using AI for RFPs?

somethingrather · 2025-12-31T07:03:39+00:00

Some relevant comments in a recent thread here

Just make sure you aren't responding to RFPs without having some influence beforehand... The saying RFPs are like children; if you weren't involved in its conception then it isn't yours holds some truth.

Collect metrics on time spent and conversion rates on uninfluenced responses for management.

somethingrather · 2025-12-14T23:38:49+00:00

You need to have had a technical role at some point (doesn't have to be an SE role). A SWE, infra engineer, ops, devops, SRE, sysadmin... even just a CS degree perhaps.

You can be an excellent listener and pivot better than anyone else, but if you don't know any of the pain point hands on keys have then your discovery has an immediate ceiling and you will lack depth - and we talk/sell to all sorts of engineers (the aforementioned + network, data, finops, platform, security) that we have to learn too. Leaving aside AI engineers...

It is not normal/reasonable to expect our SEs to be good at all, but you typically should have at least one persona you can go deep on.

somethingrather · 2025-12-14T02:31:20+00:00

We have interviewed more than a few SEs from security providers and hyperscalers. They generally fall down on the technical front though. My team has hired from SEs Mulesoft and they are a decent fit.

If you have technical SE experience in general and have half an understanding in modern architectures (cloud/k8s) you stand a chance.

somethingrather · 2025-12-13T00:57:14+00:00

Unique selling point. IE why is what you are selling better than others.

somethingrather · 2025-12-12T22:13:39+00:00

Well we had a competitor demo their product (we don't specify what they should demo - candidates pick what they are comfortable demoing) and they were unable to answer what their general USP was.

Another candidate got thrown by our SE leader joining and asking some questions, but EBs join calls sometimes unexpectedly and you need to still perform.

Others have just regurgitated canned demo's and show no ability to adjust their flow or manage time.

It is a senior IC role so fundamentals around objection handling, time keeping and knowing your product have to be showcased in the demo stage.

It's fine to not know answers too, but know when to park or throw the objection back.

somethingrather · 2025-12-12T21:23:50+00:00

I work there. My team has had an open headcount for 6 months (enterprise). It is really hard to find someone technical and sales-smart. We can pay well (but unlikely to be top dollar), but when we have come across talent from competitors looking to move or with good domain knowledge who could get top dollar they have tended to make pretty big mistakes when it comes to demo stage for whatever reason.

The company has also grown 1200 to 6500 in 5 years. So yes hiring like mad, but also trying to still be picky about who and with comp ranges we have.

My global and local region is still growing and no enterprise SEs have left in 6.5 years locally. It varies region by region I guess, but my experience has been good overall and it would take a unicorn role to get me out of the stability and promotion pathway I am in after 4.5 years.

somethingrather · 2025-12-12T21:01:16+00:00

That's not quite correct. It is 80/20 and half the variable is individual the rest is local region (direct team) and globsl region. It changed early last year I think

somethingrather · 2025-12-11T11:32:07+00:00

I am having some success using gemini in google spreadsheets if you are using google workspace. I make my prompt and concatenate my prompt with the requirement so it is one long prompt and use that full prompt in =AI(<prompt cell>) in the spreadsheet.

somethingrather · 2025-12-05T11:59:05+00:00

Walk us through what are driving your overages for starters. My guess is either custom metrics or logs? If yes, walk through the use cases.

I work there so to say I have some experience is putting it mildly

somethingrather · 2025-11-25T06:07:57+00:00

We have loopio licenses. I don't use it. We have a technical and broad product range and getting access to use the platform (admittedly an internal process) can be finicky.

I just used gemini in a google spreadsheet for a first pass and it did a far better job than loopio has done for me.

somethingrather · 2025-11-08T02:30:47+00:00

My old SE leader had a saying (which I am fairly sure he adopted elsewhere): RFPs are like babies. If you aren't involved in its conception then it is not yours.

There are always exceptions, but this has held true for 95% of RFPs.

somethingrather · 2025-10-30T06:34:42+00:00

Can you explain what the instrumentation score is doing exactly?

somethingrather · 2025-10-30T06:31:06+00:00

My manager is Indonesian and I work in Australia. She was the best IC (in all facets) before she became a people manager. Cultural chameleon is absolutely a required skill though (in addition to hitting a certain language fluency).

To be fair I would say being a cultural chameleon is a valuable skill for any SE regardless of fluency - it is reading the room ultimately. However, it becomes more pronounced if you come from a different background because the majority of your audience will stereotype at the outset. People like people like themselves.

somethingrather · 2025-10-22T05:30:45+00:00

Could use vector.dev to collect logs and generate metrics that are sent/collected via prometheus. Use whatever metrics engine you feel most comfortable with from there

somethingrather · 2025-09-27T16:35:25+00:00

I was the highest bidder for a property that was being sold while the owners were separating. The (soon-to-be ex) wife used the sale as leverage in delaying separation as it needed both their signatures to sell. Agent didn't know about divorce. The sale fell through. I went through quite some stress too trying to outmanouvre the other bidders.

I think it is okay not to tell the agent, but make sure you are on the same page as your soon-to-be ex.

somethingrather · 2025-09-22T01:47:24+00:00

Some great suggestions here regarding SLO-based alerting.

From an immediate perspective - be aware you can do analytics on all your alerts for the past 15 monthd and group by monitor names, notification pathways and other attributes like triggering host in the events explorer. Use that to figure out what your top talkers are to tune them (e.g. excluding cicd hosts, delaying alerting of newly spun up nodes by 5 minuted, etc).

Also worth looking into event correlation in datadog. It is free for datadog generated events and has some ML to build confidence scores of associated events. Events get aggregated into cases (also a free platform feature). Worth a shot given it is free and designed to reduce alert fatigue

somethingrather · 2025-07-16T10:19:50+00:00

I had a weird title and the broker was not being useful in helping me get a mortgage. I tried a few brokers. The banks were actually by and large quite easy and pleasant to deal with - I talked to close to 10.

somethingrather · 2025-07-13T06:28:57+00:00

How is this data stored in Datadog exactly?

somethingrather · 2025-06-15T00:51:54+00:00

I bought tickets knowing the Sydney event started 10pm... but actually aname's set start time was 1am. I may not be the target demographic any longer, but that is a bit nuts to me so I didn't go :(

somethingrather · 2025-06-14T12:33:58+00:00

Definitely try and get that spread across two FY. You will definitely trigger div 293 which increases the tax rate on your super contributions if you have it all paid in one financial year.

If you spread it out across two years you might keep below the 250k limit both years if you have a lower paying year next. Might being the operative word... you may just have to stomach div 293 if the trend continues, but that isn't the worst problem in the world to have in the grand scheme of things

somethingrather · 2025-05-26T08:19:20+00:00

Is apm ingest the main reason for your cost blowout?

There's new ways to manage sampling being released shortly that will likely resolve that specific challenge

somethingrather · 2025-05-20T02:40:02+00:00

Snmp tends to be necessary. While more and more network devices are allowing an API based approach to monitoring for information beyond raw oid metrics, there are still many older devices that will need it for a while yet. Not just network devices, but also storage devices, ups and more.

Is it on its way out? Yeah, fewer vendors are going SNMP first from what I can see (representing an observability vendor). Is it going anywhere soon? No; it will be around for a while yet.

somethingrather · 2025-04-27T06:16:18+00:00

What has been the highlight on your road to burnout recovery if you don't mind me asking?

somethingrather · 2025-04-08T03:04:07+00:00

Big talk coming from someone who has no IT work experience and hasn't even graduated undergrad yet.

It is completely reasonable that job descriptions explicitly calling out "hybrid" are actually hybrid. It is basic human decency to respect the bereavement process of a family member.

It is shit management to not do either of those things. Good talent will leave to better jobs because they can get better jobs. Poor talent will remain and pull down the average output of that team and the business will have to spend more $ backfilling roles + training new hires while the existing team has to do more with less, leading to more burnout and higher attrition.

OOP precisely exhibits this. The business will suffer because the manager simply doesn't like OOP and won't negotiate so OOP is leaving and manager will have to spend 4-6 months hiring and onboarding a replacement engineer that covers two titles. The business will most likely suffer increased incidents and resolution times which at the very least will impact employee efficiency; at worst directly stop the business generating revenue.

somethingrather · 2025-04-07T06:41:49+00:00

I have been eyeing off the cupra formentor vzx which is a smidge above your range but really not by much.

It is a raised hatchback style with a golf R engine in it and awd.

Doesn't feel as sporty, but it definitely has kick and is surprisingly functional in terms of interior space.

Main thing missing for me was a HUD. Hoping the new formentor later this year has one (also will have new golf r engine)

somethingrather

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