Imagine getting 45 minutes to describe and defend the quantifiable impact of your body of work as an individual contributor accumulated over multiple years. It’s your job to convince a panel that you have what it takes to help solve the company’s biggest problems. Could you do it?

Our guest Daniel Paluszek has done it successfully at 2 different technology companies to become a Global Field Principal. Much of his success in these roles is attributed to a “culmination of exposure” over the course of his career and the support of both family and managers. This week in episode 339, we begin with the story of Daniel’s move to a hypergrowth startup and learn what it was like to run his own business as the company grew and changed. When an unexpected opportunity to join VMware arose, Daniel transferred his learnings to focus on business growth for service provider partners.

We also talk about the reasons Daniel pursued the role of Global Field Principal, the responsibilities of that role, and why he continues to find it interesting. After listening to this episode, we might all think differently about the importance of building a body of work. Have you been building yours? It’s not too late to begin or keep going.

Original Recording Date: 06-11-2025

Daniel Paluszek is a Principal Partner Technology Strategist at ServiceNow. If you missed parts 1 or 2 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 337 – Finding Drive: The Parallels of Mentoring and Technology Partnerships with Daniel Paluszek (1/3) and Episode 338 – Steady Build: Broadening Exposure and the Priceless Perspective of People Management with Daniel Paluszek (2/3)

Topics – Leaping into Hypergrowth, A Culmination of Exposure, Pursuit of Principal and the Responsibility of Execution

3:06 – Leaping into Hypergrowth

• What did the next job transition over to SimpliVity look like? It seemed like this was a conscious move toward an up-and-coming startup and a new technology wave at the same time.
  • Daniel says it was a conscious choice to move to Simplivity.
  • While Cisco was somewhere that felt like home, Daniel was given the opportunity to join Simplivity when it was a startup.
    • The industry was moving from 3-tier architectures with virtualization to hyperconvergence (a convergence of storage, compute, and networking in a single form factor that scaled out linearly). It was an exciting time for the industry as a whole, especially for virtualization.
  • Daniel knew some of the people who had joined Simplivity.
    • “I’ve never done a startup before, a hypergrowth company…. There were about 100-150 people when I joined. In that first year, I think we tripled the company in size…. It was something that was just an incredible experience.” – Daniel Paluszek
    • Daniel was a pre-sales Solution Architect at SimpliVity working with both customers and partners in the southeast United States (Floride and Alabama).
  • At Simplivity Daniel learned the skill of building your own business.
    • He and his sales rep (also a great mentor to him) worked as one logical unit partnered together to build business. They were aligned on the priorities and focus areas.
  • “Sometimes you have to take that leap of faith and try something that’s completely unknown. I was leaving a tried-and-true company…Cisco Systems is an incredible company…going to a startup that I had no idea where this was going to go…. Why wouldn’t I do this? There’s nothing but upside to try this and get the experience of a startup. And so, that’s what I did.” – Daniel Paluszek
    • Daniel calls his time at Simplivity some of the most impactful years of his career. It felt like Daniel was able to fit the same amount of learning from Cisco (5 years) into 2 years at Simplivity.
    • Daniel had to learn many functions we might think of as being outside the role of pre-sales like marketing (running campaigns, planning customer events, etc.). There wasn’t a lot of field awareness of what hyperconvergence was, so part of the job was taking time to educate customers and partners.
    • “So, every day was about how do we not only simplify the messaging but focus on the business problems, the challenges, and how we’re directly solving those for all industries and customers. And we had to wear all these different hats.” – Daniel Paluszek
    • “If there was any nugget of wisdom…everybody should do an up and coming fast growth company and just understand all the different roles needed and working together on building something…building a company.” – Daniel Paluszek
    • Daniel worked on a small team and built incredible, lasting relationships with others along the path of building something extraordinary and special. He really enjoyed the period of time before SimpliVity was acquired by HPE – a great time with great people and great technology.
• While a role we take may change over time as a company changes, hypergrowth startups can change quickly. For example, a role may not look the same in 3-6 months. What are some of the other ways Daniel’s role changed as the startup grew that he did not expect?
  • Daniel says you had to learn adaptability very quickly.
  • When the company is in hypergrowth mode, you do what it takes to get things accomplished even if it seems outside of your specific role (support, product management, etc.). This requires people who will collaborate well to execute on the overall goal. As a company grows, its internal organizations grow too, and you begin to have dedicated people to perform specific roles / job functions.
  • “The one thing that wasn’t evident to me coming from a large manufacturer / vendor was you had to do everything under the sun, and you had to wear 27 different hats. I was willing to do that…. In the early stages, my sales rep and I were doing all of that, and as the company grew, we had pre-defined people. We had a marketing person, and we had a sales development representative….” – Daniel Paluszek, describing life inside a hypergrowth startup
  • Running your own business in this case meant hosting marketing events. That involved getting funding, coordinating with a restaurant / venue to build a menu, track event registrations, coordinating speakers for the event, and tracking follow up conversations with event attendees based on interest in the topic and products.
  • “Sometimes you’ve just gotta do things that you may not like that are just part of getting the job done right and getting it done successfully in the interest of your company and your end customer. And sometimes you just have to get it done. I think there’s a delicate balance. In large organizations, we have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Sometimes you’ve just gotta break that glass and figure it out after the fact, but if you’re doing in the best interest of your customers and your organization, I’ve never seen anything negative come out of that because you’re serving and bringing value to your stake holders at the end of the day.” – Daniel Paluszek
• From what Nick sees, Daniel has a pattern of trying new things to gain experience and learn when he feels it is something that will make him better, even if he’s not sure how it will make him better at the time. Then that post-processing Daniel has inside him will kick in so he can use the experience later.

12:17 – A Culmination of Exposure

• Did Daniel decide to move on from startup life because he was tired of it, or was it because of a new opportunity?
  • Daniel’s career had been shaped by VMware from a young age to this point in time, and he was given the opportunity to work there. But this was not something he planned.
  • When HPE (HP Enterprise) announced their intent to acquire SimpliVity, Daniel had intended to stay and see what happened. A friend from Cisco mentioned to Daniel that the VMware partner group was looking for technical pre-sales engineers, and this friend thought Daniel would be a good fit.
    • “Two weeks later I accepted an offer from VMware in the partner group…. I went with my gut, and I said, ‘I’m going to take this offer…and see where it goes.’” – Daniel Paluszek, after being open to an unexpected opportunity
    • Daniel was leaving right around the time the HPE acquisition of SimpliVity was closing. Choosing to take the role at VMware was a very difficult decision. The hiring manager at VMware encouraged Daniel to do what was best for him and his family.
  • To this point, Daniel had accumulated a wide range of experience:
    • Working with VMware technology as a customer
    • His professional services background
    • The focus at Cisco on the datacenter and building cloud architectures
    • Being a part of SimpliVity and focusing on hyperconvergence
  • “I just had this culmination of exposure and depth of experience that I was able to utilize in a role core to what I had built in the past.” – Daniel Paluszek
• Daniel tells us he worked for VMware for about 5-6 years focusing on service provider partners and eventually became a field principal architect.
  • Daniel and his team members supported global cloud providers that were providing infrastructure or platform as service to their customers based on VMware architectures.
  • Daniel worked to make these cloud providers successful with architectures that supported either a shared multi-tenant cloud or dedicated private cloud environment.
• During this time Daniel found an appetite for blogging. The VMware technical community was very active in this area, and it was interesting to Daniel.
  • Once Daniel began writing blogs, he realized it could be used as a medium to answer some of the questions multiple cloud providers were asking. Through blogging, Daniel could break down new complex topics into digestible material.
  • Daniel was writing for his own personal blog and also for the VMware corporate blog and accumulated 100-150 blog articles across both sites by the time he left VMware.
    • Daniel eventually took down his blog site because the content was so outdated.
  • Daniel also recorded lightboard video presentations to explain different concepts cloud providers were seeking out during that time.
  • “It was another medium where I could articulate a message and really help the community on growing the VMware solutions.” – Daniel Paluszek, on decreasing the friction to growth of VMware solutions through field awareness and education
  • Daniel worked in a business unit that had technical marketing and product management personnel. Daniel’s creating the content helped the overall business unit make a greater impact, and it created a collaborative, cross-functional team.
    • “If you can collaborate and work together effectively on a clear and single mission, you can accomplish anything. And I thought we did an incredible job supporting our cloud providers and partners.” – Daniel Paluszek

18:25 – Pursuit of Principal and the Responsibility of Execution

• John mentioned the field principal title has come up a couple of different times in previous guest interviews. What does this title really mean, and what led up to Daniel’s decision to pursue that title?
  • Daniel cites being part of the CTO Ambassador program during his time at VMware. Specific engineers and architects who were part of this program throughout the company would work closely with the Office of the CTO.
  • This group was a collaborative forum for a couple of things:
    • Working on special projects and initiatives
    • Providing feedback to product leaders and the research and development teams around industry trends, value to customers, and much more
  • At VMware, field principal was one job level above the senior staff level. The field principal title was a designation of global contribution and impact to others both inside and outside the company beyond the normal customers or partners you served.
    • The path to principal for Daniel was through his value differentiated work at a partner and then supporting partners for many years. He was passionate about supporting partners in a way that had not previously been done and wanted to go through the field principal program.
    • The principal program had an intake process to submit your accomplishments along with letters of recommendations. This was reviewed by a board who determined if you met the requirements to do a panel defense.
    • The process is analogous to a VCDX (VMware Certified Design Expert) which was part test and a panel defense.
    • The field principal defense was about showcasing quantitative and qualitative metrics of your impact, but it was also about how you presented a body of work containing what you have contributed and what you will continue to contribute in the future.
    • “You had 45 minutes to present in front of a live panel…and it was a hard stop. And if you didn’t complete it, they could not grade you completely, or you would have missed the mark…. Your presentation and everything that you show in your body of work had to be represented in an executive format…. How do you represent everything in less than 45 minutes? …It’s a lot harder than you anticipate.” – Daniel Paluszek
    • For Daniel, this was also a test of his presentation skills.
    • Some thought Daniel might not achieve principal because of a short tenure at the company, but that only drove him to succeed.
• Are the skills needed for the panel defense similar to those that one would need to speak to an audience of executives and hold their attention?
  • Though Daniel never got a VCDX, he speaks to the importance for a solution architect to understand the functional and nonfunctional requirements, assumptions, risks, and constraints. The field principal methodology followed the same patterns and system methods as the VCDX.
  • Daniel says he left the experience with a greater awareness of the formal methodology he had learned through real-world experience.
• What would Daniel tell someone they should consider before pursuing a principal role?
  • “Are you ready to have that responsibility, and are you willing to lead the biggest problems and challenges in the organization, internally and externally? …People are going to seek you out to solve these problems that others could not.” – Daniel Paluszek, on the role of a principal
  • Danial was not a principal when he joined ServiceNow and had to go through their process to achieve principal. It was somewhat similar to what he experienced at VMware.
  • If you sign up for the responsibility of being a principal, you have to go execute. Daniel says a principal is setting the tone and narrative for the rest of the organization. It’s about setting an example for others while you execute.
  • Though the principal is focused on solving the company’s biggest problems, you may be working on this in addition to your daily responsibilities. Are you willing to put in the extra time required to do it? “You have to have the passion and the desire to solve these big problems…beyond your day job to really make that impact on a global scale.” – Daniel Paluszek
• How do you decide where to focus your time when juggling extra responsibilities and your day-to-day responsibilities?
  • Daniel says it often means you are working nights and weekends.
  • If you have a customer-facing responsibility, your customers should come first. Daniel made sure this was his mindset across both companies where he’s been a principal.
  • “You have to serve your customers and your organization first, and the other priorities come second. It was all about, for me, time management and time efficiency and managing hour by hour.” – Daniel Paluszek
  • It’s also important to have a discussion with your family about this being something you want to do. Keep up constant communication on this front. Daniel cites support from his family as a very important part of the equation that has made him successful.
    • Listen to the schedule Daniel normally works and the intentional focus on having blocks of time for his family.
    • One could approach this as a short-term deficit for a longer-term benefit.
  • On the professional side, you need the support of management and leadership to be successful in your normal responsibilities and the additional responsibilities of being a principal.
  • Daniel considers himself fortunate on both fronts to have support personal and professional.
  • Nick highlights the fact that leadership has to sign off on / approve members of their team being promoted to principal and spending a set amount of time on projects above and beyond their normal work.
• What keeps the role of a principal exciting now that Daniel has done it at multiple companies?
  • Daniel gets excited about working on the problems others have not yet been able to solve.
  • “Many times, I don’t have a clear path to execution. I’ve gotta go figure that out, and…I gotta build a cross-functional team. And I have to look at different perspectives and what we’re trying to solve. But building that methodology and working with like-minded individuals that are scrappy, have grit, that desire to build something great just drives me. I like people that are willing to…roll up their sleeves and get stuff done in the interest of our customers and partners. And I think that’s what motivates me on a daily basis. There’s problems anywhere you look or challenges. Let’s go solve them. Let’s go conquer them.” – Daniel Paluszek
  • Daniel considers every experience a blessing. Every experience is something you can build on to make yourself a better professional.

Mentioned in the Outro

• Did you catch the field awareness theme? Daniel had to educate potential customers and partners on SImpliVity’s solutions when he worked for them during the hypergrowth phase. This field awareness took on its next iteration when Daniel moved to VMware. All of the blogs and lightboard videos were creating field awareness for the community of cloud provider partners he served at the time and helped the business unit he worked for scale.
  • There’s an element of field awareness when we speak about the principal title. Other people have some understanding / awareness of the fact that these people get pulled in to solve some of the largest problems a company has or its customers and partners have.
• It’s worth distinguishing the way in which principal is applied to different roles across different customers.
  • Daniel as well as many others fall into the category of field facing resources (i.e., Global Field Principal). They serve a specific set of customers or partners (entities outside of the company at which they work) as part of their role. It could be someone who is an individual contributor in technical pre-sales, professional services, or even technical support.
  • For guests like Ken Collins or Max Kanat-Alexander, they were principal engineers, and their focus was software engineering and was likely more of an internal facing role. They still help the organization solve problems but might not be field facing. Check out their episodes for reference:
    • Episode 241 – A Self-Taught Programmer’s Banyan Tree of Knowledge with Ken Collins (1/2)
    • Episode 242 – Modalities of the Staff and Principal Engineer with Ken Collins (2/2)
    • Episode 285 – Contribute Back: Embracing the Open Source Spirit with Max Kanat-Alexander (1/3)
    • Episode 286 – Succession Planning: Delegation Skills and Technical Ownership with Max Kanat-Alexander (2/3)
    • Episode 287 – Scope Creep: Evaluating Impact in Career Decisions as a Principal Engineer with Max Kanat-Alexander (3/3)
• For some episodes that provide another perspective on the hypergrowth startup, check out these with guest Andrew Miller. We also talk to him about the principal title, and in his case it is field facing like Daniel.
  • Episode 166 – Management and the Hypergrowth Startup with Andrew Miller (2/3)
  • Episode 167 – Pause and Step Outside with Andrew Miller (3/3)
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