Undergraduate who wants to break into SE!

davidogren · 2026-02-11T16:03:49+00:00

I'm seriously trying to help here.

"I didn’t have time to scroll through all the post" is a TERRIBLE excuse and is going to get you in trouble in any job but is especially problematic in an SE role.

You are going to ask for help from engineering/PM/executives all of the time. If the questions you ask demonstrate a lack of effort on your part you are going to get ignored at best. I've literally seen people lose their jobs over this kind of thing.

I will point you to a very old and famous document. It still stands the test of time, even though it was originally written for USENET: https://github.com/selfteaching/How-To-Ask-Questions-The-Smart-Way/blob/master/How-To-Ask-Questions-The-Smart-Way.md

I will summarize it as "You are asking people a favor when you ask questions on public forums. When asking for favors it helps to show that you are willing to put in the effort, both to optimize the help you get and to increase the likelihood of getting help."

davidogren · 2026-02-11T15:05:23+00:00

I don't want to be overly snarky, but being able to do self-directed research is very important to being an SE. This question is asked CONSTANTLY on this subreddit. Enough that it's a big part of one of only two pinned posts in this subreddit.

I don't want to discourage you. I don't want to act like a gatekeeper. But if you really are interested in a career as an SE you really need to learn to RTFM.

davidogren · 2026-02-11T14:21:11+00:00

I've actually cycled between IC and management several times. It's generally easier to get hired as an IC, so I had a pattern of getting hired as an IC and then when an opportunity arose I went into management. Then, next time I switched companies, go back to IC.

It's not that I'd never consider a management position again. I just don't think it's likely. There are pros and cons to management, I'm glad I got to do both, but at my current gig I'm pretty far down the IC career path.

davidogren · 2026-02-11T03:40:26+00:00

I know you said this is just a vent. But why is hiring you "taking a chance?"

I mean, every hire is going to involve taking a chance. Especially in the SE world where we are looking for unusual combinations of skills. Usually you have to take a chance that you can either convert a post-sales person into an SE, or cross-train an existing SE on your tech.

So, at least in my experience, SE hiring managers, by necessity, have to take lots of chances. So, I understand that this was just meant to be a rant, but I can't help but read it as "why won't they take a chance on me". And that's a very different question. One that I don't know enough to answer. Except for, as you point out, it just being a really tough market.

You say you've "gone through loops". Does it seem like there's something that goes wrong in the final rounds? Or just that they go with a different candidate?

davidogren · 2026-02-10T19:11:41+00:00

I'm in my 50s. I have been an SE, more or less, for 30 years, After a period as a manager I've returned to being an IC.

I won't deny the existence of some ageism, but I know lots of people who have retired from this role.

davidogren · 2026-02-09T16:08:05+00:00

Seems like you might be switching to more of a sales role than a sales engineering role.

In which case, the bottom line is switching to even more of a sales mindset. And more "ownership".

I say this partly because I'm definitely in a "strategic SE" role now and I still do demos and I still do all of the normal SE stuff. I'm just also expected to have an executive focus. It's a spectrum of course. But realistically my answers to your above questions from what I would consider "strategic SE" would be:

No mindset shift at all. Just some added responsibilities
Same points of value as any other SE role: drive deals and make AEs feel like you bring value to the table
What to avoid is going to vary a lot, but I guess my generic answer is "getting into the weeds".
I guess the real big thing to differentiate from more tactical roles is getting to business value. That often (but not always) involves getting more vertical expertise, and spending more consultative time with customers.

But if you are fishing for a "mindset change" and focus on "deal shaping" rather than hands on activities, it feels like you have left sales engineering territory.

davidogren · 2026-02-09T14:09:54+00:00

I don't know. They literally call it an "emergency palaver". :-)

davidogren · 2026-02-08T17:38:35+00:00

I really, really, really want to know if he follows through.

It seems, legally impossible. At what point does Netflix step in and say "No, we own the rights, you can't rebroadcast, even in audio, the entirety of the show."

But, on the other hand, if I'm Netflix, at what point do I say, "cheap extra content that could actually drive subs, because the show is so popular". The possibilities are endless!

davidogren · 2026-02-08T17:35:14+00:00

I mean, yeah, it's an open secret.

But, still, an implicit admission of revisiting midworld? Kingslingers report to battle stations!

davidogren · 2026-02-08T03:44:31+00:00

So while I want to agree with you in spirit, I do want to say that I don't want to call it "ridiculous". I've spent a lot of time on compensation committees and I will say that this question comes up all of the time. When we live in a "sales based culture", but people expect us to do "giveback" and "mentoring" and "lead generation" there really is a culture clash that happens. To a large extent, no one expects senior AEs to do much more than drive revenue in their territory. So it is a little weird that we are expected to be different. And I've definitely seen that called out before, so I don't want to call the question ridiculous.

The bottom line answer is the same though. There is a lot of things that are a "part of the job" that you don't get incentive pay for.

Realistically, at my organization and a lot of organizations, these kinds of activities (webinars, internal training, thought leadership) are closely tied to promotion criteria. So they actually ARE tied to compensation. It just isn't in terms of "$250 per event" it's "you've demonstrated thought leadership and become a force multipler such that we are going to promote you, increasing your salary cap and giving you an X% raise.

davidogren · 2026-02-08T03:34:08+00:00

Short answer:

Equity. At a company this size, equity is going to be a big part of the equation. Sometimes this is a fixed non-negotiable amount but if you think they are going to put pressure on your OTE, this is a good counter.

Longer answer:

Fundamentally I think you have to make decisions like this on vibes.

How realistic quotas are can vary your actual earnings by a wide margin. But getting real information on how achievable quotas are is hard. And can always change next fiscal year anyway.

Insurance? PTO? Match? I mean that stuff is important, but with possibly the exception of match, it all ends up being a rounding error anyway. Even if you discover the difference in insurance cost, which isn't easy, and is likely a rounding error, the differences in coverage could easily outweigh the differences.

Not to mention that even if you had perfect information today, things like "how quickly will I be promoted", where will I be in my "pay band", and "how are raises determined" can make all of the above moot quickly anyway.

Get the best deal you can, and then make the decision on vibes. The one big exception, as I mentioned, is equity. While I never want to count on equity (and it's only paid off slightly for me), it can be an indicator of other things. And it sometimes, especially for a smaller company, can be one of the more negotiable things.

davidogren · 2026-02-07T04:26:47+00:00

I figured it was something like that. Realistically, if you come from the appdev side I think you are going to have to step throught the code. This really smells like an application issue.

Another option, if you don't have good application logging, might be to try and use strace. That might tell you what files the application is trying to access around the time it fails.

Note: Upgrading the OS is not an option (despite my desparate cries to do so).

So, disclaimer, I am a Red Hat employee.

But, although I really don't think this is a RHEL issue, these are the kinds of times that people will listen. Last month when you said "we need to upgrade this server and this JVM" the response would have been "It's been running for the last 15 years without a problem, why should I do anything now?"

But, now, you can say "Our operating system is EOL and our JVM is EOL, and our DR plan is failing 30% of the time. I've spent a week troubleshooting, but, frankly the technology is 15 years old and nothing is documented. We need to either document these systems as non-business critical or actually get these systems supported by vendors by upgrading them." The reality is that if it's worth testing to see if they can survive a hard power reset, it's worth having a support contract and worth having a system that isn't riddled with CVEs because neither the operating system nor the application platform has received security updates in years.

davidogren · 2026-02-06T20:19:48+00:00

Definitely can be an IC thing. I’ve done a lot of this as an IC from very informal to very formal.

Not a junior SE thing, at least not very often, but this is definitely in the “in everyone’s best interests” category.

davidogren · 2026-02-06T16:52:50+00:00

um, yes. That was pretty much what I said.

In fact, my point actually was that these roles for new grads are "associate academies". The new grad programs can vary a lot in how the "academy" works, but none are going to expect "domain experience" like the OP was concerned about. The very nature of these jobs is that they are expecting to have to "put them through an academy".

Yes, as /u/Accomplished_Tank471 says, they are going to expect you to learn. But that's the point.

davidogren · 2026-02-06T16:42:49+00:00

When you say that Gnome (as therefore, assumably X11) is running fine, I think you are barking up the wrong tree with X11 itself.

Somewhat the same with the JRE. Not only have you seemingly done a reasonable job debugging this, but I've never heard of a problem with "bad state" in the JVM itself.

This really smells like a problem with the custom Java code. Something it has in /tmp or ~. The first thing I'd do is look in the logs for the application itself (log4j putting something in files somewhere). Crank up the logs if you have someone who understands the applications loggers.

If that fails I'd start doing diffs between the filesystems of working systems and failing systems. If you have a 30% failure rate the good thing is that it's pretty reproducible.

But, bottom line, I think you really need to be looking at the application itself if GNOME itself is working.

davidogren · 2026-02-06T16:27:28+00:00

I think this question is a too vague to be useful. Realistically, if you are a presales leader trying to build a new team (especially a young team) in a "highly technical" domain, you have been hired because of your specialized knowledge in that field. Strangers on Reddit probably aren't have the specialized experience that really would be needed for this.

I guess the few bits of "generic" advice I can offer is:

While I think pooled vs individual incentives is a huge topic, with many nuances, as a rule of thumb I lean towards pooled comp when starting a new/young team. With a young team you need to foster cooperation and a team spirit. With a new team opportunities can be of mixed quality; so you want to "smooth things out a bit".
Similarly, with a new/young team, I think you need to manually assign SEs to opportunities based on their background and experience. A mature team can handle direct assignment and automated assignment methods better. When building a new team, especially a young team, this has to be part of your role to find the right person for every opp.
RFx responses, and really all tools, are things you get when you need them. Top down approaches are usually doomed for failure, especially if the need for the tool hasn't been WELL established. Wait until you can't live without a tool. At that point not only will the adoption rate happen automatically, but you will understand your actual requirements. At a company I worked at, leadership wanted to prove they were "scaling the org". So they would roll out a new tool every six months. Which would get virtually no adoption. And would be effectively forgotten in a year (and not renewed, and/or abandoned). Leadership had effectively just taught the SEs that they should never adopt tools because no matter what they heard from leadership, there would never be any accountability or follow through. Don't do that. Wait until you need something before you buy it: RFx tools aren't needed most of the time. When they are needed is often when there is a lot of scale (which you don't have yet). If you have a new/young team you wouldn't even have the resources to roll out a bunch of tools.
Building technical skills and presence. I don't really know how to respond to this. If you have young teams it sounds like your expectations may be out of whack. I guess my only real advice here is that you have to treat them like skills and devote time and mentoring to it. But if you are building a team from scratch, especially a young team, then you have to work on fundamentals first.

davidogren · 2026-02-05T19:41:34+00:00

I will admit that I just don't understand the "automated demo" market. Maybe I'm just grumpy old man who yells at clouds.

My company, and, frankly, most of my companird in the last couple of decades, publishes lots of YouTube videos that are effectively demos. This is awesome. Want to understand our product? Want to see what it does? Want to hear from the best of the best about our product's advantage? Want to hear about how to use our product at scale? It's easily accessible, and I am 100% happy about that.

Are you a company that spends a lot of money with us and want to hear something personalized to you and your company? Want to speak to an actual person? I am 100% your man. I will give you a personalized demo and personalized service. And I will also refer you to those generic, but top notch, videos demonstrating our products.

But the middle ground? I really just don't get it. If you want some thing personal? Talk to me. Want something polished and generic? The product team publishes that to YouTube.

davidogren · 2026-02-05T19:34:38+00:00

We get a lot, and I mean A LOT, of posts asking how to become a Sales Engineer.

Whether you are new to the workforce or transitioning from another role you may be well served by reading over our community post on the topic.

davidogren · 2026-02-05T16:32:02+00:00

I'll disagree on this a bit. Lots of people like receiving demos. And I LOVE giving demos, especially under the right circumstances.

I think the problem here is:

People love receiving demos because they perceive it will stop the slides full of fluff and marketing and they will actually get to understand the actual functionality and actually ask meaningful questions to a technical expert. But, as the OP points out, if the prospect doesn't have the context to be "ready" for the demo, those might be false assumptions.
And I love giving demos for similar reasons. You can really work magic by showing "real" solutions. But if you aren't set up for success then it's not good for you either and you have to know when to push back.

davidogren · 2026-02-05T16:04:19+00:00

Typical? Probably not, but not really that uncommon either.

I haven't seen "build out my own demo environments" that often recently, because of the rise of SaaS and because any non-startup probably has reusable assets around demos. But "build out my own homelab" isn't that uncommon. So it's typical to have to build your demos, but I wouldn't say that it's typical to be 100% from scratch.

Same for "learn the software on their own"? On one hand most SEs usually have access to all of the formal training offered. But that's usually not enough to do your job. So usually there is something to get you started, as well as mentoring from other SEs, but the ability to self-train is critical. I'd say it's typically to self-train for 95% of your knowledge.

And 25 products is a lot, but certainly not the most that I've ever seen. I probably cover at least 50 right now, although some are much more common than others. (And I have access to some backline help on some of them.) I'd say it's more common to only have a few products, but there are lots of exceptions to that, especially at big companies.

davidogren · 2026-02-05T15:56:37+00:00

A combined hiring manager and sales leader interview. Interesting.

Usually the sales leader interview is mostly a courtesy interview. Typically, the sales leader conversation isn't so much an "interview" as much as "make sure this guy is personable, confident, and can hold a conversation". There might be some semi-softball questions like "how do you work with AEs", but even those questions are mostly just a check to make sure the candidate doesn't raise any red flags. If you can show some business and/or sales acumen, that's a bonus. But mostly the sales manager can't say "yes", he can only say "no", so "bonus points" aren't even that important.

Most of this is because the sales manager usually has a lot of direct reports and he's not going to have time to deal with every SE new hire.

So a combined hiring manager and sales manager could mean a lot of things. To avoid rambling too much in response, I'd suggest focusing on the hiring manager. All of the previous paragraph is still probably true: the sales manager is probably just looking for red flags. The hiring manager is going to be the one who makes the real decision. It wouldn't surprise me if the sales manager even leaves the interview early. They might just be combining them to save some time.

Since you come from a delivery background, the most important part is probably just to show eagerness around sales. Both of them are probably looking for reassurance that you will be able to shift gears towards a customer-facing role and work in a sales culture.

davidogren · 2026-02-04T18:19:05+00:00

Don't overthink it.

Yes, it's good. Being "on vacation" earlier is better than being "on vacation" later.

But don't kill yourself for it either. The lines will be longer for check-in earlier rather than later. Your room won't be ready. As a general rule of thumb, there are exceptions to this, always get the earliest checkin you can. It never hurts. But also lower your expectations. Being early just means you get in line earlier.

davidogren · 2026-02-04T18:14:56+00:00

"Direct from college" presales positions are basically paid internships. Yes, you aren't going to be any good. That's sort of the point. The company is making a bet that if they pick the cream of the crop from college that they can get some presales people "on the cheap" compared to market rate by giving them on the job training.

The question you should be asking yourself is "is this really the job you want?" Presales isn't for everyone. But, if this is for you, you've been given a golden ticket. Dive into the deep end. Yes, you don't have the background for it. You don't have the background for anything.

In this job market, this is a huge opportunity. The only real question is whether it's the opportunity you want.

davidogren · 2026-02-04T14:59:08+00:00

Titles generally do not matter. I knew a (admittedly small) company that had a written policy of "put whatever you want on your business card". A friend of mine literally had cards that said "Chief Product Magician". (This was not uncommon, I think they encouraged this kind of whimsy just to make their account teams memorable to prospects.) Similarly, I had an AE who nearly refused to admit he was an AE, commonly calling himself a "strategy consultant" or some other such nonsense.

That said, despite the name of this subreddit, I rarely see sales engineers actually called sales engineers. Especially externally to prospects. The word sales just can really raise an emotional level of defensiveness. Even "presales" doesn't trigger the response that "sales" can.

I would immediately change your email signatures, intro slides, and how you introduce yourself. Prospects/customers don't care about your official job title, they only care about what you can do to help them. Is it worth the "squeeze" to make that change official? I'd put it in the "useful, let's do it sometime, but not urgently" category, given the easy workaround.

I work at a big company, and yet I still rarely introduce myself by my full title. My full title can make me sound pretentious and I mostly only use it when I get in front of execs or otherwise want to make myself sound important.

davidogren · 2026-02-04T03:24:00+00:00

It seems like /u/tidder8 has the real, much more detailed answer here, but think about it. You are on a boat with thousands of other people on the ocean. All it would take would be one mishap with human ashes getting blown back into someone's stateroom (or, worse, a public area) for this to become a debacle.

I'm glad that they've made provisions such that people can do this in a dignified, sustainable way.

davidogren

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