The Loneliest Job in the Building [59]
The episode explores the SE Rockstars Pre-Sales Leadership Community, a peer network of ~250 solution engineering leaders across Europe that addresses the isolation of SE leadership roles. The community operates through monthly online sessions with breakout discussions and an optional WhatsApp group for rapid problem-solving, with strict governance to prevent vendor infiltration.
Summary
Tim introduces the episode by establishing that SE leaders face unique isolation compared to other go-to-market roles—he shares his own experience as one of only three regional leaders in a 2,000-person company with limited peer support, contrasting this with how quickly he received quality answers from a WhatsApp group of SE leaders when posting a problem. Ava and Nate discuss the SE Rockstars Pre-Sales Leadership Community, which was created two years ago by two SE leaders who identified that all other go-to-market functions (marketing, sales, support) had peer communities, but SE leadership had none. The community launched German-speaking first and recently expanded to English across all of Europe as of September 1st to accommodate non-German speakers in France, Spain, and other regions. The community operates under strict governance: membership is limited to SE leaders with direct reports, excluding vendors, individual contributors, and hidden founders, with two operators maintaining discipline. The community functions through two main mechanisms: monthly 50-minute online sessions featuring a 10-minute impulse talk on a specific topic followed by breakout group discussions among 4-5 leaders, then a return to full group discussion, and an optional weekly WhatsApp group where members post real-time questions and receive rapid feedback from 20+ companies simultaneously. Topics emerge organically from member needs rather than predetermined content calendars—recent topics include forward-deployed engineering, compensation structures, and KPI selection. The value proposition centers on peer experience: members discuss half-finished ideas and failed experiments rather than polished presentations, creating practical problem-solving that often exceeds internal meetings. The community is entirely free with no upsell, funded by its sponsors. Tim addresses the time concern by reframing participation not as another meeting but as the only venue where SE leaders don't need to explain their role.
About this episode
Ava had a comp question and nobody in her company to ask. She took it to a community of 250 SE leaders and had twenty answers by lunch. Nate has watched a dozen of these groups die and wants to know what's different.
Key Insights
- Tim argues that SE leaders in enterprise settings experience profound isolation compared to peer groups in other go-to-market functions, with his personal example showing three regional leaders had each other and a pub for support, while their 400 engineers had each other and numerous peers.
- Ava demonstrates that peer networks can outperform formal internal processes—she received 20 quality answers to a compensation question in one afternoon via WhatsApp versus a 14-page company policy debated quarterly by committee, with two answers being better than anything she could have found internally in a month.
- The SE Rockstars organizers claim that community value derives from discussing half-finished ideas and real failures rather than polished keynotes, with members leaving sessions with progress that often exceeds what a quarter of internal meetings would accomplish.
Topics
Transcript
Hey there and welcome to Leading Pre-Sales, the show for solution engineering leaders who want to build teams that drive revenue and not just demos. My name is Tim and I'm the co-founder of SE Rockstars and together with Jan, we've coached over 350 solution engineers and their leaders across several dozens of companies. Every conversation you hear on this show is based on real coaching situations, real challenges, real problems that as leaders like you are dealing with right now. None of this is made up. We use AI to bring these stories to life through our two hosts, Nate and Ava. But the insights come straight from the trenches. Each episode gives you one actionable takeaway you can…
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