本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛I was a campus hire. Right after I completed a 5-week long new hire orientation, I was assigned a job that none of my co-workers would like to go.
The position was a PTL – proposal team lead – in SDC (solution design centre). There was absolutely no technical content in my everyday work. It was a junior PM job – whenever there was a proposal or RFP response work item came to SDC, one PTL was to be assigned to organize the response effort.
PTL will set up time line, schedule check point meetings, assign section owners, collect write-ups, ensure proper document format and QA process was followed.
Dealing with sales and architects was my daily job. Sales should provide client background, win theme, executive summary and pricing. Architects should provide solution overview, diagrams, write up on all technical sections, and fill in the QA form.
Neither was easy to deal with. Sales usually were not responsive when they were busy and became very aggressive towards the end. Architects usually were arrogant and would simply ignore all my meeting notice. In my first 50 conference calls, I could hardly understand what the callers were talking about, let alone lead the team to get things done. More often than not, by the due date of any major mile stone, my team would miss the mark. I could never organize a complete and successful RFP response. But soon after, I found myself quite popular among both sales and engineers. I was in high demand whenever a deal came through to SDC. Well, the reason was rather simple – I had such a lay back attitude, always calm and quiet (not that I wanted to be calm and quiet, I simply did not understand what they were talking about on the phone), people felt no pressure working with me. I guess a dumb PTL was better than what they would usually get from SDC. My assignment got extended again and again – well, one reason was that no one else would want to join SDC from the technical team. After this SDC assignment, I was assigned to a project to lead a team of contractors to perform Token Ring to Ethernet migration. Either projects had any technical content.
I regretted that I declined the offer from Toronto lab, at least for the first few years. I did not feel that I learnt anything. In my first 3-4 years, I did nothing technical. But now that I looked back, I was wondering if being technical was that important. I was never good at it anyway.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
The position was a PTL – proposal team lead – in SDC (solution design centre). There was absolutely no technical content in my everyday work. It was a junior PM job – whenever there was a proposal or RFP response work item came to SDC, one PTL was to be assigned to organize the response effort.
PTL will set up time line, schedule check point meetings, assign section owners, collect write-ups, ensure proper document format and QA process was followed.
Dealing with sales and architects was my daily job. Sales should provide client background, win theme, executive summary and pricing. Architects should provide solution overview, diagrams, write up on all technical sections, and fill in the QA form.
Neither was easy to deal with. Sales usually were not responsive when they were busy and became very aggressive towards the end. Architects usually were arrogant and would simply ignore all my meeting notice. In my first 50 conference calls, I could hardly understand what the callers were talking about, let alone lead the team to get things done. More often than not, by the due date of any major mile stone, my team would miss the mark. I could never organize a complete and successful RFP response. But soon after, I found myself quite popular among both sales and engineers. I was in high demand whenever a deal came through to SDC. Well, the reason was rather simple – I had such a lay back attitude, always calm and quiet (not that I wanted to be calm and quiet, I simply did not understand what they were talking about on the phone), people felt no pressure working with me. I guess a dumb PTL was better than what they would usually get from SDC. My assignment got extended again and again – well, one reason was that no one else would want to join SDC from the technical team. After this SDC assignment, I was assigned to a project to lead a team of contractors to perform Token Ring to Ethernet migration. Either projects had any technical content.
I regretted that I declined the offer from Toronto lab, at least for the first few years. I did not feel that I learnt anything. In my first 3-4 years, I did nothing technical. But now that I looked back, I was wondering if being technical was that important. I was never good at it anyway.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net