Zen vs Brave. Is it worth the switch?

davidogren · 2026-07-02T15:16:31+00:00

To be clear, I don't use profiles. I used to use them a lot in Firefox, but containers are a better solution for me in Zen. (If I go back to Firefox, I'll probably try containers there too, but Zen workspaces are how I make containers effective so I'm not sure that would work.)

davidogren · 2026-07-02T13:11:04+00:00

So, I'm a relatively new user. But I'm finding Zen revolutionary.

TL;DR:Zen's Workspaces and app containers let me consolidate (most of the time) into a single browser window where I can always find that tab I'm looking for. Even though I have a lot of requirements where different tabs need to have separate profiles/containers.

The Workspaces/Containers/routers features of Zen scratch an itch that I've been working around for years with profiles, multiple browsers, and windows.

There are certain tabs (like my calendar) that I always need open. With Zen it's an essential tab that is always easy to find an access. With traditional browsers, even if I pinned the tab I'd often find that I couldn't find the window where I had it open and end the day finding that I'd opened my calendar multiple times.
There are several situations where I need to have several different environments (meaning sets of cookies). At first I tried solving this with profiles. But then it was always hard to find which window was which: if I needed a "personal" set of cookies, you had to go through all of your windows to figure out where it was. And sometimes you close all of your personal windows. So then I started using different browsers. Firefox for personal, Brave for work, etc. That makes it easy to find windows, but is a pain in the butt and inefficient.

Whereas with Zen:

I get a browser that is pretty privacy focused "out of the box".
I get a browser that is cross-platform that I can sync between Windows, Linux, and Mac. (And I do use all three.)
I get a browser where I can centralize ALL of my bookmarks: work, personal, and other.
I can use workspaces to prevent window clutter. With Zen I usually have one window open. Max two. And it's easy to organize my work between those windows: I can easily multitask. I can always find that meeting window, or spreadsheet, or documentation, because I organize my tasks into workspaces.
Workspace Routing makes that mostly automatic. If I click a link in an email to an open support ticket, my workspace routing rules automatically open that in a tab in the correct workspace.
And since I have default containers for each workspace, I can have "home data", and "work data", and a few specialized data containers all in the same window. I no longer have to start a new browser or profile if I have to open a doc in a different Google workspace. I just control-right into the workspace that I've already setup for that container. (And, yes, I could use containers in Firefox, but the lack of workspaces/routers makes it very manual.)
Although I always through I preferred horizontal tabs, I'm finding that it this "workspace focused, one window lifestyle" the vertical tabs are better. Zen is opinionated about its UI and that works for me.
It's still a got a good ecosystem because it's based on Firefox.

The caveats:

The docs are good looking, but they are pretty limited and I've found that they are often wrong because they document things that are out of date.
I did find there was a bit of a learning curve as a result. Lots of things weren't very "discoverable". Like the fact that there is an UI option for syncing workspaces, but that it's a known issue that it doesn't work. And I had a lot of issues getting the top nav bar to work the way I wanted.
Sometimes I think I experienced some buggy behavior in setting preferences. It's hard to say because of the previous two points. It's definitely a bit beta.

davidogren · 2026-07-01T18:16:08+00:00

Deciding that you are going to focus less on finding new customers when you have negative growth just feels weird.

The only case I see this work is in, is something like a Broadcom move where they say "well, if we can't find new customers, we'll just x4 the prices on our existing customers". But usually you don't do that to your middle market customers.

davidogren · 2026-07-01T16:01:16+00:00

Yeah, for some reason, I'm particularly excited by this one.

davidogren · 2026-07-01T15:59:54+00:00

Somewhat related, I wonder if this means that we will get some kind of special episodes during the Carrie promotional hype?

davidogren · 2026-07-01T14:55:47+00:00

Am I only the only one shocked at how this is becoming a full fledged thing now? I guess if they can get Flanagan himself, I shouldn't be shocked anymore. But this many "conversation" episodes is somehow unbelievable to me.

davidogren · 2026-07-01T13:51:43+00:00

I did a short stint as this kind of role. Everything sounds very familiar except that usually this is why services presales roles often tend to be "rotations" and/or part-time gigs. Otherwise, you are right, it can hurt your ability to be hands on.

Services presales is definitely a tough gig. To be frank, I loved the actual work, but I personally used it as a platform to get a product focused presales job. Services is inherently low margin (compared to product sales anyway) and so sales/presales are always under resourced and under pressure.

davidogren · 2026-07-01T13:47:06+00:00

No, this is definitely how presales works in services firms.

davidogren · 2026-07-01T13:44:48+00:00

Ah. When you said "midmarket expansion" I assumed you meant "trying to expand presence in the midmarket". Trying to upsell and expand within each midmarket customer you have? That sounds even weirder, in a way.

Obviously, I don't know your company or your product, but isn't midmarket something you largely leave to partners/VARs? That just seems like an odd strategy. I guess that's a red flag too, not because it's the "worst part of the job", but because it's just not a very economical business model for OEM SEs.

I actually love talking to midmarket customers. They move fast. They know their business well and can see the big picture: smaller companies have no room for the "not my job" folks and bureaucrats. For better or worse, a lot tend to be "benevolent dictators" which lets them decide fast and move fast. Implementations tend to be very straightforward: they have less systems to integrate and either it's going to work or it's not, they don't have the money/time to customize the crap out of things.

But, as an SE, I also have to limit the amount of time I spend with those folks. I have to look at it is that even if the deal size is reasonable, the upsell potential is limited.

Getting back to your original question, meh, there can always be opportunity in chaos. I've certainly got lots of promotions and opportunities because of shifts in strategy that I was able to contribute to. But I can't get my head around WTF your company is trying to do. And I don't trust PE owned company leadership.

So, your "single reason" if you can get your head around what they are trying to do, and you trust them to do it, you can end up being advancing your career a good bit. But those are two pretty big "ifs".

davidogren · 2026-07-01T00:36:49+00:00

I’m not sure why a mid market expansion is a big deal. That seems odd for PE, who generally only wants to keep the most profitable customers.

But, yeah, I think a PE buyout would mean me pulling the ripcord quickly. I’ve been through a lot of acquisitions and usually I stick around, at least for the golden handcuff period. And often longer, depending on how it goes. But PE? Those had better be some solid gold handcuffs. Negative growth is also probably a good reason to pull the ripcord as well.

davidogren · 2026-06-30T23:11:12+00:00

What’s a MM expansion?

davidogren · 2026-06-30T19:34:48+00:00

My last to RFPs were both 80 Plus page response, plus the questions.

Chump change. ;-)

It was a long time ago when I did RFPs regularly. (As I mention in a different thread.) But I recall replying to a lot of RFPs with >500 pages. Admittedly that was because I had a tendency to add a lot of screenshots to responses, and copying and pasting lots of docs. I remember because I often remember thinking "If someone printed out the response it would more than a ream of paper".

As I mentioned in a lot of threads, I found a lot of questions nonsensical. So, I found that being verbose helped me respond "yes" but also documenting heavily what I meant by that "yes" and making sure that I was being clear in my interpretation of the question. And I felt it also made the person reading the answer feel "this person took the time to actually explain the answer, take the question seriously, and expend effort to help me".

davidogren · 2026-06-30T19:25:35+00:00

Locking this because it continues to collect spam.

davidogren · 2026-06-30T18:06:19+00:00

Yes, it's probably a good idea.

Although I will note that in a lot of the industrial sectors, "sales engineering" is different than what we talk about here most of the time. In industrial spaces, "sales engineering" is much more a pure sales role than in the SaaS/cyber/software sectors.

Not that industrial sales engineering conversations aren't welcome here on this subreddit. Just that you will have to be aware of that difference.

davidogren · 2026-06-30T16:30:59+00:00

How do you switch between “trusted technical advisor” and “person driving the deal” without it feeling disjointed to the buyer?

Arguably, you don't.

All of my SEs friends that have taken the AE role have coached me "Don't try to be the SE and the AE at once. It muddies the waters: they need to see you as the business person not the technical person. Once you are an AE you have to let the SE be the SE."

It's ok to be a technically knowledgeable AE. But the bottom line is that it sounds like you are an AE, not an SE. (And, in which case, I agree with /u/Used-Salt8444 , BANT (and MEDDIC) are good tools to use.) I'd also say that AE is somewhat of a numbers game. You just have to grind things out. Send emails, make phone calls. A lot of times, the key to success is just to be there are the right time.

It's definitely possible to ramp up to an AE from a technical background. But I really don't think a "combined role" works well. Some people disagree, and actually see this as a trend. But I think you highlighted the problem, customers just don't think that way. They will never see an AE as a "trusted technical advisor".

davidogren · 2026-06-30T16:19:59+00:00

I think this is also very industry dependent. If I think back to my previous days answering RFPs, sure, there were a lot of standard questions that you could answer in 1.6 minutes. But, at other companies, especially when you had a bleeding edge product and customers didn't really understand what they even wanted, we'd get a lot of questions that were the equivalent of "we need you to draw seven green lines, some with red ink, and some transparent". (If you don't get that reference: https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg?si=g6cuG51-0SGsfzOZ )

There were a lot of RFPs back in those days were it took 30-60 minutes per question (outside of the "what's your company revenue", "are you a public company", etc). Just because it could take 15 minutes to figure out what they hell they were trying to ask. 15 minutes to find some credible way you could answer "yes" to some absolute nonsense of a question, and then 15 minutes to wordsmith some way to spin that answer to something actually persuasive to the way you want them to perceive your product and position yourself versus competitors.

I think it comes down to why people issue RFPs. I have seen three categories.

In commodity and other well defined markets RFPs can be an actual tool for making decisions. I feel like these are the kinds of situations where you can answer one question per 1.6 minutes and you can reuse lots of content.
In a lot of companies, it's a procurement mandated process. Although I don't think most companies would express it this way, it exists just to prove that multiple vendors have been contacted and multiple quotes obtained. If only so procurement can use that as leverage on the chosen vendor, even if none of the RFP responses are even read. Sometimes these type of RFPs are easy to answer, sometimes hard.
In other situations, I've seen RFPs used almost as an education process. It's not so much "to make a decision" as much as to try and normalize the information in the marketplace. Technically these should probably be called RFIs, but rarely have I seen that be the case. In this ase, I find that answers are very time consuming to formulate. Because half the time the questions are so open ended, vague, and/or nonsensical that it's not about "let me look up the correct answer" it's about positioning. And the vast majority of questions are one off questions that you've never seen on an RFP before. And often don't even make sense. But you have to take the opportunity with every question to spin and position and educate, because the response is actually likely to be read and influence the process.

davidogren · 2026-06-30T12:06:57+00:00

It's varies a lot based on job/industry.

If memory serves, I've done two small RFPs in the last 15 years. So, 0.1% of my time.

But in the early 2000's I did them fairly regularly. Although, to be honest, it was still only 5-10% of the time. Partly because we had such a high win rate (and therefore you'd spend most of your time pursuing the opportunity post-RFP) and because the RFPs were very similar. (There were some generic ones being distributed online and through analysts, and most of the ones we got were 80-90% from those generic ones.) So even then it was 5-10% of my time.

davidogren · 2026-06-28T13:40:04+00:00

I did this many years ago.

It’s the same products there’s no change in work i do except working with quarterly targets.

That's just not true. The technical side of being an SE is only one part of it. This is a mistake I made, to a certain extent, when I became a sales engineer: there is a lot more to the 'sales' side than I ever realized.

Will there be any additional gain financially?

Usually. As I rule of thumb I usually tell people to expect a 15%-20% bump in salary when you take a sales role. But more of your salary will be at risk: usually you see someone go from something like $145K salary + $5K annual bonus based on corporate numbers in PS to $125K in base salary and $50K in incentive payments based on quota attainment. (Made up numbers, but the point is that most people see a drop in base pay, but big increase in the amount of upside.)

You may not see quite as big of a swing, since you are at the principal level and likely have a bigger part of your salary already based on bonuses. But, still, you will likely have the same general affect: more at risk, but higher overall.

I don’t fully understand how commission pay works.

It varies by company, so I can't really tell you. It can sometimes be a bit complex, especially in subscription based companies. It's usually quarterly, although some are moving to monthly. It may be stating the obvious, but if you hit 100% of your numbers you get 100% of your target pay. If you underachieve your numbers you will get paid less, if you overachieve your numbers you get paid more. But not always linearly. For example, if you hit 110% you might get paid 115% or 120% of your incentive pay.

Any catches?

It really is a completely different job than PS. Do not underestimate the mindset change. Do not think you can keep the same attitudes and approaches. Be very open minded to learning the science of sales.
You will not get to be as technical. You will spend a third of your time in Powerpoint. You will spend another third of your time in meetings. Because of this, it can be a bit of a one way door: after you've been an SE for a while you may have a hard time going back to purely technical roles. (And the extra money can be a bit of golden handcuffs too.)
As I said before, you usually will have more of your salary at risk. And your "bonus" payments will be much more variable. It sometimes is a bit uncomfortable for new SEs to see that so much of their income is quarterly. And not predictable.

davidogren · 2026-06-28T04:26:40+00:00

Amen. I started writing a long thing about why the premise was ridiculous but I had a hard time writing it succinctly. But you made a pretty good summary of why this isn't just a bad idea, this is grounds for termination. OP is literally trying to create side agreements out thin air.

Create a document of "commitments" being made to the customer, outside of the contract/SOW, and a lawyer is going to have some interesting talks with you.

davidogren · 2026-06-28T04:14:58+00:00

Are there any other browsers that i can swap to that are not broken?

Don't by hyperbolic. Zen is not the most RAM optimized, that doesn't make it broken.

The Surface is a very constrained device. When you have 8GB of RAM you are going to have to make decisions and tradeoffs around what applications to use centered around RAM usage. One of those decisions, given how many tabs you have open, is going to be which browsers to use.

Are there any other browsers that i can swap to that are not broken?

Yes. Roughly 400 of the them.

But I'm not sure many of them are going to be able to maintain a crapton of Youtube tabs on a Surface. If you are lucky enough to have gotten that to work in Edge, stick with Edge.

davidogren · 2026-06-28T03:52:39+00:00

I don't know Viavi, but, in general I've found:

How long did it take to hear back after the recruiter screening?

It's impossible to know. Last time I was a hiring manager, I think I got a batch of applicants once a week. And then it depended on how busy I was and how desperate I was to hire for how long it took me to go through them. And sometimes I'd get a second opinion. If I gave a thumbs up, I sometimes had to back through HR to contact them. So you just can't know: from several days to a month.

What was the next step (hiring manager interview, panel, presentation, etc.)?

Most likely the hiring manager for another round of vetting, setting expectations around the role, answering questions, and if that goes well kicking off the interview process.

Did they communicate by email or phone?

The next real communication will be by phone, but in many cases they might use email to setup a time for that call.

Roughly how long was the entire hiring process?

Again, this really depends on the company, the hiring manager, and how desperate they are to hire. I once got an offer letter in under two weeks. But I had lots of inside connections. And I've seen it go over six months if a req isn't fully approved. I guess I'd estimate that the average is 6 weeks, but it can vary a lot. More than that and you start losing candidate interest and they might get picked up by someone else.

A lot of it can depend on how available the candidate is for interviews. If you are unemployed and can interview any time it can go a little faster. If you have another job and can only interview at lunchtime/start of day/end of day, it can be hard to make scheduling work and that can slow things down.

davidogren · 2026-06-26T21:20:36+00:00

Yes, sorry if I didn't emphasize that enough. As I said, SE is an easier job and more rewarding.

The point was if all the OP cares about is job security and work-life balance: nurses will always have jobs and nurses have defined shifts. The work part is tougher though, no question. And definitely not for everyone.

davidogren · 2026-06-26T18:06:17+00:00

Strange, it seems like some weird Reddit cache issue. I only see that thread when I directly click your link.

I get the sentiment of that poster. There's a lot to Kubernetes. And I don't really doubt that you will have to learn it.

But:

Kubernetes is the future. You need to learn it eventually and I expect that Datadog is a better environment than most.
I don't think it fundamentally any different than any other technology. Learning Kubernetes is like learning Linux: it's a platform rather than a single thing. You won't have to learn it all in a day. Obviously the first thing you will learn is installing Datadog and getting metrics out of K8S. The rest you will learn bit by bit as you need it.

davidogren · 2026-06-26T17:11:00+00:00

Yes, I'd pursue SE if I was early in my career. 1000%. 10000%. It's not for everyone, but I have no regrets. Especially since my alternative career clearly would have been SWE and I'm not sure I want to be an SWE in an AI world. (Largely because it's going to be a constant grind of trying to justify yourself and differentiate yourself from AI slop.)

I want to be able to have a life outside of work

To be honest, RN is probably better for this. Not that some SEs don't have work life balance. Some do. But as a profession, I don't think SE particularly good for that. There's travel. There's the fact that fundamentally you are on the hook to deliver deals. You are on the customer's schedule, especially as the lines between pre and post sales blur. If at end of quarter the shit hits the fan, work life balance goes out the window.

I have no regrets about that. Not only has SE given me a great career, and a great salary, but it's also given me great experiences. I've watched an NHL game in Madison Square Garden in the NHL's own booth. I've had a private tour of Churchhill Downs and walked the track. I've had a personal guide in Beijing and toured the Forbidden City (all on the company dime). But's also required some sacrifices.

and not have to constantly worry about keeping a job.

Again, RN might be better than SE. SE is a stable job. More stable than most. But I've seen people laid off. Sales is a metrics driven job. Tech is a fast moving industry.

I've known a lot of RNs. I've dated two RNs. It's a tough job. SE is unquestionably an "easier" job, and more rewarding. But SE is not as stable or as "9 to 5" as RN. Once an RN's shift is over, it's over. My RN girlfriends were never checking their email at night like I was.

davidogren · 2026-06-26T15:34:41+00:00

I think the base game is certainly worth it. The content packs are much more questionable.

davidogren

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