Slightly over 3 months in now at my first role as Technical Marketing Engineer with Rubrik, Inc and I couldn’t be happier. The job itself is new things often enough, to where I don’t feel bored. And my team is amazing-I couldn’t ask for a more supportive group of people. The more I work with them, the better it gets. The breadth of knowledge and insight they bring to the table help me immensely. As I’m sitting here at my computer on a Friday night feeling thankful, I thought I would do a quick recap of some of the projects I’ve already been working on and things I’ve done.
First month:
Started off with bootcamp and begun learning about the product. Like past roles with most of the companies I’ve worked for, this was once again like drinking from a firehose. To be clear, I do not feel like I have even scratched the surface of the products, even after 3 months. Along with trying to ramp up on the product and forgetting countless names of co-workers (yeah, I’ve got an exceeding bad memory for names and I definitely apologize to all those whose name I’ve forgotten… ever), I also attended VMworld. While there, I caught up with countless friends and starting experiencing the high regard that people hold for Rubrik. I was able to meet customers who also loved the product, and some even went as far as sharing/paying for cab rides with me and of course dinners. I was able to help setup the Rubrik demo labs and felt like I was able to start contributing to the team. I also did my first presentation in conjunction with Pure Storage (at VMworld ever!).
Second month:
Second month, I started warming up with presentations with a product demo and a webinar. Both helped calm some of my jitters about presenting in front of people. I’ve always been nervous about presenting in front of people and imposter’s syndrome. But I also hate that feeling, and was a major reason why I wanted to be (and was) a VMware certified instructor while working at Dell Emc and a large reason for moving to this role. I’ve always been decently introverted and have worked hard to try to come out of my shell. The community has been a large part of what has made it easier for me to do so. During the month, I ended up back at HQ for team meetings and more team-building activities. This is one of the first teams that I’ve worked for that has truly worked hard at bringing their employees together and becoming family. To end the month out, I started preparing for my first VMUG presentation.
Third month:
The third month I traveled to Phoenix, Az for their UserCon there. I gave my first presentation to a…not packed house . It was actually better this way in my opinion since this allowed me to work into this sort of thing a bit easier. I felt more like it was a conversation and tried to get the attendees more involved in the presentation with me instead of it just being a slideshow. The last part of the month was finished off with going back to HQ to work in the lab. I’ve always loved lab work as it presented a clear problem or goal and you could concentrate on that instead of needing to define things first. I admit freely that I’ve confined myself in that sort of environment for too long though and need to work on my creative side. Which is why we are going to try to blog more.
So what’s next on the agenda? First thing, I have a vacation planned. First one in 5 years where I am actually going somewhere. Heading to a remote cabin in Colorado to spend a week. Get some creative juices flowing again and some rest. I will be visiting a few friends from VMware up there and enjoying a few libations with them. Hopefully the ideas for some blog posts will show up and I’ll begin writing those. After that, I’m still doing a ton of learning. Trying to get a lot better at my Spanish and Rubrik’s products along with the products we support (Azure, Hyper-V, AWS, etc.). I’m sure there will be more information coming out of those. To be continued….