peterst28

This is the most user-friendly and approachable guide for the Spark UI out there. Published in the Databricks documentation, the guide shows you how to diagnose common problems via the Spark UI. It takes a practical step-by-step approach to make it easy to discover what's going wrong.

If you're selling to engineers, it would be an easy transition. In fact, I could probably pretty easily find a job with one of my clients since they see me as an expert in the field. If you're selling to non-engineers it might be trickier. Just like with engineering, the next job you get can depend a lot on what you were doing previously. If you're coding or architecting as a sales engineer, you are set up well to do that in your next position. If you're selling a less technical product and are never really coding or architecting, then you will have to climb your way back if you want to return to SWE.

do you work for an enterprise-focused tech company?

I work as a sales engineer for Databricks. As a SWE I had built cloud infrastructure like the equivalent of AWS S3 for the companies I worked for. So the technical nature of the product and customers appealed to me and made my skillset valuable to the role.

how much travel do you do outside the pandemic?

I have not had this job outside the pandemic. I'm NYC-based, and my understanding is that I would have traveled by subway to meet clients quite often, but plane travel would have been only a few times a quarter.

What would be the “FAANGs” for a SWE turning into a sales engineer?

When figuring out who you want to work for, I would suggest selling a product that you like to customers you would like to work with. If you like the product and the customers the job can be a joy. If not, it can be a slog. You have a huge leg up if you already have experience with the product or came from the industry that will be using the product. Another important thing to look at is the sales culture of the organization. Some organizations have aggressive sales cultures where the "win" is what matters regardless of all else. Other sales organizations are more focused on making their customers successful. As a former SWE, the customer success sales culture appeals far more to me.

One thing I really like about working for Databricks is that, while we do make commission, it's a pooled commission. So I get compensated on the performance of the team, not just myself. So it fosters a very collaborative atmosphere. We're always jumping in to help each other out. Individual commissions can make for a cut-throat sales culture. I probably make less money than I would with individual commissions, but I'm much happier. So that's another thing to look at: how people are compensated.

There's plenty you can do, but you have to figure out what appeals to you, the tradeoffs, path, etc. I found that the book "Designing your life" really helped me. It encourages talking to people who are already in different fields / roles that interest you. When I did this, sometimes I found myself saying, "yes that sounds amazing." Other times I found myself saying, "ugh that's not what I thought it was at all." Eventually I decided that the best move for me was to sales engineering. It's engineering-adjacent so I can make use of my years of experience, but it's people-oriented and has tons of variety. You'll probably have a different final answer, but I highly recommend the techniques in the book. You may even find yourself a job you're excited about through the process of talking to people about what they do. https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful...

I don't think it was the kind of "seed" you're thinking of.

That's actually a hilarious interpretation. I hadn't thought of that. :)

But it's a pretty formal report so if they meant feces, they would have said so.

That's actually a really interesting link. I see severe escalation that sounds like the result of a poor police response. It started with graffiti and a broken window. More than a week later:

"Portland Police were forced to deploy crowd control spray to disperse a crowd that was throwing animal seed at officers."

Really? They were forced to use pepper spray or tear gas because they were being pelted with animal seed? Poor babies. It must have stung. This is precisely why there are protests to begin with. The police in America only escalate. They do not know how to de-escalate. It did eventually get to fire and hammers, but let's look hard at how it got there. If you escalate a fight, expect to get hit.

The danger of the protesters is overblown in the service of certain people who want to divide Americans. The division, polarization, and people reaching for guns is far more dangerous than the protests themselves.

Arazoo | Senior Scala Developer | NYC | REMOTE (preferably in Eastern Europe)

We are building applications for the architecture and construction industry. The industry has terrible software, and we think we can do a lot better! Join us and help build great software that has a real impact.

To see what we're building, take a look at https://arazoo.com/

We already have a small but fantastic team in Eastern Europe (one developer in Ukraine and another in Croatia). You will work remotely with those developers and management in New York City. We're looking to add a developer who works mainly in the backend but is capable of working on the full stack.

Our main technologies are:

  • Scala
  • React
  • Elasticsearch
  • AWS
  • MySQL