Next Level: Shifting Specialties and Broadening Your Outcome Goal with Duncan Epping (2/2)

Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

Are you trying to reach that next level in your career? Why do you want to get to the next level, and what is most important to you in doing that? If next level means next job level in your case, at some point there is no next level. What then?

Duncan Epping would encourage you not to set a goal based on an endpoint. This week in episode 304 we share Duncan’s career progression over time to Chief Technologist, discussing his motivations and goals along the way. You’ll hear about the qualities top level individual contributors in our industry possess. We also talk through the willingness to shift our technical specialty over time and the humility of approaching everything with the intent to learn something regardless of the outcome.

Original Recording Date: 10-29-2024

Duncan Epping is Chief Technologist, a published author, a blogger, and someone who loves to learn. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Duncan, check out Episode 303.

Topics – A Job Role is not the Goal, Reputation and Reliability, Shifting Your Area of Specialization

2:47 – A Job Role is not the Goal

• We’ve discussed not needing to go into management to progress in our careers and continuing to progress as individual contributors with some of our guests. Sometimes this means moving to another company whose clearly defined job leveling supports this choice (staff level, principal level, distinguished level, and perhaps all the way to Chief Technologist). What does it take to progress along this path?
  • Duncan tells us this is something that is quite difficult to discuss because the way someone can progress can differ greatly across companies. Things which may be important for progression at one company may not be important at others.
  • Though Duncan is a Chief Technologist today, repeating the same steps he took does not guarantee someone will reach the same level or end up in the same situation. Some of this has to do with being in the right place at the right time or being properly positioned to reach the next level.
  • “Even for myself, at some point there is no career progression anymore…. There’s not always a next level. The same applies for the CEO of the company. There is no higher level…. That is also something to consider.” – Duncan Epping
  • We might hear of people wanting to get to the next level and then to the next, but at some point, the progression will stop.
  • “You also need to ask yourself, ‘why do you want to get to that next level? What is most important to you?’ …One of the things that was extremely important to me when I started out in the virtualization space…it wasn’t becoming a Chief Technologist or a CTO or anything like that…. The one thing that was really important to me was to learn as much as I possibly could about this new, cool technology that appeared on the market. That is the one thing that I wanted to do. And that is what set me up for success. I wasn’t constantly chasing new job roles. Those job roles were more or less chasing me…which I know sounds very funny, but that’s the way things really went….” – Duncan Epping
  • Several months after Duncan started blogging, both VMware and EMC reached out to him about job openings (because he had written a lot of content). But Duncan did not write the articles to get a new job. He wrote them to learn something about a technology he was passionate about.
  • After starting in professional services at VMware, Duncan consistently tried to stay on top of the latest technical innovations inside the company, expanding his professional network through discussions with product managers and engineering team members. He was asked to move over to the cloud team that did some of the earliest deployments of vCloud Director.
  • Once the VCDX certification was created, Duncan wanted to figure out how to get it. Through the process of obtaining his VCDX, Duncan further expanded his professional network and was asked to become a Technical Marketing Architect.
  • “It was all a more or less natural evolution in terms of my passion and my interests more than me chasing a particular job.” – Duncan Epping
  • In Duncan’s opinion, a principal or a Chief Technologist does not mean you’re the person who has been working at a company the longest. Someone could be a senior engineer for many years while others could progress to higher job levels in a very short time.
  • “It’s also not always the most technical person that gets to the next level. It’s typically that person that knows how to communicate well both internally and externally but on top of that is also extremely interested in learning new things. And that could be anything. I wanted to say learning new technology, but it isn’t necessarily new technology. It could be anything. And I think being able to convey that passion and helping other people moving forward as well…that is what essentially then sets you up for a job role like a Chief Technologist….” – Duncan Epping
  • Being a Chief Technologist isn’t just about understanding technology. Duncan mentions this is about understanding people, processes, customers, and much more.
  • Duncan highlights being a part of mentoring programs in the past as both a mentor and a mentee. In mentoring conversations people often want to know how to get from one point to another or how to replicate what someone else did in a short amount of time. Duncan says when he takes them through the process, they might say they don’t have the time to put in the work.
    • Duncan chose to continue learning over time because it was a part of his job but also because he loves learning about new technology as well. He didn’t think about the process in terms of time he did or didn’t have.
    • Duncan loves writing about and reading about new technology, watching videos about it, and answering questions about it on community forums / Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn.
    • Duncan feels it is all of the above things combined that present a person as someone who could take on a role of an internal champion and an external facing technologist for a company (a role like Chief Technologist).
• John restates this as the role is more of an outcome of many actions, and the goal was staying curious, continuing to learn, and building a professional network along the way. The recognition and getting new opportunities seem like a byproduct of the underlying curiosity.
  • “A lot of people when they talk about their career progression and then they start thinking about goals, they tend to talk about that endpoint where they want to get. They tend to set that goal and say ‘I want to become a CTO of X, Y, and Z.’” – Duncan Epping, reflecting back on a career progression talk he gave a couple of years ago
  • When Duncan started working for VMware, the role of Chief Technologist did not even exist, so it certainly was not a goal for him. There was one CTO of the company at that time, and that was it.
  • “My goal was always to learn more about the technology that I wanted to learn more about and help other people to understand the technology better. That was what I was working toward.” – Duncan Epping
    • Notice Duncan’s goal was not a sole focus on pay raises or promotions. Those were byproducts of the work he was doing toward a larger goal.
  • People tend to set huge goals and get disappointed when they do not reach them. Duncan mentions even within huge companies, there are a relatively small number of CTO or Chief Technologist roles.
    • In Duncan’s opinion we should not set a goal to land one of these specific roles because the chances of disappointment are quite high when we don’t get one.

12:58 – Reputation and Reliability

• John speaks to his own philosophy of dreaming in bands and not being laser focused on a single job role or company. Think about the types of people you want to work with, the projects you want to work on, and the things you want to learn (i.e. things that can create more opportunities for you in the future – sometimes in the form of a new role).
  • When Duncan became a Chief Technologist, there was no process for becoming one. The process was created internally because people wanted to promote Duncan to that level.
  • “They knew my skill set. They knew I was passionate about something. They didn’t really have a head count for it, but they ended up creating a head count. And they ended up creating that role because they felt there was a need to have someone like myself to be part of that organization.” – Duncan Epping, on getting chosen for a specific role
  • In most cases, Duncan was asked to take certain roles rather than chasing them.
  • “I think that is something that a lot of people don’t tend to understand…. I didn’t wake up on Monday morning and all of a sudden I was a Chief Technologist. I also started out as a consultant at VMware. I was just a consultant, and then I became a senior consultant. And then after a couple of years I became a principal consultant. And then I went from consultancy into technical marketing. And then, within technical marketing I became a principal. And then I moved between different teams…. It all happened organically, and it isn’t something that I planned for. It is just something that occurred over time.” – Duncan Epping, on progressing through different roles within a company
  • There were many things Duncan had achieved even before he came to VMware.
  • Things we can learn from Duncan’s story and apply to our own career progression are things like emphasizing curiosity, knowledge creation / knowledge publishing (learning in public), building professional networks, and developing a reputation inside and outside your company. It sounds to John like when you’ve built a good reputation both inside and outside your company, the learning and publishing of that knowledge is the important thing and over time has a tendency to bring opportunities your way (almost like becoming a center of mass).
  • Duncan says we also need to be open to new opportunities, even if it means stepping into an unknown area. He would encourage us not to be afraid of new opportunities.
  • “I’ve been part of groups that would create a new product which we didn’t know if it was going to be successful or not. And some people don’t take those opportunities because they may think if it isn’t successful I may end up without a role. But in my opinion if you’ve created a big enough network….” – Duncan Epping
  • We don’t have to be the center of mass / center of attention, but developing a reputation of knowing how to find answers is very helpful. Duncan may not know the answer to every question, but he generally knows where to find the answer when someone asks.
    • Duncan mentions colleagues like William Lam, Frank Denneman, Joe Baguley, Alan Renouf, and others who operate in a similar way – they know how to find answers when something is outside their base of knowledge. They can be relied upon to go and find an answer. Duncan has featured these people and the traits they possess in presentations he’s delivered on career to various audiences.
    • “That is what is most important – that people can rely on you. And they know if I ask him or her a question, something is going to come back. And it may take 5 minutes. It may take an hour. It may take a day. But I know something is going to get back. That is also where the power of that network comes into play because if you don’t have a huge network, then you won’t be able to find the answer.” – Duncan Epping, on being a reliable source for helping others find answers to questions

19:49 – Shifting Your Area of Specialization

• When doing something you love to do (for Duncan, writing to learn) becomes part of your job, do you still love it?
  • At the moment, writing blog posts is not part of Duncan’s role (nor is writing books). He could go months without writing anything if he wanted.
  • When Duncan was in technical marketing, he enjoyed the writing aspect of the role. But what may not be so interesting is writing about the same thing many times. This can lead to getting bored. Duncan has written many articles about vSphere HA admission control and vSAN stretched clusters, for example.
  • “The one thing I’ve always forced myself to do is try to figure out what I can write about something which hasn’t been written before…so try to come up with something new. And that could even be for the same feature, for the exact same functionality but just written differently based on a question that a customer asked. Or, it could be a completely different topic. That’s why in my career you’ve seen me move from being a generalist in terms of virtualization then focusing on vSphere HA, then being responsible for availability and storage within technical marketing. After that I became responsible for the SDDC…. Then I became part of the vSAN team. Now I am also part of the VCF business unit but focused on storage and availability in a broader sense. So I’ve always more or less moved around, which made it a bit more interesting to write about things.” – Duncan Epping, on shifting writing topics over time
  • Lately, Duncan has been writing about running (in Dutch). Because Duncan loves writing so much, he is open to writing about anything. Duncan finds writing about new things interesting, and as a result we may see him shifting topics regularly.
• Duncan touched on being a generalist and becoming more specialized at times. What advice does Duncan have for others as it relates to staying a generalist or becoming more specialized?
  • He’s never been too worried about falling into either category.
  • Duncan started out very broad and was a systems administrator in the 1990s, focusing on Novell, Lotus Domino, Windows, and Linux systems.
  • When Duncan became a virtualization consultant, that was still quite broad since it involved a focus on the servers, the storage, and the virtualization layers. As technology grew and Duncan started working for VMware, more and more systems needed to integrate / hook into the virtualization platform.
  • Duncan has never had an issue diving deep into an area to become a specialist, and he’s willing to swap to a new area when needed to become a specialist there too. He has demonstrated specialty in VMware’s vSphere HA, Site Recovery Manager, and vSAN to take a few examples.
  • A Chief Technologist may need to speak to storage and availability in general and then go deep in vSAN stretched clusters for a customer discussion, for example.
  • “In my opinion, you don’t necessarily pigeonhole yourself. If you have the capability to dive deep into something…while you were a generalist before, I’m pretty sure after you dove into something specific, you can go back up if needed. You’re setting those boundaries yourself. No one else is doing that.” – Duncan Epping
  • Duncan understands why people might be worried about making shifts between generalist and specialist, but he’s seen people make some very big jumps.
    • Duncan shares the example of Cormac Hogan. He was a support engineer for EMC 20 years ago and then started working as a support engineer for VMware. When there were openings in technical marketing, Duncan remembered working with Cormac and suggested they bring Cormac onto the technical marketing team. Cormac was very storage focused for many years, but he would later focus on Kubernetes and is currently focused Data Services Manager.
    • “So he’s been going left to right, up and down, whenever someone asks. And the reason he’s capable of doing that is not because he’s thinking about being a generalist or being a specialist. He just has a passion for technology, and if someone asks him tomorrow, ‘hey, you need to focus on x, y, and z’ he’s going to dive into that and try to figure out what it is, how it works, and how he can help customers moving forward using a solution like that. And that solution could be a tiny little feature that is part of this bigger platform, or it could be that whole platform itself…. People are too worried about those things. If you understand the process of learning new technology, you can apply that to anything.” – Duncan Epping, commenting on Cormac Hogan’s career
    • Right now, Duncan is writing about running just for fun. He even puts a disclaimer on his blog about it.
    • “I’m not a coach. I’m not an influencer in any shape or form. I’m not a specialist even. I’ve been running for 25 years, and I’ve got experience in running. I’m just trying to learn more myself, and the way that I learn things is by writing things down. So that’s why I’m sharing it. And hopefully it’s useful to others, and if it’s not, at least I got to learn something. But if you apply that mindset, it doesn’t really matter if you’re pigeonholed into that particular section and that section of the world all of a sudden stops existing. Because you can learn about some other type of technology next week or the week after. I think it’s just that process that you need to focus on and not the particular thing that you need to learn.” – Duncan Epping
    • John re-emphasizes the title not being the goal but rather the process of curiosity, learning, and building relationships being the goal.
• Duncan leaves us with an important disclaimer.
  • Duncan can write about running as much as he wants, but he’s never going to run a marathon in 2:10.
  • “The role and those promotions may never come…. There’s no guarantee whatsoever. And that’s why I think the focus should be in terms of following your passion and having fun and enjoying it. Because if you’re not enjoying it, it’s for sure not going to happen.” – Duncan Epping
    • Remember, even if those roles never come, we can always keep learning!
• If you want to follow up with Duncan on this discussion, you can find him:
  • On Twitter / X – @DuncanYB
  • On LinkedIn – Duncan Epping
  • On his blog Yellow Bricks

Mentioned in the Outro

• Check out Duncan’s VMUG Keynote – Six Fundamentals for Advancing Your Career and the accompanying blog article.
  • Nick loves that Duncan sets goals based on learning.
  • In this presentation Duncan discusses the idea of having an outcome goal that isn’t focused on a job role or endpoint and a process goal with some quantifiable steps toward the outcome. Setting outcome goals in this way makes them independent of job roles and can help set us up for future opportunities.
• The idea of shifting your specialty was very interesting.
  • This is a willingness to go deep in a new area of technology and changing your focus.
  • To do this well you have to understand how you learn best and continue learning, knowing for a time you will be completely focused on learning the new area while being open to changing that focus in the future.
    • Building deep expertise in an area can help prevent distractions in an industry that changes constantly.
    • Developing expertise in multiple areas makes one very broad in technology.
• One of the qualities of people who have reached some of the highest job levels for individual contributors like a principal engineer or Chief Technologist was being reliable – being someone others knew could and would go find an answer.
  • Are you developing a reputation of being reliable?
• Duncan continued to follow his interests just like Stephanie Wong. Listen to these episodes for more of her story.
  • Episode 177 – Follow the Excitement, Follow the Challenge with Stephanie Wong (1/2)
  • Episode 178 – Being a Great Generalist and Finding Your Voice with Stephanie Wong (2/2)
• There’s a great deal of humility in the way Duncan approaches his writing. Even if no one likes what he wrote, at least he got to learn something.
  • This is a great attitude that we can use for approaching so many situations in life. What can we learn from the situation even if it does not turn out the way we want?
• If you’re looking for more help related to public speaking / presentations, check out
  • Neil Thompson’s Teach the Geek podcast
  • Episode 193 – Communication for Specialists with Neil Thompson (1/2)
  • Episode 194 – Question Askers and Problem Solvers with Neil Thompson (2/2)

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