Technical Careers Beyond DevOps

Julian Dunn
Senior Manager of Product Marketing, PagerDuty
@julian_dunn
August 2019 Edition - PDX DevOps Meetup
Technical Careers Beyond DevOps

@julian_dunn
What’s in this Talk?
Roles
3
For each of these, I’ll cover:
• Sales engineering
• Professional services consultant
• Community manager / dev
advocate
• Product manager
• Product marketing
• What you do
• What the job is like
• What’s great about it
• What’s not so great about it
• Typical career ladder beyond it
• What of your “previous life in DevOps”
might you use

@julian_dunn
What’s Not in this Talk
● Growing a pure technical IC career (SDE I-->III--
>Principal/Staff or the equivalent on the
DevOps/SRE/sysadmin side)
● Moving into engineering management (read
Camille Fournier’s excellent The Manager’s Path
for more info)
4

@julian_dunn
My Career Path
5
2000-01 2001-04 2004-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-2019 2019-?

@julian_dunn
Key Takeaways / Common Reactions
1. Has a short attention span and is easily bored
2. Despite his better judgment, actually likes computers
3. Likes to use “both sides of his brain” *
*actually a crock, but a convenient analogy https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-left-brain-
vs-right-brain-myth-elizabeth-waters
6

@julian_dunn
Transferable Skills from DevOps
● Problem-solving of emergent issues
● Systems thinking
● Curiosity / continuous learning
● Empathy for the engineer
● Communication skills for complex concepts
● Technical knowledge (somewhat)
● Knowing that the problem is always DNS
7

@julian_dunn
Time to Riff Extemporaneously About:
Roles
8
For each of these, I’ll cover:
• Sales engineering
• Professional services consultant
• Community manager / dev
advocate
• Product manager
• Product marketing
• What the job is about
• What’s great about it
• What’s not so great about it
• Possible career ladder beyond it
• What of your “previous life in DevOps”
might you use (transferable skills)

@julian_dunn
What’s the job? You provide technical expertise to prospects in the process of closing a deal, working closely with
sales reps. Conduct presentations, demos, proof-of-concepts (customized demos)
What’s great about it? Great pay (+ variable comp if the company and your rep are doing well); variety of work;
potential for travel
What’s not so great? If either your sales team or the company’s product are bad, you’ll take a lot of bullets from
customers (you might still make lots of $). Travel can be heavy.
Typical career ladder: Career SE | SE mgmt | sales representative | move into product marketing or management
Skills reused: You will learn how to use the company’s product as a technical professional but in a demo-ware
context. You don’t ever build anything technically “real” anymore.
Sales Engineering
9

@julian_dunn
What’s the job? You help customers implement your company’s product.
What’s great about it? Variety of client environments; potential for travel; comp as good as or above DevOps; you-
should-listen-to-me-because-you-are-paying-me
What’s not so great? You’re just a billable resource; administrivia; work can be repetitive; clients can be
unreasonable
Typical career ladder: Career consultant | move to SI | consulting manager | customer success | advocacy
Skills reused: This is the career path with the most technical depth and continuity from what you used to do.
Professional Services Consultant (at a vendor)
10

@julian_dunn
What’s the job? Same as previous.
What’s great about it? Same as previous. Ostensibly vendor-neutral, so you get more breadth of work.
What’s not so great? Same as previous. But more likely to be a body shop / staff augmentation, so higher
administrivia / potentially unreasonable demands on your work/life balance e.g. travel on weekends.
Typical career ladder: Career consultant | move to vendor | consulting manager | customer success | advocacy
Skills reused: This is the career path with the most technical depth and continuity from what you used to do.
Professional Services Consultant (at an SI)
11

@julian_dunn
Developer Advocate / Community Manager
What’s the job? You build community around your company’s products, market space, and point of view.
What’s great about it? Public speaking, “thought leadering”, being seen as a connector/expert. If you love meeting
and talking with engineers, this is a fun role.
What’s not so great? Job satisfaction tied to your company & product’s star rising/falling. Being a public figure can
get to be a grind -- risk of burnout from travel schedule, community friction, always being on. Many companies
unsure of ROI on dev advocacy.
Typical career ladder: More of the same, or back into core engineering/ops. Also product marketing. Can be a bit of
a career dead end, in my view.
Skills reused: Good communication skills needed; your technical skills are valuable but depth will vary based on
role.
12

@julian_dunn
Product Manager
What’s the job? You own the roadmap for one or more products (strategy and execution).
What’s great about it? Variety of work; talking to customers; some travel; work with many other areas of the
business including sales, finance, legal, exec team, etc. You are seen as the expert in your area. Great salary.
What’s not so great? Stressful - internal stakeholders rarely happy with product (“everyone is a product manager”).
Politics/diplomacy. Engineers will fight you, even the ones you used to work with. The buck stops with you (given
the choice between firing an engineer and a PM over product failure, the PM gets fired).
Typical career ladder: PM->Senior PM->Group PM/Director->VP Product | PMM | startup co-founder/CEO
Skills reused: Systems thinking, intuition, problem solving, prioritization. Technical background is helpful when
working with engineering but you won’t get to code anymore (and you shouldn’t)
13

@julian_dunn
Product Marketing
What’s the job? You position and message products & solutions in the market, help product management define
strategy, and help enable sales to sell your product, and marketing (MarComm) to run campaigns.
What’s great about it? Variety of work; talking to customers; some travel; work with PM and sales. Understand
how sales works w/o becoming an SE or a rep, and how to make it better.
What’s not so great? Caught in the middle of PM / MarComm. People frequently don’t know what you do (er, just
like a DevOp but maybe worse). PM->PMM can be a waterfall (toss over the wall).
Typical career ladder: PMM->Dir. PMM | move into MarComm-->path to CMO | move into PM
Skills reused: Systems thinking, intuition, problem solving, prioritization. If you also do Technical Marketing, you do
get to use your technical skills, but they’re at the SE level.
14

@julian_dunn
Recap
● These careers are a mix of non-technical creativity + technical know-how
● Your existing DevOps/engineering experience equips you well for these roles
● It’s ok to want to continue a purely technical career after knowing all this!
15

Thanks!
jdunn@aquezada.com
@julian_dunn
16

Technical Careers Beyond DevOps

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Technical Careers Beyond DevOps

More from Julian Dunn

Recently uploaded

Technical Careers Beyond DevOps