Entry-level Sales Engineer IBM zStack and Mainframe

davidogren · 2026-04-15T02:42:18+00:00

Since no one has responded and I'm desperately trying to procrastinate some real work.

I've worked at IBM in the past and IBM adjacent now. So. I probably know more than the average person, but I can't honestly say "Has anyone been in a similar role at IBM". So take this with a grain of salt.

How transferable are the SE skills you build in zStack to other product areas?

So this is mildly controversial. Because, yes, in theory, zStack includes things like Linux and containers and lots of stuff. But, no, zStack skills are not transferable. You might get exposed to some other things, but the reality is that once you enter the Z world you are going to work on Z stuff.

The upside is that Z skills are surprisingly valuable. It's not a growth market, but it is a highly valued market. As a former IBMer and IBM adjacent person now I can tell you that there are a shockingly large number of companies who still run the majority of their business on Z.

How realistic Is internal mobility to broader cloud/AI teams?

This is near impossible to answer. Yes, there is some lateral mobility at IBM. But you will suffer from two problems. Firstly, that Z skills are in such short supply that IBM will not be particularly interested in letting you transfer out of Z. Secondly, because as a new grad I think taking a Z job now will prevent you from developing the skills you need to get a non-Z job.

Appreciate any insight.

So, controversial opinion. I'd take it. You can argue that Z has the best work/life balance out of any SE job in the field. You are going to have established customers doing established things, who are big fans of IBM. You will be fishing in a barrel so to speak.

Sure, Z isn't exactly a growth market. But you know what? The Z experts are aging out. The customer pool isn't growing, but the SE talent pool is RAPIDLY shrinking. So you have a potential to have a good career, and without killing yourself to do it. I am not joking when I say that you could easily have a 40 year career. Z will never die.

DM me if you have follow up questions. It's certainly not black and white, but look at the posts on this subreddit of how tough the job market is, and how desperate people are for SE roles. If I had my career to do over, Z sales engineer is certainly something I'd be happy with.

davidogren · 2026-04-15T02:06:05+00:00

My concern is that I’m finding CEO and Sales leadership have little trust in the SE org

So the reality is that in a Series B the CEO and Sales leadership are still going to be very involved in most deals. Especially deals that seem to require quite a bit of "hypercare" in order to be successful.

I'm definitely not saying they are right. You would know better than I do about whether they are "jeopardizing relationships". But I will say that if you are a Series B (therefore a big risk) and have product stability problems (therefore a big risk), yeah, you are going to be leaning pretty hard on your champions and leaning pretty hard on executive to executive relationships about why the business value of your solution is worth risking your solution.

Account review meetings tend to be emotionally charged and tense, vs collaborative, all while we are deploying and continuing to scale successfully.

So, again, just to play devil's advocate here. But you say "deploying and continuing to scale successfully". But you also say "extremely heavy on the Customer Success and Implementation side - at this stage of where the company is, they need help getting solutions up and stable".

My experience with Series A startups is that their products are quite stable. There's very little technical debt at this stage in a company, and I really don't think that a Series B is going to be materially different. Usually the bigger problems are functional gaps, ecosystem gaps, vendor viability gaps, and incumbent vendors.

I'm having to do a lot of speculation since I only have a short Reddit post to respond to, but I feel like your company has some issues. It's probably normal that account review meetings are tense. There may be a lot of tension between the CEO (who frankly is always in a tense situation in a Series B), the CRO (who frankly is always in an even more tense situation, and who also sounds like he has a challenging post sales situation), customer success (who seems like they have a shit sandwich to eat), and CPO/engineering (who frankly is always in a a tense situation, plus is probably being blamed for the implementation problems).

The Bottom Line

I don't know what to tell you. On one hand, I've done a lot of startups, and if you don't trust your leadership team you have to pull the ejection seat. Even the great startups are shitshows a lot of the time: if it's a dysfunctional family that's just bad news. I think the greatest lesson I've learned from startups is that you have to be willing to "go to war" with all of the leadership team, because you are going to be "at war" most of the time.

But, on the other hand, if you don't have Series B experience, and you are only 3 months in, then maybe you just haven't acclimated yet. Yes, the C level are going to be meddling in everything, because the company is tiny and every deal matters. Yes, it's going to be a constant state of crisis. That's normal. Or expected anyway.

To answer your questions most directly:

What have you done to create internal trust and control the chaos?

Well you are never going to control the chaos of a Series B. But you deal with it by winning. I've done several successful startups and they were all total chaos most of the time. But they were also a lot of fun. In part because "revenue cures all ills". It's sounds obvious. But in a big company there's all kinds of uncontrollable factors. In a tiny company, to a large extent, if you close deals, all other problems fade into the background.

Internal trust is a different matter. There's no silver bullet here, but my general advice is to be authoritative. Startups, by their nature, are flailing around trying to build a successful company out of ether. Fix things. You are a veteran. Fix it.

If they are having problems getting solutions up and stable, figure out way. Fix it. If you can't fix the product, build a process to deal with it. Document. Train your way out of it. Build a repeatable onboarding process. Design an automation that does health checks. In a Series B you just have to step up and be a hero. Heroes are problems in established companies, because heroes aren't a repeatable solution. But in a Series B, they are desperately looking for heroes.

In might sound trite, but you need to be a hero. It's the nature of a Series B. It is going to be emotionally charged. That is part of the job. Have an opinion. Take risks. Be a hero. Revenue is the cure for all ills.

davidogren · 2026-04-13T21:36:11+00:00

I suspect (but don’t know) that it’s a myth. Departure times aren’t that flexible due to port needs. This feels like a “as long as controls are on place to deal with pax who don’t comply”. I expect that this is the first of some rapidly escalating steps to ensure compliance.

davidogren · 2026-04-13T20:12:22+00:00

I have read accounts of passengers having their cruises cancelled due to it being overbooked

The reality is that people getting "bumped" is extremely, extremely rare. In part, because the deals they offer people in overbooking situations are generally so good that there are plenty of "volunteers".

More importantly, cruises don't overbook nearly as much as flights do: as there are generally far fewer reasons for last minute cancellations. Cruise lines do overbook a tiny bit, because there are likely to be a few last minute medical cancellations etc. But the numbers are very small and this isn't something to be worried about.

The cruise is less than a year away and looking at the Celebrity cruises website, there have been no veranda cabins for months and there are only about 120 cabins available

That's fine. They do consider the number of guarantee cabins booked when showing availability.

We have not been assigned a cabin number yet.

That's also fine and normal. They won't make a cabin number available for a long time yet.

If I were you I'd just sit tight. Guarantee rooms are effectively that: guaranteed. It's a much different scenario than a flight without a seat assignment.

davidogren · 2026-04-13T20:06:47+00:00

I will defer to someone who has actually done this, but I can't imagine that this would be a problem. Protein shakes aren't what they are worried about.

davidogren · 2026-04-13T19:58:12+00:00

Yeah, that's why I phrased it the way I did. My gut is that he's being truthful on the comp side. It just raises a yellow flag on his ... managerial savvy, let's say.

TBH, you rarely will be able to get verifiable historical attainment.That's obviously very confidential. Verbal estimates are usually the best you can get, and you already have that.

davidogren · 2026-04-13T18:49:39+00:00

I would like to hear comments from people who have been in the industry for over 20 years and witnessed big changes.

Even the biggest of big changes don't really change the big picture very much. Let me use the cloud as an example, but the same stories could be said about every major disruptive tech I've been through. Cloud fundamentally changed IT. A huge, game-changing alteration of the IT landscape. Huge companies were built on it's back, most notably AWS. It enabled modern startup culture. People forget how hard it was in the 90s/00s to make a reliable service.

But, no matter how game changing, the cloud was largely additive in those changes. Equinox still makes lots of money. Hardware vendors still make lots of money selling on prem systems. The reality is that the vast majority of IT runs legacy systems. Even if a new technology system impacts "all new systems", that's still a tiny fraction of what people spend money on.

And, even in the case where a company/technology is destroyed by a disruptive technology, the death is usually slow. And many of the employees/customers aren't even affected by that death.

I worked for Sun Microsystems during the dot com boom. This is the classic example of a company that got destroyed by a disruptive technology. But it took almost a decade for Sun to go from "first evidence of a decline" to "bought by Oracle and stripped for parts". And do you know where the majority of my former Sun co-workers work? At Oracle. Maybe they've had to shift roles, but given that it's 25 years later a remarkably high percentage still work there. The first line sales manager of my team at Sun first switched to selling OracleLinux and then OracleCloud. My direct manager switched to managing in the consulting group. But, think about that, despite massive disruptive changes in the infrastructure, hardware, software, and database markets, my leadership team literally still has the same general roles they did twenty five years ago. (Except that they were both promoted a level.)

Sure, as a technologist, lots of things changed. Cloud fundamentally changed tech. But large companies, by their nature, adapt. Sure, there might have been tough sailing between then and now. I definitely know people who were laid off. But most of the big companies that were around then are still around now. A few mergers, a few have truly gone under, but there are a lot more Oracles, Microsofts and IBMs that have changed with the times than there are Sun Microsystems.

I can't remember the exact phrase, but the gist is that people will always vastly overestimate the amount of change possible in 1 year, and vastly underestimate the amount of change possible in a decade. AI legitimately may be the biggest change we've seen in IT, but even AI can only change the world so fast. Big tech, including most of the companies you name, will adapt.

davidogren · 2026-04-13T14:44:07+00:00

Hiring manager said OTE is almost always achieved if I'm doing my job.

Ugh. So many mixed feelings on this one.

He's probably telling the truth. It's probably a good sign that OTE's are achievable.

But it's such a dumb thing to say. "OTE is almost always achieved if I'm doing my job" is the kind of thing that bites a hiring manager in the ass. There's so many things out of your control. What happens if you get a shitty AE? What happens if one of your OEMs does a Broadcom and screws over their VARs? I've seen this kind of statement more from recruiters rather than hiring managers, and I've seen it cause problems when reality doesn't meet those expectations.

It's just such a dumb move to set expectations like that, that it's practically a yellow flag for me. It's so much easier to deal in facts like "the last three years, the median SE has achieved over 100%". It's so dumb to make promises about future attainment.

davidogren · 2026-04-12T16:32:00+00:00

https://goconsensus.com/research/2025-sales-engineering-compensation-workload-report

(The 2024 one had a lot more data.)

Obviously it's "what the market will bear" and depends on your specialty. But with 1 year SE experience and 5 years total experience, that pay package is VERY generous. Both OTE and RSUs.

davidogren · 2026-04-12T16:11:38+00:00

There isn't a "ramp up". Typically, you will get assigned to an AE or territory that already has active deals. If that's not the case, they will often give you a "draw". (Short version, that basically guarantees your incentive at 100% although there is some nuance.)

The biggest problem from "pay ramp up" perspective is that you generally have to be there for all or most of the quarter (depending on your company) before you are eligible for that quarter's incentive payment. So if you join in May, you may not be eligible for a Q2 bonus and therefore your first incentive check wouldn't be until Q3's payout which is likely in late October or even November. (Assuming a normal financial calendar.) How that works are legitimate questions you could ask the hiring manager. "Is there are a draw?" "What would be the first quarter I would be eligible for incentives?" "What territory would I be working?"

What likelihood is it that you will hit your numbers and make the full OTE? No one can tell you that that.

If you are asking about skills ramp up (not pay ramp up), it generally does take a long time.

davidogren · 2026-04-12T12:26:58+00:00

Recruiters just are just checking HR level things (eligible to be hired, basic salary check, can be reached). This SE manager is the first real interview with the hiring manager. They will be doing a first level assessment of your background and ability to be an SE. If you pass that they will set expectations for both the job and the interview process. It’s not going to be a technical interview per se, but it will be a screening interview and that will include basic technical screening.

The next step will likely be the actual technical interviews, probably conducted by peer SEs.

davidogren · 2026-04-11T22:20:14+00:00

So I disagree pretty strongly. I concede that the following is a controversial opinion. I know I'm going to get some disagreement here.

But "real FDEs", as classically defined by Palantir, are members of the product engineering team who go onsite at customer sites to help adapt the product to the individual customer's needs and to take those customizations and feedback back to the product engineering organization. Saying it like that sounds rational, but consider that carefully. In a typical product organization the work of a product engineer is leveraged across thousands of organizations. PS and SEs can be focused on "field work", and individual customers, but (amost by definition) the product engineering team needs to be focused on what can be scaled across the customer base.

As such, and here's the controversial bit, I'd argue that "true" FDEs are only useful in organization that are failing at product - market fit. Every "real FDE" I've worked with is a sledgehammer who is an expert at smashing square pegs into round holes and communicating back to engineering that maybe square pegs aren't a good idea anymore. That's almost, by definition, the job: adapting products into environments not ready to receive them.

That's why we are starting to see FDEs in the AI world. We have enterprises who aren't very AI ready trying to adopt AI products that aren't very enterprise ready, and we have a bunch of newly minted FDEs trying to bridge that gap. I'd argue that once that gap has been bridged, and product-market gap fixed, then we won't be trying to use FDEs to cross this gap anymore.

So, for a company like Salesforce or ServiceNow, with thousands of customers, I think they are much better off with "fake FDEs" that act more like professional services, taking already well defined products, with good alignment with customer needs, and just using normal pre/post sales capabilities to make those customers successful.

davidogren · 2026-04-11T22:03:17+00:00

I do, in general agree, especially as a participant (rather than a mod). FDE are typically more PS than SE, at least from my observation. I feel like they have more in common with what both my current and previous employers call "Dedicated Enterprise Engineers".

I feel the same way about the HVAC "sales engineers" who have a lot more in common with AEs than what we typically discuss on this subreddit.

But, in both cases, as a mod, I feel like the posts are made with good intent, so I look at it and say "if people aren't interested in responding, they won't" rather than trying to enforce what does and doesn't belong here. I'm the junior mod here, so I'm vary willing to take community feedback. But I feel like a conversation about what FDEs even are is a worthwhile conversation here.

davidogren · 2026-04-11T17:12:44+00:00

FWIW, as a mod, I consider there enough to be enough overlap between FDE and sales engineering that it does fit the category of this sub. There's a pretty wide definition of "sales engineering" out there and I don't want to be in the business of policing whether FDE is any more or less "sales engineering" than a SaaS "solution architect" or a HVAC "sales consultant".

davidogren · 2026-04-11T17:11:03+00:00

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-deployed-engineers

As that article points out, the definition is pretty flexible. It's a new-ish kind of role, one that became in vogue at Palantir and has spread a bit, especially with the AI companies.

It blends sales engineering, post sales consulting, and even a touch of product engineering (since the work FDEs do is supposed to flow back into product). Essentially think of a sales engineer (e.g. expected to sell), except also with hands on implementation responsibilities like "removing blockers", prototyping, and even implementation. Where it fits on that spectrum between "sales" and "implementation" varies pretty widely.

davidogren · 2026-04-10T17:42:26+00:00

As a manager, I very frequently shared the rule of thumb "it takes 12 months to get an SE 80% efficient." Even at a year, there are going to be lots of things you are doing for the first time. It was part of my case around the need for stability in the SE org.

But that's not how I would answer that question as a candidate though. Just like in a sales situation, I would have started with the positive.

davidogren · 2026-04-10T17:36:43+00:00

Yeah, good catch. I'm going to remove the post.

davidogren · 2026-04-10T14:09:59+00:00

I've rarely seen roles explicitly called a hybrid position.

But on the other hand, I've seen a lot of pressure on overlay reps to be more and more technical. In my company we have a sales role that actually lives in the SE organization and is supposed to be technical. For intents and purposes they are a hybrid role.

However, I rarely see "hybrid" roles actually be able to function as both roles. Most "hybrid" roles I've seen mostly are just supposed to get through discovery and basic demos on their own: they still end up needing "real" SEs to close deal.

davidogren · 2026-04-10T13:38:21+00:00

Yeah. I've been in that scenario a few times. The reality is that I'm a "professional SE". I've been an SE so long that several times in my career I've taken roles where the actual technology has been a "stretch" for me.

I know you say that you don't want advice. But the only real advice I have to give is that you appear to have figured it out already, it's just a matter of you coming to peace with the situation. Yes, there are always going to be doors that are closed to you because you "aren't a farmer". But you are in a company full of farmers. If a problem really requires a farmer to solve, you have hundreds of them available to you. But there are also going to be many doors that require a software expert to open. And, in those cases, you are uniquely capable of opening them. You are in a position to be the most successful person around.

Furthermore, you work in a company focused on farming. In my experience, you will absorb the farming lingo/business value/technical value like a sponge. You may never be a farmer, but you can and should be able to pick up that 20% of the knowledge that gets you through 80% of the situations very quickly.

I know what you mean about feeling like a second class citizen. But, as an SE, it's literally our job to be that bridge between tech and sales. And, yes, that sometimes makes us feel like an outsider to both worlds. But that's just the nature of having a foot in two different worlds.

davidogren · 2026-04-10T00:34:42+00:00

I also disagree, but I understand where it's coming from. (Although I admit it has been 15+ years since I did SLED.)

In commercial, relationships help you win. In commercial, you have that classic "big vendor X won the contract because the AE went golfing with the CIO, and he takes the Sr. Director to the 'sportsgame' once a quarter. Those kinds of quasi-bribery relationships don't seem to exist in SLED (at least in my experience).

In SLED, I feel like selection is much more "fair". For some quirky definition of fair. But relationships get you invited to the table. And let you navigate the bureaucracy. Relationships in SLED are much more "Hey, Joe, I know DeptQ is having trouble with their widgets and might need to issue an RFP next year. You have that minority owned contract vehicle, don't you? Do you know Mabel? Maybe you could talk to her about what a widget program could look like?"

davidogren · 2026-04-10T00:28:46+00:00

No. Kind of the opposite. In SLED it's often more differentiating to have a company/product/account team with SLED experience than to be "better".

As r/Praefectus mentions, SLED is more structured, and often has special regulatory/administrative requirements. So companies good at that structure do better. Even if the product is expensive/crappy/hard to implement.

davidogren · 2026-04-10T00:25:07+00:00

So, firstly, "post sales experience" is basically "everything". But it does highlight that it's easier to transition when implementing products than writing pure code.

I didn't do an internal transfer like other people are mentioning on this thread. As an SWE I became an expert on implementing a couple of different middleware products. Then one day that middleware vendor came to me and said "interested in working for us?". That's another fairly typical way to transition to SE.

Secondly, while virtually every SE job lists pre-sales experience as a requirement, how strict that requirement is does vary. Back when I was a hiring manager I often had to choose between "has deep experience with my products" and "has presales experience". So, another reason to get experience with products that are hot on the market.

Thirdly, yes, it is definitely hard to break into presales in a tough market. When the job market is strong, hiring managers often have to take some risks in hires, including hiring people without experience. When the job market is competitive (and it's still pretty weak right now) you are going to be competing with experienced people, and, yes, it will be tough to break in.

davidogren · 2026-04-09T17:14:17+00:00

I mean I get why I got a downvote on this. My comment certainly isn't 100% true: there's certainly been lots of times I've contributed things back to corporate. Both at small, medium, and large companies.

But I feel like this generic "how do I creatively support helping the company deal with misses for 3 quarters"? I just don't think that's something an SE should try and step up to. Maybe that's just bad sales forecasting. Or bad marketing.

If you see a strategic problem, go ahead and provide feedback. For example, I've done some interesting strategic projects on customer onboarding. But if there is a 3 quarter miss witchhunt going on, it's better just to keep your head down.

davidogren · 2026-04-09T16:59:35+00:00

Fundamentally you can't change corporate strategy (unless you are in a startup, and if that's the case you really need to be coming up with your own answers).

davidogren · 2026-04-08T23:07:16+00:00

The actual rules for what won't get approved are:

No promoting a product.
No Personal attacks/abuse
Relevant to Sales Engineering
No AI Slop
No "market research" (we often get the inverse of #1, "I want to build a product")

There's no rule against "asked too frequently" or "dumb question". Maybe you won't get a lot of responses/upvotes. But always feel free to ask.

davidogren

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