July 2, 2025 • 37 mins
Today we're examining Palantir's "Forward Deployed Software Engineers" - and separating fact from the hype!
Everything old is new again! Move over companies that have been doing this for decades such as SAP, IBM, and countless consulting firms!
https://blog.palantir.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-palantir-forward-deployed-software-engineer-45ef2de257b1
Listen as we break down Palantir's 2020 blog post about their Forward Deployed Software Engineers (FDSEs) and discover what these engineers actually do versus what the marketing claims...
Key topics covered:
- What FDSEs actually do, day-to-day
- How this compares to traditional consulting roles
- The difference between software configuration and software engineering
- Why embedded customer roles aren't new
- Career advice for aspiring technical professionals
If you're interested in understanding the reality behind tech industry buzzwords, this is your episode!
#ProductManagement #SoftwareEngineering #TechCareers #Consulting #Leadership #AgileCoaching
LINKS
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YouTube: https://youtu.be/SGvJK-aruJ8
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596
Website: http://arguingagile.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
have you ever heard of alittle company called Palantir?
(00:02):
I have.
They may or may notbe evil, but we're not
talking about that today.
Don't get excited.
We're not judge of Yeah,yeah, we would never do that.
Not on a Tuesdaythis article's from 2020, but
they were hailed in the mediafor having forward deployed
software engineers, callingthem out as like a model for
a great way to work with yourengineers where they, we work
(00:23):
directly at the customer andI can't remember exactly the
article I read, but it waslike, you agileists should be
like, lauding them for workingdirectly with the customer and
it's closest to the roots ofwhat y'all are looking for.
And, I looked at it and Isaid, should I be impressed?
When I first read thisarticle, I didn't come away
with the impression that thisis groundbreaking stuff that
(00:44):
this is not anything new,but the terminology is Right.
Ford deployed software engineer,you're not behind enemy lines
or anything for god's sake.
Sure, sure so they've justadded this kind of vernacular
around it, but also the, thecrux of it is these engineers
are again, another vernacembedded with customers.
Where, where, where was it thatwe've seen this before, right?
(01:06):
In the past where engineerswould go out with the
salespeople and work directlywith the customers, even
in the early lifecycle.
Oh, don't sales, right?
Don't say that on Redditbecause they were very vehement
about they, this is not asales engineering position.
We're gonna read the articleand get into that the article
is on blog.palantir.com.
(01:27):
I'll put a link inthe show description.
All right, so I put thearticle on the screen.
It's called A Day in theLife of a Palantir Forward
deployed Software Engineer.
It's from November 2nd, 2020.
It's quite old.
I mean like in terms offollowing the current trends
blogosphere, it's like 15 iceages ago at least but it starts
off by saying Brian is a forwarddeployed software engineer.
(01:49):
That's me, by the way.
Brian is a forward deployedsoftware engineer at
Palantir, currently focusedon delivering data integration
solutions to a US Departmentof Defense customer.
We sat down with Brian to learnabout the FDSE role in his
day-to-day life at Palantir.
That's what the wholearticle is gonna be about.
So what is this role?
What do these people do?
Okay.
You're a forward deployedsoftware engineer.
(02:10):
What is that?
Forward deployed softwareengineer, FDSE, or quote,
Delta is a software engineerwho embeds directly with our
customers to configure Palantirsexisting software platforms to
solve their toughest problemswhile a traditional software
engineer or dev, that's,they didn't put SWE on here.
SWEeee.
My, my favorite.
(02:31):
My favorite.
Yes.
Shortening of dev focuseson creating a single
capability that can beused for many customers.
F DSEs focus on enablingmany capabilities for
a single customer.
We are deployed acrossmany industries and problem
domains, so the breadthof projects we tackle is
large and always evolving.
Since joining Palantir, I'vehad the chance to work across
(02:51):
cyber healthcare and defense.
So he's a sales engineer,like a post-sales engineer.
What, what do they used to call?
The people that came in aftersales sold the contract, but
the people that had to setthem up because they would
you would sell the contract,but then people would come
in and have to set you up andget you functioning before
the, they would cash a check.
Are the, is that the salesengineering team or It was
(03:11):
professional services team.
It a number of differentdifferent titles so, so
sometimes they were calledpre-sales engineers, uhhuh
because you hadn't quite pinnedthe contract at that point.
Sales engineers, because theygo out with the sales team.
And do this stuff again, notbefore the contract signed
necessarily, but it startsbefore the contracts signed.
So maybe they'll go out to likeexhibitions or conferences or
(03:33):
whatever, and set up a demo.
When a customer comes in andthey're interested, they engage
with the customer, not at thehigh holistic sales level,
but deeper in, in their data,in their, in their company.
Yeah.
So if you have technicalfolks in the audience that
are engaging with thesepeople, they can actually
talk the same language, right?
Mm-hmm . used to be calledsales engineer, right?
(03:56):
Or pre-sales engineer,some variation thereof.
Presale , pre-sales is beforethe contract is signed.
And then whatever comes afterpresales is like good luck kid.
You're on your own.
It's just professional servicesof which the company puts in
the contract you get a certainnumber of hours or months What
do they used to call hypercareafter the main period is over?
That kinda stuff.
When I was at a utility I workedwith teams from Deloitte and
(04:18):
IBM and pwc, and there wasanother place teams from all
the big consulting firms I don'tthink I ever, I don't think
I work with a McKenzie team.
I don't think.
And they all hadpeople like this.
Oh I'm sorry.
The other one was,s-A-P-S-A-P was the other one.
And they embed people like they,they make a sale and that sale
(04:41):
is like, I get like vendorslike IBM, stuff like that.
They don't, well, IBM'sa bad example, like
vendors like Deloitte.
They're not sellingyou any technology.
They're selling you professionalservices to implement something.
The SAP folks, on the otherhand, they are selling you
technology like you lease andservices, they call it solutions
, and services , and you getbasically the people that they
have there on site with youneed them to be experts at their
(05:03):
database design when they addmodules and integrate their
tables with your tables and tellyou exactly what primary keys
to go with and stuff like that.
It's like you coulddo it on your own.
You could learn todo it on your own.
It's a tough road with complexsystems like SAP for example,
it so it's difficult to getthere quickly without this help
which is why these companiesand SAP P is a great example.
(05:23):
They don't just sellyou the software, right?
They sell you a solution.
So the software is part ofit, but also some services
are part of it wherethese people are embedded.
As the article says withthe customer to synthesize
and customize a solutionto solve the customer's
specific problems yeah.
But if you look at the actualsoftware that, that comes
out of the box, it won'tsolve anybody's specific
(05:44):
problems necessarily.
Alright, let me continuewith the article 'cause it's
not really a long article.
Iterating closely with customersacross the various industries
requires a unique and broadskillset ranging from software
development to data engineeringto customer engagement and
creative problem solving , ifthis person is sitting in the
room, I would like to pokeand prod and say, really?
Tell me a littlemore about your.
Data engineering thatyou do at this customer?
(06:06):
Like is it like settingup ETL pipelines and doing
transforms and stuff like thatat a broad, massive scale?
Or are you like taking in aspreadsheet once in a while?
Like what kind ofdata engineering are
you talking about?
Like how much of thisis like sales bluster?
Mm-hmm.
And how much is likeactual real work?
Okay.
I need to address questionslike what products are we
deploying for this use case?
Why are we deploying them?
(06:27):
How will we spin upworkflows that utilize these
products to address thecustomer's specific needs?
As f DSEs, not only do we needto be able to answer these
questions, but we actuallyimplement the solution in
collaboration with end users.
Okay.
I dunno, I don't, nothingnew there that really like
shakes my, no, I mean thequalities that these people
bring aren't just thetechnology that their company
(06:50):
is offering or technologyin general, even Right.
A key quality is really justlistening to the customer,
understanding their pain points.
Mm-hmm.
And then figuring out howthey can be solved using
a mix of technical pieces.
Right?
Yeah.
Starting with your owncompany's technology.
Yeah.
But then anything elsethat might be needed.
I mean, that sounds likea consultant with like
a proprietary package ofsoftware that comes with
(07:11):
them so I'm a consultant andI've got a bunch of software
and services like that comewith me that I can draw on.
I told this story when we wereprepping for this episode.
I used to work for a companythat had this particular
software package called Gateway.
And Gateway wasexactly what it was.
It was the gateway between abunch of external services,
APIs, mailboxes, yeah.
(07:31):
Fax machines, likedozens of things, right?
. And you can configurethis gateway service with
like a million plugins.
You can make it as complexas you want, but you could
also make it as simpleas you want hey, just
monitor this email inbox.
. And whenever someone sendsme an email, grab it and
orchestrate it through theworkflow pipeline of like if
(07:52):
it's got this, then do this.
If it doesn't have that, thendo whatever , this is a lot
of that kind of thing I'vegot this software, it's really
powerful, but by itself, ifyou don't put any inputs and
outputs, it doesn't do anything.
It doesn't do anything.
Yeah.
And also If you just put thesimplest inputs and simplest
outputs, you're not gonnaget any real leverage with
the system where if youknow how to configure it,
(08:12):
it can really relieve a lotof pressure for your users.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, , those are very,very common back in the
day these predictive sortof workflow analysis and
management type of tools andquite, a lot of it actually,
now that I think about it.
It was not necessarily to dowith the proprietary software
that a vendor brings, althoughthat was at the center of
it, but around it there'sa lot of other bits and
(08:34):
pieces, right, that you can.
Some of it was free,some of it was just other
proprietary software.
Like for example, youmight have needed Adobe
or something like that sothis was very, very common.
But it's interesting you saidthat sounds like a consultant
because in this article they'rerefuting that, oh, here we go.
In the next section,lemme start right away.
It says, is an FDSEsimilar to a consultant?
(08:56):
No, not really.
I think one of the thingsthat differentiates us from
consultants is how technicallycreative we can be while
also delivering solutionsquickly in the hands.
Hang on, hang on.
Wait, wait.
I almost jumped in there.
Did you see the shot atconsultants there in the
hands of an FDSE Palantir'sproducts, Foundry and Gotham.
Why is your product namedGotham like really Batman?
(09:18):
The place where allthe evil people live
that Batman beats up.
That's what you need,Gotham City does.
, Does Batman live inGotham City or does he
live in Gotham Suburbs?
Because I need to knowthese things like this.
Nevermind.
I know, I know.
But he has quick transportation.
I do know that.
He does.
He does.
Our ready built playgroundsthat empower us to be
flexible and efficientin how we solve problems.
(09:39):
Unlike consultants, we can pullmost of the pieces together out
of the box, meaning we don'tneed to reinvent the wheel for
each customer and spend years ofcreating a patchwork solution.
This sounds like someonewho's never been a consultant.
Exactly.
Instead, we can focus oncomposing the right architecture
of features to supercharge usersthis way, I'm creating software
that makes my customers moreuniquely able to do their jobs.
(10:01):
Oh boy.
Oh boy.
Oh boy there's alot wrong with this.
First of all, it doesn't soundlike he's creating software.
He's configuring software.
Yeah, he's setting up softwareand second of all I don't
know any consultants that.
Don't use outta the box stuff.
Like very few consultantsare out there like truly
creating custom stuff.
And also like you can tellthis article was written in
2020 'cause like consultantsnow are just using chat gpt
(10:23):
to, yeah, let's just give themthe benefit of the doubt that
this was pre AI or chat GPT.
But you know, there are acouple of jabs in here on
consultants saying thatthey're not technical or
necessarily have that prowessto put these things together.
I was gonna say only justcall it or what it is
only 'cause I worked inconsulting for a short time.
Can I say that?
, Watch out with thiskind of attitude.
There's consultants thatare out there that are
(10:45):
gonna eat your lunch, man yeah.
Careful.
Yep.
Agreed.
Absolutely., I completelydisagree that consultant,
this is not a consultant role.
You are consultingwith the customer.
You, yourself said you'reembedded with them.
Right?
So what are you doingworking in a vacuum,?
Right.
You're consulting now , thetechnical aspect of it.
. Consultants do have technicaljobs, especially these ones
(11:05):
that are putting together bitsand pieces and synthesizing a
tailor made or bespoke solutionto solve the customer's unique
problems, I used to do thatfor years when I was working in
the publishing sector, right?
There was a core piece ofsoftware that didn't do anything
much if you just took it outof the box, and implemented
it because every customer hada unique circumstance with
(11:26):
their backend systems, theERPs, the financial systems.
So you had to do this work,and if you're not technical,
you couldn't do it even ifit meant doing things like.
Writing scripts to makeall of this work right.
Not necessarily compile code oranything like that, they would
have to be updated all the time.
No, this is writing scriptsand training them in how
(11:48):
you're doing it so they can beself-sustaining going forward.
Yeah.
That's interesting that heleft the, the training piece.
I, I wonder if we'regonna hit that.
He may have it.
The training piece I don'trecall it though, so we'll see.
Because I think that yeah, I,we gotta write that one down
for a note to look back later.
I'm interested if when heleaves or his assignment.
Is over I wonder if like thecompany's just out on its own.
(12:10):
they no longer can changethe Palantir products.
Probably, I mean theseguys will probably wave the
change request flag, right?
Yeah.
And say buy more hours.
I wonder I, I guess thebusiness model is what
I'm wondering about.
I wonder if, i'm wonderinghow close this is to the
SAP business model wherebasically like, they're not
really they don't reallyencourage you to learn the
table structure and change ityourself and stuff like that.
(12:31):
They really want youto call them and then
they come in and do it.
It's the same as if youever work on a IBM series.
I like, they don't really wantyou adding RAM to the box.
They don't really want you,like they want you to call
them , A guy will come outwith a suitcase with the RAM
and put it in like this isexactly, the tactic, I guess
to have the customer sign upfor a maintenance contract.
(12:52):
Right?
. So then makes sense.
They'll say, well, call us.
We'll take care of it.
It's covered under yourmaintenance, or only
this much is covered.
or you go to a platinummaintenance tier.
Then we cover a bit more thatdoesn't shock me that they're
huge with the governmentbecause that seems like a
sales pitch that would goover well for the government
is like, you absorb no risk.
Right.
You know, you call us whenthere's a problem, we'll send
the man with the suitcase outand they'll fix everything.
(13:12):
It's all on our dime.
You know just like the old IBMconsultants that would come
out and all the rest is onthem, you don't pay anything.
The SLA says we'll be outthere in a certain number of
hours or whatever dependingon the, the support tier.
Yeah I guess the customer canrest assure that the job will
be done in a timely mannerand it'll be done Right.
(13:32):
Because the experts are doing itright but meanwhile, the experts
like, and then now we changethe screen over to the experts.
And the experts are likea dude going like, alter
table, insert column.
Sorry, I don't really have likeany hangup with SAP or anything.
It's just, well I rememberclearly being at a work
center that like heavily usedSAP and it was just like,
(13:55):
it was this big black box.
Yeah.
It was a big black box andeveryone treated it like,
ooh, like the, we gotta have,gotta get the SAP teams time.
And it's, it was a big thing.
And when I actually satdown, 'cause , that part of
my career was like I, I waslike just coming online with
like agile ways of working.
I was just kind of likediscovering what path I went
oh, what do Scrum Mastersdo and what does this do?
And I'm like, whatdoes, what is the actual
(14:16):
discipline, agile coaching?
How can that add value?
And stuff like that.
I was like just learningabout that kind of stuff.
So I was going, I was like.
Going and sitting with theSAP people when they were
doing their work, just likesitting over the shoulder
in the cube Hey, don'tyou have something to do?
I'm like, no, not really, my job is to make sure
that this is done right.
And then go back and tellmy boss or project manager
or whatever that like, Igot the thing done even if
(14:38):
getting the thing done wasjust sitting behind the
person doing the work, makingsure that it was done right.
Because like, I got a wholeteam that's blocked from testing
this thing until you get thenew table structure done.
So , no, I havenothing else to do.
It was like one of those workcenters, with stage gates and
milestones and check boxes andI, I remember sitting behind the
SAP person and they were doingbasic sequel insert column Sure.
(15:04):
Into a table.
I'm like, this is SAP.
And then he was like, yeah,but you gotta know what column.
And he had a big ERDdiagram in this cube.
I'm like.
Just share that with us.
This is not, I mean, yes,you need to coordinate who's
changing tables or whatever,but anybody can do this work.
This is easy.
This is just sequel you know.
Oh, Brad, it's morecomplicated than that.
I understand.
(15:24):
You got a million modules.
You gotta know what Right.
What the right module is to buy.
'cause there's a lot ofmoney involved the CRM module
does this, the natural gasmodule does this, whatever.
I understand.
But it like theactual technology.
But under, under hood, it'sbasic T SQL statements, man.
Sure.
But this is different.
This is, this is the, boy,the camera's rebelling on
me when he is like, you'redoing, you're being too sassy.
(15:45):
All right.
Fine, fine.
Let's move on.
Why did you choose thisrole versus a traditional
software engineer?
Role?
Software engineer.
SWEeee.
He says, I chose to be a forwarddeployed software engineer
because of the rapid cyclebetween creating solutions
and seeing them in action.
At this point, I don't knowif this is anything other than
like corporate propaganda thatwe're reading at this point.
(16:05):
Is there anything in herethat's not propaganda?
The instant feedbackof iterating hand?
Actually, here, let me changesome words in here, om,
and let me see if it, sure.
Let me see if itstrikes you differently.
Okay.
Why did you chooseto be a scrum master?
I chose to be a scrum masterbecause of the rapid cycle
between creating solutionsand seeing them in action.
The instant feedback ofiterating hand in hand with a
customer means you can createsomething very impactful
in a short amount of time.
(16:26):
Wow, I'm sold.
That works, doesn't it?
Yeah.
I'll, I'll take two to go.
absolutely.
But when we, again, like this,is this the funny thing about
I did it in the episode withEd, the extreme ownership.
I'm doing it again,maybe at this point.
What I'm, I guess I'msignaling to you, we need to
have an episode completelyon like, hey, if Agile's
over big a Agile is over,like there's a path forward.
(16:49):
let's talk about a careercounseling episode.
Yes.
Of like, let's talkabout some path forward.
Okay.
Business, leadership,entrepreneur, solopreneur,
a program manager.
A lot of people are jumpingand ship to product.
A lot of the podcastersin the space are jumping
to product, right?
Like there's a path forward.
I just took his language outwith whatever they're trying
to propagandize and changeit, and it totally fit.
(17:12):
So I'm just saying like, thisstuff is, it's in the zeitgeist.
Mm-hmm.
It's not going away.
Sure.
But companies are seeingit and it's like, oh, let
me grab that language andadd it to my vernacular.
He says, I also like aunique mix of autonomy
and unpredictabilityin the role I am given.
Oh, oh boy.
If you like that, you workat any bank, I've given
(17:32):
the opportunity to work onprojects that interest me.
Those projects always throwunique challenges my way.
I'm constantly learningand adapting, for instance,
despite having no priorexposure to the cyberspace,
upon joining Palantir,I was immediately thrust
into a large cyber project.
Oh.
That has nothing, not,not like consulting in
any way, shape, or form.
Not at all.
I had no experience in this, butthey billed top dollar and threw
(17:53):
me into this project to getup to speed, I needed to learn
the ins and outs of foundriescyber offering and discover the
particular technical challengesfacing the customer all while
gaining general cyber expertise.
Talk about drinking from thefire hose, exclamation point.
This is corporate propaganda.
I didn't realize when Istarted reading this, but
yeah, I guess I should have.
Listen, this is no differentthan a software engineer
(18:15):
who's been tasked to workon a cyber project without
any prior experience.
They'll be drinkingfrom a fire hose too.
This is no different.
You're still learningfast on the job.
I mean, how, how is this unique?
I think it is different thanbeing a software engineer.
Again, another episode in themaking right here which sort of
lines up with vibe coding andsort of also lines up with ai.
(18:36):
Oh, right, right.
It's different than being asoftware engineer because, you
don't get to be like CaptainKirk flying on a Starship
Enterprise coming in liketelling a civilization you
should be good to each otherand not be a planet of mob
series or whatever and thenflying off and then never
coming back and being like,Hey, what's, what's going on?
How is this, howare you guys doing?
Software engineering, whenyou're like completely
(18:57):
greenfield, you do whatever,blue ocean, whatever you
wanna call it, where likeyou come in, you start
with a blank slate, you'reflying, you're programming
new stuff, new fields.
Oh totally.
I got this.
That's a lot different thanI got 500 API endpoints.
Anybody could be usingany of them at any moment.
My database has balloonedto 90 tables, right?
(19:19):
There's no one personthat knows all of them.
'cause they were added overthe course of wherever.
Like that's, that's alot different software
engineering than this.
I completely agree with you.
I mean, the only side of, Iwould say that's kind of on
this FDA, whatever it's calledfor FDSE you are doing all
this without prior expertise.
You're learning on the jobin front of the customer, so
(19:41):
it might carry a risk thereOf losing your credibility.
Right.
You're supposed to be anyconsultant, even though
they say no any consultant.
Yeah, absolutely.
But you know, thisis that role, right?
You're forward deployed witha customer you're embedded
with, and now there's arisk, I believe that where
you're learning stuff, you'relooking stuff up, right?
Yeah.
and if it's in front ofa customer, you might run
that risk , I mean the nicething about consulting,
(20:03):
usually your consultinghouses, , they have some
sort of Managerial structure.
there are people you cango back to either senior
consultants or other peopleIn the firm that you
can reach out to.
And, there's help there.
That's the nice thing aboutbeing a consultancy which is
exactly what he says next.
Oh.
Oh, is it?
Okay.
Is it this to get up to speed, Ineed to learn the ins and outs.
Okay.
Next paragraph.
He says, he says, to meetthe challenge, I leverage
(20:24):
mentors and members of my team,spent a lot of time talking
to customers who know thesubject matter best and did
some independent exploration.
Now, although I'm not workingon cyber anymore, I still
frequently contribute tocyber initiatives across the
company because of my newfoundexperience and interests.
See, , I like what I'minterested in when I'm
reading this is all the inbetween the cracks kind.
(20:44):
, Yeah, yeah.
Kind of stuff is like, how oftendo you get pulled off of your
customer to do something else,to go fight a fire on another
customer and then like, I wannahear some stories about that.
I'm more interested about theconsultancy, the management
of the internal consultancyof Palantir, which again,
I gotta think under theirorg structure is just like
operations or professionalservices or some kind I know
(21:07):
like those are not Vogueanymore, , that's the way all
companies did their software inthe first 10 years of my career.
It was like the COO ran allof operations, which, in
which, which involved allof professional services.
Sales probably was a equalpillar, but sales and
professional services.
There probably was somekind of contention between
the sales engineers andthe . Operations Engineers.
(21:30):
Engineers, yeah.
The support engineers,whatever you wanna call 'em.
Yep.
Yeah, I agree.
It was exactly that structure.
Back in the day you had underoperations, customer support,
but smaller companies, justthe ones I was a part of as
a person who went out withsalespeople doing exactly what's
described here in this article.
I took calls in the morning,like I'd get to work early in
the morning about seven, put thecoffee on, and then sure enough
(21:53):
the phone would ring because oneof our customers had us on speed
dial just to talk about stuff.
Yeah so not necessarilyyou know, talk about issues
they're having or anything.
Just thought, Hey, I havethis report I was thinking
about jazzing it up.
Any, any suggestions,that kind of stuff.
My point is, you are notdone when you leave this
role, you don't reallyleave this role mm-hmm.
(22:14):
In a smaller company.
'cause you don't havethat handoff to a customer
support department.
Yeah.
You're always the conduitwith that customer and you're
moved on to another customer.
So to your point, sometimescustomers will call you and say
to to, even if they call the,the support hotline, they'll
say, Hey can I talk to Owen?
Because he knowsour system, right?
So we circumvent all ofthis explanation about what
(22:35):
they're doing, et cetera.
So it's bigger overheadon this person.
It'd be interesting ifwe want to take customer
service and support.
Just what we're talking aboutnow, offline to another podcast.
I got a couple of people inmind that I could reach out to.
Sure.
That would be good forthat because, this article
we're reading about theforward deployed, sorry, I
forgot what it's called now.
Forward deployedsoftware engineer.
Forward deployedsoftware engineer.
(22:56):
Right forward deployedsoftware engineer.
They're not reallysoftware engineers.
They're engineers.
I'll give 'em that, rightthey're customer support
engineers sales engineersbut I mean like software
engineer, like I think abouta software engineer, of
course software development.
I'm not convinced yet.
I could be convincedthat they're definitely
deeply, deeply technical.
And maybe a lot of themwant to move into a software
(23:18):
developer, full-timeengineer role eventually.
But what I'm reading in hiscorporate propaganda, it leads
me to believe that I haven't,he hasn't said anything about
software engineering yetThe story you just told,
where the customer calls.
Yeah, maybe they're a problemchild, maybe they got issues
or whatever they call you andthen you scramble your team, get
the team together, do whatever.
(23:39):
There's nothing that he justoutlined other than like being
the single point of contactfor people to like, walk up
to their cube and grab 'em.
I was at a work center oneof my previous work centers.
We had a team of engineersand they tried to make sure
that the senior engineers haddivvied up the customers where
a particular customer alwaysgot the same senior engineer,
(24:02):
so the people that picked upthe phone and tried to solve
the customer's problems.
Like this equivalent, but incustomer support not parked at
your site forever the peoplethat picked up the phone would
try to solve the problems.
They might be differentpeople, they might not be the
same person all the time, butif they couldn't figure the
problem out quickly, they wouldescalate to a senior engineer.
And the senior engineer forthat customer that called
(24:24):
would always be the sameperson so it's, it's like
what he's talking about inhis position is I, I'm trying
to figure out if this modelis any different from a model
that I've seen in my previousexperience, and I have yet to
see anything in this articleother than I ship the person
off and I send 'em to workfor that customer exclusively,
(24:45):
which is it to me seems justto be a matter of financial.
I financially can affordthat as a company.
Again, he's not, this is like,this is corporate propaganda,
so I don't know how deep he'sgonna get into that kinda stuff.
It's like, that's thestuff I would like to know.
From my perspective likefrom my experience in other
companies, I have seen,okay, we got a big customer.
I wanna make sure that theyalways have this person
(25:06):
who initially set them up.
And every time they call,they're gonna get this person.
Like maybe they don'tget the person initially.
But it always rollsback up to this person.
'cause they know that person.
Everybody knows thatperson at the company.
That's exactly how it wasin my experience when I was
doing this stuff i'd always bealerted, Hey this is usually
customer support, right?
They'll answer the callafter I moved on to a
(25:27):
different customer, right?
Sometime later they would answerthe call and then they would
tap me on the shoulder, right?
Yeah.
We were in the office,so they'd say, have so
and so on the phone.
Would you like to?
Right.
Can I transfer to you?
Right.
I would say you need if, if I'man executive at that company,
I want some kind of systemthat alerts you that says like,
Hey, Om your customer calledin to customer support today.
Brian and customer support hashim on the phone right now.
(25:49):
Yep.
Maybe you wanna pop intocustomer support or mean
whatever for a remote.
Maybe you want to dial in and,and just like pop in and be
like, Hey guys, what's going on?
Everything good?
I would want to proactivelyalert you that we're talking to
your customer, but again from myexperience , this seems like a
lot of other models I've seen.
Yeah.
Just not called this specificforward deployed software
(26:09):
engineering I agree with thatit goes , far enough in history
for me where the executives atmy company would occasionally,
not always, but occasionallysay, this customer is important.
We need this really good take,good care of 'em strategic.
So yeah.
So give them yourSkyTel pager number.
That's how back it goes skyTelpagers and they would call,
(26:29):
and I would know, I wouldgive one customer a code.
When you page me, pageme with 9, 9, 9, then I
know it's an emergency.
Email me or page me withones something like that and
you could do that differentnumbering things for different
customers, but yeah, I mean,every customer wants to feel
like they're talking to theone person they know, who knows
their environment and their,their configuration all right.
(26:52):
Let's try to skimas much as we can.
He says what's a typicalday in life for you?
He says, I work remotely.
I'm working on a project forone of our DOD customers.
Where I'm creating newfunctionality on top
of our Gotham platform.
That's right.
Our Gotham platform.
Typically a chunk of my dayis spent designing, writing
and testing workflows.
Oh.
So similar to my gatewayproduct I always talking about.
That's exactly right.
So he is not Desi, he's notwriting or developing new code
(27:14):
as a software engineer would.
Right?
Another portion is spentconfiguring Gotham to
unlock new functionalitywithin the platform.
This could involveconfiguring new data models
or working on stabilityimprovements and upgrades.
, I also reserve some timeeach day for comms, emails,
meetings, and standups overhead.
It's called overhead.
I generally try to limitthe time I spent in meetings
by asking myself, does thisdiscussion have to be a meeting
(27:37):
and do I have to be there?
Well, this should havebeen an email I won't
even, I like that's, yeah.
Most people at the company takea similar approach and at leads
a situation where every meetingI attend ends up being a.
Ends up being aproductive use of my time.
The remainder of my day is spenton a variety of tests, learning
about other deployments, meetingnew coworkers, or working on
miscellaneous shared projects.
(27:58):
That's interesting.
Meeting new coworkers.
Does he meet the newcoworkers by email?
Anyway, sorry that, that wasme attacking him for no reason.
He's saying daily videoconference standups
often end up in yogaWhat are some of the technical
challenges you encounter?
Every FDSE, by the way, I stillhave yet to reach any of the
se problems he's talking abouttackles technical challenges
(28:18):
on a day-to-day basis.
Here are some examples oftechnical problems I've
worked through duringmy time at Palantir.
All right, here we go.
He gives some bullet points.
How do I build scale andmaintain a terabyte scale data
pipeline feeding a missioncritical operation workflow.
I wonder how oldthis article is.
Okay.
It's 2020.
Like terabyte scale datapipelines are common now , my
(28:40):
intent was not to be hostilewith this article, but the style
of writing is making me hostile.
It's giving me hives,the style of writing.
Any flow of data on along enough timeline is a
terabyte scale pipeline.
Just want to point that out.
, What does that mean?
A mission criticaloperational flow.
He's talking aboutscaling things up, is
what I get out of this.
I think he's talking aboutthe amount of data that
(29:00):
comes into the pipeline.
There are very few datapipelines I've ever worked
with that don't get upto the terabyte level.
Yeah, exactly so, okay.
How do I configure ourplatform to support specific
data and workflow accesscontrols for our customers
based on unique regulatoryand compliance requirements?
Okay.
Data and workflow accesscontrols means if a US person's
data comes through the pipeline,you're not allowed to have that
(29:23):
in there so you need to be ableto filter us persons out of
this data pipeline when we'reanalyzing the Middle East yeah
so he, what he's doing here,he is configuring specific data
and workflow access controls.
This is like, it's just, it'srules on a data pipeline.
Like this is not, I wouldexpect him to probably
even be able to farm thisout to a junior person.
(29:44):
Seriously.
I don't know the economicsof Palantir, so I dunno if
they're they send one engineerto this site of like 500
people, and say like, lookhow much we're supporting you.
We, we have afull-time resource.
A resource, yeah.
Full-time resource.
I'm like nails on a chalkboard.
I'm trying to, I'mtrying to give om the
heebie-jeebies over here.
(30:05):
I'm getting that.
It's this language,with the barely filter
over the top of it.
He says does my solutionencourage self-sufficient
collaboration and discoverywithin the platform, unlocking
additional value for the client?
Is my solution flexible?
Will it be resilient tomodified access control
requirements in the future?
Okay.
That was a lot of words.
I don't know if any ofthem meant anything.
How do I design, build,test, deploy, and maintain
(30:27):
a unique workflow to allowa particular, again, this
goes back to the workflowproduct I was talking about.
it seems very similar.
That's all he's doing is.
Putting together workflow.
This is software configuration.
This is not, I mean , thisis like a, I would say
like get a good start insoftware development as
like a tester or like a helpdesk or something like that.
And then transition over tothis do this for a while to do
(30:49):
like highly technical work verylogical, highly technical work.
And then do this for awhile until an opening
opens up on one of thesoftware development teams.
Then you move over to do realsoftware development work where
you're actually working in code.
Yeah.
It seems like agood career path.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it makes sensefor somebody to, if
they're coming into thefield, . To follow that path
he says he builds thisworkflow for non-technical
(31:10):
customers to visualize andinteract with high noise data.
How can I generalize thisfeature to fold into the
base platform so thatother fdsc and clients
can benefit from my work?
So he, he's configuringflows of data, a workflow.
For the data throughthe application.
Okay how do I investigate aproduction software outage?
Identify root cause ofthe issue to deploy a fix
(31:31):
and monitor the stack forstability while coordinating
communication betweenproduct teams, our deployment
team and the customer.
You put in trouble.
That's basicallycustomer support work.
Yes.
Customer supportwork yeah, yeah.
Okay but he's nota sales engineer.
No, he's an FDSE.
What is the most challengingaspect of your role?
Directing.
Directing focus ischallenging at times.
(31:52):
Did he just say directing focus?
I did given the ever-changinglandscape of our products,
capabilities and our clients'needs, we are blessed with
a nearly infinite numberof problems to be solved.
I need to consistentlyidentify the most valuable
thing to be working on,regardless of expertise or
comfort level with the subjectmatter, execute against it.
(32:14):
Everything's on fire all thetime, is what it sounds like.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, this is really, Imean, everyone does this, right?
Prioritize what you'reworking on he likes the
variety of the role.
Okay, good.
I'm, I'm amazed this got leftin the corporate propaganda.
Like Yeah.
You're, you're so busy thatthe, like the thing that
you find most challenging isthat focused, everything's
(32:35):
changing all the time.
Like that the softwareis changing all the time.
The customers for nerdchanging all the time the
things you have access to ischanging all knowing, knowing
enterprise software like, likeGotham probably is like the
software and the configurationsetting settings are probably
changing under your feet.
Like the sand is probablyshifting under your feet.
All the time and youprobably don't get a lot
(32:55):
of notice about it 'causeof the size of Palantir.
So that could be exciting.
I get it.
The regulatorychanges are there too.
I also don't like thepolitics shifting under
your feet as well.
It's probably happening inthis company the size, right?
Anyway, he's gonna wrapthings up, he says, to wrap
things up, what advice doyou have for future squeeze
from a technical perspective?
My advice is to learnto work with systems
architectures and code basesyou are not familiar with.
(33:17):
Really, that'srevolutionary right there.
Revolutionary.
He joined with withhard way background.
He had never worked on commonsoftware tools like Spark or
microservice architectures.
Really?
He never workedon microservices.
Wow.
More generally, find amentor and invest in a
relationship with them.
Having someone in your cornerwho you can turn to for
guidance and ask for help andnavigating career is invaluable.
(33:38):
This sounds likesomeone who works as a
consultancy, I have to say.
In a consultancy.
You do need someonein your corner.
You need someone to go back to.
And if you don't have thatperson in the consultancy,
you're not gonna last in thatconsultancy for very long
This was interesting.
I really wanted to know moreabout this model 'cause they've
been blasting this model out.
I watched a podcast recentlywhere they were talking
(33:59):
about this model and onthat particular podcast.
I can't remember what it wasthey were attributing a lot of
success to this and portrayingthis role, the forward deployed
software engineer it was somekind of like monumental, like
breakthrough in thinking.
And I'm just, I was listeningto it going this sounds like
what most smaller softwarefirms do they have a dedicated
(34:22):
engineer to a big customer.
They're willing to likewhatever revenue it takes,
like it's strategic, solike a margin or revenue or
whatever, like doesn't count.
Right.
, Making that customer happyis the most important thing.
This role of havingpeople embedded with
customers is nothing new.
This goes back a long, long way.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah so, I don't knowwhy this is suddenly
(34:43):
become vogue as a role.
It's just, it's just anotherdressed up sales engineer role.
Really, at least to me.
It's not a sales engineer.
He says clearly in thearticle, it's not a
sales engineer anyway.
Okay.
We believe them!All right, if you enjoyed
this podcast, don't forgetto like and subscribe.
Remember every like.
Counts everysubscription counts.
(35:04):
A comment on, on LinkedInwhen I post the podcast, that
helps too for our engagement.
And thank you everyonefor listening.
Awesome.
This is great.
Thank you all.
sorry, I didn't read the.
The comments here.
I think all the people whohave trouble understanding the
gist of what Palantir does,should read this blog post.
It's excellent.
Can I put my thoughts in herewithout creating an account?
Oh.
Oh, no.
I have to create an account.
You have to create an account.
(35:24):
It's making me sign upfor a medium account.
All right.
Here we go.
We created an account on Mediumfor the Arguing Agile podcast.
So now we get the comment.
Here we go.
Interesting read.
We were so happy to createa podcast you know what,
I'm gonna put a dash in herejust so people think that
this was written by chat.
(35:45):
GPT.
Here we go.
Oh, M dash.
You need an M dash.
Oh, is it, is that, was itM dash two dashes like this?
No, no.
It's, it's a, it'sa single dash.
It's a special character.
You can do it in Word in ation.
Oh, I can't, I, sorry.
I'm, I'm typing with thekeyboard on a laptop, so that's
s not gonna work for me however,we're chuckling, chucking,
chucking, chuckling at the,we, we, we are not consultants.
(36:11):
That's all right.
Spell check's.
Got me disclaimerfollowed by a description.
Of exactly what consultantsdo, exactly what consultants
do betting with clients,solving their specific,
specific problems.
(36:32):
Problems, and dealing withcustomer engagement, that's
implementation 1 0 1.
Honestly, I probablycould stop there.
That's in, that's like, that's,that's enough heat right there.
The position seems light.
Sorry, I spell light.
LITE.
Sorry.
I That's how it is okay.
(36:52):
Alright light.
Sometimes on the podcast, om islike, that's, that's the pro,
that's the queen's language.
That's the way it's works.
And I'm like, oh.
Oh no.
This position seems lighton actual SSWE work, like
coding, architectural designand building existing systems.
Not that there is anything wrongwith that anything wrong with
(37:13):
being a specialized consultant?
It's valuable work.
And we've all been there.
This is cool.
There you go.
Respond.
have you ever heard of alittle company called Palantir?
(00:02):
I have.
They may or may notbe evil, but we're not
talking about that today.
Don't get excited.
We're not judge of Yeah,yeah, we would never do that.
Not on a Tuesdaythis article's from 2020, but
they were hailed in the mediafor having forward deployed
software engineers, callingthem out as like a model for
a great way to work with yourengineers where they, we work
(00:23):
directly at the customer andI can't remember exactly the
article I read, but it waslike, you agileists should be
like, lauding them for workingdirectly with the customer and
it's closest to the roots ofwhat y'all are looking for.
And, I looked at it and Isaid, should I be impressed?
When I first read thisarticle, I didn't come away
with the impression that thisis groundbreaking stuff that
(00:44):
this is not anything new,but the terminology is Right.
Ford deployed software engineer,you're not behind enemy lines
or anything for god's sake.
Sure, sure so they've justadded this kind of vernacular
around it, but also the, thecrux of it is these engineers
are again, another vernacembedded with customers.
Where, where, where was it thatwe've seen this before, right?
(01:06):
In the past where engineerswould go out with the
salespeople and work directlywith the customers, even
in the early lifecycle.
Oh, don't sales, right?
Don't say that on Redditbecause they were very vehement
about they, this is not asales engineering position.
We're gonna read the articleand get into that the article
is on blog.palantir.com.
(01:27):
I'll put a link inthe show description.
All right, so I put thearticle on the screen.
It's called A Day in theLife of a Palantir Forward
deployed Software Engineer.
It's from November 2nd, 2020.
It's quite old.
I mean like in terms offollowing the current trends
blogosphere, it's like 15 iceages ago at least but it starts
off by saying Brian is a forwarddeployed software engineer.
(01:49):
That's me, by the way.
Brian is a forward deployedsoftware engineer at
Palantir, currently focusedon delivering data integration
solutions to a US Departmentof Defense customer.
We sat down with Brian to learnabout the FDSE role in his
day-to-day life at Palantir.
That's what the wholearticle is gonna be about.
So what is this role?
What do these people do?
Okay.
You're a forward deployedsoftware engineer.
(02:10):
What is that?
Forward deployed softwareengineer, FDSE, or quote,
Delta is a software engineerwho embeds directly with our
customers to configure Palantirsexisting software platforms to
solve their toughest problemswhile a traditional software
engineer or dev, that's,they didn't put SWE on here.
SWEeee.
My, my favorite.
(02:31):
My favorite.
Yes.
Shortening of dev focuseson creating a single
capability that can beused for many customers.
F DSEs focus on enablingmany capabilities for
a single customer.
We are deployed acrossmany industries and problem
domains, so the breadthof projects we tackle is
large and always evolving.
Since joining Palantir, I'vehad the chance to work across
(02:51):
cyber healthcare and defense.
So he's a sales engineer,like a post-sales engineer.
What, what do they used to call?
The people that came in aftersales sold the contract, but
the people that had to setthem up because they would
you would sell the contract,but then people would come
in and have to set you up andget you functioning before
the, they would cash a check.
Are the, is that the salesengineering team or It was
(03:11):
professional services team.
It a number of differentdifferent titles so, so
sometimes they were calledpre-sales engineers, uhhuh
because you hadn't quite pinnedthe contract at that point.
Sales engineers, because theygo out with the sales team.
And do this stuff again, notbefore the contract signed
necessarily, but it startsbefore the contracts signed.
So maybe they'll go out to likeexhibitions or conferences or
(03:33):
whatever, and set up a demo.
When a customer comes in andthey're interested, they engage
with the customer, not at thehigh holistic sales level,
but deeper in, in their data,in their, in their company.
Yeah.
So if you have technicalfolks in the audience that
are engaging with thesepeople, they can actually
talk the same language, right?
Mm-hmm . used to be calledsales engineer, right?
(03:56):
Or pre-sales engineer,some variation thereof.
Presale , pre-sales is beforethe contract is signed.
And then whatever comes afterpresales is like good luck kid.
You're on your own.
It's just professional servicesof which the company puts in
the contract you get a certainnumber of hours or months What
do they used to call hypercareafter the main period is over?
That kinda stuff.
When I was at a utility I workedwith teams from Deloitte and
(04:18):
IBM and pwc, and there wasanother place teams from all
the big consulting firms I don'tthink I ever, I don't think
I work with a McKenzie team.
I don't think.
And they all hadpeople like this.
Oh I'm sorry.
The other one was,s-A-P-S-A-P was the other one.
And they embed people like they,they make a sale and that sale
(04:41):
is like, I get like vendorslike IBM, stuff like that.
They don't, well, IBM'sa bad example, like
vendors like Deloitte.
They're not sellingyou any technology.
They're selling you professionalservices to implement something.
The SAP folks, on the otherhand, they are selling you
technology like you lease andservices, they call it solutions
, and services , and you getbasically the people that they
have there on site with youneed them to be experts at their
(05:03):
database design when they addmodules and integrate their
tables with your tables and tellyou exactly what primary keys
to go with and stuff like that.
It's like you coulddo it on your own.
You could learn todo it on your own.
It's a tough road with complexsystems like SAP for example,
it so it's difficult to getthere quickly without this help
which is why these companiesand SAP P is a great example.
(05:23):
They don't just sellyou the software, right?
They sell you a solution.
So the software is part ofit, but also some services
are part of it wherethese people are embedded.
As the article says withthe customer to synthesize
and customize a solutionto solve the customer's
specific problems yeah.
But if you look at the actualsoftware that, that comes
out of the box, it won'tsolve anybody's specific
(05:44):
problems necessarily.
Alright, let me continuewith the article 'cause it's
not really a long article.
Iterating closely with customersacross the various industries
requires a unique and broadskillset ranging from software
development to data engineeringto customer engagement and
creative problem solving , ifthis person is sitting in the
room, I would like to pokeand prod and say, really?
Tell me a littlemore about your.
Data engineering thatyou do at this customer?
(06:06):
Like is it like settingup ETL pipelines and doing
transforms and stuff like thatat a broad, massive scale?
Or are you like taking in aspreadsheet once in a while?
Like what kind ofdata engineering are
you talking about?
Like how much of thisis like sales bluster?
Mm-hmm.
And how much is likeactual real work?
Okay.
I need to address questionslike what products are we
deploying for this use case?
Why are we deploying them?
(06:27):
How will we spin upworkflows that utilize these
products to address thecustomer's specific needs?
As f DSEs, not only do we needto be able to answer these
questions, but we actuallyimplement the solution in
collaboration with end users.
Okay.
I dunno, I don't, nothingnew there that really like
shakes my, no, I mean thequalities that these people
bring aren't just thetechnology that their company
(06:50):
is offering or technologyin general, even Right.
A key quality is really justlistening to the customer,
understanding their pain points.
Mm-hmm.
And then figuring out howthey can be solved using
a mix of technical pieces.
Right?
Yeah.
Starting with your owncompany's technology.
Yeah.
But then anything elsethat might be needed.
I mean, that sounds likea consultant with like
a proprietary package ofsoftware that comes with
(07:11):
them so I'm a consultant andI've got a bunch of software
and services like that comewith me that I can draw on.
I told this story when we wereprepping for this episode.
I used to work for a companythat had this particular
software package called Gateway.
And Gateway wasexactly what it was.
It was the gateway between abunch of external services,
APIs, mailboxes, yeah.
(07:31):
Fax machines, likedozens of things, right?
. And you can configurethis gateway service with
like a million plugins.
You can make it as complexas you want, but you could
also make it as simpleas you want hey, just
monitor this email inbox.
. And whenever someone sendsme an email, grab it and
orchestrate it through theworkflow pipeline of like if
(07:52):
it's got this, then do this.
If it doesn't have that, thendo whatever , this is a lot
of that kind of thing I'vegot this software, it's really
powerful, but by itself, ifyou don't put any inputs and
outputs, it doesn't do anything.
It doesn't do anything.
Yeah.
And also If you just put thesimplest inputs and simplest
outputs, you're not gonnaget any real leverage with
the system where if youknow how to configure it,
(08:12):
it can really relieve a lotof pressure for your users.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, , those are very,very common back in the
day these predictive sortof workflow analysis and
management type of tools andquite, a lot of it actually,
now that I think about it.
It was not necessarily to dowith the proprietary software
that a vendor brings, althoughthat was at the center of
it, but around it there'sa lot of other bits and
(08:34):
pieces, right, that you can.
Some of it was free,some of it was just other
proprietary software.
Like for example, youmight have needed Adobe
or something like that sothis was very, very common.
But it's interesting you saidthat sounds like a consultant
because in this article they'rerefuting that, oh, here we go.
In the next section,lemme start right away.
It says, is an FDSEsimilar to a consultant?
(08:56):
No, not really.
I think one of the thingsthat differentiates us from
consultants is how technicallycreative we can be while
also delivering solutionsquickly in the hands.
Hang on, hang on.
Wait, wait.
I almost jumped in there.
Did you see the shot atconsultants there in the
hands of an FDSE Palantir'sproducts, Foundry and Gotham.
Why is your product namedGotham like really Batman?
(09:18):
The place where allthe evil people live
that Batman beats up.
That's what you need,Gotham City does.
, Does Batman live inGotham City or does he
live in Gotham Suburbs?
Because I need to knowthese things like this.
Nevermind.
I know, I know.
But he has quick transportation.
I do know that.
He does.
He does.
Our ready built playgroundsthat empower us to be
flexible and efficientin how we solve problems.
(09:39):
Unlike consultants, we can pullmost of the pieces together out
of the box, meaning we don'tneed to reinvent the wheel for
each customer and spend years ofcreating a patchwork solution.
This sounds like someonewho's never been a consultant.
Exactly.
Instead, we can focus oncomposing the right architecture
of features to supercharge usersthis way, I'm creating software
that makes my customers moreuniquely able to do their jobs.
(10:01):
Oh boy.
Oh boy.
Oh boy there's alot wrong with this.
First of all, it doesn't soundlike he's creating software.
He's configuring software.
Yeah, he's setting up softwareand second of all I don't
know any consultants that.
Don't use outta the box stuff.
Like very few consultantsare out there like truly
creating custom stuff.
And also like you can tellthis article was written in
2020 'cause like consultantsnow are just using chat gpt
(10:23):
to, yeah, let's just give themthe benefit of the doubt that
this was pre AI or chat GPT.
But you know, there are acouple of jabs in here on
consultants saying thatthey're not technical or
necessarily have that prowessto put these things together.
I was gonna say only justcall it or what it is
only 'cause I worked inconsulting for a short time.
Can I say that?
, Watch out with thiskind of attitude.
There's consultants thatare out there that are
(10:45):
gonna eat your lunch, man yeah.
Careful.
Yep.
Agreed.
Absolutely., I completelydisagree that consultant,
this is not a consultant role.
You are consultingwith the customer.
You, yourself said you'reembedded with them.
Right?
So what are you doingworking in a vacuum,?
Right.
You're consulting now , thetechnical aspect of it.
. Consultants do have technicaljobs, especially these ones
(11:05):
that are putting together bitsand pieces and synthesizing a
tailor made or bespoke solutionto solve the customer's unique
problems, I used to do thatfor years when I was working in
the publishing sector, right?
There was a core piece ofsoftware that didn't do anything
much if you just took it outof the box, and implemented
it because every customer hada unique circumstance with
(11:26):
their backend systems, theERPs, the financial systems.
So you had to do this work,and if you're not technical,
you couldn't do it even ifit meant doing things like.
Writing scripts to makeall of this work right.
Not necessarily compile code oranything like that, they would
have to be updated all the time.
No, this is writing scriptsand training them in how
(11:48):
you're doing it so they can beself-sustaining going forward.
Yeah.
That's interesting that heleft the, the training piece.
I, I wonder if we'regonna hit that.
He may have it.
The training piece I don'trecall it though, so we'll see.
Because I think that yeah, I,we gotta write that one down
for a note to look back later.
I'm interested if when heleaves or his assignment.
Is over I wonder if like thecompany's just out on its own.
(12:10):
they no longer can changethe Palantir products.
Probably, I mean theseguys will probably wave the
change request flag, right?
Yeah.
And say buy more hours.
I wonder I, I guess thebusiness model is what
I'm wondering about.
I wonder if, i'm wonderinghow close this is to the
SAP business model wherebasically like, they're not
really they don't reallyencourage you to learn the
table structure and change ityourself and stuff like that.
(12:31):
They really want youto call them and then
they come in and do it.
It's the same as if youever work on a IBM series.
I like, they don't really wantyou adding RAM to the box.
They don't really want you,like they want you to call
them , A guy will come outwith a suitcase with the RAM
and put it in like this isexactly, the tactic, I guess
to have the customer sign upfor a maintenance contract.
(12:52):
Right?
. So then makes sense.
They'll say, well, call us.
We'll take care of it.
It's covered under yourmaintenance, or only
this much is covered.
or you go to a platinummaintenance tier.
Then we cover a bit more thatdoesn't shock me that they're
huge with the governmentbecause that seems like a
sales pitch that would goover well for the government
is like, you absorb no risk.
Right.
You know, you call us whenthere's a problem, we'll send
the man with the suitcase outand they'll fix everything.
(13:12):
It's all on our dime.
You know just like the old IBMconsultants that would come
out and all the rest is onthem, you don't pay anything.
The SLA says we'll be outthere in a certain number of
hours or whatever dependingon the, the support tier.
Yeah I guess the customer canrest assure that the job will
be done in a timely mannerand it'll be done Right.
(13:32):
Because the experts are doing itright but meanwhile, the experts
like, and then now we changethe screen over to the experts.
And the experts are likea dude going like, alter
table, insert column.
Sorry, I don't really have likeany hangup with SAP or anything.
It's just, well I rememberclearly being at a work
center that like heavily usedSAP and it was just like,
(13:55):
it was this big black box.
Yeah.
It was a big black box andeveryone treated it like,
ooh, like the, we gotta have,gotta get the SAP teams time.
And it's, it was a big thing.
And when I actually satdown, 'cause , that part of
my career was like I, I waslike just coming online with
like agile ways of working.
I was just kind of likediscovering what path I went
oh, what do Scrum Mastersdo and what does this do?
And I'm like, whatdoes, what is the actual
(14:16):
discipline, agile coaching?
How can that add value?
And stuff like that.
I was like just learningabout that kind of stuff.
So I was going, I was like.
Going and sitting with theSAP people when they were
doing their work, just likesitting over the shoulder
in the cube Hey, don'tyou have something to do?
I'm like, no, not really, my job is to make sure
that this is done right.
And then go back and tellmy boss or project manager
or whatever that like, Igot the thing done even if
(14:38):
getting the thing done wasjust sitting behind the
person doing the work, makingsure that it was done right.
Because like, I got a wholeteam that's blocked from testing
this thing until you get thenew table structure done.
So , no, I havenothing else to do.
It was like one of those workcenters, with stage gates and
milestones and check boxes andI, I remember sitting behind the
SAP person and they were doingbasic sequel insert column Sure.
(15:04):
Into a table.
I'm like, this is SAP.
And then he was like, yeah,but you gotta know what column.
And he had a big ERDdiagram in this cube.
I'm like.
Just share that with us.
This is not, I mean, yes,you need to coordinate who's
changing tables or whatever,but anybody can do this work.
This is easy.
This is just sequel you know.
Oh, Brad, it's morecomplicated than that.
I understand.
(15:24):
You got a million modules.
You gotta know what Right.
What the right module is to buy.
'cause there's a lot ofmoney involved the CRM module
does this, the natural gasmodule does this, whatever.
I understand.
But it like theactual technology.
But under, under hood, it'sbasic T SQL statements, man.
Sure.
But this is different.
This is, this is the, boy,the camera's rebelling on
me when he is like, you'redoing, you're being too sassy.
(15:45):
All right.
Fine, fine.
Let's move on.
Why did you choose thisrole versus a traditional
software engineer?
Role?
Software engineer.
SWEeee.
He says, I chose to be a forwarddeployed software engineer
because of the rapid cyclebetween creating solutions
and seeing them in action.
At this point, I don't knowif this is anything other than
like corporate propaganda thatwe're reading at this point.
(16:05):
Is there anything in herethat's not propaganda?
The instant feedbackof iterating hand?
Actually, here, let me changesome words in here, om,
and let me see if it, sure.
Let me see if itstrikes you differently.
Okay.
Why did you chooseto be a scrum master?
I chose to be a scrum masterbecause of the rapid cycle
between creating solutionsand seeing them in action.
The instant feedback ofiterating hand in hand with a
customer means you can createsomething very impactful
in a short amount of time.
(16:26):
Wow, I'm sold.
That works, doesn't it?
Yeah.
I'll, I'll take two to go.
absolutely.
But when we, again, like this,is this the funny thing about
I did it in the episode withEd, the extreme ownership.
I'm doing it again,maybe at this point.
What I'm, I guess I'msignaling to you, we need to
have an episode completelyon like, hey, if Agile's
over big a Agile is over,like there's a path forward.
(16:49):
let's talk about a careercounseling episode.
Yes.
Of like, let's talkabout some path forward.
Okay.
Business, leadership,entrepreneur, solopreneur,
a program manager.
A lot of people are jumpingand ship to product.
A lot of the podcastersin the space are jumping
to product, right?
Like there's a path forward.
I just took his language outwith whatever they're trying
to propagandize and changeit, and it totally fit.
(17:12):
So I'm just saying like, thisstuff is, it's in the zeitgeist.
Mm-hmm.
It's not going away.
Sure.
But companies are seeingit and it's like, oh, let
me grab that language andadd it to my vernacular.
He says, I also like aunique mix of autonomy
and unpredictabilityin the role I am given.
Oh, oh boy.
If you like that, you workat any bank, I've given
(17:32):
the opportunity to work onprojects that interest me.
Those projects always throwunique challenges my way.
I'm constantly learningand adapting, for instance,
despite having no priorexposure to the cyberspace,
upon joining Palantir,I was immediately thrust
into a large cyber project.
Oh.
That has nothing, not,not like consulting in
any way, shape, or form.
Not at all.
I had no experience in this, butthey billed top dollar and threw
(17:53):
me into this project to getup to speed, I needed to learn
the ins and outs of foundriescyber offering and discover the
particular technical challengesfacing the customer all while
gaining general cyber expertise.
Talk about drinking from thefire hose, exclamation point.
This is corporate propaganda.
I didn't realize when Istarted reading this, but
yeah, I guess I should have.
Listen, this is no differentthan a software engineer
(18:15):
who's been tasked to workon a cyber project without
any prior experience.
They'll be drinkingfrom a fire hose too.
This is no different.
You're still learningfast on the job.
I mean, how, how is this unique?
I think it is different thanbeing a software engineer.
Again, another episode in themaking right here which sort of
lines up with vibe coding andsort of also lines up with ai.
(18:36):
Oh, right, right.
It's different than being asoftware engineer because, you
don't get to be like CaptainKirk flying on a Starship
Enterprise coming in liketelling a civilization you
should be good to each otherand not be a planet of mob
series or whatever and thenflying off and then never
coming back and being like,Hey, what's, what's going on?
How is this, howare you guys doing?
Software engineering, whenyou're like completely
(18:57):
greenfield, you do whatever,blue ocean, whatever you
wanna call it, where likeyou come in, you start
with a blank slate, you'reflying, you're programming
new stuff, new fields.
Oh totally.
I got this.
That's a lot different thanI got 500 API endpoints.
Anybody could be usingany of them at any moment.
My database has balloonedto 90 tables, right?
(19:19):
There's no one personthat knows all of them.
'cause they were added overthe course of wherever.
Like that's, that's alot different software
engineering than this.
I completely agree with you.
I mean, the only side of, Iwould say that's kind of on
this FDA, whatever it's calledfor FDSE you are doing all
this without prior expertise.
You're learning on the jobin front of the customer, so
(19:41):
it might carry a risk thereOf losing your credibility.
Right.
You're supposed to be anyconsultant, even though
they say no any consultant.
Yeah, absolutely.
But you know, thisis that role, right?
You're forward deployed witha customer you're embedded
with, and now there's arisk, I believe that where
you're learning stuff, you'relooking stuff up, right?
Yeah.
and if it's in front ofa customer, you might run
that risk , I mean the nicething about consulting,
(20:03):
usually your consultinghouses, , they have some
sort of Managerial structure.
there are people you cango back to either senior
consultants or other peopleIn the firm that you
can reach out to.
And, there's help there.
That's the nice thing aboutbeing a consultancy which is
exactly what he says next.
Oh.
Oh, is it?
Okay.
Is it this to get up to speed, Ineed to learn the ins and outs.
Okay.
Next paragraph.
He says, he says, to meetthe challenge, I leverage
(20:24):
mentors and members of my team,spent a lot of time talking
to customers who know thesubject matter best and did
some independent exploration.
Now, although I'm not workingon cyber anymore, I still
frequently contribute tocyber initiatives across the
company because of my newfoundexperience and interests.
See, , I like what I'minterested in when I'm
reading this is all the inbetween the cracks kind.
(20:44):
, Yeah, yeah.
Kind of stuff is like, how oftendo you get pulled off of your
customer to do something else,to go fight a fire on another
customer and then like, I wannahear some stories about that.
I'm more interested about theconsultancy, the management
of the internal consultancyof Palantir, which again,
I gotta think under theirorg structure is just like
operations or professionalservices or some kind I know
(21:07):
like those are not Vogueanymore, , that's the way all
companies did their software inthe first 10 years of my career.
It was like the COO ran allof operations, which, in
which, which involved allof professional services.
Sales probably was a equalpillar, but sales and
professional services.
There probably was somekind of contention between
the sales engineers andthe . Operations Engineers.
(21:30):
Engineers, yeah.
The support engineers,whatever you wanna call 'em.
Yep.
Yeah, I agree.
It was exactly that structure.
Back in the day you had underoperations, customer support,
but smaller companies, justthe ones I was a part of as
a person who went out withsalespeople doing exactly what's
described here in this article.
I took calls in the morning,like I'd get to work early in
the morning about seven, put thecoffee on, and then sure enough
(21:53):
the phone would ring because oneof our customers had us on speed
dial just to talk about stuff.
Yeah so not necessarilyyou know, talk about issues
they're having or anything.
Just thought, Hey, I havethis report I was thinking
about jazzing it up.
Any, any suggestions,that kind of stuff.
My point is, you are notdone when you leave this
role, you don't reallyleave this role mm-hmm.
(22:14):
In a smaller company.
'cause you don't havethat handoff to a customer
support department.
Yeah.
You're always the conduitwith that customer and you're
moved on to another customer.
So to your point, sometimescustomers will call you and say
to to, even if they call the,the support hotline, they'll
say, Hey can I talk to Owen?
Because he knowsour system, right?
So we circumvent all ofthis explanation about what
(22:35):
they're doing, et cetera.
So it's bigger overheadon this person.
It'd be interesting ifwe want to take customer
service and support.
Just what we're talking aboutnow, offline to another podcast.
I got a couple of people inmind that I could reach out to.
Sure.
That would be good forthat because, this article
we're reading about theforward deployed, sorry, I
forgot what it's called now.
Forward deployedsoftware engineer.
Forward deployedsoftware engineer.
(22:56):
Right forward deployedsoftware engineer.
They're not reallysoftware engineers.
They're engineers.
I'll give 'em that, rightthey're customer support
engineers sales engineersbut I mean like software
engineer, like I think abouta software engineer, of
course software development.
I'm not convinced yet.
I could be convincedthat they're definitely
deeply, deeply technical.
And maybe a lot of themwant to move into a software
(23:18):
developer, full-timeengineer role eventually.
But what I'm reading in hiscorporate propaganda, it leads
me to believe that I haven't,he hasn't said anything about
software engineering yetThe story you just told,
where the customer calls.
Yeah, maybe they're a problemchild, maybe they got issues
or whatever they call you andthen you scramble your team, get
the team together, do whatever.
(23:39):
There's nothing that he justoutlined other than like being
the single point of contactfor people to like, walk up
to their cube and grab 'em.
I was at a work center oneof my previous work centers.
We had a team of engineersand they tried to make sure
that the senior engineers haddivvied up the customers where
a particular customer alwaysgot the same senior engineer,
(24:02):
so the people that picked upthe phone and tried to solve
the customer's problems.
Like this equivalent, but incustomer support not parked at
your site forever the peoplethat picked up the phone would
try to solve the problems.
They might be differentpeople, they might not be the
same person all the time, butif they couldn't figure the
problem out quickly, they wouldescalate to a senior engineer.
And the senior engineer forthat customer that called
(24:24):
would always be the sameperson so it's, it's like
what he's talking about inhis position is I, I'm trying
to figure out if this modelis any different from a model
that I've seen in my previousexperience, and I have yet to
see anything in this articleother than I ship the person
off and I send 'em to workfor that customer exclusively,
(24:45):
which is it to me seems justto be a matter of financial.
I financially can affordthat as a company.
Again, he's not, this is like,this is corporate propaganda,
so I don't know how deep he'sgonna get into that kinda stuff.
It's like, that's thestuff I would like to know.
From my perspective likefrom my experience in other
companies, I have seen,okay, we got a big customer.
I wanna make sure that theyalways have this person
(25:06):
who initially set them up.
And every time they call,they're gonna get this person.
Like maybe they don'tget the person initially.
But it always rollsback up to this person.
'cause they know that person.
Everybody knows thatperson at the company.
That's exactly how it wasin my experience when I was
doing this stuff i'd always bealerted, Hey this is usually
customer support, right?
They'll answer the callafter I moved on to a
(25:27):
different customer, right?
Sometime later they would answerthe call and then they would
tap me on the shoulder, right?
Yeah.
We were in the office,so they'd say, have so
and so on the phone.
Would you like to?
Right.
Can I transfer to you?
Right.
I would say you need if, if I'man executive at that company,
I want some kind of systemthat alerts you that says like,
Hey, Om your customer calledin to customer support today.
Brian and customer support hashim on the phone right now.
(25:49):
Yep.
Maybe you wanna pop intocustomer support or mean
whatever for a remote.
Maybe you want to dial in and,and just like pop in and be
like, Hey guys, what's going on?
Everything good?
I would want to proactivelyalert you that we're talking to
your customer, but again from myexperience , this seems like a
lot of other models I've seen.
Yeah.
Just not called this specificforward deployed software
(26:09):
engineering I agree with thatit goes , far enough in history
for me where the executives atmy company would occasionally,
not always, but occasionallysay, this customer is important.
We need this really good take,good care of 'em strategic.
So yeah.
So give them yourSkyTel pager number.
That's how back it goes skyTelpagers and they would call,
(26:29):
and I would know, I wouldgive one customer a code.
When you page me, pageme with 9, 9, 9, then I
know it's an emergency.
Email me or page me withones something like that and
you could do that differentnumbering things for different
customers, but yeah, I mean,every customer wants to feel
like they're talking to theone person they know, who knows
their environment and their,their configuration all right.
(26:52):
Let's try to skimas much as we can.
He says what's a typicalday in life for you?
He says, I work remotely.
I'm working on a project forone of our DOD customers.
Where I'm creating newfunctionality on top
of our Gotham platform.
That's right.
Our Gotham platform.
Typically a chunk of my dayis spent designing, writing
and testing workflows.
Oh.
So similar to my gatewayproduct I always talking about.
That's exactly right.
So he is not Desi, he's notwriting or developing new code
(27:14):
as a software engineer would.
Right?
Another portion is spentconfiguring Gotham to
unlock new functionalitywithin the platform.
This could involveconfiguring new data models
or working on stabilityimprovements and upgrades.
, I also reserve some timeeach day for comms, emails,
meetings, and standups overhead.
It's called overhead.
I generally try to limitthe time I spent in meetings
by asking myself, does thisdiscussion have to be a meeting
(27:37):
and do I have to be there?
Well, this should havebeen an email I won't
even, I like that's, yeah.
Most people at the company takea similar approach and at leads
a situation where every meetingI attend ends up being a.
Ends up being aproductive use of my time.
The remainder of my day is spenton a variety of tests, learning
about other deployments, meetingnew coworkers, or working on
miscellaneous shared projects.
(27:58):
That's interesting.
Meeting new coworkers.
Does he meet the newcoworkers by email?
Anyway, sorry that, that wasme attacking him for no reason.
He's saying daily videoconference standups
often end up in yogaWhat are some of the technical
challenges you encounter?
Every FDSE, by the way, I stillhave yet to reach any of the
se problems he's talking abouttackles technical challenges
(28:18):
on a day-to-day basis.
Here are some examples oftechnical problems I've
worked through duringmy time at Palantir.
All right, here we go.
He gives some bullet points.
How do I build scale andmaintain a terabyte scale data
pipeline feeding a missioncritical operation workflow.
I wonder how oldthis article is.
Okay.
It's 2020.
Like terabyte scale datapipelines are common now , my
(28:40):
intent was not to be hostilewith this article, but the style
of writing is making me hostile.
It's giving me hives,the style of writing.
Any flow of data on along enough timeline is a
terabyte scale pipeline.
Just want to point that out.
, What does that mean?
A mission criticaloperational flow.
He's talking aboutscaling things up, is
what I get out of this.
I think he's talking aboutthe amount of data that
(29:00):
comes into the pipeline.
There are very few datapipelines I've ever worked
with that don't get upto the terabyte level.
Yeah, exactly so, okay.
How do I configure ourplatform to support specific
data and workflow accesscontrols for our customers
based on unique regulatoryand compliance requirements?
Okay.
Data and workflow accesscontrols means if a US person's
data comes through the pipeline,you're not allowed to have that
(29:23):
in there so you need to be ableto filter us persons out of
this data pipeline when we'reanalyzing the Middle East yeah
so he, what he's doing here,he is configuring specific data
and workflow access controls.
This is like, it's just, it'srules on a data pipeline.
Like this is not, I wouldexpect him to probably
even be able to farm thisout to a junior person.
(29:44):
Seriously.
I don't know the economicsof Palantir, so I dunno if
they're they send one engineerto this site of like 500
people, and say like, lookhow much we're supporting you.
We, we have afull-time resource.
A resource, yeah.
Full-time resource.
I'm like nails on a chalkboard.
I'm trying to, I'mtrying to give om the
heebie-jeebies over here.
(30:05):
I'm getting that.
It's this language,with the barely filter
over the top of it.
He says does my solutionencourage self-sufficient
collaboration and discoverywithin the platform, unlocking
additional value for the client?
Is my solution flexible?
Will it be resilient tomodified access control
requirements in the future?
Okay.
That was a lot of words.
I don't know if any ofthem meant anything.
How do I design, build,test, deploy, and maintain
(30:27):
a unique workflow to allowa particular, again, this
goes back to the workflowproduct I was talking about.
it seems very similar.
That's all he's doing is.
Putting together workflow.
This is software configuration.
This is not, I mean , thisis like a, I would say
like get a good start insoftware development as
like a tester or like a helpdesk or something like that.
And then transition over tothis do this for a while to do
(30:49):
like highly technical work verylogical, highly technical work.
And then do this for awhile until an opening
opens up on one of thesoftware development teams.
Then you move over to do realsoftware development work where
you're actually working in code.
Yeah.
It seems like agood career path.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it makes sensefor somebody to, if
they're coming into thefield, . To follow that path
he says he builds thisworkflow for non-technical
(31:10):
customers to visualize andinteract with high noise data.
How can I generalize thisfeature to fold into the
base platform so thatother fdsc and clients
can benefit from my work?
So he, he's configuringflows of data, a workflow.
For the data throughthe application.
Okay how do I investigate aproduction software outage?
Identify root cause ofthe issue to deploy a fix
(31:31):
and monitor the stack forstability while coordinating
communication betweenproduct teams, our deployment
team and the customer.
You put in trouble.
That's basicallycustomer support work.
Yes.
Customer supportwork yeah, yeah.
Okay but he's nota sales engineer.
No, he's an FDSE.
What is the most challengingaspect of your role?
Directing.
Directing focus ischallenging at times.
(31:52):
Did he just say directing focus?
I did given the ever-changinglandscape of our products,
capabilities and our clients'needs, we are blessed with
a nearly infinite numberof problems to be solved.
I need to consistentlyidentify the most valuable
thing to be working on,regardless of expertise or
comfort level with the subjectmatter, execute against it.
(32:14):
Everything's on fire all thetime, is what it sounds like.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, this is really, Imean, everyone does this, right?
Prioritize what you'reworking on he likes the
variety of the role.
Okay, good.
I'm, I'm amazed this got leftin the corporate propaganda.
Like Yeah.
You're, you're so busy thatthe, like the thing that
you find most challenging isthat focused, everything's
(32:35):
changing all the time.
Like that the softwareis changing all the time.
The customers for nerdchanging all the time the
things you have access to ischanging all knowing, knowing
enterprise software like, likeGotham probably is like the
software and the configurationsetting settings are probably
changing under your feet.
Like the sand is probablyshifting under your feet.
All the time and youprobably don't get a lot
(32:55):
of notice about it 'causeof the size of Palantir.
So that could be exciting.
I get it.
The regulatorychanges are there too.
I also don't like thepolitics shifting under
your feet as well.
It's probably happening inthis company the size, right?
Anyway, he's gonna wrapthings up, he says, to wrap
things up, what advice doyou have for future squeeze
from a technical perspective?
My advice is to learnto work with systems
architectures and code basesyou are not familiar with.
(33:17):
Really, that'srevolutionary right there.
Revolutionary.
He joined with withhard way background.
He had never worked on commonsoftware tools like Spark or
microservice architectures.
Really?
He never workedon microservices.
Wow.
More generally, find amentor and invest in a
relationship with them.
Having someone in your cornerwho you can turn to for
guidance and ask for help andnavigating career is invaluable.
(33:38):
This sounds likesomeone who works as a
consultancy, I have to say.
In a consultancy.
You do need someonein your corner.
You need someone to go back to.
And if you don't have thatperson in the consultancy,
you're not gonna last in thatconsultancy for very long
This was interesting.
I really wanted to know moreabout this model 'cause they've
been blasting this model out.
I watched a podcast recentlywhere they were talking
(33:59):
about this model and onthat particular podcast.
I can't remember what it wasthey were attributing a lot of
success to this and portrayingthis role, the forward deployed
software engineer it was somekind of like monumental, like
breakthrough in thinking.
And I'm just, I was listeningto it going this sounds like
what most smaller softwarefirms do they have a dedicated
(34:22):
engineer to a big customer.
They're willing to likewhatever revenue it takes,
like it's strategic, solike a margin or revenue or
whatever, like doesn't count.
Right.
, Making that customer happyis the most important thing.
This role of havingpeople embedded with
customers is nothing new.
This goes back a long, long way.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah so, I don't knowwhy this is suddenly
(34:43):
become vogue as a role.
It's just, it's just anotherdressed up sales engineer role.
Really, at least to me.
It's not a sales engineer.
He says clearly in thearticle, it's not a
sales engineer anyway.
Okay.
We believe them!All right, if you enjoyed
this podcast, don't forgetto like and subscribe.
Remember every like.
Counts everysubscription counts.
(35:04):
A comment on, on LinkedInwhen I post the podcast, that
helps too for our engagement.
And thank you everyonefor listening.
Awesome.
This is great.
Thank you all.
sorry, I didn't read the.
The comments here.
I think all the people whohave trouble understanding the
gist of what Palantir does,should read this blog post.
It's excellent.
Can I put my thoughts in herewithout creating an account?
Oh.
Oh, no.
I have to create an account.
You have to create an account.
(35:24):
It's making me sign upfor a medium account.
All right.
Here we go.
We created an account on Mediumfor the Arguing Agile podcast.
So now we get the comment.
Here we go.
Interesting read.
We were so happy to createa podcast you know what,
I'm gonna put a dash in herejust so people think that
this was written by chat.
(35:45):
GPT.
Here we go.
Oh, M dash.
You need an M dash.
Oh, is it, is that, was itM dash two dashes like this?
No, no.
It's, it's a, it'sa single dash.
It's a special character.
You can do it in Word in ation.
Oh, I can't, I, sorry.
I'm, I'm typing with thekeyboard on a laptop, so that's
s not gonna work for me however,we're chuckling, chucking,
chucking, chuckling at the,we, we, we are not consultants.
(36:11):
That's all right.
Spell check's.
Got me disclaimerfollowed by a description.
Of exactly what consultantsdo, exactly what consultants
do betting with clients,solving their specific,
specific problems.
(36:32):
Problems, and dealing withcustomer engagement, that's
implementation 1 0 1.
Honestly, I probablycould stop there.
That's in, that's like, that's,that's enough heat right there.
The position seems light.
Sorry, I spell light.
LITE.
Sorry.
I That's how it is okay.
(36:52):
Alright light.
Sometimes on the podcast, om islike, that's, that's the pro,
that's the queen's language.
That's the way it's works.
And I'm like, oh.
Oh no.
This position seems lighton actual SSWE work, like
coding, architectural designand building existing systems.
Not that there is anything wrongwith that anything wrong with
(37:13):
being a specialized consultant?
It's valuable work.
And we've all been there.
This is cool.
There you go.
Respond.
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