Remember that slim chance I wrote about earlier this year?
I threaded the needle folks.
I landed the dream position of Mobile Deployment Engineer.
That’s right – I’m an Engineer now.
I take the title a little more seriously than most I guess. For me it was a long journey met with multiple abject failures and near misses. The title doesn’t make the person but for me; especially as a public servant – titles carry a lot of institutional weight and respect. I’ve been in the thick of it for nearly 2 decades and no matter how good the solution I brought, ideas I proposed or shared, or seniority I possessed – it was never enough. Now; I’m as legit as it gets.
“What’s an MDE do?” You might be asking.
WELL LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT – in some broad strokes.
That my dear reader will be keeping me busy (hopefully) for years to come. I’ll be engineering device and account deployment and management solutions (Mobile Device Management [MDM], Enterprise Mobility Management [EMM], and Mobile Application Management [MAM]) for iOS & Android-based solutions for a large local government organization.
There are existing 3rd party systems in place but unfortunately they have a very (as an extremely astute colleague cited) “lived-in” look and feel. They’re gonna need a lot of TLC that I can’t WAIT to give.
I’ve already got 4 major projects on the slate (One that will be planning a major deployment with an associated 200-500 device roll-out) with about 2-3 in the wings (that seems to increase every other week; I’m hoping it slows down just a little bit). There’s a support queue averaging about 20 new incidents and service requests per week and a literal revolving door of device upgrades, replacements, and fixes.
It’s going to be a literal blast. I’m so excited.
“But Jeremy, what about the stuff you were working on?”
This is bittersweet but I won’t be able to take any of my previous work with me. That means I’ll be leaving enterprise video & network monitoring behind and transitioning them to other engineering staff.
It’s been a good run, I’ve managed and matured the utilization of network performance monitoring and many associated products with it to bring about proactive monitoring, recording, and analysis of key performance indicators, establishing enterprise-wide baselines for devices and applications, as well as establishing critical application and services monitoring & alert management to enable real proactive support and reporting that simply didn’t exist (to name only a few; truly) and I’m honestly very proud of that work that can stand the test of time. Whether it will or not – is no longer my torch to carry.
I’ve been working on enterprise video solutions for about 3 years and in that time I’ve been able to revolutionize the way the overall program works, institute standardization and consolidation of data, hardware, and methods used by various entities. I’ve implemented a new long-term flexible solution that will exceed the needs of its various customers – something no one else was able to do and I’m also very proud of that considering its high value to the organization. Video isn’t going anywhere and from my experience – this is definitely an area of growth to keep an eye on but will also no longer be my focus.
Nothing is ever perfect; but I feel however imperfect my work is or was – it remains high-quality, supportable, and has the ABILITY to be handed off rather than myself being the ONLY person capable of working on any of it – which I think a lot of technical professionals accidentally box themselves into. It’s a point of pride that I feel I can safely move on without jeopardizing anything I’m walking away from.
My new role is an incredible opportunity. I’ve worked hard for it and I plan to make the best of it. It closely aligns with a large portion of work and support I do for family, friends and acquaintances. It’s work I genuinely enjoy with a team of fresh faces that are already using or are open to modern approaches that have been vastly unpopular to past teams I’ve worked on. My new manager is fully supportive of my vision for where I want to take MDM and has offered every avenue to help me execute on that vision. It’s genuinely a night/day difference that is hard to describe my excitement for. I’ll also have another person working with me so no more lone-wolfing here – we’ll be backing each other up and have scheduling flexibility. This really means less concern for everyone when one of us are out of the office that neither the organization nor either of us have to worry work is getting dropped. It’s a big deal; at least for me (pretty sure it is for them too).
For those that follow my work or my musings: thanks for hanging with me this long. Hopefully more awesome to come.
jeremyxmentzell 