20260226 Customer Interview 01 Mickey Scalise
Before the call (2 min) Set the tone right away. Something like "Hey Mickey, thanks for doing this. I'm going to ask you some questions about your experience working with me. There's no wrong answers, I just want to hear how you'd describe things in your own words. Should take about 20 minutes."
Warm up (2 min)
- How's everything going since we last worked together?
The last time we officially worked together was project when you and I and Marty worked on linux servers. I've continued on working on the path working with computers but I'm at a Microsoft shop now. I'm currently struggling with a situation at work where they agreed to assign me work for a particular position but they filled me with other work other than that position. And that's sad. It's been a repeated thing too.
- If a friend or coworker was going through something similar to what you were dealing with, how would you describe what you were up against?
I would say if the conversations don't go in the direction that you were told that it would be a better plan long-term to find another job where you're doing what you were originally assigned to do. Because 2-3 years is a long time in technology and you're behind the 8-ball after that.
- Before you reached out to me, what had you already tried on your own?
(He's shifted away from the project we worked together to his current struggles)
Just hope. I hoped that we would accomplish whatever they would have me doing and we'd reach the point where we were doing what I was originally assigned to do when they hired me.
Last place I quit without having another job lined up because it was ridiculous and they were lacking in standards and IT security practices.
- What wasn't working about those approaches?
Well we have some new CTO where I'm at now and he brought in upper level management who are telling me they want to hire people to do desktop support so i can move into engineering, but it's been 6 months and I've seen no movement. And I'm also hearing that they're saying no one is complaining so when no one is complaining why would they change anything? And I'm working with a bunch of people in their own silos which isn't what they said how it would work when they hired me.
- What made you decide to actually book a session instead of just keeping at it alone?
If you can't figure it out on your own, then you need to seek other advice. Not one person knows everything that's for sure.
- Was there anything that almost stopped you from reaching out?
It would only be if management started to act the way they said they would. If I got the additional staff, even one person, or I got access... well if we don't get the other person I don't have the time to switch to desktop engineering so there's no other option for that.
- What was the most useful thing you got out of our sessions?
Learning how to collaborate with people. Everyone's got a different style. We pretty much all had the same language in the technology field so it was more about learning to work together. There's another feature to that, if you're in a job where they're working in a different part of the country they might have different slang so you just ask for clarification like "what do you mean when you say such and such?" I'll use an example for shut-down is sometimes called "cold boot" where some people don't know what that means. It means "after you shutdown a computer completely, and when you turn it on again it starts up from scratch." There's also hard reset, and hard shutdown too. Sometimes coworkers will pick up your lingo and something you pick up theirs.
- Was there anything you needed that we didn't get to?
No, we accomplished the goals of that linux server project. It was great and everyone was happy. We like happy.
- Anything you're still working through that you wish you had more support on?
At work, I wish I had time to do what I was hired to do. I have enough background and knowledge about how systems work and I can read documentation to learn more but I need more uninterrupted time to focus. But being the only person managing 150+ machines, there isn't any time or ability to sit down and just focus. Think of it like yourself, you have an idea to write a program from scratch you can't have people interrupting you every 10-20 minutes. You need time to zoom in on it and make progress on it.
- How did the price feel relative to what you got out of it? Just gut reaction, not looking for a compliment.
$225-$250 it seems like that's what people are paying for real help. At those prices too I think the person providing the training or assistance is expecting to be fully engaged in the session. I ask a lot of questions and pushing the envelope for those prices.
- If you were telling another engineer about what I do, what would you say?
I know you've done, I forgot the term site... site reliability engineering and I know you've worked with companies that dealt with audio and video and web based communications. I'd say you're extremely thorough, deeply investigates, and does not jump to conclusions.
Your position is a contractor, right? We hire a lot of contractors and I don't know why because we just get them in for a project and then their gone. The person doesn't have investment in the company to learn and grow with them so I wonder if there's some value lost in that exchange. We also lost with this upper level hiring we lost some good talent. One was a former Microsoft engineer and worked with the company for 5 years and they doubled his workload and the next morning he quit. He then dropped off all of his stuff and i asked what are you going to do and he said I'm going to cruise the world. he's been on 50 cruises already. He's in his late 50s." I asked if he's considering cruising the world in retirement and he laughed and said "Nah, I'm in the work-till-you-die club."
He also said during the call: "I learned more about communicating effectively with AI using CART prompting. I asked it for help with a problem i had with getting an image on a computer and it said it can't do what you want to do with powershell but you can use microsoft intune and autopilot. basically you feed it in and its another way to make an answer file. the other way is the out of box experience (which is what I'm avoiding) then you can write powershell scripts for it."