The past year and one month have been some of the most fun, crazy, fulfilling, and exciting times of my life both professionally and personally. And it is all thanks to Allah (SWT) the one and only creator and provider of health and wealth.
I am writing this post to help chronicle what has happened and share with others what it looks like down the road. Many “Getting Into Tech” posts focus on “getting into” and not what happens when you are in the industry and the potential lows that can also occur. While I have 0 regrets about my decision to leave the civil engineering industry and am excited to keep forging a path into Tech, I didn’t want to sugarcoat anything.
Now I do tend to ramble a bit in my writing and I am covering both events that happened in my professional and personal life, so this post ended up longer than I expected. I have included a ToC for that reason but hope you read everything and let me know what you think!
Table of Contents
Intro and ToC
My Time at Replicated (9 months)
My Crazy Summer
Layoff
Rehired
House
Hajj
My Start with Loft (4 months)
What's Next?
My Time at Replicated (9 months)
I have written about my time at Replicated before so I will be linking those pieces and doing a brief recap more so than diving into it in this post:
If you check the dates of the posts you will see that the first 4 are from Sept-Nov and I ended my time at Replicated in June. So what happened from Dec-May? Well, not much and that is what led to the last post honestly. There were posts that I planned but never got around to writing. In February we had our Field Kick Off which had the entire Revenue (Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Ops) Org come together to train and bond for the new fiscal year. I was working towards moving into a customer success manager position but had to wait for the headcount to open up (Spoiler: headcount did not open up).
All in all, it was a period where my quota wasn’t met because there wasn’t much available and deals weren’t generated and the pipeline was disastrously empty. I’m not saying that I knew what was coming in terms of the layoff, but I can say it was shocking but not surprising. There had been many red flags since I started but I had the WFH with amazing benefits Rose Tinted Glasses on.
I will say that Replicated treated me well as an employee and conducted the layoff very well. I do not regret my time there and still am connected with many current and ex Replicated employees. It just wasn’t working for them financially to keep the revenue team on and scaling the way we were.
My Crazy Summer
Layoff
Rehired
I started at Loft Labs as an SDR Team Lead on June 6th. The day I got laid off I reached out to my network and let them know what happened. This got the wheels turning on potential new opportunities but the quickest wheel was my current manager. He was the one who hired me at Replicated and had moved on in the Spring and gotten a position with Loft Labs. He let me know that there was a position at Loft for me if I wanted and I could start within a week.
My research into the company led me to discover a startup with an amazing product built on a technology that I had gotten familiar with at my last company (Kubernetes). After talking with the CEO I also saw a company where I could grow rapidly, develop my skills, and forge a path of my own with amazing support. That is what led me to ultimately accept vs just needing a job.
But I did need a job pretty quickly even with my severance pay for 2 big reasons, Hajj and a House.
House
Before I talk about this I want to share some readings to let you know my perspective on houses and the suburbs:
But my love for remote work and WFH has also led me to move further away from the city. My wife is a Learning Commons Director at an Elementary School so in order to reduce her commute as well as be closer to a masjid and Muslim community, we moved to the suburb she works in and bought a townhome. I bought an e-bike (RadRover 6 but they have a lot of amazing models) so I can get around without driving still. It isn’t the same as living above a Trader Joe’s and walking to the coffee shop but it is what it is.
We closed 2 weeks after I got laid off so having a new job was immensely helpful in making sure that went smoothly.
Hajj
Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca that is required for all Muslims at least once in their lifetime if they can afford it. Here is a nice overview! It is something my wife and I have been trying to go to since 2020 and since the pandemic happened this was the first year that it was back. Before the pandemic, it was reaching around 3-4 million people a year but this year they put a cap of 1 million from around the world. Because of these 2 factors prices were close to double from before and it cost us $15,000 per person around. There was a lot of stuff that happened because of a new system that had a botched roll-out but that will be a for a separate post. In the meantime check out my Instagram story where I/my wife chronicled the journey and explained every part of the Pilgrimage: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17979243718585121/
My start with Loft (4 months)
One benefit of being at a startup is how fast you move and how things can change quickly. One downside of a startup is that 4 months can feel like 4 years. Part of that may be due to buying a townhome and moving in right before going on a pilgrimage which happened all within the first 2 months of being at Loft. My CEO and Manager were immensely supportive during that time as I had to take 2 weeks off right as we were getting things set up to start sequencing and building our pipeline. Even when I returned the next 2 months were nonstop. We hired another SDR, fixed/streamlined key parts of our Sales Tech Stack, started preparation for Kubecon NA 22, and I started to learn more about the RevOps world.
While I was at Replicated I was moving towards becoming a Customer Success Manager but I had met with the members of our RevOps team individually to learn more about what they did. While it had interested me then, CSM seemed to be the more feasible path at the time. Now at Loft, there aren’t dedicated Ops personnel so I have started to proactively learn the tools and ask for more of the responsibilities as I go down the RevOps path.
But my primary job is still SDR Team Lead at the moment and I have spent most of the 4 months helping set up our sales motions and start booking meetings so that ever important pipeline can be generated.
What's Next?
Did you just read the post? Because I think trying to plan for what’s next in a startup world is part necessary and part folly. Things change so quickly that I can’t even imagine what the rest of the year will entail. I hope to stay in tech, specifically the Revenue side.
When I first got into Tech by starting in Tech Sales, the goal was to eventually move to Product Management. But as I have learned more about the revenue org and the opportunities within I have realized there is a path for me here. I am having a lot of fun meeting with future customers and helping bring in the revenue for the startup to succeed.
Currently, I am taking Salesforce courses to work towards a cert in Salesforce as well as classes in RevOps and Sales Development. Whether I go into Sales management or a dedicated RevOps role or a combination role will depend on what is needed at my company but I can see myself working toward a CRO role.
Well, thank you for reading my long recap post. I hope to post more regularly and have ideas for posts that delve into my learnings about RevOps and the courses I am taking as well as more personal writings like my passion for urban planning. I want to shout out my wife who has been an amazing support during this first tumultuous year in a new industry as well as thank the family and friends I have who I was able to turn to. And as always this was all possible thanks to Allah (swt).