Passion for supporting our customers on their PCF journey, and ability to approach support issues with a customer-focussed mindset. You are able to handle interrupt-driven and exploratory work (e.g. questions on slack, on-call escalations, participation in cross-team meetings.) You ask relevant questions about an issue, figuring out what a customer needs to move forward, and drive it to resolution. You can communicate what you know respectfully to different audiences. You can also share what you still don’t know, and help identify the steps to learn more. You can apply your acquired knowledge on the fly, and are able to explore creative solutions to help meet the customer midway.
One example of success in this area: Your PM notes that there is an open support ticket that the team should help with. You don’t have much context on the issue, but go into the Slack channel with an open mind. You ask good foundational questions, learning where assumptions have been made, and where evidence has been found. After speaking with the customer and with Support / Field / Customer Success, you realize that this is a known issue in an upstream product, and point support in the right direction. You explain how you got to this conclusion, and stay in the Slack channel until it’s clear that the issue has been resolved and the customer is satisfied with the outcome.
| Level | Skills |
| L1 (eng intern) |
- Responds with engagement to interrupts; can enlist help
- Explains their suggestions and their approach to an interrupt or support issue.
|
| L2 (engineer) |
- Makes forward progress on most interrupts
- Maintains communication feedback loop with involved parties
- Escalates to leadership when needed, so leadership can involve the right folks to help with the issue
- Resolves familiar issues when encountered again
|
| L3 (senior engineer) |
- Assesses interrupts and can identify what someone is really asking for
- Prioritizes interrupts, with support from stakeholders as needed
- Identifies and pulls in the right people to help with the interrupt
- Onboards new team members on existing interrupt practices
- Approaches conversations about customer constraints/culture/IT practices with a positive attitude and desire to understand
|
| L4 (staff engineer) |
- Recognizes patterns in interrupts, and channels that feedback to drive product improvements
- Continually assesses team's support load and evolves ways to reduce it / make it easier
- Leads support conversations / resolution in high-stakes situations (e.g. angry customers, data loss, etc.)
- Maintains context while switching between an interrupt and several other tasks.
|
| L5 (eng director) |
- Understands support as a first-class feature of the product; shapes product definition based on that understanding
- Rapidly context-switches and explores uncertain / complex support issues; where valuable, takes the time to articulate the approaches taken and trade-offs of each one
- Teaches others how to explore in an unknown/unfamiliar (customer) environment
|