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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional »
A Utility Player’s Advantage: The Work of Marketing in Tech with Erin O’Quinn (1/3)

3d ago 45:06

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Being a utility player in the sports world is one thing, but what does a utility player look like in the tech industry? Erin O’Quinn, our guest this week in episode 330, says it takes a willingness to learn, approaching what you learn as something that can help you later, and a willingness to advocate for yourself.

Erin is currently a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. After studying communications in college, Erin’s first roles were in marketing communications, where she became well versed in the logistics of events like trade shows and developed a distinctive advantage by saying yes to new tasks / projects (even a little IT support for her employer). Throughout this first part of the story, Erin learned what she wanted most from a company’s culture, what it takes to develop a corporate brand, and how to communicate effectively with executives. As you listen to this episode, think about this – what is something you could say yes to today that could help you grow in the future?

Original Recording Date: 05-14-2025

Topics – Communications and the Work of Marketing, Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies, A Return to the Tech Industry, The Strategic Side of Marketing, Communication with Executives

2:15 – Communications and the Work of Marketing

Erin O’Quinn is a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. She has conversations with account teams and end customers to truly understand how customers use specific products, the benefits they have received from those products over time, and how success has impacted careers, teams, and the overall business. Erin tells us it’s a fun job.
From where Erin began, it’s been a long, winding road to get to where she is now.
Upon starting college, Erin planned to be a psychologist and counsel people in a 1-1 staetting. The school she attended (University of California San Diego) had a psychology program more focused on behavioral psychology and less on how people interact. As a result, Erin decided to pivot to studying communications. This ended up being a natural shift.
- The communications program focused on mass communications and communications as a social and cultural force. Human information processing concepts brought in some psychology as well.
- Erin refers to herself as a media junkie who wanted to understand how it influences people
Some of Erin’s first roles were in MarCom positions, but not all were with technology companies.
- MarCom is marketing communications, but with marketing in general, the same terms can mean different things at different companies.
- “If you ever look at job descriptions and you see a title, you can’t just go by the name of a job. You actually have to look at what the job description is to figure out if what you think it says is what it is. But marketing communications at that point meant more of the mass communications…creating publications….” – Erin O’Quinn, on MarCom positions
- In college Erin became the editor of a newsletter. She learned how to do layouts and graphic design in addition to doing some writing.
- Her first job was with the San Jose Real Estate Board, made up of local chapters to help members become realtors. Erin would send out the newsletter, but the company also realized Erin knew how to fix computers. When people had questions and IT was not around, people would ask Erin. She became the IT department and the marketing department.
- The company was switching from Novell to Microsoft. They wanted Erin to help with this transition, and when she asked for formal training to fill knowledge and experience gaps, it was denied. She was worried a poor outcome could be career limiting and began looking for other jobs. The transition to Microsoft, however, did go smoothly.
“But I did switch from there into tech because I realized I enjoyed the idea of being a little more hands on with technology, but I like the marketing side. So, I went to a tech company….” – Erin O’Quinn
- The company Erin worked for developed a back end for search engines like HotBot and Yahoo.
- Erin accepted a job as an executive assistant at this company but told her boss she would only take it with the understanding that she did not want to be an executive assistant in a year.
- “I told my boss at the time, ‘I will take this job if you promise me that I won’t be your assistant in a year. ‘I knew that I wasn’t somebody who wanted to be an administrative assistant. I wanted in at the company because it sounded fun and the people were interesting. And I loved not being the smartest person in the room. I was guaranteed to do that at this company. I knew I would be learning all the time.” – Erin O’Quinn
- Around 6 weeks into the job, Erin was asked to help support the company at a trade show. She expressed a willingness to learn and said yes to her first trade show.
- The next time she was asked to support the company at a trade show, Erin had to run the entire event in New York City to fill in for a colleague. She learned about unions, working with vendors, and how to set up the booth at the trade show. Since it was a small team, Erin needed to know how to demo the company’s products, who to ask if there were in-depth questions she could not answer, and how to talk to anyone who came by the booth whether it was a CIO or any other member of a technical team.
- Erin loved the events side. It allowed her to work with many different people at the company. She liked the challenge of either figuring things out or failing.
Were there other reasons Erin didn’t want to be an executive assistant long-term?
- Being an executive assistant (or EA) was more about taking care of an individual and less about doing the work of marketing. Erin was more interested in the marketing work than being a support character.
- Erin had worked in her own department before and was changing jobs to become someone’s assistant. After developing skills and experience in her previous marketing role, she wanted to keep growing. Many assistants stay in those roles for a long time, and Erin didn’t want to stay in it long because the shift to something else is more difficult if you are an assistant for a long time.
- Erin wanted to set the agenda and intention with her boss up front, and it made things easier to shift out of the assistant role later.
  - “I wasn’t asking for crazy money. I wasn’t asking for a lot of things, but if I was willing to fight for myself that way up front, he knew that I was going to be somebody interesting to work with. And I think that actually helped me get the job…. I love being a generalist whenever possible. It’s more fun.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Erin was focused on ambition and optionality.
Had Erin been interested in writing up to the point of doing the newsletter to make her a well-rounded communicator going into marketing?
- When in college, Erin assumed communications entailed either being in front of a camera or writing, thinking she needed to build skills in both areas.
- Erin tells the story of working with her roommate to resurrect a specific newsletter for the university. Erin used her experience in layouts, and the roommate did the editorial part. Even after Erin and her roommate left the university, the newsletter continued to build momentum thanks to their initial commitment to get it going again.
- Erin also did an internship at a phone book company. The phone books were published in English, Tagalog, Chinese, and Vietnamese to serve a large Asian community in San Diego. Erin would take translated ads and do layouts as well as reach out to local politicians to get endorsement letters.
- “I started advocacy in college, whether I knew it or not. I just followed the transcript and did it. It kind of got me set up, I guess, to do it later in life.” – Erin O’Quinn

12:28 – Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies

What did the moves look like once Erin moved on from the executive assistant role?
- Erin grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and has been surrounded by tech since birth. Some of her family members worked for HP for their entire career.
- Erin’s mother works in the biotech / pharmaceutical industry, and her dad worked as a punch card programmer before he went on to a career in sales.
- Tech was booming at this time. There were lots of job opportunities, and it seemed like a good industry to enter.
- The web was still pretty new. Erin had learned HTML in college and filled in once when a webmaster (or website administrator) left.
- Erin worked on promotional items and ran events. Because she was good at it, Erin was asked to run all the trade shows for the company, and it became her primary job.
  - This involved things like handling logistics, working with product management and product marketing teams, and sometimes working with development teams. Erin had to ensure the technical specifications for what would be demonstrated in the booth were properly captured and that the booth was set up properly.
  - Understanding servers and networking was very helpful because Erin helped set up the booth and especially in cases where they had technical issues at the booth.
  - Erin needed to know other things like how to have people behave, how they should dress, the colors to use, and how to handle marketing for the events.
  - Erin says she eventually became the promo queen at this company.
- “I was always having fun and always getting to learn. I never felt like I was being stuck in a role. If I wanted to know something different, I asked the question. That first tech company I worked at was very happy to get me involved. They had a very open culture.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Erin describes some of the cultural elements at this first tech company where she worked (during the .com era) – super soaker fights, barbecue competitions, etc.
  - “…Different levels of creativity. I loved seeing that it wasn’t just the people who were supposed to be creative. By outside standards everybody assumes that in marketing you’re supposed to be the creative ones because you’re coming up with the visual and the brand and the words. But I loved how creative the development teams were and how creative the IT teams even could be at times…. I gained respect not just for people’s technical knowledge or how they could wordsmith but seeing every person at this organization as wholistic people who have multiple skills. I think that also prepared me for being able to move into different organizations after that in a more meaningful way….It was a blast.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - The unique nature of Erin’s role allowed her to meet every person at the company that went from 65 people to 1300 people at one point.
  - Erin worked with events, internal events, and internal communications. She would assist with content creation for company meetings and handle the meeting logistics.
What did Erin take away from this experience in terms of the company culture she wanted for future jobs?
- Erin calls out the way people interacted and supported each other as something she really liked. There is a difference between doing an activity because we have to and doing it because we want to spend time with the people involved in the activity.
- “To work with people that made me happy to be in the office with every day was something that I decided I needed in a career, and that’s something that stuck with me….” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Based on the cultural exposure she’d had to that point, Erin was able to look at a new company and contemplate what about it she wanted to be a part of.
- Erin took a brief break from working in the tech industry after a time of layoffs at her company and worked as a merchandising coordinator at Technology Credit Union.
  - The company had a dual focus – expanding their membership and to whom they were allowed to market.
- Erin realized quickly into the merchandising coordinator that the work came in spurts. Promotions happened once per quarter and took about 4 weeks to handle effective. Things were quiet the rest of the time, and Erin didn’t like this.
  - As Erin began looking for other things to occupy her time, she found a couple of different teams inside the company with no support from marketing. The first was the business development team who would reach out to businesses (tech companies) and promote membership.
  - “And what I rapidly realized was that the people who were doing that were very good at business development at a credit union, but they didn’t know how tech people thought. They didn’t know their audience.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Erin felt her experience running tech events could help the business development team communicate more effectively with their audience. She created some marketing packages with branded designs and supported their events. The business development team needed to rethink items they might use for free giveaways because of the tech audience, for example.
  - There was a mortgage team Erin worked with to build out their first set of marketing materials to be seen as consistent with the organization.
  - Erin continued to expand her reach in addition to supporting the promotions each quarter. Helping those other groups as well made the job much more interesting to her.
- Did the additional work Erin did increase her value to the overall organization?
  - She believes it did. The job market was tough during this time, but for credit unions it is about growing and maintaining the membership.
  - Erin was primarily concerned about 2 things – being useful and picking up skills. Previously when she worked at the tech company, Erin was learning on a daily basis.
  - “How can I make sure that I keep that trajectory? Because otherwise, I will get bored, and I don’t do well in boredom…. So, I wanted to find ways to keep myself entertained, and I did. But it drew me back to tech.” – Erin O’Quinn
Did Erin communicate the additional work she was doing to her leadership in 1-1 meetings, for example?
- Erin’s manager knew what she was doing as did the vice president (VP) above her manager. Sometimes the VP would assign her exploratory projects or ideas to test directly.
- She would get random tasks. They didn’t always lead somewhere, but each one was an opportunity to learn something, making it interesting for Erin.
- John says Erin was a utility player in this role. She agrees and says this is a pattern for her over time.
  - Erin tells a story from her previous role at Inktomi that involved buying as many matchbox Ferraris she could purchase in San Francisco as a joke for the CEO of the company.
  - “I always ended up with these very bizarre tasks because I would just be up for whatever was needed.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Breaks between event seasons gave her the room to be creative in the work she took on.

23:55 – A Return to the Tech Industry

When Erin transitioned back to working for a tech company after working at the credit union, she returned to a MarCom role and at first wondered what the pace would be like. She worked for a startup-like public company called Opsware.
Erin’s first project after getting the job was focused on the company’s new executive briefing center. She tells the story of needing to have a chairman make some final decisions and then slammed into him by accident in one of the office hallways upon their first meeting.
- Despite the collision, she did get the answers needed, and her managers were impressed.
Part of Erin’s work was doing case studies and trying to establish a corporate brand.
- The company was also building their sales teams around this time. Erin would work with different groups to make usable tools to serve those teams.
- As the company became more event focused, Erin jumped back into trade shows again, and since this was her comfort zone, anything else they did would be easy.
- “I was able to bring some of my expertise in the job, but I was also spending a good portion of the time learning about the technology…. I went from a caching and search engine company into a true enterprise software company. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know how the sales teams would operate. I didn’t understand what was needed, but I learned fast because everybody was willing to talk to me and tell me. Being in a company where they want you to learn and they force you to learn, I was all in for drinking from that fire hose.” – Erin O’Quinn
- When Erin asked people to show her how to demo products so she could fill in for anyone working the booth as needed, they were a little surprised. Erin was insistent on learning the products, only wanting people to help her understand the pitch for a basic understanding, which opened the door to pass a conversation on to someone else if more depth was needed. As the product portfolio expanded, Erin continued to learn the remainder of the products.
Erin refers to her time at Opsware as fast, furious, and fun. She later would go on to work for VMware but realized she was at the first VMworld event representing Opsware. At that conference she ran into a number of former colleagues from Inktomi.
- “That is when I realized I guess how strong of a world technology really was and that who you know sometimes comes in handy.” – Erin O’Quinn
Erin also tells us she stores many different pieces of information in her memory that she will find a use for some time later.
- How you packed a suitcase might help give you a creative idea for shipping something to an event, for example.
- Candy is expensive to get through customs when going to Europe, for example.
- Certain things we learn which we will never forget come in handy in other parts of our job.

28:29 – The Strategic Side of Marketing

In addition to tactical items, did Erin get involved in some of the strategic sides of marketing like cultivating the voice of the brand?
- Erin says she worked on a lot of the presentations for the company.
- She cannot take credit for the voice of the company but was able to work with a marketing agency her company worked with. They had to figure out how to make something look simple and complicated at the same time or prove the complexity was there without showing it to make the message more accessible to people.
- Erin worked on creating the visual identity of the company and not specifically the brand or logo. Part of that work was translating what they wanted (which might be complex words) to someone who was very graphically inclined in a way that was understandable.
- “How do these pieces of information get carried through so that it can be explained either very simply, or prove that complexity to show that we’re handling the complexity in a simple way? That process definitely has helped me along the way…. It was learning new skills more around translation and connecting than it was about how to build a strategy for that company until we were acquired, and then I got a chance to do a little bit more hands on with some of the strategic planning.” – Erin O’Quinn, on developing a visual identity for the company
- Opsware was acquired by HP and became part of HP Software. Once this happened, Erin was one of the only people from Opsware who was not placed in product marketing. They left Erin in corporate marketing, but she did not really fit into a specific bucket because she is a generalist.
  - The event team thought Erin worked for them for a long time, but they later realized she was not part of their org chart. Erin still supported some of their events.
  - Erin was able to work with the brand team, the search engine optimization team, and some others.
  - “Every skill you pick up at some point in your career is going to help you some place else whether you know it or not. That would be one of the biggest things I could stress in that journey for me.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - In working with the brand team, Erin also worked with executive communications for different types of events (a user conference, a sales event, etc.). She was more focused on logistics but got to be in the room to hear conversations about how to convey strategy.
  - “So, I didn’t shape it. I never would take credit for any of those parts, but being there and being in that room where it happens, you learn a lot as to how that works…. You can see the process and then extrapolate that into something else that you can actually build yourself later.” – Erin O’Quinn

32:52 – Communication with Executives

Did Erin apply the thing she was learning from being a part of the executive communications in her own communication with executives? This is very difficult for the individual contributor.
- Erin says her first 3 jobs working in small organizations really prepared her for this. She knew the CEO at each of those companies on a first name basis. This experience built a fearlessness when communicating with executives.
- Erin tells the story of a developer who came to her at one of these companies and said he wanted to start a cricket team. When Erin encouraged him to go speak to the CFO (whom she knew on a first name basis), he was terrified. Erin offered to introduce this person to the CFO to make it easier.
- “By knowing them and them knowing me and becoming more comfortable just remembering that they’re people before they are anything else made it much more comfortable for me to do that. So, I do feel privileged that I had that opportunity, but it stuck with me.” – Erin O’Quinn
- When we speak to executives as experts in what we do, we need to remember executives are experts in what they do (running something much bigger).
  - Understand what an executive’s position is and what matters to them about what you’re going to ask. You might need to give them more context to understand the full details of what you’re asking or understand that you’re asking the wrong person.
  - If you need an executive’s buy in on something, Erin suggests getting to know the person’s executive assistant.
  - “They are much more approachable as a rule, and they are the gate keepers to a lot of executives. So never, ever, in any company treat an executive assistant poorly because they are the most helpful people on the planet. Or they can be very difficult if you treat them badly.” – Erin O’Quinn, on treating executive assistants well.
  - Executive assistants will let you know what your level of access is to an executive.
  - Never take it personally if an executive assistant provides feedback on a better way to approach something. Take it as information they are giving you to help you.
- When someone tries to help us by explaining their expertise, we should listen and not take it as a critique.
  - “A lot of people can take critique very personally, and the only way to grow, I think, is to be given guidance. If everything that you do is perfect the first time, you don’t get an opportunity to learn because you don’t understand how to fix something. It just means you’re lucky in some situations…or you’re not stretching. If you’re not willing to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while, you’re not going to get that chance to grow…. If somebody offers you an opportunity, unless you know you can’t really put the time into it, say yes. Say yes as often as your schedule will allow because it’s some form of a skill that will help you…. Don’t necessarily go too far backwards, but if something is new, sideways or up…say yes because you never know what skill or what contact or what benefit you’re going to get out of that.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - John says we’ve boiled down this pattern to “if you’re always comfortable, you are never growing.”
  - If Erin gets too comfortable, she gets bored. Boredom is her brain’s way of saying she isn’t doing enough and to try something else.
- How do we know what we should say no to?
  - We should not take on more than we can physically do or our time will allow us to do successfully.
  - If we need to sacrifice quality in our base work for something, it is not something we should do.
  - For things you really want to do but really don’t have the time, Erin would recommend addressing it with your manager. Communicate the value of what you want to do, and ask if there’s a way to make better use of your time to do it.
  - Be willing to advocate for yourself with your management in this way. This shows initiative and indicates career growth. It might let your manager know that you’d like to do more or take on more responsibility, and it gives them an opportunity to provide some of that rather than you seeking it elsewhere.
  - “Don’t be afraid to have the conversation with your manager. If they say no, then you know where they stand, and that’s not a bad thing either because sometimes they are also doing things to protect you. They may know something big is coming, and they don’t want you to take on something you can’t handle because more is coming in short order.” – Erin O’Quinn

Mentioned in the Outro

We can advocate for ourselves or the work we do and its impact / value.
- When Erin reached out to local politicians for endorsements, it was about the work and its impact. The story was similar when Erin started helping other teams inside the credit union who did not have support from marketing. She knew her work would be valuable to help them.
  - When advocating for the work we do, be sure to communicate the work you do and the impact you’re making in 1-1 meetings with your manager. Erin did this, and we think it’s part of the reason she was given more and more responsibilities.
- Erin advocated for herself and her career in when taking the role as an executive assistant through the transparent conversation she had with her manager at the time. Erin also advocated for herself when it came to having others show her how to demo products in the booth at a trade show.
We also see an element of how industry expertise can apply to another company not focused on the same industry.
- Erin used her knowledge of working at a technology company to help co-workers at the credit union understand technology professionals as an audience to improve the message.
- Maybe you have a deep expertise in regulatory compliance or working through audits. Maybe you’ve worked for a service provider or hosting company and can take some of what you have learned to another company to improve their operations. Maybe you worked at a technology vendor or value added reseller and can help improve vendor relationships for the company.
- Amy Arnold used her expertise from working in the public sector to be effective in future roles such as pre-sales. Check out these episodes for more of the story.
  - Episode 281 – Packets Don’t Lie: Quality of Service for Technical Exploration in Network Engineering with Amy Arnold (1/2)
  - Episode 282 – All the Networking Things: Project Management, Pre-Sales, and Broadening a Technical Specialty with Amy Arnold (2/2)

Contact the Hosts

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- E-mail: [email protected]
- DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney
- Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman
- Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_
- Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube
If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

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A Utility Player’s Advantage: The Work of Marketing in Tech with Erin O’Quinn (1/3)

Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

15 subscribers

published 3d ago

MP3•Episode home

Original Recording Date: 05-14-2025

Topics – Communications and the Work of Marketing, Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies, A Return to the Tech Industry, The Strategic Side of Marketing, Communication with Executives

2:15 – Communications and the Work of Marketing

Erin O’Quinn is a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. She has conversations with account teams and end customers to truly understand how customers use specific products, the benefits they have received from those products over time, and how success has impacted careers, teams, and the overall business. Erin tells us it’s a fun job.
From where Erin began, it’s been a long, winding road to get to where she is now.
Upon starting college, Erin planned to be a psychologist and counsel people in a 1-1 staetting. The school she attended (University of California San Diego) had a psychology program more focused on behavioral psychology and less on how people interact. As a result, Erin decided to pivot to studying communications. This ended up being a natural shift.
- The communications program focused on mass communications and communications as a social and cultural force. Human information processing concepts brought in some psychology as well.
- Erin refers to herself as a media junkie who wanted to understand how it influences people
Some of Erin’s first roles were in MarCom positions, but not all were with technology companies.
- MarCom is marketing communications, but with marketing in general, the same terms can mean different things at different companies.
- “If you ever look at job descriptions and you see a title, you can’t just go by the name of a job. You actually have to look at what the job description is to figure out if what you think it says is what it is. But marketing communications at that point meant more of the mass communications…creating publications….” – Erin O’Quinn, on MarCom positions
- In college Erin became the editor of a newsletter. She learned how to do layouts and graphic design in addition to doing some writing.
- Her first job was with the San Jose Real Estate Board, made up of local chapters to help members become realtors. Erin would send out the newsletter, but the company also realized Erin knew how to fix computers. When people had questions and IT was not around, people would ask Erin. She became the IT department and the marketing department.
- The company was switching from Novell to Microsoft. They wanted Erin to help with this transition, and when she asked for formal training to fill knowledge and experience gaps, it was denied. She was worried a poor outcome could be career limiting and began looking for other jobs. The transition to Microsoft, however, did go smoothly.
“But I did switch from there into tech because I realized I enjoyed the idea of being a little more hands on with technology, but I like the marketing side. So, I went to a tech company….” – Erin O’Quinn
- The company Erin worked for developed a back end for search engines like HotBot and Yahoo.
- Erin accepted a job as an executive assistant at this company but told her boss she would only take it with the understanding that she did not want to be an executive assistant in a year.
- “I told my boss at the time, ‘I will take this job if you promise me that I won’t be your assistant in a year. ‘I knew that I wasn’t somebody who wanted to be an administrative assistant. I wanted in at the company because it sounded fun and the people were interesting. And I loved not being the smartest person in the room. I was guaranteed to do that at this company. I knew I would be learning all the time.” – Erin O’Quinn
- Around 6 weeks into the job, Erin was asked to help support the company at a trade show. She expressed a willingness to learn and said yes to her first trade show.
- The next time she was asked to support the company at a trade show, Erin had to run the entire event in New York City to fill in for a colleague. She learned about unions, working with vendors, and how to set up the booth at the trade show. Since it was a small team, Erin needed to know how to demo the company’s products, who to ask if there were in-depth questions she could not answer, and how to talk to anyone who came by the booth whether it was a CIO or any other member of a technical team.
- Erin loved the events side. It allowed her to work with many different people at the company. She liked the challenge of either figuring things out or failing.
Were there other reasons Erin didn’t want to be an executive assistant long-term?
- Being an executive assistant (or EA) was more about taking care of an individual and less about doing the work of marketing. Erin was more interested in the marketing work than being a support character.
- Erin had worked in her own department before and was changing jobs to become someone’s assistant. After developing skills and experience in her previous marketing role, she wanted to keep growing. Many assistants stay in those roles for a long time, and Erin didn’t want to stay in it long because the shift to something else is more difficult if you are an assistant for a long time.
- Erin wanted to set the agenda and intention with her boss up front, and it made things easier to shift out of the assistant role later.
  - “I wasn’t asking for crazy money. I wasn’t asking for a lot of things, but if I was willing to fight for myself that way up front, he knew that I was going to be somebody interesting to work with. And I think that actually helped me get the job…. I love being a generalist whenever possible. It’s more fun.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Erin was focused on ambition and optionality.
Had Erin been interested in writing up to the point of doing the newsletter to make her a well-rounded communicator going into marketing?
- When in college, Erin assumed communications entailed either being in front of a camera or writing, thinking she needed to build skills in both areas.
- Erin tells the story of working with her roommate to resurrect a specific newsletter for the university. Erin used her experience in layouts, and the roommate did the editorial part. Even after Erin and her roommate left the university, the newsletter continued to build momentum thanks to their initial commitment to get it going again.
- Erin also did an internship at a phone book company. The phone books were published in English, Tagalog, Chinese, and Vietnamese to serve a large Asian community in San Diego. Erin would take translated ads and do layouts as well as reach out to local politicians to get endorsement letters.
- “I started advocacy in college, whether I knew it or not. I just followed the transcript and did it. It kind of got me set up, I guess, to do it later in life.” – Erin O’Quinn

12:28 – Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies

What did the moves look like once Erin moved on from the executive assistant role?
- Erin grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and has been surrounded by tech since birth. Some of her family members worked for HP for their entire career.
- Erin’s mother works in the biotech / pharmaceutical industry, and her dad worked as a punch card programmer before he went on to a career in sales.
- Tech was booming at this time. There were lots of job opportunities, and it seemed like a good industry to enter.
- The web was still pretty new. Erin had learned HTML in college and filled in once when a webmaster (or website administrator) left.
- Erin worked on promotional items and ran events. Because she was good at it, Erin was asked to run all the trade shows for the company, and it became her primary job.
  - This involved things like handling logistics, working with product management and product marketing teams, and sometimes working with development teams. Erin had to ensure the technical specifications for what would be demonstrated in the booth were properly captured and that the booth was set up properly.
  - Understanding servers and networking was very helpful because Erin helped set up the booth and especially in cases where they had technical issues at the booth.
  - Erin needed to know other things like how to have people behave, how they should dress, the colors to use, and how to handle marketing for the events.
  - Erin says she eventually became the promo queen at this company.
- “I was always having fun and always getting to learn. I never felt like I was being stuck in a role. If I wanted to know something different, I asked the question. That first tech company I worked at was very happy to get me involved. They had a very open culture.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Erin describes some of the cultural elements at this first tech company where she worked (during the .com era) – super soaker fights, barbecue competitions, etc.
  - “…Different levels of creativity. I loved seeing that it wasn’t just the people who were supposed to be creative. By outside standards everybody assumes that in marketing you’re supposed to be the creative ones because you’re coming up with the visual and the brand and the words. But I loved how creative the development teams were and how creative the IT teams even could be at times…. I gained respect not just for people’s technical knowledge or how they could wordsmith but seeing every person at this organization as wholistic people who have multiple skills. I think that also prepared me for being able to move into different organizations after that in a more meaningful way….It was a blast.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - The unique nature of Erin’s role allowed her to meet every person at the company that went from 65 people to 1300 people at one point.
  - Erin worked with events, internal events, and internal communications. She would assist with content creation for company meetings and handle the meeting logistics.
What did Erin take away from this experience in terms of the company culture she wanted for future jobs?
- Erin calls out the way people interacted and supported each other as something she really liked. There is a difference between doing an activity because we have to and doing it because we want to spend time with the people involved in the activity.
- “To work with people that made me happy to be in the office with every day was something that I decided I needed in a career, and that’s something that stuck with me….” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Based on the cultural exposure she’d had to that point, Erin was able to look at a new company and contemplate what about it she wanted to be a part of.
- Erin took a brief break from working in the tech industry after a time of layoffs at her company and worked as a merchandising coordinator at Technology Credit Union.
  - The company had a dual focus – expanding their membership and to whom they were allowed to market.
- Erin realized quickly into the merchandising coordinator that the work came in spurts. Promotions happened once per quarter and took about 4 weeks to handle effective. Things were quiet the rest of the time, and Erin didn’t like this.
  - As Erin began looking for other things to occupy her time, she found a couple of different teams inside the company with no support from marketing. The first was the business development team who would reach out to businesses (tech companies) and promote membership.
  - “And what I rapidly realized was that the people who were doing that were very good at business development at a credit union, but they didn’t know how tech people thought. They didn’t know their audience.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Erin felt her experience running tech events could help the business development team communicate more effectively with their audience. She created some marketing packages with branded designs and supported their events. The business development team needed to rethink items they might use for free giveaways because of the tech audience, for example.
  - There was a mortgage team Erin worked with to build out their first set of marketing materials to be seen as consistent with the organization.
  - Erin continued to expand her reach in addition to supporting the promotions each quarter. Helping those other groups as well made the job much more interesting to her.
- Did the additional work Erin did increase her value to the overall organization?
  - She believes it did. The job market was tough during this time, but for credit unions it is about growing and maintaining the membership.
  - Erin was primarily concerned about 2 things – being useful and picking up skills. Previously when she worked at the tech company, Erin was learning on a daily basis.
  - “How can I make sure that I keep that trajectory? Because otherwise, I will get bored, and I don’t do well in boredom…. So, I wanted to find ways to keep myself entertained, and I did. But it drew me back to tech.” – Erin O’Quinn
Did Erin communicate the additional work she was doing to her leadership in 1-1 meetings, for example?
- Erin’s manager knew what she was doing as did the vice president (VP) above her manager. Sometimes the VP would assign her exploratory projects or ideas to test directly.
- She would get random tasks. They didn’t always lead somewhere, but each one was an opportunity to learn something, making it interesting for Erin.
- John says Erin was a utility player in this role. She agrees and says this is a pattern for her over time.
  - Erin tells a story from her previous role at Inktomi that involved buying as many matchbox Ferraris she could purchase in San Francisco as a joke for the CEO of the company.
  - “I always ended up with these very bizarre tasks because I would just be up for whatever was needed.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - Breaks between event seasons gave her the room to be creative in the work she took on.

23:55 – A Return to the Tech Industry

When Erin transitioned back to working for a tech company after working at the credit union, she returned to a MarCom role and at first wondered what the pace would be like. She worked for a startup-like public company called Opsware.
Erin’s first project after getting the job was focused on the company’s new executive briefing center. She tells the story of needing to have a chairman make some final decisions and then slammed into him by accident in one of the office hallways upon their first meeting.
- Despite the collision, she did get the answers needed, and her managers were impressed.
Part of Erin’s work was doing case studies and trying to establish a corporate brand.
- The company was also building their sales teams around this time. Erin would work with different groups to make usable tools to serve those teams.
- As the company became more event focused, Erin jumped back into trade shows again, and since this was her comfort zone, anything else they did would be easy.
- “I was able to bring some of my expertise in the job, but I was also spending a good portion of the time learning about the technology…. I went from a caching and search engine company into a true enterprise software company. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know how the sales teams would operate. I didn’t understand what was needed, but I learned fast because everybody was willing to talk to me and tell me. Being in a company where they want you to learn and they force you to learn, I was all in for drinking from that fire hose.” – Erin O’Quinn
- When Erin asked people to show her how to demo products so she could fill in for anyone working the booth as needed, they were a little surprised. Erin was insistent on learning the products, only wanting people to help her understand the pitch for a basic understanding, which opened the door to pass a conversation on to someone else if more depth was needed. As the product portfolio expanded, Erin continued to learn the remainder of the products.
Erin refers to her time at Opsware as fast, furious, and fun. She later would go on to work for VMware but realized she was at the first VMworld event representing Opsware. At that conference she ran into a number of former colleagues from Inktomi.
- “That is when I realized I guess how strong of a world technology really was and that who you know sometimes comes in handy.” – Erin O’Quinn
Erin also tells us she stores many different pieces of information in her memory that she will find a use for some time later.
- How you packed a suitcase might help give you a creative idea for shipping something to an event, for example.
- Candy is expensive to get through customs when going to Europe, for example.
- Certain things we learn which we will never forget come in handy in other parts of our job.

28:29 – The Strategic Side of Marketing

In addition to tactical items, did Erin get involved in some of the strategic sides of marketing like cultivating the voice of the brand?
- Erin says she worked on a lot of the presentations for the company.
- She cannot take credit for the voice of the company but was able to work with a marketing agency her company worked with. They had to figure out how to make something look simple and complicated at the same time or prove the complexity was there without showing it to make the message more accessible to people.
- Erin worked on creating the visual identity of the company and not specifically the brand or logo. Part of that work was translating what they wanted (which might be complex words) to someone who was very graphically inclined in a way that was understandable.
- “How do these pieces of information get carried through so that it can be explained either very simply, or prove that complexity to show that we’re handling the complexity in a simple way? That process definitely has helped me along the way…. It was learning new skills more around translation and connecting than it was about how to build a strategy for that company until we were acquired, and then I got a chance to do a little bit more hands on with some of the strategic planning.” – Erin O’Quinn, on developing a visual identity for the company
- Opsware was acquired by HP and became part of HP Software. Once this happened, Erin was one of the only people from Opsware who was not placed in product marketing. They left Erin in corporate marketing, but she did not really fit into a specific bucket because she is a generalist.
  - The event team thought Erin worked for them for a long time, but they later realized she was not part of their org chart. Erin still supported some of their events.
  - Erin was able to work with the brand team, the search engine optimization team, and some others.
  - “Every skill you pick up at some point in your career is going to help you some place else whether you know it or not. That would be one of the biggest things I could stress in that journey for me.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - In working with the brand team, Erin also worked with executive communications for different types of events (a user conference, a sales event, etc.). She was more focused on logistics but got to be in the room to hear conversations about how to convey strategy.
  - “So, I didn’t shape it. I never would take credit for any of those parts, but being there and being in that room where it happens, you learn a lot as to how that works…. You can see the process and then extrapolate that into something else that you can actually build yourself later.” – Erin O’Quinn

32:52 – Communication with Executives

Did Erin apply the thing she was learning from being a part of the executive communications in her own communication with executives? This is very difficult for the individual contributor.
- Erin says her first 3 jobs working in small organizations really prepared her for this. She knew the CEO at each of those companies on a first name basis. This experience built a fearlessness when communicating with executives.
- Erin tells the story of a developer who came to her at one of these companies and said he wanted to start a cricket team. When Erin encouraged him to go speak to the CFO (whom she knew on a first name basis), he was terrified. Erin offered to introduce this person to the CFO to make it easier.
- “By knowing them and them knowing me and becoming more comfortable just remembering that they’re people before they are anything else made it much more comfortable for me to do that. So, I do feel privileged that I had that opportunity, but it stuck with me.” – Erin O’Quinn
- When we speak to executives as experts in what we do, we need to remember executives are experts in what they do (running something much bigger).
  - Understand what an executive’s position is and what matters to them about what you’re going to ask. You might need to give them more context to understand the full details of what you’re asking or understand that you’re asking the wrong person.
  - If you need an executive’s buy in on something, Erin suggests getting to know the person’s executive assistant.
  - “They are much more approachable as a rule, and they are the gate keepers to a lot of executives. So never, ever, in any company treat an executive assistant poorly because they are the most helpful people on the planet. Or they can be very difficult if you treat them badly.” – Erin O’Quinn, on treating executive assistants well.
  - Executive assistants will let you know what your level of access is to an executive.
  - Never take it personally if an executive assistant provides feedback on a better way to approach something. Take it as information they are giving you to help you.
- When someone tries to help us by explaining their expertise, we should listen and not take it as a critique.
  - “A lot of people can take critique very personally, and the only way to grow, I think, is to be given guidance. If everything that you do is perfect the first time, you don’t get an opportunity to learn because you don’t understand how to fix something. It just means you’re lucky in some situations…or you’re not stretching. If you’re not willing to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while, you’re not going to get that chance to grow…. If somebody offers you an opportunity, unless you know you can’t really put the time into it, say yes. Say yes as often as your schedule will allow because it’s some form of a skill that will help you…. Don’t necessarily go too far backwards, but if something is new, sideways or up…say yes because you never know what skill or what contact or what benefit you’re going to get out of that.” – Erin O’Quinn
  - John says we’ve boiled down this pattern to “if you’re always comfortable, you are never growing.”
  - If Erin gets too comfortable, she gets bored. Boredom is her brain’s way of saying she isn’t doing enough and to try something else.
- How do we know what we should say no to?
  - We should not take on more than we can physically do or our time will allow us to do successfully.
  - If we need to sacrifice quality in our base work for something, it is not something we should do.
  - For things you really want to do but really don’t have the time, Erin would recommend addressing it with your manager. Communicate the value of what you want to do, and ask if there’s a way to make better use of your time to do it.
  - Be willing to advocate for yourself with your management in this way. This shows initiative and indicates career growth. It might let your manager know that you’d like to do more or take on more responsibility, and it gives them an opportunity to provide some of that rather than you seeking it elsewhere.
  - “Don’t be afraid to have the conversation with your manager. If they say no, then you know where they stand, and that’s not a bad thing either because sometimes they are also doing things to protect you. They may know something big is coming, and they don’t want you to take on something you can’t handle because more is coming in short order.” – Erin O’Quinn

Mentioned in the Outro

We can advocate for ourselves or the work we do and its impact / value.
- When Erin reached out to local politicians for endorsements, it was about the work and its impact. The story was similar when Erin started helping other teams inside the credit union who did not have support from marketing. She knew her work would be valuable to help them.
  - When advocating for the work we do, be sure to communicate the work you do and the impact you’re making in 1-1 meetings with your manager. Erin did this, and we think it’s part of the reason she was given more and more responsibilities.
- Erin advocated for herself and her career in when taking the role as an executive assistant through the transparent conversation she had with her manager at the time. Erin also advocated for herself when it came to having others show her how to demo products in the booth at a trade show.
We also see an element of how industry expertise can apply to another company not focused on the same industry.
- Erin used her knowledge of working at a technology company to help co-workers at the credit union understand technology professionals as an audience to improve the message.
- Maybe you have a deep expertise in regulatory compliance or working through audits. Maybe you’ve worked for a service provider or hosting company and can take some of what you have learned to another company to improve their operations. Maybe you worked at a technology vendor or value added reseller and can help improve vendor relationships for the company.
- Amy Arnold used her expertise from working in the public sector to be effective in future roles such as pre-sales. Check out these episodes for more of the story.
  - Episode 281 – Packets Don’t Lie: Quality of Service for Technical Exploration in Network Engineering with Amy Arnold (1/2)
  - Episode 282 – All the Networking Things: Project Management, Pre-Sales, and Broadening a Technical Specialty with Amy Arnold (2/2)

Contact the Hosts

The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
- E-mail: [email protected]
- DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney
- Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman
- Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_
- Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube
If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

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