The Golden Years

This will be a long post, and it's mostly for my own purposes to document this information somewhere, but maybe some people will find it interesting.

When I started in Customer Support, I just wanted to have a job that paid decently well and that I at least somewhat enjoyed doing every day, and I did.  The office was a great environment.  I really liked Brian, my manager, and later Keyur after I moved to an advanced team, though he wasn't in our office.  The team in Kansas was small, as most of the Support team was in California.  Initially, the team was just Dennis, Kiley, Steve, Drew, and me, and soon Kevin joined as well.  Steve, Drew, and Kevin became great friends and are still three of my closest friends even today.  Later others joined, including Connor, Mitch, Trevor, Phil, Derek, Patrick, Ryan, Jeffrey, Matthew, Bruce, Jesse, and others.  We had such a fun group of guys in the office, that it was always enjoyable to be there, because you knew you could strike up a fun and nerdy conversation at any time.

As far as the job itself, I liked working with the product.  Our product was a powerful software application that provided useful business functionality and was very configurable and extensible, which made it fun to work with, and fun to try to troubleshoot and reproduce issues.  I also really enjoyed working with our customers to help solve their problems.  Some were general questions, or maybe some small part of some report wasn't working quite right.  But some were critical production-down issues at major banks, where tens of thousands of dollars were being lost every hour during the downtime, and the bank's CTO was alerted to the problem, and it was up to me to, as quickly as possible, diagnose and resolve the issue (it should be noted that often the root cause of the problem was not with our software, but because our software was failing, we had to figure out what other product was actually the root cause).   There were often high-pressure situations, but I enjoyed them, as my even-keel, no-stress personality worked in my favor to allow me to quickly work through the issues despite the urgency and pressure of the situation.  I wasn't assigned to those high-profile cases at the beginning, but pretty early on in my career I was moved up to the team that took the toughest and most urgent cases and worked with the most sensitive customers.  At the end of my time in Support, I was the Platinum Support account manager, meaning I personally managed the accounts of the customers who paid the most money for the highest level of Support.  I really enjoyed that role, and I found that technical account management was something that I was skilled at and something that I found rewarding.

In 2006, one of the CSEs left Support to join the Sales team as a Sales Engineer.  He told me about how it was to be in that role, and I decided I wanted to do that as the next phase of my career.  It's hard to get into Sales if you have no Sales experience, but I had a natural "in", because I knew everything about the product that I would be selling.  Sales Engineering management knew of me, and they were very excited that I wanted to be an SE, so the hiring/transfer process was very quick, and in February 2007 I became a Sales Engineer.  My main responsibility was to work with a Sales Rep (who did the pure sales part of the process) to support them from the technical side.  Companies aren't going to spend 5, 6, or even 7 figures on a software product unless they are convinced of its technical merits, and Sales Reps are not equipped to do that, but the SEs are.  So that's what I did.  I worked with the Sales Reps to move opportunities through the sales cycle by doing anything that required technical skills, whether it was a product demo, a proof of concept, or just a technical conversation.  And the stakes were high, as most of these opportunities were for $100k to $300k, and some were upwards of a million dollars.  For a small-ish company like ours, that's a lot of money.

I've loved this job.  First, it's exciting.  It's thrilling to be part of the sales process, strategically determining the proper way to position the product from a technical standpoint to convince the customer that we were the right solution.  And because our product is really, really good, I don't have to make things up.  Our product is awesome, so it's been my job to ensure they realize this and that it's a better solution than our competitors.  That also feeds into one of my innate loves: competition and winning.  I get to compete against others (other companies and specifically other technical sales teams at those companies) in order to win.  And I love winning.  Every time we win a deal, especially when it's mostly because of the technical capabilities of the product, it's a thrilling, satisfying feeling.  It's also been nice to have an increase over what Support pays, which is probably less than it should be, and to get commission.  I don't get paid anywhere near what the Sales Reps make in terms of commission, but I get something, and that's always a nice feeling to have money come in that was unexpected and not budgeted for, as opposed to Support where you know your paycheck down to the penny, as it never changes.

I've gotten to go places and see things that I otherwise never would have seen.  On business trips I got to go to New York City multiple times, I finally saw a Cubs game in Wrigley Field, I got to see my first NBA game, and I got to see a ton of MLB games.  I spent most of my time in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee, but I got to go all over the country.  I spent a lot of time in Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Indiana, but I also occasionally got to go places outside my normal territory like Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Lake Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Arkansas, Fargo, Toronto, Baltimore, and Connecticut.  I've basically been able to travel the country for free, seeing tons of different things and different places, eating great food, meeting interesting people, and experiencing different cultures.  People always ask me why I enjoy traveling for work, and that's a big part of it.  I'm really very thankful that I've been able to have these experiences.

Meghan and I have also gotten some great trips out of it.  When the Sales Reps I work with make their quota, we both get invited to President's Club.  So Meghan and I got to go to the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas in 2008, the Red Rock Resort and Casino in 2011, and Maui this year.  All of them were all-expenses-paid trips.  Free vacations are always nice.  And we even had a partially-paid vacation to San Diego.

And then there is the people and the culture.  We're a California-based company, which typically means things are more casual and more fun.  Our CEO made some business decisions at times that weren't ideal, but he did maintain a fun culture that we all loved.  He even spent much of an event one time carrying around baby Joshua.  We have a Sales and Marketing Kickoff every year, which is so much fun for me.  We learn a lot, but there are always fun events and parties and chances to hang out with my friends.  We also have technical trainings, which can be grueling, but I still love them due to all the time I get to spend with my colleagues, many of whom are friends.  I have colleagues from the Sales, Marketing, and Professional Services side that I always enjoy seeing at these events, including Rob, Mica, Pierre, another Pierre, Michelle, Steve, another Steve, Mark, Aamir, Marnie, and others.  This is in additional to all the Sales Reps I work with regularly, including Ben and Aaron, Jay, Jim, and others.  And on top of that, I've even really liked my management.  My direct manager while I've been an SE (until this February), Dylan, has been a friend, despite actually being my supervisor.  We got along so well together and spent so much time hanging out, even going to baseball games together by ourselves when on the road, separate from company events.  He has even hosted events at his cabin for our team.  His boss and my VP, David, has always been great.  He supports all of us and has our back for everything.  He does a great job running our organization.  The whole SE organization is great.  We have a super talented team, and we all work well together, and we all have fun together.

So I've been so thankful to have been at Actuate for these past 12.5 years.  And the 8.5 years that I've been an SE has been so much fun and so rewarding and so instrumental in the development of my professional skills, that it's hard to imagine a better experience that I could have had.

Last Day in Paradise

We had to check out of our condo today.  We enjoyed the view as much as we could before we had to depart.

The inside was nice too.  It had a relaxing and upscale feel to it, which is just what we wanted for our vacation.

More pictures of us.  I needed the flash to take away the silhouette effect, but it almost makes it look like we're in front of a fake background.  I can assure you it's real, and it's amazing.

Flights out of Maui's airport back to the mainland leave either in the morning or the evening.  This is because with the distance and the time change, morning flights will arrive in the mainland in the evening, and evening flights will arrive in the mainland the following morning.  Airports generally don't have inbound flights in the middle of the night, which is when they would be for mid-day departures from Maui.  So we had a lot of time to kill today after our condo checkout and before our 10:00 PM departure flight.  We decided to go to the beach in front of the Sheraton.  All beaches in Hawaii are public beaches, so you can go anywhere.  The Sheraton has an amazing beach, as you can see here, so we decided it would be a good way to spend our day.

We rented a cabana, which is what they call this contraption.  It was great.  It has two lounge chairs with a shade that you can move to wherever you need it to be.  With Meghan's propensity to get sunburned, we needed shade for the day, and this fit the bill.  We spent the day reading and taking a break to go eat lunch at one of the beach restaurants (Haute Dog).

I rented some snorkel gear a couple days ago, but the water was too rough near the condo, but the Sheraton has Black Rock, which is known for its great snorkeling.  So I put on my gear and headed out.  I saw amazing fish, of course (because we're in Hawaii, and that's how it goes here), but I also saw several of those huge green sea turtles.  They are endangered, so there are signs everywhere telling you not to harass them, and that you shouldn't even get close, because someone might report you.  So I tried to get close, but not too close.  I wish I would've had an underwater camera, but this picture captures what it was like.  It was pretty crazy.  And these guys just didn't care about anything else,  They would go wherever they wanted to go, and a couple times they came right at me.  Not wanting to get nailed with some sort of federal endangered animal harassment charge, I quickly re-positioned myself out of the way to let the turtle go wherever he was going.  Watching them swim right toward me was really amazing.  It pretty much looked exactly like this.  And these guys are not small.  They are four and five feet long.  And they have hard shells and sharp fins and beaks, and they are not going to go around you.  They expect you to move, so you do.  I explored all around Black Rock and saw four different turtles, including a mama and a baby feeding on the algae on the rocks.  It was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

Finally it was time to pack up, as the beach equipment had to be turned in, so we then headed to Lahaina for dinner and souvenir shopping.  Next up is our long red-eye flight home with a layover in LA.  Good-bye, Hawaii!  We'll miss you!

Sunsets and Sushi

Usually I do pictures in chronological order for a post, but I'll make an exception in this case, because this picture just needs to be at the top. I'll probably never take a more perfect picture of nature. This could be on a postcard or mounted on a wall or something. I'm not giving myself credit, because God did all the work.  I just grabbed my camera and captured an image of it.

The actual first picture of the day is this one. I don't normally eat breakfast at home, but on vacation I almost always do. I also don't normally have coffee on a daily basis at home, but since we're in Maui, I'm pretty sure the right plan is to get up and have breakfast and coffee on the lanai while enjoying the ocean.  So that's what I did every day in our condo.

This was the view from our second floor lanai during the day and the sandy beach just to the right out the back door of our condo.

Here you can see how the waves crashed up against the rocky shore just on the other side of the retaining wall, and then how the waves lapped against the sandy beach just a few yards further down.

When we first got to the condo, Meghan spied something black crawling on the wall and was a little grossed out and wary of it. I was pretty sure it was a crab, even though I'd never seen a black crab before.  But sure enough, if you go look on the rocks on the other side of the retaining wall, they are everywhere.  In fact, I thought I was taking a picture of one here, but later when I looked at the picture and zoomed in, there are four of them.  I think the normal orange crabs are cute little guys, but these are not.  Maybe it's the black shells, but they look sinister and like giant bugs who may also be poisonous alien lifeforms or something.  Fortunately there's nothing to worry about, as they are total scaredy cats.  If you get within about six feet of them, they will scurry away and hide under a rock.  So no death by creepy killer black crab, but also no tasty dinner either.

As the sun set, the aqua color of the water was replaced by a shiny dark blue that reflecting the sun beautifully.

I barely remembered to stop taking pictures of the ocean and to actually take a picture of us as we sat on the lanai enjoying the setting sun.

For dinner, we decided on sushi.  After the sun had set, I drove to a nearby sushi restaurant to get takeout.  It looked really good, despite how terrible it looks in this picture, and tasted great.  We enjoyed sushi and wine on our lanai in the Hawaiian night while listening to the ocean.  What an amazing trip it's been,

Lounging at Lokelani and Lahaina

The place I chose for us to stay for the second half of our trip is the Lokelani Condos in Honokowai just north of Lahaina.  Last time we went to Maui we stayed at the Papakea, which is very close to this place.  I wanted a place with a direct oceanfront view, and with a bedroom that opened directly to the ocean.  There were a few other things I wanted, and Meghan had a wish list as well.  Thanks to the beauty of VRBO, I was able to find several properties that met all of our criteria.  I was able to negotiate it down to a good rate, but you still never know if you'll be happy with a place until you see it in person.  But we arrived yesterday, and it was great.  It has a really nice interior.  It has two floors, so both the living room and the master bedroom have their own lanai, opening right up to the ocean.  We are about 30 feet from the water, as you can see from the picture on the left, which is looking out from our bedroom lanai.  There is a sandy beach about 100 feet to the right, but right in front of the condo is a grassy lawn and then a wall that has a rocky shore on the other side.  We walked out to the beach today and saw this giant green sea turtle just lounging on the beach.  It's hard to tell scale from the picture, but he's about four feet long.  It's pretty amazing to see something like that.

We wanted to lay out on the beach and read, but it was high tide, so there wasn't a whole lot of beach available, so we instead used the lounge chairs on the grassy area.  We spent a lot of time today reading and just enjoying the sounds of the ocean as the waves crashed against the shore.

The sun started to set, which resulted in some beautiful pictures of it reflecting off the water.

For dinner we went to Lahaina and ate at the Cool Cat Cafe.  They had really good burgers.

There is a banyan tree in downtown Lahaina that's 142 years old and 60 feet high. It looks like a forest, but it's just one tree. Meghan and I spent some time there last time we were in Maui, so we wanted to walk by it again.  To get an idea of how big it is, see how small Meghan is in the picture on the right.  We had a nice evening out.  We are looking forward to another relaxing day tomorrow.