Posted by Lieutenant Commander Jasmijn DeVries (XO) in Sincerest Apologies!

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Chris Emmitt (Chief Engineer) in Sincerest Apologies!
Probably going to toss this into a few ships, but I just wanted to pop back in and apologies on my lack of activity recently. I’ll try to summarize everything I can just to kind of make this quick and not a long story that not everyone would be interested in.

I believe I spoke to a few people in regards to my shift in jobs recently. So in short I started a new job towards the end of October/Early November making a shift from completely technical positions (i.e. Network/Systems in the Military to Program/Technical support as a civilian) to a Sales Engineering position. I know Sales was pretty fast paced, but I didn’t expect it to be as fast and demanding as it is. So usually in this kind of position on the Commercial side usually they’d only have to master about 2-3 products and if a sales guy needs to do a demo for a customer they would go to that Sales Engineer to do it. Being on the Federal side seems to be a bit different. We have to learn ALL the products. All 23 products that I’ve had almost no experience with. I’ve utilized their networking monitor before when I was in the military, but it’s become so much more than that old tool I used before. So essentially it was a race to learn as much as I can to become as productive as I can and there is no formal training for any of it. “You’re an Engineer, figure it out.” Is a quote that always comes to my mind when I think about it now. So not only have I been bouncing around from demos to tradeshows, to running webinars on things I barely know anything about. In between all that time I have to study the products and learn more so that I can be able to answer questions any potential customers might have in regards to the product to help solidify that sale. Needless to say, it’s been absolutely chaotic and I’m incredibly thankful for those of you here who have been supporting me through this despite my lack of activity. Thank you again, this place is seriously incredible and I’m hoping to be in a place when I can post more often and consistently soon! In these last 5-6 months I’ve gotten a pretty good base on the knowledge of the products to be able to work from! (And hey, if you’re interested in have a monitoring/managing solution for your IT infrastructure, let me know lol)

tl;dr
Work has been a busy, chaotic nightmare, but I’m getting better with my knowledge and time and I hope to be posting more often and consistently in the near future!

-Mike

The world definitely moves a bit faster when it comes to business and sales! It isn’t a problem, Mike. Real life can get hectic, that’s just how it goes! I’m glad to hear you’re becoming acclimated to your new(ish) job! I hope the chaos is at least the tinest bit of fun. ;)
Take your time on your return, Mike. We’ll still be here.

• Trin

The Chaos is always fun in one way or another XD I love learning .. one thing I can’t stand about work is if it gets monotonous and boring .. being in the Sales field you’re always talking to someone new or having to adjust your strategy based on personalities, so it’s a constant sense of new even if the products are the same which is interesting :) Finally caught up on all my ships the other day too lol

-Mike