I’m sharing pt 2 of my career journey from Eng → Sales → Product → CoS → COO.
This post is about stumbling into an interview for a role I’d never heard of– and then landing it (aka how I went from engineering at HubSpot to pre-sales at Scale).
When I mentally committed to a pivot, I got connected to Mitch Morando.
I’d been combing through posts on AngelList when one stood out. The slug of this URL says it all: https://wellfound.com/jobs/676492-no-exp-req-solutions-engineer-engr-who-wants-to-work-directly-with-customers
The listing was short, and I was 50/50 on whether it was a bot post. But, it was exactly what I wanted.
After talking to Mitch, he told me I was a solutions engineer. I told him that was great, and I didn’t know what that was.
Mitch kindly introduced me to a few sales leaders he was advising. That’s how I met Jon Wilfong at Scale.
I knew I’d work for Jon within five minutes of our first call. He’s one of those rare people who is highly intelligent, highly competent, and also has a higher EQ than most. I needed to work for him.
Being an engineer, I dove straight into Scale’s API docs. I built a demo app over a weekend and sent it to Jon (the repo still exists! https://github.com/jbarth04/Scale)
I passed the technical interview and was scheduled to speak with Aatish Nayak, Scale’s then-head of NLP labeling. Jon sent me an arXiv paper to read and told me to be prepared to discuss.
What good is a liberal arts education if not to read some text and come prepared for a discussion? I figured this one would be easy.
If I had done more critical thinking about the solutions engineer role (someone who gets on calls…with potential clients…as a salesperson), I would’ve prepared for a mock sales call. This never crossed my mind.
When Aatish started asking me questions as if he was the customer and I was the salesperson, I literally had zero idea what to do.
I guess my post-interview email (“I’m excited to improve my skills!”) and my initial impression got me invited to fly out to San Francisco. I downloaded a random sales podcast and got on the plane.
Jon wanted me on the team, but he pitched that I start on the post-sales team, and then move to pre-sales later. I politely told him I’d only accept a job working for him on the pre-sales team. I was there to close the role I came for.
Jon gave me an exploding offer (nice one), which I believed (ha ha), and it all worked out.
That’s how I joined Scale back when it was a Series C company with ~100 people.
Here’s what I learned:
1. When you truly commit, things fall into place. It’s less about control and more about mentally being on board with it happening.
2. Impressions matter. Showing up and being clear in your words and actions can outweigh a stumbling block.
Who else has also gone blind into an opportunity and made it out on the other side?
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