Please join me in congratulating Peter Gallagher (b. Purushottam “Peter” Gangadikeyaharvahar) on his recent promotion. Peter is one of the good SBS Show friends and currently works as a PSS Escalation Engineer at Las Colinas, Texas.

On Monday, Peter will be assimilated to the Microsoft Sales collective and his current Team Leader, Mark Stanfill had the following comment:

We wish Purushottam the greatest success in his sales career. I am sure he will do the neccessary.

As you may imagine, the transition of an engineer to the sales force is not an easy task. With specific and direct answers to technical questions Microsoft sales employee could actually give the customer a correct answer, something that could have horrific consequences. Mr. Stanfill further explains:

De-technical-ization process is mandatory for every member leaving the team. There are two components: lab and panel Q&A.

During the panel Q&A the candidate is extensively tested on his knowledge of correctly implementing the transition pack. By doing so we eliminate any actual practical knowledge that the future sales person will be able to relay to his/her customers.

The lab is a grueling process during which the candidate:

• Implements an SBS cluster
• Performs an SBS migration
• Uses the transition pack to upgrade to Windows 2000 Advanced Server, which he must obtain through p2p networks.

The lab instills the concept of belief in the candidate, it allows him to become comfortable selling solutions that can never be implemented. This becomes crucial for his sales career.

The final step in creating a perfect sales drone is throwing the engineer from the fourth story building until he lands on his head. At that point the engineer is ready for his sales career and is shipped to DFW with a one way ticket to Fargo, ND.

So again, please join me in congratulating Peter on his promotion.

* All names, places, people, events and processes are fictional. Any similarities to the real people, places, events and processes are purely coincidental. This post grossly overstates the technical competence of sales people, jumping off a four story building will not make you a good sales engineer – please seek out a taller building.

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