“So what do you do?”
So one of the most common questions I get from friends and family is “So what is it you do now?” Most of them know I changed jobs 6 months ago. That said, it was always rather hard to explain to non-technical friends what it is I actually did then. To some degree it’s easier to explain what I do now. My role is what is classically known as a “Sales Engineer” though at ASG our title is “Consulting Engineer” which is a reflection of our company direction. In casual conversation with someone who is likely non-technical I’ll refer to myself as an “Enterprise Information Technology Consultant.” Instead of working in direct support of one IT environment, I provide support and direction to a number of customers throughout LA.
It’s certainly easier dinner party conversation than trying to describe what I did before as a “Systems Engineer.” It was really hard to break down engineering and ops for storage, backup, unix etc. into digestible small talk. Most folks have at least some notion of what a consultant does and that also handily avoids trying to explain the role at some level of detail which is what I’d have to do if I described myself as a “sales engineer.” Even “consulting engineer” works better in this context.
Making the decision
I was at my previous job for almost 9 years. And one of the big differences between all of my previous IT jobs and this one is that this one is that I am part of the sales organization. Until now I was one of those IT guys they kept away from the business folks down in the basement (or in a data center) keeping all that “computer stuff” running. In my case, my title was Storage Systems Engineer. I had primary responsibility for all of my customer’s Backup and Recovery and all of their file-protocol NAS storage systems. I also had engineering and ops responsibilities for their Fiber Channel storage environment as well as engineering support within the Unix & Linux systems.
So this was a varied role in a large, complex environment. It was a real challenge with tons of opportunities along the way for growth and learning. We supported the environment operationally as well as providing engineering for large project intiatives. When the business wanted to replace a system, we provided all the infrastructure engineering. We implemented it too and we were also responsibile for keeping it running once the systems were up. While I was there we moved 2 data centers, replaced the entire backup/recovery envrionment, and replaced the primary centralized storage systems twice.
Of course change is inevitable and this environment was beginning to evolve. It became clear that the business wanted to alter how IT services were delivered. And nearly 9 years in one place is a long time. I was doing less engineering and more “keeping the lights on” work. I began to see that it was time to make a move.
Over this years I’d gotten to know a lot of people in the business and the sales engineering role struck me as a challenge. You work with a lot of customers in lots of different businesses. The IT environments are of varying sizes with a variety of needs and a variety of people running them. So I reached out to some trusted individuals and started talking about my interest to move into a sales engeering role. I received a lot of good feedback and they all thought that kind of move would be a good fit for me. Then it was just a simple (HA!) matter of finding the right company and the right fit.
Of course this took many conversations over many months.
A consulting focus and a “hybrid” role
A number of things drew me to ASG. The first is the company’s desire to move from the traditional “Value Added Reseller” model into a deeper consultative approach to their customers. In the Enterprise IT world, software and hardware is most often purchased through local resellers. One of the challenges VARs have is differentiating themselves from each other. Much of that differentiation is the strength of the relationships individual sales teams build with their local customers. To drive that and deepen those relationships, ASG is offering an array of consulting and professional services that go beyond software and hardware sales transactions. Our goal is to become a trusted technology advisor to our customers. We want to understand how their businesses use IT and what their challenges are with technology. Sales transactions are a natural consequence of those kinds of interactions and not driven purely by quarterly quota targets. That’s an environment I wanted to be in.
There’s also an entrepreneurial angle. I work with my team to build on their existing relationships and help create new ones. In a very real sense I feel responsible for supporting and growing our market here in LA. That autonomy and the accompanying sense of responsibility was also part of the attraction. I also feel a duty to my customers to ask the questions they may not realize they need to ask. I’ve spent years evaluating vendor products and solutions and then putting them into service and discovering all the details and challenges that present themselves in the real world of a customer operating environment.
There’s also the learning aspect of it. So while I’m not operating and implementing equipment day in and day out like I did before, there’s a wealth of training options available. In fact, I have to keep up with certain trainings as a job requirement. Of course we do have extensive lab gear available for us to try things out. Furthermore, in our market, ASG has had a lot of success with vendors I’ve spent a lot of time with myself so that helped ease the transition. We do a lot with NetApp, CommVault and Cisco UCS in LA. That’s a world I know reasonably well and I can talk to my customers about. But I’m also able to start learning and working with new vendors and new approaches. So for my customers I also have to help sort through an ever-changing landscape and help make the right technology bets given their exisiting IT environment, the business they are in, and where they want to go.
Lastly, ASG saw me and sees me as being able to work in a hybrid role, also delivering Professional Services where it makes sense. So I can still keep a bit of that hands-on touch doing designs and deployments in the territory. And for the most part, I’m the one making the decision on whether or not I should be doing the PS delivery for a particular customer engagement. And I feel like I’ve got all the support within the company to do that when I can or pull in the individuals with the right expertise when I can’t.
In the end, it became an easy decision. And 6 months in now, I can say that what we discussed fits pretty closely to what I’d envisioned I’d be doing. I can see a long road ahead to continue to grow which is one of the most important items I was seeking when I decided it was time to make a transition.
And I’m not gonna lie, there’s a bit of geek pride in having an “@virtual.com” email address.