Dan Papandrea - How to Get Paid as a Tech Sales Engineer? #86
Dan “POP” Papandrea is the Field CTO for Sysdig, a cloud-native security and visibility platform. Dan became a tech sales engineer after starting his tech career in tech support and IT.
POP spends his days learning and contributing to the orchestration and container ecosystem. POP is the host of the hit podcast The POPCAST by Dan POP which explores the leaders and creators and stories behind the code. twitter: @popcastpop
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A note from Grant
Imagine for a moment with me that you have a deep love of technology and programming, but you also really like being around people and thinking about business goals and being involved in sales. Perhaps you also like a bit of travel, maybe a little wining and dining.
Perhaps even you like making a little extra coin above and beyond your salary via bonuses tied to sales. If any of those things ring true, you are going to want to listen in as we catch up with Dan Papandrea, the field CTO of Sysdig and hear how this NYU grad in computer science and long time Director of IT became a sales engineer working for the likes of SS&C Advent and Hewlett Packard Enterprises before joining Sysdig and working his way up from team lead to Field CTO.
And, as if Dan isn’t busy enough, in addition to his day job, he is also the host of the PopCast with DanPop, a podcast aimed at exploring the lives and careers of leading technologists. Stay tuned as we catch up with Dan Papandrea and hear how he has built a career at the center of business and technology.
Quotes
“I moved over to Advent SS&C. I basically started there in tech support and I worked my way up to the director of IT of the east coast and Europe.”
“When I started we were at 5 hedge funds and then we grew out to 499 of the 500 largest hedge funds in the world.”
“There’s gotta be this love of humility and empathy for the people that you are selling a software or a service to. I never look at myself like I’m selling anything. It’s ‘what can I do to help the customer get to their goals easier’? What can I do to help them go see their children?”
—Dan Papandrea
Key Milestones
- What inspired Dan Papandrea to get into tech?
- While at SS&C Advent, Dan switched jobs to tech sales engineer.
- What does a sales engineer do on the day to day?
- How does compensation work for a sales engineer?
- These days Dan is a Field Chief Technologist. What does this role consist of?
- How does one build a sales engineering team?
- Dan also created the hit podcast - PopCast. What was the inspiration behind the show?
Additional Resources
5 Rules to be a Solution(ist) by Dan Papandrea on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-solutionists-salesfield-engineers-5-rules-thumb-dan-papandrea/
Listen to Dan’s podcast ‘Popcast’ on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-popcast-with-dan-pop/id1503966242
