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4/1/1: 4 Random Thoughts from me, 1 tools to help Sales Engineers, 1 quote for motivation
Solution Engineer Manager Can Destroy a Great Sales Engineer and Improve a Bad One
- September 22, 2023
By Ramzi Marjaba
4/1/1 Weekly
4 Random Thoughts, 1 Tool, and 1 Quote
An SE Manager can make our life easy, or make it miserable. I’m not talking about slacking SEs. I’m talking about hard-working and talented SEs who could thrive under a great leader and fail miserably under a bad one for either being treated badly, put on the wrong account based on their skill set, or any other reason.
This week’s podcast interview with Mohamed Barkhad, a Customer Engineer at Google Cloud, features an example of how a great SE leader can deal with situations.
And this video discusses an example of the same situation being handled horribly.
Let’s dig into this a bit with the 4/1/1
4 Random Thoughts From Me:
1- Same title, different customer set = different role. I.e. Within the same company, a Sales Engineer covering a large enterprise will have a different role than the SE covering small to medium businesses.
2- You might be doing great under one manager, but suck under the next one. This is usually due to the manager not setting the expectations, or not being involved enough to see what is happening. If this happens to you, meet with your manager, ask them to set expectations, and invite them to calls simply to observe or to give you feedback.
3- While looking for a job, it’s important to make sure that you can get along with your manager. But you also need to make sure you’d work well with the account managers, SE director, and anyone else you will be in contact with since the manager can quit at any time. If they are the sole reason you took the job, you might end up looking for a job soon after.
4- As Mohamed said in the interview, one uncomfortable conversation can take you further in a relationship than 100 comfortable conversations.
1 Tool:
Cloud Architect Certification from Google Cloud
If you’re looking for a cloud certification, Mohamed recommends this one. Need I say more?
1 Quote:
“One uncomfortable conversation can take you further in a relationship than 100 comfortable conversations” – Mohamed Barkhad
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