Punched in the Nose Part 2 (Replay)

Machine-generated from the episode audio and not hand-corrected, so names and technical terms may be imperfect. The audio is authoritative.

All right, you're listening to a replay of the CTO advisor, one of my favorite episodes from back when we counted episode numbers, episode 101, Matt, Luigi and Mark. We all sat around a table virtually and talked about getting punched in the nose. And with all the news of disruption and layoffs, I thought it be appropriate to rerun this podcast and just remind everyone how awesome they are. All right, you're listening to episode 101, still not the official ceremonial 100th episode of the CTO advisor, because we have to have like the rule, Mark, is we have to have Chad on.

Chad threw the gauntlet and said he had to be on for episode 100. I thought you guys were doing a 10-part series for episode 100. Oh, that's a good way to put it. It feels like we're skipping the 13th floor in a hotel right now. Superstitious. And I think we haven't done this since like a sponsored podcast. We have a couple of guests on for this episode of the CTO advisor. Luigi Danikos and Matt Broberg will get into the introduction, but I'll let Mark take on like the emceeing of this conversation.

This is a follow-on to a podcast we did a few months ago about being punched in the nose. You know, interestingly enough, that's my wife's favorite episode because we didn't talk about anything technology. We all kind of just opened up and shared our stories and just put it out there. So like everybody at my wife's work started listening to that episode. So it's the only episodes that my wife actually liked. It does. It does. Okay, so we've all been through a lot of change.

And if you heard our last episode at the time, it was Keith, Matt, and myself, and we were all going through various things in life, job and personal. So I wanted to do a follow-up and see what's changed for everybody and how we got down there. And I also wanted to pull in Luigi because Luigi just went through a life change as well. We're all at different stages. So I'm going to start with you, Matt. The last time we talked, you were just kind of putting yourself out there and looking for something and figuring out what to do next.

So what's up with you? Yes, Mark. I appreciate the invitation to come back. So since October, which feels like a very long ago time and very recent at the same time, I'm sure we'll revisit that dichotomy. But since then, I have gotten a great job. I'm working in a marketing department at a large tech company doing open source related things. So kind of right in the sweet spot, I had to make a couple of tough decisions to land there.

And it wasn't the smoothest landing, but I've been there for about four months now, and it's been really nice. Nice. So in the end, you said you had to make some decisions. Were there other competitive jobs or moves or personal stuff? What happened? Yeah, it's a reframe back. So my wife and I decided to move cross country from Portland, Oregon out to Minneapolis, Minnesota. So we kind of settled in on that towards the end of October. And that was around when I was trying to make a firm decision on where I was going next.

I'll be honest and say I was holding out really hard for, I got a verbal offer at kind of like the dream company I've been wanting to go to for a while. And about a month and a half of them giving me the verbal offer, they hadn't been able to follow through with the written one due to some internal struggles. And I had to make the call to move forward. And there's a couple options on the table there, I'm lucky to say.

And I went with this one. So it was a little bit of a choose your own adventure. Like, you know, you get the big win of getting a verbal confirmation that you're good at what you're doing. And then you got to still need the paperwork if you're going to get paid. So not to put you on the spot, but do you think you made the right decision? I made the right decision at the right time, right? Like, I think something, you know, that really hits home as I revisit this punch in your nose philosophy that we're having here is to remember that every decision we make is in the context of a specific time and place.

And it's the most respectful thing you can do to yourself is to remember where you were when you make a decision. It's still true now, but I also want to say it was true then when I made the right decision for the right reasons. And the reason really had to do, I was working on a mantra that I wanted to be enough wherever I was going. I didn't want to sell this vision of what I could become or what I could learn or what I could grow into.

Just at this stage in my career, I wanted to kind of double down on something I'm already good at and get comfortable with being really good at something, which is not something I've been comfortable with. I've been exploring throughout my career, and this is the first time I admit, like, maybe I need to double down a little bit. Oh, that's great advice. So I think that leads in really well to Luigi. Luigi, you're doing something now. What's going on? Yes, I am doing something now.

I'm working for probably my number one company. I've probably wanted to work for a while over there at VMware now, which is different because it's in a role that I've never thought about until I had a conversation with a fairly random person from the company originally. And then ultimately you, Mark, you're a large part in me getting this role. So, yeah, it's different. I guess my journey is a little different than most of y'all because I went through so many different phases to get to where I'm at, and I'm not doing what I thought I would do, but I'm actually really excited about what I'm doing in an SE type of role.

And for that, I was like, I don't know why I didn't think of that role before. And I hear you're moving. I think that's a key piece. Yeah, I will be out in the Minneapolis area for most of my time, and then I'll be coming back to Massachusetts with the family and stuff, and that'll be an interesting time between the two places. But most of my time during the weekend stuff will be spent out in Minneapolis, and my weekends will be spent back in sunny Massachusetts.

And if listeners really listen in, you can hear me smiling about the Minneapolis part. And as weird as Matt was just at my house on New Year's, and he brought me a hat from Minnesota. And luckily for me, I do have – I guess for me it's a little different because I know so many people, especially in that area. I have friends, and Matt is like a brother to me, so I have family out there that I can lean on for just emotional support because you need that support when you're making transitions like that.

And Matt's been really great about reaching out to my wife because he knows that my wife and my family is very important to me. And he reaches out to her just to be like, hey, just checking in on you and stuff. Oh, yeah, so I probably should rewind here and say how I got punched in the nose since you guys all told your punched in the nose story. Back in 2017, I was laid off from HPE when they merged companies, and then I kind of got put into a bad mental state.

I was kind of depressed in a sense, and Matt was there throughout the whole process. And I guess I didn't really want to try to leverage my network at first. I was trying to do it on my own merits in a way, and then finally I just started to talk to more people. And I think it was more of a pride thing, like why was I not good enough? Am I good enough? Am I not good enough? And then ultimately I ended up becoming good enough.

That's my punched in the nose story. Yeah, so you started out differently than I did when I lost my job. The first thing I did literally right after I tried to call my wife who didn't answer was take to Twitter. I don't even remember what I said, but well, I'm looking for a new job, something real simple. And then the number of people who outpoured was just beyond crazy. Yeah, for me it was a little different. I put a tweet out there, but I was just like, I'm independent again.

And then literally the first person to reach out to me was Steven Foskett. He was like, hey, so I have this event coming, right? At the time it was in December in Massachusetts. And he's like, now that I'm independent again. So for me, I took a little bit of a different journey because then I did a bunch of the tech field day delegate stuff, tech field days last year and stuff. And it really hurt me that I couldn't do any this year because I had taken just a regular job job to help pay my bills and the scheduling was messed up.

But I kind of did, but I didn't like broadcast it out there. And I realized that when I was going to some of these events and conferences with Foskett and the field day crew. And I was talking to people, they're like, wait, you're not at HP anymore? And this is like months later. And I was like, well, yeah, no. And I guess I didn't do a great job of letting my network know. And so many people have tried to help me in the last year.

And Matt's been probably one of my biggest people in my corner, checking in on me, trying to make sure that I stay positive and I don't fall down that rut of forget everyone. Way to go, Matt. Well, it's always been a little kind of crazy important for me to remember this and for others listening to remember that are going through a tough time. Because it's ironic because Luigi taught me to build the network that I built. Like he's not everybody knows this.

It's an old Geek Whisperers podcast reference. But Luigi was the guy that got me to join Twitter and to stay on it and to do so to really connect with people that are as enthusiastic as we are. So when he was going through a rough patch, yeah, I was texting him, tweeting him every day. I could for a while until kind of just reminding him of how awesome he is and how much he's meant to me and how much he's got to give this community.

And like, you know, back to our punch in the nose. It's like you've got to get to care for each other. Like when when you can't care for yourself. And I appreciate to have I appreciate having all of you guys as part of this. And I hope everybody listening knows who that is. And if they think they don't have anybody, they should look again because I guarantee they have somebody that can be there for them. They might have to nudge him down again, though.

Yeah, I think that's the best advice. We have support networks. We have friends, people who are there to support us, whether we know it or not, they're there. So in times when we don't think we're good enough, it's on all of our support networks to, you know, to to remind us and bring us up and let let me know and let you know, let each other know. Hey, you know, what was Stuart Smalley? Gosh, darn it. I'm good enough.

Yeah. Well, I think, too, sometimes, especially when you're in job changes, right, and you're in that job market and you're applying for jobs. And I applied to a hundred, I mean, hundreds of jobs I was qualified for. And then you don't get callbacks. And then you see the people that you hired into those roles and you're like, you don't have a tenth of the experience you have. And you're like, but why wasn't I good enough for this? You know, I'm more involved in this.

And I know this space and that. Why is it this person that has no experience getting that or you have experience? So then you start, you know, doubting yourself. And you get a lot of self-doubt and so forth. And then I had other roles come to me where people wanted me to relocate. And at the time, I was just like, no, it's not something that I would consider and so forth. And for me, one of the large factors is for this job with VMware was the team and the feeling I got from my now boss.

And Mark, you are on my team and stuff. But not just Mark. It was the other members of the team that I met throughout the interview process. And how comfortable I felt, right? It was felt like it was almost just like I'm talking to you guys like I am talking to you now is how I talk to the team. And that's how I felt. And I just wanted to be around that. So then it was approached to me by Matt here.

And he already had it. Again, this is how great Matt is thinking. He reached out to my wife and said, hey, what do you think about this? And to me, that was huge. Again, someone thinking about something that I care about. Yeah, just to provide a little context there, what happened was there was a job opening where Matt lived on my team. And I reached out to Matt and said, hey, do you know anybody? And Matt said, Luigi, question mark.

And the concept hadn't even dawned on me because Luigi doesn't live where Matt lives that might be okay. And then Matt just kind of did what Matt does and got it working. I mean, and I wouldn't do this out of the blue to anybody. I do have Luigi's wife's phone number because they are family to me. I've spent a lot of time at their house. They've spent time at mine. So this is a special case that I wanted to sound like Matt is just like the most meddling person on the Internet here meddling kids.

But it was one of those things where it seemed just crazy enough to work. And I have to also reinforce like there's something really special about how Luigi sounded while he was interviewing for the sales engineering roles, these SC roles. I'd never out of all the time we've been talking when he was looking for his next gig, I'd never heard him so happy. It was always like, ah, this is interesting, but I'm not like I need this or I need that. And it was this one.

He was just like, this is amazing. I'm with smart people that I want to work with. I just, you know, I'm going to learn some stuff. But it was like exciting instead of like this concern that you're not measuring up to something. So, you know, knowing knowing his family, I know how hard it would be to be further away. But I also felt like, you know, this one, it's just crazy enough to work. Yeah, I agree. It's crazy.

All right. So keep last time we talked to you, you were dealing with some personal loss issues in your life. You know, everything that was going on. You've had a lot changed since then, which might be punched in the nose. But I kind of think it's more of a opportunity came knocking. So what's going on with you, Mr. Downs? So today as we record this, I got my last payroll check from VMware. I got a I think we all, you know, we were pretty transparent.

I announced back in July I took a job at VMware. And like Luigi, VMware was kind of my dream job. The role maybe not so much, but the company definitely, you know, Stu Miniman over at theCUBE and Wikibon reminded me, you know, you know what, Keith? I remember meeting you at VMworld in 2012. And, you know, you were the whole the expert thing. You're trying to you were trying to get into VMware. And I sat down and did look back at kind of email correspondence and talk to the wife.

I've had 26 interviews at VMware over the past six, seven years. Wait, 26 is in two followed by six. Yes. How many roles was that for? That was a five role. Well, if you do the math that, you know, I get to the last interview in, you know, four of the five, maybe a lot of just back and forth in. Oh, I'm so close. You know, I'm the last I made it to the last round of interviews and a majority of the roles that I interviewed for.

Oof. I think you're also in a, you know, like Louisia is a very competitive city with lots of. Well, I think it is. There's not even a competitive city thing. These were, you know, all virtual role. So they're very competitive jobs. I mean, there one was an open tech strategist. One was for Chris Wolf's old job, which is the the field CTO, the America's field CTO. So these were pretty prestigious roles within VMware. So it's not like, you know, I'm going for a desktop support position and I'm convening the guests, you know, 10,000 people locally.

They can do that job. I don't know. The OpenStack role doesn't sound that prestigious to me. Well, you know, there was a time and a place. There was a place at the time. It was, you know, VMware had just rolled out their OpenStack solution. So it was it's it's for you. Interestingly enough, they never filled the job. So they're just closing the wreck. So you started at VMware in July and started in July. And if you guys know, VMware is one of those companies that's fairly famous.

VMware, Cisco, few companies do this. Intel does it now. They re was they call it rebalancing their workforce. So strategically, they want to make sure they never get stale in a area of skill set. So not necessarily a workforce reduction, a workforce rebalancing. So I was a solutions architect with, you know, a very business slanted skill set. They no longer wanted to invest in that type of skill set and capability and wanted to invest that those resources in a different area for that full time employee.

So, you know, I drew the short straw and got laid off after, you know, six, seven months. And VMware got laid off when VMware made that announcement that they, you know, ripped the X number of employees. So I don't know about you, but when I lose jobs, job, I never feel good. How did you take that news? That's right. I wasn't surprised. You know, quite frankly, you know, people who listen to this podcast, the CTO advisor and listen to kind of the VMware story traditionally.

It was a experiment. It was, hey, you know what, can we have a broader conversation beyond just IT infrastructure with our crowd? But, you know what, you look at the publicly available information and where VMware wants to go with their revenue, and you look at what I do and the value that I bring in. It's not, you know, there's definitely some overlap, but not necessarily a home run. So from a capability, from a, you know what, is this thing going to work out perspective?

Me and my manager had a very blunt conversation that we ran out of runway when it came to choosing who had to go. So it wasn't a surprise. And I didn't necessarily feel bad, other than the fact that I really liked working at VMware. Yeah, there wasn't any opportunity to shift around internally. I mean, Matt, I'm going to be brutally honest, please. The as if, you know, I ever have a problem. I know. I like you need that disclaimer.

I love it. Yeah. You know what? I felt a bit slighted. The right. Yeah. Personally, I felt I made a you know what me and my wife had talked about over the years. I've built this CTO advisor brand. And it is taking a lot of three to the industry sweat and blood to build the brand. You know, it's not something that I made, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars doing as a result. So when I looked at going to go work at VMware is cashing in the chips, kind of saying, you know what, I built the brand.

I'm going to take my reputation to VMware. The folks at VMware were extremely appreciative. They value the brand from a, you know, conversation. You talk to all the executives. They were really happy to have me. However, when it came to and it doesn't matter how many, you know, you look at things personally. I understand being in an executive role need to lay off, you know, whatever number of people and dealing with the aftermath that you can't. You can't specifically place every single person into a new role.

You kind of and being where I have to say was extremely fair to the folks that they laid off here in the US on how they found new roles. Yep. However, personally, I had interviewed with VMware 26, 27 times over the years. I've interviewed these execs. They know me. I know them. I did not have a position when I was laid off. I did not have a good landing zone for where I could go within VMware. You know, I mean, I'm a square peg round hole.

There's only a couple of jobs, organizations within VMware that I can go to. And none of that skill, none of there was not a 100% match or 70% match where I could win after I got laid off at VMware. So I felt slighted. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad you went into that because it's hard for me not to think. I'm with you that it's so important to distance yourself from it and see it rationally and see it from the perspective of somebody who has to make tough calls about headcount.

When getting let go, I try to do that same thing. But there's also like the other thread of it that I think it's important for people to honor, which is like fucking hurts. And I've been on the other side of that, right? I've had to let people go. Yeah. It's not a fun feeling. I mean, it's nowhere near as bad as it is for the person I'm sure being let go. But it's not good. It's not pleasant when you have to make that decision yourself.

I can't imagine having to make it at a company like VMware where we're saying a large number of people. That seems unfathomable to me to emotionally deal with that. And you know what I get? Matt, you're absolutely right. There's the feeling of feeling slighted and there's actually being slighted. So I can't say that I was slighted. I was treated just as fairly, if not more so than everyone else. I got personal calls from super senior level people within VMware who said, Keith, we'll help to get you in a role within VMware that you're qualified for and that you're skilled for.

If there's a place for you in VMware, we'll help you get there. So there's the feeling of being slighted and there's actually being slighted. I was not treated unfairly. That's incredibly important. Yeah. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. I mean, so what's next? So what's next? You know what? I came back and, you know, me and Melissa, my wife, we kind of licked our wounds and said I was interviewing for a couple of roles within VMware. One was a natural fit from like that traditional evangelist role.

Another one was more of an advisory role for cloud financial services, et cetera. And we looked at it and we said, you know what? And, Mark, we talked about it. I've interviewed for VMware 26 times over the past six years. This isn't like this, you know, this isn't a sustained. This was a sustained effort over a long period of time. VMware just wasn't meant for me. These are two great world class opportunities. It's highly likely I would be offered the jobs, one of the two jobs at the end of the interview process.

But, you know what? I can't. I can't. I'm a man of faith and I can't ignore the signs that if you ask someone 26 times, do you want me? And 26 times they tell you no. Or 24 times or whatever the number of times they tell you no. Listen to what they're saying. They don't want you for whatever reason. Not again. Not anything against VMware. I highly recommend that you go work for them. I couldn't speak more highly of my experience at VMware.

However, me and VMware are meant to be what we are today. Me examining VMware as an analyst and as an independent person and saying, you know what, VMware? Are you doing best by your company, by your shareholders, your customers in the industry at large? And, you know, I'm, again, a societal-based person by society. So I like being in the role that I was prior to going to VMware, that CTO advisor role, and saying, you know what, VMware? Are you the better solution over Nutanix?

Are you the better solution over Microsoft? Are you doing enough when it comes to racial diversity? I like challenging not just VMware but the industry at large at a lot of these questions. So, you know, I decided that at least for the short term, I'm not going to find another traditional job. And I'm definitely, definitely, you can put it on slippery slope that I'm saying that I will not work for another vendor again. That won't happen. Now, I just want a vendor to call you and offer you a job now.

It has happened, Mark. Right after, you know, right after I said, you know, I got laid off from VMware, I got no less than four or five inquiries from some really great vendors, some startups, and some mature companies, you know, asking if I would be interested in coming to, you know, bring my skill sets to them. But the one thing that I learned while working at VMware, you know, I can't make, I can't talk the way I like to talk. I can't be as direct as I want to be.

And that means a lot to me. Yeah. I also appreciate the can I vendor or not vendor. I've mostly vendored. I've only, wait, yeah, I've only worked for tech vendors in some way, shape, or form since I got into this industry. But I found this was a little different when I was looking at the opportunities in front of me. Most of them fell into developer relations, which is, you know, a blossoming skill set that I've written a lot about and spoken a lot about.

And I realized I just didn't have my heart in it right now. And it came down to this thing that I think all of y'all will find interesting that I couldn't give all my energy to selling a product right now. I just absolutely couldn't do it in my heart. And that's really what I've realized, like my primary skill set is getting people energized in a way to talk about or buy some technology. Like that's what my primary skill is more than anything else in particular.

And that's worked really well for me. And when I'm looking at these opportunities, I'm just like, I don't care about your NoSQL database. I don't care about your storage array. I just truly can't give a shit about this right now. And that was really hard for me to grapple with that. Like my energy is depleted on that front and I don't know exactly how to get it back. I'm working on that. But I knew I couldn't do that.

So in my current role, I'm advocating for open source, like just the entire category of participating in open source software development. And that I can do. I'm not selling anything in particular to anyone. I'm just talking about something I care about. And I don't know. Have any of you had to grapple with that energy source and anything related to that? I know what a storage array is. You're the one. Mark doesn't get tired of storage arrays. Keith, you're a storage guy at heart.

You know it. We've decided it. Yes. It's there. It's a cold heart. Matt, it's interesting you say that. I had one of the roles that I was interviewing for within VMware was they rebranded it, but it was an evangelist role. And it was for an evangelist role for a product that as the CTO advisor, I actively say it was not a good product. So awkward. Yeah, it's a little awkward. But I think in general, what I discovered during my stint at VMware that I had made a purposeful, knowledgeable decision that I would have to put down a certain part of the CTO advisor's reputation, not a new reputation, but a brand that I couldn't be.

I could no longer be independent. VMware is going to give me a check twice a month that I now miss. But in return, I have to put on a VMware hat or at least I can't be anti VMware on Twitter. Even as I worked for VMware and when I had the conversations that the CTO advisor typically has, which is big, broad business conversations, I absolutely loved it. But when I had to have a conversation on, hey, why should you keep on vSphere versus moving to Nutanix HV, I had no passion for that.

I left that part of my career a long time ago. And that is part of the job, man. But isn't that kind of part of every job? Like there are parts of the CTO advisor that I know you don't like. But I think the thing that can help mitigate it is when you have a passion for the overall job. And I can honestly say I had a certain level of passion for VMware. VMware is probably the second best job I've ever had next to the CTO advisor.

And I think the thing that's really hard, and Matt, I think you can relate to this more than anyone, is that when you have a passion for something, you can put up with low pay. You can put up with questionable culture. If the thing that you're doing is really fulfilling and the thing that I was doing at the CTO advisor was really fulfilling. VMware was a great job. And those two are not necessarily the same thing. Like VMware has awesome benefits, an incredible culture, one of the best products in the market.

The community is, you know, really great, which is what Luigi is really passionate about. But I had all those things kind of in some sense at the CTO advisor. So when I had to do marketing, when I had to do sales, when I had to do accounting, when I had to do the regulatory stuff, when I had to do all that stuff, contracts, when I had to do all that stuff that I don't have a passion for in VMware, it wasn't. I could easily do it.

Yeah. See, this is my VMware is my first real vendor job. Every other job I've had, with the exception of maybe a company I started when I was, you know, senior year of high school, which that was so long ago, I'm not even going to count that, has been working on the customer side. So it's very different working at a vendor. From my perspective, there are definitely some really good things and some, like any job, there are things I'd rather be doing.

But, you know, I find that I love talking to customers, something I didn't wasn't quite sure. You always went out in the community and did Vmugs and, you know, sessions and interop and all that stuff. And I love talking to people. But that's a lot different than going into the room of, you know, one, two, three, maybe even five people and just sitting down and talking with them about their problems. And, you know, I always talk about a broader thing that I sell.

You know, I get paid on vSAN or HCI solution and the surrounding products. But invariably, every conversation with everybody is about something almost entirely different, which is one of the things that I really love about the gig. Well, I think this has been. Louis, you go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say one of the things, though, to to help recover you from getting punched in the nose is I know for me, and I think maybe Keith kind of touched on or alluded to it, is he was open to conversations.

And I'm always open to conversations with people about new opportunities. So if you are maybe stuck in a rut at work, you know, you're not liking your current job or whatever, you know, have those conversations with people because you never know where it could potentially lead you to, even if it is a role that you may not necessarily think of at first. You know, I typically have conversations with just about everyone about opportunities and stuff. So I would I would leave with that.

All right. Well, this has been a great conversation. I think we've gone much longer than we all typically do. But Matt, where can people find you on on the Interwebs or your address or whatever? Most places at MB Broberg. And Luigi, where can people find you and where can Matt find your wife? Matt's already got my wife's contact. Mine is nerd alert. So it's at a nerd alert dot com or nerd alert on Twitter. And I'm even linked in slash.

I am slash nerd alert. So nice. And Keith, what about you? You can find me at CTO advisor on Twitter or the Twitters, as my daughter Delaney loves to say. Yeah. The CTO advisor dot com. Oh, you know what? Ironically, I forget this mark. I registered the Twitters dot com. Did you? Yeah. I got a renewal notice last month. I'm like, oh, that's hilarious. And it redirects to the CTO advisor. Oh, man, because I might want to since the storage at the Twitters dot com email address.

Yeah, there you go. Just for fun. So. So if you didn't get that for me, I'm since the storage on the Twitters and pretty much every other platform. And thanks for listening. And talk to you next time.