Punched in the Nose Part 2

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All right, you're listening to episode 101 still not the official ceremonial 100th episode of the CTO because we have to have the like the rule mark is we have to have Chad through the gauntlet and said he had to be on for episode 100 so 10 part series for episode 100 oh that's that's a good way like we're skipping the 13th floor in a hotel right now superstitious we haven't done this since like a sponsor podcast we have a couple of guests on for this episode the CTO advisor Luigi Danikos and Matt Broberg we'll get into the introduction but I'll let 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 constantly 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 episode 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 different stages so I'm gonna start with you Matt the last time we talked you were just kind of put yourself out there and looking for something and figuring out what to do next so what's up with you yes mark 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 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 I about a month and a half of them giving me the verbal offer they hadn't been able to follow through with a 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 the big win of getting a verbal confirmation that you're good at what you're doing and then you gotta still need the paperwork if you're gonna 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 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'd 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 get 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 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 lot while over there in a 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 it's different it might 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 have do but I'm actually really excited about what I'm doing and in the SC 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 that's a key key yeah I will be I will be out in the 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 with 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 the sunny Massachusetts and if if listeners really listen in you can hear me smiling about the Minneapolis Matt was just at my house on New Year's and he brought me a hat and luckily for me I do have I guess for me it's a little different right 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 you know just emotional support right because you need you need that support when you're making transitions like that and you know 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 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 you're 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 you know why was I not good enough you know am I good enough am I not good enough and then ultimately I ended up becoming good enough that's my punch-in-the-nose story yeah so you started out differently than I did when I 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 and I don't remember what I said but well I'm looking for a new job something real simple and the number of people who outpoured was just beyond crazy yeah for me it was a little different like 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 Stephen Foskett he was like hey so I have this event coming right in at the time it was in December in Massachusetts and he's like now that I'm independent again you know 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 a just a regular job job to help pay my bills and the scheduling was 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 the Foskett and the field day crew and I was talking to people 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 you know 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. And well it's always been a little kind of crazy important for me to remember this and for others listening to remember that I've gone 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 Geekwisters 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 of the nose it's like you've got a got 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 now and 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 to sometimes especially when you're in job changes right and you're in that job market and you're applying for jobs I mean 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 get 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 and I know this space and and that well why is it this person that has no experience getting that or you have the experience so then you start you know doubting yourself right and you get a lot of self self doubt and so forth and then I had other roles come to me where the 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 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 talked to the team and that's how I felt and and I just wanted to to be around that so then it was approached to me by Matt here and he already had again this is how great Matt is thinking he reached out to my wife and say 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 said hey do you know anybody and Matt said Luigi question mark and the concept hadn't even dawned on me because he doesn't live where Matt lives that might be okay and then Matt just kind of did what Matt does yeah we got it working I mean and I wouldn't do this out of the blue to anybody I do have more as Luigi's wife's phone number because they are family to me I've spent a lot of time at their house they spent time at mine so this is a special case I don't 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 SE 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 I'm 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 who's just like this is amazing I'm with smart people that I want to work with I just you know I'm gonna 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 Keith 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 so what's going on with you mr.

down 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 the cube 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 be expert thing you're trying to you were trying to get into VMware and I sat down did look back at kind of email correspondents and talked 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 so if you do the math that you know I get to the last interview in you know for the five maybe a lot of just back and forth and oh I'm so close you know I'm the last I've made it to the last round of interviews and in the majority of the roles that I interviewed for oof I think you're also in a you know like Luigi is a very competitive city with lots of competitive city things these were you know all virtual role so they're very competitive jobs I mean there one was a whole defect strategist one was for Chris Wolf's old job which is the the seat 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 competing against 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 for you interestingly enough they never filled the job so they're just closing the rack so you started at VMware 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 read 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 and 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 I you know I drew the short straw and got laid off after you know six seven months and be more get laid off when being were 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 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 a crowd but you know what you look at you look at what 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 it's there's a there's definitely some overlap but not necessarily a home run so from a from a capability from a you know what is this thing gonna work out perspective and 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 I'm gonna 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 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's 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 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 gonna 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 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 the 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 hundred percent match or a 70% match where I could lead after I got laid off at VMware so I felt slighted yeah yeah I mean I'm glad you went into that because I it's hard for me not to think I with you that it's so important to 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 it is for the person I'm sure being let go but it's not 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 so emotionally deal with that and you know what I get and I can't you know there's the 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 get personal calls from super senior level people within VMware who said Keith will help to get you in a role within VMware that you are they that you know you're qualified for and that you're skilled for if there's a place for VMware if there's a place for you in VMware we'll help you get there so you know 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 you know kind of licked our wounds and said you know 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 a advisory role for cloud financial services etc and we looked at it and we say 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 and this was a sustained effort over a long period of time VMware just wasn't meant for me the 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 I'm a man of faith and I can't ignore the signs that if you ask someone 26 times do you want me in 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 me and where I highly recommend that you go work for them they I couldn't speak more highly of my experience at VMware however beat me and VMware are meant to be what we are today me examining VMware as a analyst and as a independent person and saying you know what being where are you doing best by your company by your shareholders your customers in the industry at large and 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 being where 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 are you doing enough when it comes to racial diversity I like the I like challenging not just VMware but the industry at large and a lot of these questions so you know I decided that at least for the short term I'm not gonna find another quote traditional job and I'm definitely definitely you can put it on you can you can put it on slippery slope that I'm saying that I would not work for another vendor again I just that 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 get 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 meet I can't talk the way I like to talk I can't be as direct as I want to be and that 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 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 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 and just like I don't 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 I 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 like the entire category of participating in open-source software development and that I can do like I didn't 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 a grapple with that like energy source and and anything related to that?

I always love storage arrays so. 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. Yes. It's there. It's a cold, cold heart. Matt, it's interesting you say that. I had one of the the roles that I was interviewed 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 advisors reputation not in the reputation but 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 and what I even as I worked for VMware and I had the 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 AHV that I had no passion for that well that's like you know that I left that part of my career a long time ago and that is part of the job man and it isn't that kind of part of every job like there are parts of the CTO advisor that I know you don't like.

There's absolutely 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 you can put up low pay you can put up with questionable culture if the thing that you're doing is like really fulfilling and the thing that I was doing at the CTO advisor was really fulfilling.

VMware was a great job and it is not necessary 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's 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 have 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 that 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 know I 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 than I sell you know I get paid on on vSAN or HCI solution and the surrounding products but invariably every conversation with everybody's about something almost entirely different which is one of the things that I really love about the gig well I think this has been Luigi go ahead yeah I was gonna 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 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 that's already got my wife's contact and mine is a nerd alert so it's at a nerd alert calm or nerd blur on Twitter and I'm even linked in slash I am slash nerd alert so nice and Keith what about you where do you can find me at CTO advisor on Twitter or the Twitters as my daughter Delaney loves to say yeah the CTO advisor calm oh you know what ironically I forget this mark I registered the Twitters calm 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 um Cincy storage at the Twitters calm email address yeah there you go just for fun so so if you didn't get that for me I'm Cincy storage on the Twitters and pretty much every other platform and thanks for listening and talk to you next time