▲ Community Session: What is a Forward Deployed Engineer?
VVercel
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Transcript
00:00:00Hello! Welcome to this week's Versailles Community Session. Today we're talking about
00:00:16what is a forward-deployed engineer. Before we get started, I just want to say remember
00:00:22to follow our community code of conduct. Just generally be nice to each other in the chat
00:00:26so we can keep doing these. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask those along
00:00:31the way. We're not doing any demos today. This is all questions, so feel free to ask them.
00:00:36And I'll ask out loud as they come up. And with that out of the way, I would like to welcome
00:00:42our guest. Here we have Chris. Bring him on stage. Hello, everyone. I'm so happy to have you here.
00:00:53We're talking about forward-deployed engineering, and I know this role is not well known, kind of
00:00:59misunderstood, so I want to clear some of that up. I know the title kind of almost sounds like it's a
00:01:05military role or something. So at a high level, what actually is a forward-deployed engineer,
00:01:11and how is it different from a solutions engineer or customer support or a product engineer?
00:01:17Happy to, Amy. And first, by way of general introduction, everyone, Chris Williams, better
00:01:22known on the internet as Voodoo Tiki God. Things that I've done that you might know of: Node Serial
00:01:28Port, the yellow JavaScript logo, JSConf way back in the day. So been around the JavaScript community and
00:01:36throughout all of its iterations and done great things. And it's a great question. A lot of people ask me,
00:01:42specifically as the head of the team, the head of the forward-deployed engineering team, what that means.
00:01:47And your comments about it sounding very military, actually, if you want to trace the ontology back,
00:01:53where the words came from, it actually does have its roots in sort of military elements with Palantir,
00:02:00I believe, being the first one to coin the term. There are many different implementations of it
00:02:06for a variety of different reasons. Some will take, some organizations will take their consultancies and
00:02:12just rebrand them as now we're forward-deployed engineers, same person, same badge, but hey,
00:02:16looks different. At Vercel, we adopt a different approach that isn't exactly like the Palantir model,
00:02:23is a little bit morphed into a newer way that we believe is more effective for our customers and for
00:02:31improving our products, including Next.js and the Vercel platform and all the work we do with the AI SDK
00:02:38and the various different frameworks that we're building on. What we view it as is the linchpin
00:02:43or immediate feedback cycle between customers and the way that they are using our actual products.
00:02:50And what I'll say is the theoretical thoughts of how we thought they were going to use it.
00:02:55And sometimes those are perfectly in alignment and customers are able to immediately use the products,
00:03:01immediately take advantage of them. And then other times it's a little bit orthogonal.
00:03:06And what myself and my team do is we will embed directly in, that's the forward deployed side,
00:03:14go hands on keyboard, roll up sleeves, go shoulder to shoulder inside our customer environments and
00:03:21develop with them, develop new things, refactor sort of brownfield or existing code bases into a more
00:03:27modern way. And in doing so, we're teaching them, the customers, how to operate at the speed of Vercel,
00:03:34how we leverage these new technologies, when's the right tool for the various tasks and when to avoid
00:03:39that other tool, because it may send you down the wrong path, basically giving our battle scars back
00:03:45into the customer so they can move faster and gain iteration velocity. I think we're sort of fanatical
00:03:51here at Vercel about through experimentation and rapid development. In exchange, we are gathering
00:03:59feedback of in the trenches, how things are actually used, how are cache components in Next16 actually
00:04:05being used? Where are spaces that maybe we have a gap in how we expected people to use the AISDK,
00:04:14and we give those real world implementations and concepts back to our engineering product and design
00:04:21or EPD teams and team members. And we give them real world examples. Here is this customer at this
00:04:26scale using and seeing this because we were there shoulder to shoulder building it with the customers.
00:04:32And we're able to then say, see, I know we thought we were going this way, but we ended up seeing it this
00:04:38way and working with the EPD team to get that alignment more one-to-one as best we can. In some cases, we can't.
00:04:46And that's okay. But more that way. So that way, other customers we may not be engaged with are,
00:04:52I'll say, having a better experience as they go through the engagement model. So a lot of our work
00:04:57is generally diving deep into a customer's code base, challenging their preconceived norms,
00:05:05looking at their observability and instrumentation and making sure they're actually watching what they
00:05:09think they're watching and aligning to the right most things. And then also feeding that back as the
00:05:14overall cycle. I think it was another part to your question, Amy, but I've forgotten it completely.
00:05:19Lisa, throw it at me. Oh, no, I think, I think you've covered it. Success. The other thing I want to know,
00:05:26because you kind of touched on this a little bit, um, deployed. What does that actually look like in
00:05:31practice? Um, whether it's at Vercel or other, um, similar roles at other companies, because everyone does
00:05:37things a little differently. Is it a lot of onsite travel? Are you embedded in Slack and Zoom with customers? Um,
00:05:44are you worried about time zones or like, would just generally, what does an average day or week look
00:05:49like? I wish, I wish there was an average day or week, but, but with respect to your question, um,
00:05:56when, uh, the initial implementation and for some places the embedded or deployed means physically on
00:06:03site with the customer to see exactly how they're using it. We at Vercel are very much a remote first
00:06:09and driving remote implementations for our customers all the time. So for us,
00:06:14the deployed or embedded is more, as you mentioned in that Slack and, uh, various ceremonies where we're
00:06:21engaging and working with them through, uh, asynchronous or synchronous where needed through
00:06:27video conferencing and stuff of that nature models. It does mean and can mean a little bit of travel,
00:06:33uh, I'd say in the 25 to 30% demographic where some things are just better to get around a whiteboard
00:06:41and talk through and diagram and let's go through this. And the digital whiteboards just, they, they,
00:06:46they, they lose something. If just the, the like residual marker on your fingers when you're trying
00:06:52to write on the whiteboard, but there is something worthwhile in doing in person. So we do have a
00:06:59little bit of travel that's involved because of that. We generally try to keep our team members. I
00:07:04specifically, um, uh, like dead set on this keep team members plus or minus one time zone away from the
00:07:11customer base. So that way, if you are traveling, it isn't a, um, painful experience. It is something
00:07:18that is, you know, not, you have to go to like, uh, do some sort of regimen to get back on time zone
00:07:24or anything of that nature. No, we make sure that we are able to get there quickly and return back
00:07:29without any sort of jitter. So there is a little bit of travel, but for the most part, we try to
00:07:35prioritize and drive as much as possible through Slack engagements, um, co-developing through remote
00:07:43and pair programming via a variety of different mechanisms. And then also working through, uh,
00:07:49video conferences where we may need something a little bit more face to face before going into
00:07:54onsite. Yeah. And being in a similar time zone helps with that as well. Even when you're remote,
00:08:00you have a lot more overlap in your working hours. It absolutely does. Um, and, and I mean, people want,
00:08:08we're all humans still. I think, I don't think any of us have crossed the chasm to become agents yet.
00:08:12Uh, but soon, um, no, I hope not. I really do. Uh, we're all humans. So one of the nice things is,
00:08:19is especially with the customers that we have the privilege and benefit of working with,
00:08:23they are also all humans. And we, my, my team members ended up building great relationships
00:08:28with them, um, largely because we get to come in and sort of like show them the, not just art of the
00:08:34possible, which everyone loves to talk about our proof of concepts, but real, like, here's how we get this
00:08:39done. Here's how we do this together. And it brings an almost Promethean fire to the way that they
00:08:46continue to operate there thereafter, like, um, day two to day 200. It, they have changed and become more
00:08:53more like how we operate. And that brings them excitement, experimentation, curiosity is rekindled.
00:09:00So we generally end up having great friends who were former FTE deployment targets, uh, like not
00:09:08targets that since former forward deployments, uh, in, in engagements that we worked with. And it is an
00:09:15amazing thing to come back to some of them, you know, quarters to a year later and find out all the great
00:09:20things they've done without us. I mean, it's kind of sad we weren't there, but, uh, it's a change and a
00:09:26pivot for them as a business, as a generally happiness model. Cause at least from what I've seen, adding that
00:09:34experimentation in iteration velocity and showing them that things don't have to be so hard and that you
00:09:40could just move quickly ends up making them happier in their day to day and their work and the output
00:09:47and product that they do and the experimentation space. So it ends up becoming quite honestly,
00:09:52a very virtuous and positive cycle all the way around. Yeah. It is a really good way of working
00:09:58when you move quickly and you can do that experimentation because I've been in rules before where it's
00:10:04everything has to be shipped completely perfect. And you've invested all of this time in some big
00:10:08feature and then you launch it and oh no. I mean, quite honestly, I mean, even, uh, even the start
00:10:15of this and I like one of us had a technical problem and couldn't get the audio working.
00:10:20Uh, but that's what makes life fun and exciting. Like those sorts of like moments or maybe not just
00:10:25audio breaking, but it was a couple of minutes right before, but like that is what makes us human is not
00:10:31that it breaks, but how we respond to that breakage, how we respond to that incident and, you know,
00:10:37going through it and persevering it together, which is part of the piece of the FTE side is your shoulder
00:10:42to shoulder. When things go south, you're going, uh, south with it and you're helping the team out of
00:10:47that situation. Those are, those are galvanizing moments. They, they separate like those who are
00:10:54ready to dive in and explore and experiment, figure out better ways. And those who, you know, sort of just
00:11:00fold. And so one of the things as part of being with the team is having a little bit of that empathy
00:11:05to understand that in certain situations, you might have to be, uh, strong in terms of willed and
00:11:14opinion, but then there's others where, Hey, look, we're all in this together. Um, and not necessarily
00:11:19like check the opinion at the door because something happened, uh, some state change happened in the
00:11:24industry or something. And you need to have a little bit of the empathy to, and, and, um, what is it?
00:11:30Uh, EQ, emotional quotia to be able to assess that situation and find the right move with it.
00:11:37And I think on that topic, this kind of role it's, it's very technical, but it also involves a lot of
00:11:43that EQ, the understanding people, the, the soft skills or, or whatever, uh, you might want to call that.
00:11:49So what, what's the balance there for people? Like who excels in this kind of role and, um,
00:11:56what kind of skills, uh, would be the best for that, you know, to fit?
00:12:01That is a great question. I, um, I have been told that, uh, I'll give my personal opinion
00:12:11and then I'll say what I've been told. How about that? Um, my personal opinion is there are a lot,
00:12:17there are a fair number of individuals out there who are multidisciplinary or have different parts
00:12:23of their brain that activate, uh, generalists is the other term that I've heard used for this. So
00:12:29people have a, a breadth and depth, uh, of broad stretch knowledge, not just, I am the greatest
00:12:36Next.js developer in the world, but I, I, I can absolutely write next, but I also know how to write AI.
00:12:43Maybe I know how to write rust. And I also, uh, maybe try to run a company once might've failed.
00:12:49That's okay. Uh, we all, it's the attempt more than the execution per se, the generalist mentality of
00:12:57I'm good at technical. I can speak human as well. Have some of the empathy elements. Maybe I have some
00:13:02business, uh, acumen. Maybe I have a little bit of sales prowess. Um, maybe I have leadership qualities.
00:13:09Uh, what I've found is individuals for the FD role have. Pick three or more of those rather than having
00:13:18just one of them. That's not to say that an individual who may join our team and is deep in one,
00:13:25we can't help grow the other, but generally we will start helping to grow that, uh, those other muscle
00:13:32memory pieces of how to handle, uh, a stakeholder, a C-suite stakeholder dinner, um, how to navigate a
00:13:39very problematic misaligned expectation and do it with a bit of, uh, grace and elegance and, you know,
00:13:47those sorts of things or how to honestly, how to, how to tell somebody that maybe the project that
00:13:52they're working on isn't a good idea, but do it in a way that doesn't seem condescending and negative.
00:13:57Um, those are the pieces that we look for in, and when we're hiring for the role. So this is very
00:14:04different. I do want to indicate like very different from most other roles. And it's actually a thing that
00:14:09historically I've always suffered personally from because I have a very varied background. Um, I've
00:14:15run large technical conferences and written code all over the place. Uh, only like two of a good,
00:14:22two lines of a good. Um, and then, uh, I've run several different businesses. I've been the head of
00:14:27sales at some organizations. So that doesn't make sense. When I go look for job descriptions, it's like,
00:14:33you'll do this one thing and you'll do it the best of the ability. I'm like, okay, I could do the one
00:14:37thing, but then I'm bored. Like the rest of me needs activation. I need all, all cylinders firing for
00:14:44me to feel happy, uh, at work. And I found that the team members that I have and the team members
00:14:49that we bring on share that sort of, uh, broad reaching passion or curiosity to dive into different
00:14:56areas and explore it. And you might fail and that's okay. Um, going back to what I said before, uh, a lot
00:15:02of people will say, Oh, you have the most experienced team in the company, or, uh, you're bringing
00:15:07in the experience people a little, little side note here. The word experience just means you've messed
00:15:12up more times than other people have. And you mostly figured out how to do them correctly. And that is
00:15:18when somebody is bringing experience, that's all they're bringing. Wisdom is just, you've messed up,
00:15:23you figured out a path through it and you are going to avoid messing up because you now know the path.
00:15:27And ideally you're sharing that and that's the wisdom part to others. So they don't repeat the same
00:15:32mistakes. Um, so that said, I guess I'm very, I'm very experienced and that I've messed up an awful lot
00:15:40of times and, uh, have figured out ways to help others not incur the same mistakes.
00:15:48We have, uh, someone commented, um, they said, this is interesting. I've always assumed you need a lot of
00:15:54depth in one solution to be a forward deployed engineer. So a little different from what people expected.
00:16:01Uh, so if I could, you should have some depth. It doesn't have to be the best. And a great example,
00:16:08uh, Luis Alvarez is on my team. He is a former core contributor to Next.js. Um, I'm trying to get
00:16:14Sam Selikoff to come over, but he keeps refusing my invitations, but, uh, but maybe this will turn him.
00:16:19So anyways, Luis has tremendous depth, uh, Gansi Pozo. He is also a tremendous step. Dom. So what's
00:16:28depth in the, uh, agentic commerce space, they'll have depth, but they also have that breadth in a
00:16:34variety of other spaces. Um, Gansi in the enablement demographic and able to pretty much teach anyone,
00:16:42almost anything at this point. I have a firm belief that he could teach anything. Um, and it is, so it's,
00:16:49it isn't to say negating having some level of depth. Uh, it is, you should have some depth to have like a
00:16:56core area, but then also the ability to add in those not near neighbor, but other orthogonal pieces
00:17:05that pull together into the FD. Um, and because of that, it kind of balances out. So the more,
00:17:11or lack of a better term, uh, like an infinity gauntlet, like the more gemstones you have,
00:17:15I guess the less depth you have to have per se in each one of them, but you should have an overall
00:17:20strength. If you're building like a D and D type thing, like your, your, your character has to have
00:17:25the variety of different levels that balance out to make that robust element. Um, and it could be
00:17:31that you have depth in one and lower depth than the other, but that's still okay. I guess the word is
00:17:37robust, uh, robustness in, in like how you engage life is the way out for it. Yeah. It sounds to me
00:17:45like, uh, someone who's willing to try a lot of things, willing to potentially fail at those things,
00:17:51but also as long as they're legal, stay within the legal boundaries. Uh, yes. Uh, able to learn from
00:17:57it too is I think an important element there. Right. And, um, have the humility to be willing to say,
00:18:07you know, I, I suggest you don't go down this path. How do I know? Cause I went down that path and you
00:18:12shouldn't. Um, and it does look, I, I, uh, have a bit of imposter syndrome and I've worked many,
00:18:19many years to decades on overcoming it and pushing it down and all sorts of stuff.
00:18:23Uh, that's okay to be afraid of it. But the key is, is by you opening up and sharing the experience,
00:18:30the, I messed up. Uh, I know exactly why this is going to mess up because I did it once. Um,
00:18:36being willing to share that most, I'll say 99.999% of the time, uh, more uptime than a cloud service
00:18:42provider. Uh, that other person is going to receive that as, Oh, okay. Thank you for sharing.
00:18:47Let's not do that. Or let's do that depending on which direction you're going and they'll move
00:18:51forward with it. But it does take a lot to be willing to open that up and be a little bit, um,
00:18:56unguarded, uh, a little bit, uh, vulnerable. And, and that is another piece of the overall puzzle there.
00:19:06Yeah. I'm willing to try a lot of things. I'm willing to share what you learned from those.
00:19:10Sometimes we learn the better way by trying bad ways first and realizing those were not the best
00:19:16solution. Again, don't, don't do drugs, stay in the legal limits of everything. I gotta, we gotta,
00:19:20we gotta put that legals on the call. They know they're not on the call. Um, but yes, uh, staying,
00:19:26trying some things and, uh, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. You learn something either
00:19:30way. Absolutely. As far as getting a job as a forward deployed engineer, if someone wanted to do this,
00:19:40what would you suggest that they start learning today? I think that's kind of in line with what
00:19:44we were talking about. Um, but what, what like specific things might somebody who let's say coming
00:19:49from a strong engineering background might want to work on to, to help with all the other skills that
00:19:54would benefit them? This is a very fun question that I, okay, I wish I'd had some prep work on this one.
00:20:01Um, so I've done a lot of studying on this because one of my goals has always been since, uh, well,
00:20:06about 2012, just to give a back context of timing, um, has always been the belief that deeply technical
00:20:14people often fixate or focus on the technical aspects and, uh, are often pigeonholed or, uh,
00:20:23square peg round hole type thing forced into only putting blinders up and staying there. And there's a
00:20:30realistically, and as we've seen through the variety of different revolutions and evolutions of
00:20:35technology, technical people can and should be doing more and more and more different things,
00:20:41not necessarily just technical. So one of the, uh, right around the 2016 timeframe, a 20,
00:20:502015, 2016 timeframe, um, I came up with a concept that you could through experience-based learning,
00:20:57uh, which I'll explain what that is here in a second. You can actually go through and develop
00:21:04the muscle memory that combats, whether it's the imposter syndrome that prevents you from
00:21:09doing things or just gets you comfortable in those uncomfortable situations. Uh, and really what
00:21:15you're doing is you're burning into your psyche and into your, your muscle memory, that thing we talked
00:21:22about before experience. So the easiest thing as a piece of this is to see a random person and go talk to
00:21:29them. Um, if you're at an airport and there's a person across the way, go talk to them, uh, simple,
00:21:35hello, what do you do? And it may sound to somebody who is, uh, a social butterfly or an extrovert,
00:21:43they're probably like, well, that's easy. But to an introvert, that is very hard. And I, the,
00:21:51not all engineers are introverts. Uh, I, myself, uh, I phrase myself as an extroverted introvert. I
00:21:56force myself to, uh, go out. We have some on our team that are introvert, introvert, some that are
00:22:01extroverted introvert. We've got one who's an extroverted extrovert and he knows who he is. Um,
00:22:07they, the team congeals through it and all because of the working model that we operate in, we all have
00:22:13to force ourselves to be a little bit more towards the extroverted side than the introverted. So what
00:22:18I would say and suggest if you want to dive into this, honestly at Vercel and we're hiring and would
00:22:24love everyone to, to sign up and would love to bring a part of the team. But even if you see the forward
00:22:29deployed elsewhere, pushing yourself to be able to be comfortable to talk in conversations, to meet new
00:22:37people, to, you know, go through things that may initially have like the stomach butterflies, um, the
00:22:47jittery, jittery sense. Um, getting comfortable with that is actually one of the hardest, but also the
00:22:52easiest things to start doing. It's the hardest thing to do, but it's the easiest thing to start
00:22:57doing because you can go out and next time you order fast food somewhere, or if you're ordering a
00:23:02full proper meal, Hey, uh, how's your day going? And actually generally mean it and try to have a
00:23:08conversation. And even if it lasts one sentence, like my day is horrible, leave me alone. That's okay.
00:23:13Hey, we're just a small step forward, uh, able to talk. So I, I have found that to be both the
00:23:19highest hill to get over, but also the easiest one to take the first steps in towards, um, beyond that,
00:23:26it would be, um, reading some books about, uh, how businesses operate truly how they operate,
00:23:35not how they say they operate, which is very different, um, or experiencing in your own business.
00:23:40And, and if you're in a company right now questioning what, why are we doing this? What this is, this is
00:23:46crazy to me. Why are we doing this? And see if you can pick apart why they're doing it. And that gives you
00:23:50some of that business acumen to explore. So said differently, it's going to be going down those
00:23:56orthogonal paths, whether business acumen, sales acumen, uh, extrovertedness, uh, those pieces
00:24:03are the right spaces to extend into. And it really take, it does take time, unfortunately, but it's also
00:24:10for the most part, something that you can start doing today. And if not, if you don't, can't think of
00:24:16a ways happy to help. Uh, I mean, as mentioned voodoo tiki got everywhere. So, um, if you have
00:24:22questions, I, I'm just a, whatever we call it these days, uh, an ex away. No, that, that sounds like
00:24:28I'm at a rave. Anyways, you'll find a way to get in touch with me. You are very easy to find. Like you
00:24:33said, same username everywhere. Um, I'm going to let you go. I appreciate you taking the time, but I know
00:24:39you are very busy and have things to get back to. So thank you so much for joining us today.
00:24:43Thank you, Amy. And thank you very much for listening. Uh, been a pleasure and looking forward
00:24:47to hopefully, uh, welcoming you on as part of the team. We are hiring in the, uh, Americas in EMEA,
00:24:54in the UK. Uh, I don't know if that's separated together with, anyways, uh, we're also hiring in
00:24:59Australia and Japan area. So, um, if you are listening from any of those, please don't hesitate to sign up.
00:25:06Awesome. I just shared the link in the chat for everyone as well. Thank you so much.
00:25:10Thanks, Amy. All right. And thank you all for being here. I really appreciate you joining,
00:25:17making some great comments. Uh, we do have more online events happening this week,
00:25:21and you can find those at community.verselle.com/events. And if you registered for SHIP,
00:25:27we will see you in London, Berlin, and New York next month. If you haven't gotten a ticket yet,
00:25:33but you want to, you can do that at verselle.com/SHIP. And I recommend acting quickly because some
00:25:38locations are already sold out and others will be very soon. So thanks again. It was great seeing you all.
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