Andy Lapteff 0:00

This is the Art of Network Engineering, where technology meets the human side of IT. Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems, or shaping your career, you've got the insights, stories, and tips to keep you ahead in the ever-evolving world of networking. Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. My name is Andy Laptev, and I am joined in this episode by my friend, my colleague, one of my favorite people at this new role I've been in for the past year and a half, Patrick or Pat McCabe. How are you doing, Pat?

Patrick McCabe 0:28

Great, Andy. Thanks for inviting me to your show. Welcome to your first podcast. It is officially my first podcast, so I appreciate it.

Andy Lapteff 0:37

Just tell me it is. Yeah. So we were trying to figure out what to talk about, right? We're in San Jose, California for networking field day 40. Pat and I will be presenting tomorrow for our employer. But as part of the podcast, I bring some gear along. We talk to some smart people and we try to share knowledge uh with our audience. And when Pat and I were talking, first I'm like, oh yeah, we'll talk about, you know, uh this other stuff. And then you had a great idea. You're like, well, what if we talked about what it's like to go from being a network engineer to a vendor role like product marketing? And I'm like, oh my God, I love this because A, some of the most popular shows we've had are about vendor roles for network engineers. Hey, I know how much you love maintenance windows and on call and outages, but there's this whole other world that's open to us at vendors. And B, if you can communicate and you're technical, I think in full transparency, this is the best role I've ever had in my career. And I'm not a young guy. And I think it's because it's most aligned with my strengths, and it's also at a company and products I really believe in. So for me, I love what I'm doing. But I have been doing this job 14 or 15 months. So I'm a baby in the product marketing world, and you have been doing this job for how long?

Patrick McCabe 1:50

I guess it's been 12 to 15 years, uh since 207.

Andy Lapteff 1:55

Okay. What I love to do is talk to people with more experience than I have and things I'm interested in because you're further down that road. So I think in the beginning, let's just give you some street cred. So, what was your engineering background? We don't want to spend 20 minutes talking about every circuit you ever installed, but where did you come from in engineering? Like, were you did you go to school for electrical engineering? Are you how are you for you're Canadian, correct?

Patrick McCabe 2:20

I'm Canadian. I have the iron ring. Oh yeah. I can't take it off anymore because I've uh gained too much weight. I don't know if people know about this.

Andy Lapteff 2:27

I learned about this working with you. Yes. So tell people what the iron ring is.

Patrick McCabe 2:32

If I recall correctly, the iron ring symbolizes the engineer's responsibility for integrity and thorough work. And I think at least uh the first several thousand iron rings were extracted from a bridge, I believe, in Quebec. Whoa. And the bridge failed, and there might have been some failities involved in the failing of the bridge. And I think the iron ring is a reminder of our responsibility um for good solid work with integrity.

Andy Lapteff 3:00

Now, is that real engineering? And what I mean is I grew up with friends who went to engineering school and they can build bridges and roads and stuff. And then there's me, the network engineer. Eh, I can barely multiply. So was that legit engineering? Like do you have a degree in the city?

Patrick McCabe 3:17

Yeah, it's uh it's uh electrical engineering. I couldn't find a job after my undergraduate, so uh I did a master's. Uh and I happened to build uh an optimal buffering system, queuing system for an ATM switch. That was my thesis, and then I was able to find uh find work after that um at Newbridge in uh 97.

Andy Lapteff 3:38

Is optimal buffering like quality of service? Is that what we're talking about?

Patrick McCabe 3:41

It it is, that's an aspect of it. It it leverages queuing theory, so a lot of mathematics uh, you know, deriving what is the optimal uh buffering system, where do you send your uh cells and what cue and how do you process the cells, basically, is is the essence of it.

Andy Lapteff 3:59

That is a fascinating world to me. I don't understand it really. Like I think I know what a queue is, but I guess there's math that tells the things where to go. And I remember like round robin, there were like red WRED, right? Yeah. Aren't there certain queuing strategies of like, yeah, but that's all mathematics-based, which you learned, I guess, in engineering school?

Patrick McCabe 4:18

Yeah, it was mostly mathematics, the the thesis, but it's interesting because fast forward into my job when I started working at ATT, and I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, but one of the claim to fame of our routers at the time was its ability to perform hierarchical QoS, which is essentially a queuing system that we at the time, the company I worked for, revolutionized and it uh caught on. It was adopted in IPTV and essentially replicated all over the world.

Andy Lapteff 4:46

Wow. And you got to work on that at the company?

Patrick McCabe 4:48

Um, I did had no part in designing it, um, but I got to work on building networks around it. Wow, that's so cool.

Andy Lapteff 4:56

Yeah. You were telling me a it sounded like a fun story before we started. So this is like the street cred moment. Yeah. Do you want to talk about maybe your favorite outage you either caused or well helped mitigate, and then we'll pivot into product marketing?

Patrick McCabe 5:13

I I think a lot of engineers who do post-sales support, operational support, have their own set of stories. But this story here, it didn't involve me, um, but it involved uh someone in our team, and no one has forgotten this. Essentially, we had to uh troubleshoot a network in the middle of the evening during a maintenance window. And I won't mention the company name that we were working on, but it was a massive European customer, and uh we had to uh go in and we had to uh perform some routine a routine procedure into the routers. The at the time is an ATM switch. So the gentleman who was uh executing the maintenance window decided to open up a uh what we call a level seven telnet session with all of the um ATM switches at the same time. I think there might have been 50 of them.

Andy Lapteff 6:01

Yeah, I'm sorry, you said telnet, right?

Patrick McCabe 6:04

I think that was way back.

Andy Lapteff 6:06

Uh I just don't want to let that one go by. I I've also tellnet it. No shade. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Carry on, sorry.

Patrick McCabe 6:12

Yeah, and and so the problem that happened was uh the maintenance window was designed to fix because there's some basic commands to uh uh make this work again.

Andy Lapteff 6:21

Did you say the maintenance window was designed to fix something?

Patrick McCabe 6:24

It was designed to fix the problem that occurred.

Andy Lapteff 6:26

Yep, I'm I'm laughing at just our definition of yeah, yeah, I know where you're going.

Patrick McCabe 6:30

Yeah, believe it or not, mainly we can fix things in maintenance windows.

Andy Lapteff 6:34

We intended to fix something in a window, got it, right? Just okay.

Patrick McCabe 6:38

Every now and then a maintenance window will fix something. And in this in this most maintenance windows I walked into, we thought we were making things better.

Andy Lapteff 6:46

Invariably it didn't happen. Surprise.

Patrick McCabe 6:49

This sorry this example uh hit the news. Um, but what what happened was the problem was when you enter a switch at level seven, which is debug mode, if you happen to lose power at that moment uh from the session from where you're executing the session from, then you do a double control card reset on the switch. This could take up to 30, 40 minutes to totally uh come back up.

Andy Lapteff 7:14

Is that a software constraint? Like the NAS, for whatever reason, when you're in that level and it loses power, like a kernel just crack like whatever, right? Something fundamental just has to come back up and it takes forever.

Patrick McCabe 7:24

Well, the well, the reason it takes took forever is because it's dependent on the size of the database on the control card. Oh so if there's more rebuild like a okay.

Andy Lapteff 7:33

When you say database, like a routing, yeah, routing, right?

Patrick McCabe 7:35

Yeah, all cross connect at the time it was a bunch of cross connects. That was the concept.

Andy Lapteff 7:39

So this is like telco, maybe huge route tables. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick McCabe 7:42

100% massive, massive okay, uh table. With across thousands of routes, maybe absolutely it's the core of the network, right? So there might have been 20 of these switches, core of the network. The gentleman who executed the maintenance wouldn't have decided to bring up 20 sessions at once. And remember, he's at level seven on all 20 or debug level on all 20. And remember, we're fixing an issue in the systems that so the network is up when you walk into the working. Okay, everything's happy. Network's up. We got something we got to mitigate, no problem.

Andy Lapteff 8:15

So we want so let's touch all core routers at once, right? That was his idea.

Patrick McCabe 8:18

Well, hey, it's it's efficient. In some ways, it makes sense, right? You have them all up at once, you kind of do the same procedure on one after the, you know. So Pat, in some ways it doesn't. Maybe he's brilliant. I don't know. He might be.

Andy Lapteff 8:30

We'll see how we'll see how the story goes.

Patrick McCabe 8:32

But but inherently, the time the the the thing that's inherent in these switches is if you lose power at level seven, which you happen to be on across all of the switches, yeah, then you do a double control card reset on the system. In this case, there's 20 systems up, and it represents the entire core network of this massive uh uh routing network.

Andy Lapteff 8:56

How many customers would be impacted theoretically?

Patrick McCabe 8:59

Everyone, all of the customers it's the core, it's the core of the network, and there's no more resiliency because you're you have all the core routers up. So and you said this made the news, so it did.

Andy Lapteff 9:10

We're not gonna name anything. And I understand a huge telco somewhere with a ton of customers, was hard down as a result of it.

Patrick McCabe 9:19

Well, what he what he did I'm I'm spoiling it. No, no, no, no, no. It you know it's coming, it's coming. He was can't wait to get to it. It's three in the morning.

Andy Lapteff 9:27

He's gotten through how he has my empathy.

Patrick McCabe 9:29

He doesn't get it. It's ha look, we all have the stories, right? He he stepped on the power bar, uh, power button on the power bar. So all 20 went down at the same time.

Andy Lapteff 9:38

So just a quick, just a quick aside. So whoever designed the power system at this place decided to put a button on the floor where people might walk that could shut down all the power to all the core. Just is that is that what I heard?

Patrick McCabe 9:51

Well, he accessed all 20 ATM switches um through a session, and that monitor happened to be powered by the power bar, which has a button on the floor where you walk. Yep, that's right. Just like all power bars do, right?

Andy Lapteff 10:06

I wonder if that has since been changed. Do they have like a little plastic cap over the power button that you you know, like you know, you ever see in the movies? You need the two keys and do the thing for the like you know, they might they might want to all right. So, anyway, so this poor guy stepped on it.

Patrick McCabe 10:21

Poor guy stepped on it. All the power went down, all the power went down, all all 20 or whatever the number was, switches the core. The core.

Andy Lapteff 10:29

There aren't other core, like the core.

Patrick McCabe 10:30

No, this is the core. This is uh this is the core. And it did hit it. And you were there? No. Oh. I was there the next morning and and heard about it.

Andy Lapteff 10:38

Uh you saw it on the news and called your buddy.

Patrick McCabe 10:40

And I I was worried.

Andy Lapteff 10:42

Uh so how was he? Like, how did he or she take this? Was this terrifying? It sounds awful.

Patrick McCabe 10:46

It's awful. And and to your point, honestly, you do have sympathy for people in in these, you know, in these roles. Because every time you have a maintenance window, and all the network engineers know this, you're at risk. Nothing is bulletproof, and you're, you know, there's always there's always a chance of something. We talk about it all the time about network fragility. Yeah.

Andy Lapteff 11:06

And yes, my experience and everyone else is you never know when you're gonna touch something. You don't what's gonna happen. Yep. Right. Which is why the job, it's probably why it pays well, and it's probably why we're all stressed out and have bad habits, because yeah, invariably, every maintenance window, you press that button, you don't know. Here we go.

Patrick McCabe 11:24

You don't know.

Andy Lapteff 11:24

It's it's full send culture, like boop, and then you just watch. Here comes the show. And when nothing happens, it's great. So this poor guy, did they protect him? I'm curious about the culture. Like, did they was he fired for this? Or no, he wasn't fired.

Patrick McCabe 11:38

No, he wasn't fired. I mean, he knew he did something wrong, but we all do things that aren't perfect at times, right? Yep. Um, he he did I don't I don't think he stayed long, like years after, but he what he was probably never updated 20 core routers again in level seven. No, right?

Andy Lapteff 11:58

But that's how you learn. I I the first thing I broke, and then we should pivot into product marketing. Was it was that the end of the story? Yeah, that was it.

Patrick McCabe 12:04

Yeah, that was it.

Andy Lapteff 12:05

The first thing I broke, I took a job. Uh I was I was working in a NOC. Yeah, and then I took a job uh in fintech, and my first job was migrating 75 banks off of frame relay. And it's so funny because people complain about like, why was the frame relay in that certification at the time? Nobody's using that anymore. Man, the world's held together by duct tape and super glue. Like, you know, these are banks you've all heard of running on fractional T1s, like on frame relay. So that was my job. They're like, Oh, you know, I'm a contractor. Now I have a six-month-old baby at home. We just bought a house. This job is life-changing for me, and it's important. And I'm a contractor, so like I better not mess up. So I was the first one in every morning, the last one to leave at night. Like, I want to show these people, like, listen, I'm committed, you can count on me. And the first outage I caused was a again, a New York City uh financial trading house that we won't name. But I took them down inadvertently. And long story short, I thought I was doing the right thing. I had done like 60-something sites prior to this, and I had a little notepad plus plus script I would run through, and it was but what I didn't realize was that the I forget IPsec now, but whatever the tunnel uh shared key was, there was some kind of ACL that you would put in, you know, uh IP ACLF5, whatever, and then it would call the the subnet that the crypto list. Again, I forget Ipsec, but every other router out of these 75 had the same sequence number ACL. So my script worked. On this one that I broke, it happened to be a different number than all the other routers, and I overwrote it. Okay, and then I learned and then I didn't know. So I overwrote the tunnel policy, the the phase one tunnel keying thing. I overwrote the policy, and I didn't realize I had did done that because what else I learned was there's a 24-hour timer on IPSEC tunnels. So it's like a grenade, it's like a very delayed grenade. Oh boy. So everything's fine. The end of the I come in the next morning and I sat next to the knock and they're all freaking out about such and such. And I'm like, it wasn't me. That was yesterday.

Speaker 1 14:09

That's right.

Andy Lapteff 14:10

And then they're like, um, it was you, and this is why. But I say all that to say that they protected me, which I'll never forget. Um, my my my boss, Mike Walsh at the time and George Petusky. Yeah, they could have called me in. This was so this is the end of my little rant. That night I go home and my my boss at the time, Mike is like, Don't worry about it, it happens. You know, we all break stuff, like you're saying. And then I get home and I'm about to sit down for dinner, and he goes, Eh, he calls me up. Uh the CEO of that place golfs with our CEO. He's kind of mad. So they're probably gonna like need to talk to you tomorrow. I'm like, oh my God. But anyway, they they brought me in, they protected me. It was an honest mistake, it happened. And so we're all gonna break things. And I'm so grateful that we work in a culture in general that like protects their people and says, Listen, mistakes happen. He was doing his best, nobody knew, right? So, anyway, we break stuff, it's fun. Maintenance windows are hard. So you eventually went from engineering to product marketing. How does that work?

Patrick McCabe 15:04

Yeah, so I spent a few years, I don't know, uh five, six years in Canada, in Ottawa, doing uh three LS type of work, kind of the the the buck stops with you type of work.

Andy Lapteff 15:15

What is three LS for our American friends?

Patrick McCabe 15:17

So we called it uh third line support. So, you know, the uh tier one or one ls is your your uh help desk and then two ls is your level technical system center.

Andy Lapteff 15:27

You guys are the last line.

Patrick McCabe 15:28

We have no one to escalate to. Oftentimes, I mean if the truth be told, uh sometimes we're not even near nearly equipped as even two ls is.

Andy Lapteff 15:37

I get it.

Patrick McCabe 15:37

And when it gets escalated to you, I mean uh one more story. Like like I remember at the time there were pagers you had, right? You didn't you didn't have to have a pager. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Andy Lapteff 15:47

We are of a time, yeah.

Patrick McCabe 15:48

And so you look at the area code of where they're calling from to determine your how concerned you should be.

Andy Lapteff 15:56

What were the concerning area codes and what were not?

Patrick McCabe 15:58

Well, the the if it were the boss lives at the time, if it came from the UK, um, then you realize that their lab's better than yours. They spent four weeks nonstop trying to figure this out, and they have no other way other than getting to you. Okay, and so you get on the phone and you know they say in a very polite British voice, um, yeah, do you mind if I uh I uh uh bridge you into uh the customer place? You know, that like you know, very the guy hasn't slept in in two weeks and being very friendly, and then you're you know, you're you're brought into uh an environment where everyone is angry and they demand and expect that you've been working on this and you know what you're doing. And you know, at the time I'm in my pajamas, and uh I know I have to go back to headquarters and find uh enough equipment to build a lab and uh get the databases so I can restore them on uh on on the systems and try to recreate this thing. You know at the time that you're not leaving, you're probably you probably got at least a couple days before uh you know enough where you can go back home and go back to bed. So those are nightmare scenarios, and there's a few of them that happened. And I was in my 20s at the time, so it was fine. I mean, you could you know, when you're in your 20s and even 30s, you can kind of you have a lot of stamina and endurance.

Andy Lapteff 17:16

And they know they take advantage of us, right?

Patrick McCabe 17:19

Well, I I I mean it's it's honestly you you know, I I don't think I could survive that uh job now, to be honest. Yeah, I don't know. You're probably right.

Andy Lapteff 17:29

So, how did you go from engineering to product marketing?

Patrick McCabe 17:32

I was able to find a lead in uh through the same company as a systems engineer at ATT in California. So I took the job as a systems engineer.

Andy Lapteff 17:42

So you were tier three, three LS. Yep. And at the same company they were looking for SEs? Is that yeah? Okay. How did you know the SE role existed? Because that's why I like episodes like this that we're doing is to create awareness that there is this job called this thing at this place that people like us can do that doesn't have maintenance windows, doesn't have on call, doesn't have all the awful pain you just described, ad nauseum, which I did too, right? That we all know. Yeah, like you pay your dues through all that hell, and then you can kind of arrive at a place that and and something I like to tell people that aren't familiar with vendor roles, I love that you can impact an industry if you're at the right place at a good spot doing valuable things, as opposed to impacting you know one customer or one you know smaller company. So I love the level of impact we have. But how did you know an SE role existed?

Patrick McCabe 18:27

Yeah, so I I had a trip down to California and I worked with the account team there to implement a brand new ATM switch. And so I met the lead sales account person and you know met the team and had a good experience with them.

Andy Lapteff 18:43

And that's you're the technical person there to install the thing or configure it or whatever.

Patrick McCabe 18:47

Exactly. I I set it up, installed it, and showcased it at ATT, and yeah, and that's kind of the how I got the lead. I mean, I think a lot of jobs like this are are very much you meet the hiring person first and you impress them and the job comes up and you know uh so you met these people in person prior to the role appearing.

Andy Lapteff 19:05

Yeah, correct. For sure. So I was I was speaking to uh Jason Gintad earlier about that. To uh the way I think it's always been, but especially now in a more competitive job market, really, you know, I don't know anyone who's hiring off of some blind resume on some site, right? Like you need to meet the people, be in a room with them, and know you know who they are. So just another good reminder that you can't hide behind your screen at home and never talk to anyone. It's hard to grow your career. Yeah. Um, and and I also just want to ask, so you are, I know you to be a um charming, affable, friendly guy who's a good communicator. I'm guessing at that time in your life, you also had these qualities because what I'm wondering is these salespeople who saw this technical person, you know, like if you were a lunatic talking to yourself, like hitting your head into the wall, or like, you know, yelling at people being mean, they wouldn't be like, Oh, we need to get this guy in front of our customers. So, do you think you had some soft skills going in that made you look like a good candidate for because an SC is a customer-facing role, correct?

Speaker 1 20:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick McCabe 20:04

I think so. I mean, I I think I had some, but once we get to my shift of marketing, I'll tell you, I did I I realized how much a skill set marketing truly is, and I didn't have those skills. I I did have the ability to communicate with people, I felt comfortable with talking and speaking and giving it away.

Andy Lapteff 20:22

You weren't an introvert that like couldn't speak to people, right?

Patrick McCabe 20:24

I wasn't an introvert. Um, my engineering talent was probably average. I wasn't uh a genius by any stretch of the imagination in terms of my technical ability. I was pretty good. Yeah, enough to get by. That sounds familiar, by the way.

Andy Lapteff 20:38

Yeah, same.

Patrick McCabe 20:39

Yeah, I think that helped the ability to communicate with people, break the ice, be humble, uh kind of you know, uh make it about them and not you, and uh those types of skills, I think. I had some of that. You're very good at that. I've never heard you mad. No. I you know, it used to be when when I was younger, then you realize this isn't getting me anywhere.

Andy Lapteff 21:01

There have been calls where I've given you a hard time about something. I was either having a day or you were, you know, I didn't want to hear about the thing. And you're just you're you're very good at, you know, what you might call soft skills. That all resonates with me, and I love that. You know, you can be a good enough engineer for lack of a better term. Like you're you're good at the job, you do the thing, right? You're not a genius, which what how I would describe myself, but I think your soft skills can really elevate you. Your ability to communicate, your ability to resolve conflicts, your ability to negotiate situations. Um, if you don't have those skills, it might be harder to get into customer-facing roles. But um, so you got the SE role. Yep. How about that?

Patrick McCabe 21:33

Uh, it was great. The timing was perfect because we were just on the cusp of implementing and deploying IPTV. And IPTV was one of those inflection points, if you will, not to the degree that AI is, but it is video on demand, right?

Andy Lapteff 21:48

Like when you can it was yeah, it was watch movies by pressing a button on your remote kind of thing. 100%. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick McCabe 21:52

Like so, all the the telcos and the the cable companies that now offer triple play and variations of triple play. It's all based on this. This was the starting point sometime in 2002, 2003-ish is when this started. And I think it started at ATT. And I uh we built uh this system, this platform that spans all of their access from DSL to G Pond and then the network to support it uh at the core, at the COs, at the intermediate offices, at the video hub offices. We built that all out through mostly VPLS instances at the time, and um it worked. And internally we called it uh TSF uh TPSDA, but uh it was really IPTV. And that blueprint that was kind of proven out in ATT was replicated throughout many telcos across the I probably work on those systems that you folks created because as a Comcast cable guy, we had video on demand, and it was the same thing.

Andy Lapteff 22:52

You're we went from analog to digital, and your box gets an IP and it talks to that head, and then you have an out-of-band, and that's it. Yeah, and then and invariably when the on-demand would stop working, it was usually because you had a problem with either the um out-of-band channel, there'd be interference in there, or like the upstream, because the thing that because the old guys that I worked with are like, oh man, back in the day it was just analog, we just pushed signal down there and it was great. Now we got all this digital, and it's such it's such a hard but no, that's compelling technology when you actually work on it and troubleshoot it. Just the fact that that it that it's all working. Yeah. So you're an SE, you were doing IPTV, you probably got a pay bump, right? SE is like a sales-ish um commission.

Patrick McCabe 23:30

Essentially, the the base salary may not have been a huge bump, but all of a sudden in my life I have something called commission. And uh it uh when I received the first commission check, I felt guilty. Like I didn't earn this.

Andy Lapteff 23:47

This isn't right.

Patrick McCabe 23:47

Do I go to HR? Like it's like you go to an A go to an ATM to take 20 bucks out and you get uh up a hundred, and you know what do you do, right? But it just happened that I wasn't working for very long and I did get a commission check. I didn't sell a thing, if I'm being honest at the time, right? It's part of the role and part of the role. Yeah, yeah. And uh how long are you in SE? I was an SC for um most of it. And uh I I was starting a new job as an account uh manager director at the uh at the end of my uh director, you say. They it those names are interchangeable as you're so fancy, yeah.

Andy Lapteff 24:21

Aren't you a director now, fancy pants?

Patrick McCabe 24:23

I don't know what you I like I said, uh it's I get royalty on this show. This is titles titles are interchangeable, right?

Andy Lapteff 24:30

You you deserve whatever title they give you. So let's only because we're supposed to go to dinner in 15 minutes. I could talk to you about for the only reason if you feel pushed along the timeline, it's because we have 15 minutes and we want to get the product market. Absolutely, let's get there. So uh technical guy, engineer got the ring, uh stressful stuff, outage windows. Uh you meet some people who invite you in to an SE interview, you get that, you make a commission. Yay! Cool role, you wind up an AM, big deal guy. Were you an AM for a while?

Patrick McCabe 24:59

Not long, about six months.

Andy Lapteff 25:00

Yeah, which is a sales, like that's the salesperson.

Patrick McCabe 25:02

Yeah, less technical and more, you know, uh working directly with the ATT decision makers, long-term planners.

Andy Lapteff 25:09

That's generally more commission than the SE, less technical, right? Less space, more commission. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then what happened? When do you when do you leave all this fun?

Patrick McCabe 25:19

And does somebody come to you and say, you know what, we'd be good at No, it was it was I was looking for something to get back to Canada. I had to make a decision. I had uh living in the States? I was living in the US and uh in Tracy, California. That's where ATT was. Is that ATT was in um San Ramon? They had their labs there. I couldn't afford to live in the Bay Area. Yeah, so I had to nobody can. Nobody nobody can. Yeah, even the people who can afford it can't afford it. Um but lived in Tracy. So you left Canada to work. I did, yeah.

Andy Lapteff 25:51

Was that hard? Did you leave family behind and stuff? I mean, I know you can go back and visit, but well, my wife decided to go with me.

Patrick McCabe 25:56

So that's a good sign.

Andy Lapteff 25:59

But like, you know, uh family of origin, or I'm always amazed at people who leave their home or leave their country. Not that Canada, the US is a huge culture difference, although it probably is, but it just amazes me the courage to like, oh, I'm leaving where I'm from and all my people and all my stuff, and I'm gonna go do something somewhere else. I I I always find that to be courageous. I've never done that.

Patrick McCabe 26:16

Well, I mean, I had most of my family was in New Brunswick, so you know I could always visit them just like I could from Ottawa.

Andy Lapteff 26:23

Did it feel like a culture shock coming to the States or not really? It wasn't a big deal.

Patrick McCabe 26:26

Be honest, I um it was different. There is a cultural difference, and and I actually met some lifelong friends in the U.S.

Andy Lapteff 26:33

And uh you went to the right area as a polite Canadian, and I mean that uh you know as a compliment because if you were to come to like New York City or Philadelphia, be different.

Patrick McCabe 26:42

Yeah, well, you just it's different every yeah, that's true.

Andy Lapteff 26:44

I like the laid-back vibe of where you are. Yeah, we're a little more stressed out where I'm from. If you can't yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 26:50

Yeah.

Andy Lapteff 26:51

So okay, how do we get to product marketing? How does this happen?

Patrick McCabe 26:55

Okay, so I have I had two young children. I um my we had a daughter who was born in the U.S., and I had a son who was um just finished uh before grade one, what do you call it? Uh kindergarten, whatever the preschool. So we had to make a decision where do we want to raise our children? And I love the U.S. There's a lot about it that I I really enjoyed. However, we had to think long term and you know, we we didn't know if we were making the right decision or not, but we uh decided to look, I decided to look for something back in Canada.

Andy Lapteff 27:28

None of us know if we're making the right decision.

Patrick McCabe 27:30

Well, you know, you know, especially the more important the decision, the more it becomes a bit opaque. But you just have to make a decision.

Andy Lapteff 27:37

And then when you have family on the line, and I mean not on the line, but you know, it it's it's much different being a 22-year-old, whatever, going doing a thing, and then you have totally, you know, your spouse and your and your kids, yep, and you're making those big life decisions. It's it's it feels like there's more at risk or scarier, right? Like it's totally yeah. I hope this is the right so was it the right decision? You went back to Canada?

Patrick McCabe 27:58

I don't know. I I don't know. I think I I did compromise my career if I if that if that's of value. I think I was heading, you know, for more monetary wealth likely, but that's you're a big deal at ATT.

Andy Lapteff 28:10

ATT was growing. I mean, you know, right? Like that was the path you were on.

Patrick McCabe 28:13

You know, there's various variables in the equation. I mean, I don't regret right. Let's let's say let's say that I have no regrets, but you know, I do miss aspects of California and uh you know sales.

Andy Lapteff 28:26

It could be said, maybe, that you prioritized certain things for your family over the dollar amount and the big ball or career guy. Is that yeah, yeah. I think that's a beautiful compromise to make, right? Like what's gonna be best for our family, and that's the decision you make. I do know other folks who picked career. Now they told themselves they were taking care of their family as a result of, right? But they're never home and they're all over the world. And like and that's a decision you make. Like we all have our own values, but yeah, okay, so you wind up back in Canada. And for our uh US listeners, Canada is not Canada. When I came up to visit you guys, uh, we were driving somewhere and our our boss said Canada, and I thought, wow, is that how Canadians say Canada? Yeah, and I come to find out that's a town in Canada. That's right.

Patrick McCabe 29:13

Yeah, that's right.

Andy Lapteff 29:14

Canada. That's not how Canadians say Canada. You're gonna be visiting us soon, right? I will be I will be in Canada.

Patrick McCabe 29:19

Yeah, um that'll be fun.

Andy Lapteff 29:20

So again, how are we getting the product marketing? How does this happen?

Patrick McCabe 29:23

Yeah, so I just applied to a marketing position. I thought a marketing position was similar in a sense because you know you're you have to understand the product and you have to have the soft skills to communicate about the product and its value proposition and things like that. So I thought it might have been a decent fit.

Andy Lapteff 29:39

Yeah, so I applied for it and uh you were at ATT, yeah, thinking about moving back home, looking at a job in Canada because you're thinking about going back there. Okay. Yep. Was that where you are now? Is that where you apply?

Patrick McCabe 29:50

Yeah, that's I applied for a job in Canada and uh I was it Nuke at the time?

Andy Lapteff 29:55

Was it Alcatel?

Patrick McCabe 29:57

Okay, so I think it was Alcatel Lucent at the time.

Andy Lapteff 29:59

Because I know a lot of the Nukeans I've met came from Alcatel, right?

Patrick McCabe 30:03

Yeah, it was Alcatel Lucent. It was when it was after Lucent and uh Alcatel merged.

Andy Lapteff 30:08

And what was the product you were marketing? Do you remember?

Patrick McCabe 30:11

Yeah, it was one of the routers. Um it was um hardware. Yeah, it was yeah, it was hardware for sure. And and uh yeah, so I I took the job and uh moved.

Andy Lapteff 30:22

It was the hardest part of the transition for me. Now I'm fresh into you know 14, 15 months in, and I've had to be reminded on more than one occasion to elevate what I'm doing. Because we are engineers at heart and by career, I always want to dig in and you know, well, let me build this in my lab and let me do the Kubernetes thing and let me right at other places I've been, that's a technical marketing engineer role. It's much more technical. Whereas in product marketing, how can we communicate the benefits to our solution in a way that resonates with the audience? You don't need to spend 18 hours learning containerized, you know, Kubernetes craziness to do that. But I I've always I can't I have to keep getting pulled out because like you know, I'm curious. I want to get it like I think I need to understand it and use it and touch it to be able to communicate it.

Patrick McCabe 31:11

Yep, yeah. I know that feeling that's not true.

Andy Lapteff 31:13

I know that feeling right, but because you wind up just doing technical marketing work, which isn't your job, yeah, not producing the content they're asking you to, right? So anyway, that's been not that this is about me, but did you find it hard transitioning from well, you weren't in engineering necessarily, you were more on a sales side, I guess.

Patrick McCabe 31:29

Yeah, but uh it was still very difficult. The the problem is is I still had an engineering mindset, yeah.

Andy Lapteff 31:34

And um I don't think that ever goes away, right?

Patrick McCabe 31:36

No, and and you know, you have to learn to elevate and to uh abstract um technical detail into something that is a nugget that could be used for sales and that's valuable for sales and promotes the the solution of the product in in the right way. Whereas for me, it's all about detail, and I kept that. And the story I'll tell you is the person who hired me, he asked me to leverage some of the work I did at ATT and write a white paper on um uh multicast, um, PIM SSM and IGMP proxy and um the details around how multicast was implemented at uh ATT because it was on our products, right?

Andy Lapteff 32:16

So did he give you a length that he expected of you?

Patrick McCabe 32:19

He gave he he didn't, uh and he should have um because I you know I ended up uh producing this design guide, this hundred-page design guide, and there was silence. I had no feedback for about two weeks because no one really knew how to react to that.

Andy Lapteff 32:34

And uh well they would have to consume the hundred page deep technical document to even know if it was any good, right? Like, oh my god, yeah, we wanted a data sheet, buddy.

Patrick McCabe 32:43

Yeah, I thought you know, I always wanted to push the envelope, right? So I I I put in little pictures and little cutouts, little breakouts.

Andy Lapteff 32:53

That's do you still have this document? I feel like it should be framed and on like a wall somewhere. Like this was my first piece of product marketing content that nobody wanted. Yeah, nobody consumed, but this was my one wanted.

Patrick McCabe 33:04

No, it was yeah, it was mostly just just go to the installation user guides. It's really that's what that is, right?

Andy Lapteff 33:09

So that's a that's a good example though of like understanding what's needed of you, right? Yeah, I've I've intermittently, I think I'm getting more towards what's needed of me, but I want to get deep into the technical weeds and have like what feedback did you get from your boss? I guess where I'm going with this is you know, how do you balance technical with I know you're saying like elevate? So when you say elevate, does that mean more like what's the story? How are we communicating this? It's not about it's not a 110-page white paper, not at all. No, so so where it what is it? Is product marketing just just give me data sheets and one-page brochures? And and I know the answer to this because I've seen the stuff you've produced, and it isn't that. So I guess there's a balance between super technical and any idiot could say this, right? Yeah, how do you strike that balance? How do you know? Because I'm trying to find it myself. How deep should I go? You know, if the if if all we need are two and a half minute short form videos of me that people love, yeah, cool. Yeah, I'm I'm into that, right?

Patrick McCabe 34:08

Yeah, but I honestly, Andy, you're humble. Yeah, you were way ahead of me at the time coming into this role. You already crystallize the content and elevate it in such a way where it's usable. If I've had that feedback directly from sales from Europe, there's a language barrier here between him and I'm from uh he's from the Netherlands, and I work with him all the time. And he goes, You see this video, this guy who is the video, that's you. Um do what he does. So produce this. I swear to you, that was that was that was what he said to me. And and uh so you're way ahead of the game. But I think at the end of the day, it's all about the customers we're selling to. What are they worried about? What keeps them up at night? What are their problems at a at a level that we can talk to? Right? What what do we say to make them take notice? And and it's not uh, you know, everyone can tell you a technical story. Everyone who sells the same thing will tell will say the same thing technically, really. What is it about us that what nuggets or set of nuggets that you can crystallize that will make them take note? And it's related to the issues that they're worried about. Uh that's kind of how I would summarize it.

Andy Lapteff 35:19

I think it's a perfect summary of that. And as you were talking, I'm thinking like if all networking vendors are all selling the same stuff, right? How do you differentiate not only in product but in messaging? And you and I know the answers, and we're, you know, we we don't need to parse it out here, but I I love what you're saying about what problems are they having and how can we solve them in in unique real ways, not just nonsense. If the problems are, I don't know, whatever, uh instability, breaking things, like what's it like outages, I guess. That's like the biggest problem. Like we we we just sat here and told war stories for 20 minutes about all the outages we caused. But I don't hear a lot of communication from vendors about how to like you know what I mean? It it it it it always seems I don't know, like oh, this new thing or this new insight thing, or like look at this E VPN thing, like it's a lot of chatter about technical things that have been solved and not really aligned with I think the pain that that they're in, right? Yeah, which I think is is why we've you know we've been landing with with our audience recently. So that's and again, this isn't a company, this just happens to be where we work and what we're doing. And yeah, so for I guess engineers out there that any of this resonates with, if you're technical, if you're good with people, if you can communicate, uh if you like communicating, see something I've been saying from for the past, I don't know, how long have I been doing this show? Probably the past six or seven years is when people say, like, how do I get into networking? How do I grow my career? Like, get the certification we all talk about that teaches you the fundamentals of networking, build a home lab if you can, because it's practical application. When people say you don't have experience, you can say, Well, I beg to differ. I have, you know, this might have been production five years ago, but this is production gear and I have all the things running on it. I can do this with real gear. So get the cert, learn the skills, get a home lab, and then learn to communicate, whether it's write a blog or start a YouTube or TikTok or whatever we're doing these days, right? But if you can show that you're technical and you can communicate, it can really differentiate you, um, I think in the market. And that I think kind of sets you up for a role like product marketing, like which is what we do. Now, your story is a little different. You weren't like, were you writing blogs? Did you have a YouTube channel? Like what I've been telling people all these years is to like create content so that people can know you can communicate. Did you have to prove when you interviewed at Alcatel Lucent? How did they know? Like, did they learn in the interview that you didn't have a blog or a body of work showing you could communicate as well?

Patrick McCabe 37:49

I think they thought that someone who worked at ATT as an SCE as a communicator would be a good fit. I had a lot to learn and um I'm still learning. And um, marketing is a skill set, there's definitely a skill set there that is independent of the technology or the thing that you're marketing.

Andy Lapteff 38:08

Do you think you have to go to school for it? I know you didn't, right? You were an engineer. Yep. Like my wife uh, you know, has her MBA and she went for marketing and she knows a ton that I don't know. And I'm always picking her brain. Yep, yep. But it seems like the more technical folks like you and I, we didn't go to school for marketing, but then if we wind up in it, I almost thought, like, oh, should I get an MBA? Like it's a it's a business thing. And direct advice for Andy, product marketer. Like, I'm brand new, I'm creating what I'm creating. Like, what do you tell someone new in product marketing? Let's say somebody hears this and they interview and they get it, and like, oh, this is great. Cause I almost see it as like a professional content creator. I know that's not what it is, but I'm getting to do the things that I love to do, yeah, and I'm getting paid to do it. Yeah, I'm getting paid to write things. I love writing, I've been writing since I was six. I'm getting paid to make videos. Yeah, I've been doing this for 10 years for no money, you know? I'm getting paid to meet people and go to conferences. So I'm getting paid to do things I love to do that I was doing for free before anyway. Yep. What advice do you have for anyone out there that like if you're new in product marketing, what should you do? How can you be a good product marketer?

Patrick McCabe 39:11

I think you can leverage um the broader team. Like, for example, creating relationships with the sales team is is really important. You know, developing trust with them and that often opens doors to customers, and you know, having a relationship with customers through sales is amazing.

Andy Lapteff 39:28

Sales is our customer, I guess, right? It's our internal customer, yeah. Sales is gonna consume our stuff to help them when they're talking to customers. Hey, do you have information on such and such?

Patrick McCabe 39:36

Oh, yeah, I remember Pat made this thing and listen to them, listen to their needs and their struggles and you know, some of the challenges that they have with their customers and trying to help them, I think is key. And that's not always easy to do that. And I can't say that I've done that perfectly or you know, but but that is something that I strive to do is to help them um as much as I can and work with the business unit. You have to have a great relationship with the uh product teams as well. So I think the key, like many things in life and jobs, is relationships with your periphery, whether that's sales, product teams, the business unit, win them over. Um, you know, gain their respect and their trust, and then you'll find that uh your job becomes a little bit easier.

Andy Lapteff 40:18

I think the key takeaway for me at the end there is to develop relationships with sales. We both have experience in sales. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I used to sell used cars as a younger guy. Is that right? I sold a lot of used cars, but man, it was a it was a slog. And when uh I got my product marketing role, I had people like yourself and others saying, you know, uh meet people, make relationships. And I like salespeople because I was one and I know it's a really hard and stressful job. And when I was meeting them around, I would start to get feedback and try to identify any gaps because I know what it's like to do their job, not their specific job, but I know how hard it is to sell. And if there's anything I can do to help them, and their ears perked up, and I've got a bunch of feedback from them, and I've been able to feed them some things that they needed or couldn't find or whatever, which I think has made it made an impact. So one of the things I love is helping people, and if I can help our people, yeah, help our customers, it's it's gratifying, right? Like, I mean, I'm not you know curing cancer or like saving, you know, stranded puppies, but as long as I'm helping people, yeah, um, it it feels good for me. Totally agree. All right, Pat. This was awesome. Uh, I hope you had fun on your first podcast. This is great. Thank you. I hope I did okay. I'm exhausted.

Patrick McCabe 41:23

Well, I don't know if you told your audience this what you've been through today is.

Andy Lapteff 41:26

I didn't, and they don't care, but it's fine. But yeah, I didn't sleep enough last night and I've been at this doing this uh for for most of the day. But I love it because I get to talk to all kinds of people in our industry and learn all different, you know. I've never spoken to a product marketer that's had 15 years experience, that's got an engineering background that was in sales. This is very informative for me. I think I need to talk to you more. I think you need to be my work mentor now.

Patrick McCabe 41:50

Will you be my mentor, Pat? Anytime.

Andy Lapteff 41:53

Where can people find you if they were compelled by this and wanted to reach out? Are you in any of the places online?

Patrick McCabe 41:58

Well, the the one place I'm trying to uh gain some more traction and popularity is within my LinkedIn um followers. So, you know, follow me on LinkedIn at uh I don't know if you'll be able to describe my uh handle there.

Andy Lapteff 42:12

Is it Pat McCabe?

Patrick McCabe 42:13

It's P McCabe, I believe.

Andy Lapteff 42:15

We will link it in the show notes. So if if you want to connect with Pat and his user handle might be tricky, uh click the link in the show notes. Any parting thoughts? Any uh when you look back on your product marketing career so far, is there one thing you wish you did different? The biggest lesson you learn besides you know, don't write 110-page white papers, any takeaways?

Patrick McCabe 42:34

I think it's a really good career move. Um, if you feel that those types of activities are in your wheelhouse, I have no regrets. It's challenging for sure, but it's also has its own rewards. And like Andy uh implied, if you come from a technical background, there's a path for you um in marketing if it's something that you want to do.

Andy Lapteff 42:55

Is AI gonna take all of our marketing jobs, Pat?

Patrick McCabe 42:58

Uh we talked we talked about that at length.

Andy Lapteff 43:00

I have to say AI in every episode. It's a it's an algorithm thing.

Patrick McCabe 43:03

Like, you know, it's it's definitely gonna shift the time we spend on certain things. It already is. I I don't uh write uh blogs uh in isolation any longer, let's put it that way.

Andy Lapteff 43:15

I don't know if it's helpful at all, but my friend John Capo said he doesn't think AI is gonna take the job of the network engineer away. He thinks people using AI are gonna displace people not using AI, if if that makes sense. So if you can leverage these LLM tools in your network, yeah, if you have a candidate who is doing that and a candidate who is not, the person that can be more because you and I were talking before the show. I mean, I I had show notes for us that were a completely different subject, and I just talked to it and said, Hey, we just changed our topic, you know, please change it for me. And they grabbed your LinkedIn, they did the thing, and now we have, you know, like it come on, man. I have an executive assistant doing research. How can you not? So, all right, Pat, thank you for uh being on the show. Uh for all things art of network engineering, you can check out our Linktree at Linktree forward slash Art of NetEnge. We have all the things there, including our Discord uh server called It's All About the Journey. About 3,500 people there, I think, at last count. How many of them are bots? I don't know, but there's a whole bunch of great humans in there helping each other succeed, patting each other on the back when they fail an exam, and really just being there for each other as we trudge this road and try to figure out what's next in networking. So um, as always, thank you so much for watching and listening. And we'll catch you next time on the Art of Network Engineering podcast. Hey folks, if you like what you heard today, please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher. You can find us on socials at Art of NetEng, and you can visit Linktree forward slash Art of NetEng for links to all of our content, including the A1 merch store and our virtual community on Discord called It's All About the Journey. You can see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering. That's YouTube.com forward slash Art of NetEng.