你好世界和随机职业的思考

我已经有很多人问我很多问题最近，我不以任何方式肯定的是，我的意见的最佳来源，特别是当它涉及到careers-但出于某种原因，很多人问我关于他们他们应该做的事情。但有一个问题最近打我，有人问我，“什么是你有过的最好的工作，为什么？”现在通常我会马上拿出一些快速，机智，有时讽刺的答案，但不管是什么原因，我把这个问题相当严重。尴尬的沉默的那些随机的时刻之一，而该人问你的问题奇迹，如果你真正重视当他们问它打我 - 后我是最幸福的时候我的系统工程师。对我来说这可能是大部分的时间在我的职业生涯,如果你读过马尔科姆·格拉德威尔的新书“异常值”(谢谢你为我推荐这个阿,一个好的快速阅读)对我来说成为一个SE是我个人相当于10000小时的速成课。这是为什么…思科的SE是最酷的工作之一——你可以见到你的客户，了解他们的网络，并帮助设计一些最整洁的网络和系统。我是98财年和99财年的SE，以及00财年的一半。(思科的财政年度从7月底开始到结束，一直不知道为什么，但我们在7月底参加了有趣的“新年”聚会和午餐)我必须承认，我非常幸运。说到合适的时间-我最初并没有追求在萨克拉门托政府和教育客户的SE角色，我觉得我会厌倦。但几个月后，我得到了一份在旧金山当SE的工作机会，负责西海岸的金融客户。我在金融部门的工作不太顺利，我被调到了商业部门。现在，所谓的“商业”指的是那些没有名字的账户，那些少于1000名员工的账户，特别是在1998年，指的是那些真正不需要你大部分产品的人。作为第一个SE分配到商业，这是相当开拓性的，但并没有真正地被视为一个积极的职业步骤在当时。 But fate shined on me, because if you think back to 1998 about the types of companies that existed from Menlo Park, through San Francisco, and up to Napa and Sonoma counties? I ended up with every dot.com you could imagine. I had the coolest companies, the craziest business models, the fastest growth, and more fun than anyone. I had the roommate- Sean D. Murphy. Sean was a Cisco Account Manager I supported. Down the street lived Ann- Ann was the other Cisco AM I supported. See in commercial we didn't have 1 SE to 1 AM back then. Life was a bit interesting when you lived with your partner-in-crime. Suffice to say vacations were few and far between and Friday blurred right into Monday too often. Mondays and Wednesdays I would pretty much support Sean, with Ann on the alternating days. What this ended up meaning were 4-5 customer meetings a day with Sean, 3-4 the next day with Ann, then repeat. Whereas man of the SE's on the 'named account' or 'enterprise' regions would have these goals to present one or two presentations to their customer per quarter, I was doing 10-15 a week. It was, in Malcolm Gladwell's analogy, like the Beatles in Hamburg playing eight-hour sets. Friday was catch-up day with network designs, TAC case follow-=up, Bills of Materials, and taking the time to educate and train our channel partenrs on our new offerings. I was also fortunate to have these two managers, Jim Middleton and Bruce Parelskin. They had wildly different styles, but quite complementary- the short version is that Bruce would critique every customer engagement I ever did and could pretty much always find very good ways for me to improve. Jim was always trying to find opportunities to highlight to the rest of our management chain the things I got right. (I did a great job of denying him lots of opportunities...) What makes a good SE? That I learned from my customers. Know your products. Don't bother representing something you are uncomfortable with, either don't do it, or bring in someone who knows that product. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Be there for your customer on Friday night or Saturday morning if they are doing a cut-over or having problems- they are there, you should be too. It's better not to win the deal than to compromise on your principles - don't sell something that won't work. I could go on and on, and tie some relevant example to every one of those points. I know at Cisco some people still think it is better to be in Global Accounts, or Enterprise, or Service Provider. But I always have felt that the best SE's come from the ranks of those who have to support not one, but hundreds of different customers through small networks, and large ones, IT intensive businesses, and more brick-and-mortar types. Breadth of experience is invaluable. Good luck. dg (SE II for life) Follow me on推特或loopback0，我的技术博客