Associate Customer It Manager
Resume:
Dean Cashen
Hewlett-Packard (Ret. ** yrs.) (V*.*.5)
****.*.******@*****.***
******.***@*****.***
Hewlett-Packard, Boise ID.
Sr. SW Lab Engineer
Once again, due to time working directly with our Customers and our field, I took a turn back to TCE.
As the first time, Iwas used as a resource regarding what our Field, but mostly our Customers wanted to best us our products. I engaged in several programs to that end and had planned to move back into the field, but … time interfered and I took, in the very end, an early early retirement. I’d assumed it would be short – the mandatory HP 1 year for my return, but that didn’t come to light.
Fortunately, despite the odds, I’m BACK! So if you will, please read on…
Hewlett-Packard, Boise ID.
1990 to 2001
Sr. SW Lab Engineer
I continued to work in our lab providing management and diagnostic tools needed for our ascending products. However I was doing this now in Boise where I was lulled to move to.
"Product Management Tools" are targeted towards the Customer for day-to day use. "Diagnostic tools" for use by HP support to aid in solving product issues. Of the two, Diagnostic Tools are far more difficult to develop as they require intimate working experience with device HW, SW, FW, usability, and the system itself. All these are my specialties.
My role here was simple: provide SW tools for both our Customers and our Field Engineers to be able to manage, adjust, monitor, and repair tools for HP Mass Storage products.
I started much of this when I found our Program team left one rather simple, but necessary tool for day-to-day requirements to ensure the product and systems were operating as needed. In particular, the team decided to use only more elegant tools such as monitors, touch control, etc. However, after the years I spent working with Customers, especially IT personnel, they needed “command-line” tools and scripting to perform actions such as installation, monitoring, and modification of a device’s needs.
So I wrote that. I wrote a full line of HP-UX tools and scripting so IT personnel could automate such things as device health, data needs, device management, and so on. I modeled it after the quite old scripting languages since most IT techs and engineers were comfortable with those. It integrated into the server tool we were writing. Following that I did the same for new projects along with other work needed to make our management SW consistent.
Hewlett-Packard, Fullerton, CA
Sr. SW Engineer / Total Customer Experience (TCE)
1988 to 1990
My role was brought up by the Manager/Leader of TCE. He had known and worked with me for decades and knew of my both technical skills along with my “over the top” focus on what the CUSTOMER wanted, and needed.
So I left the lab and did a quick review of how we ALL fed into what was best for the Customer. With that I focused first on consistency which was largely nonexistent. Our teams then were generally looking at the short-term; Come up with a product to compete with our competition, meet to discuss what it can and couldnât do, work to minimize cost, and most important, get the product out NOW. Little was focused on the full roadmap of setting supportability, installations, and growth.
I had found, again, what I had known: Supportability was treated as ‘someone else's’ responsibility. To aid the support engineers' importance in product teams I decided to outline exactly what requirements were important, nice, or critical for all of pour mass storage products. I had thought this to be simple and basic, but I was a tad off, and the final document was 100 pages long. Not that it was hard to read, I just made certain we didn’t miss anything. I held group meetings and was a bit surprised that most of my teams weren here in the US, rather most of the feedback came from Germany, Australia, Singapore, India, and Britain. In the end we agreed that we would use this document to insure our requirements were at use in future program teams. I agreed to be available to better influence our support needs whenever asked.
The second need was brought to my attention for remote supportability. I received a simple phone call from a woman I’d worked with regarding remote support along with basic engineering, and she had been directed to gain my attention to help lead a nascent project they were calling “ISEE” or “Internet Support Enterprise Edition.” We had a small version of this we would provide to Customers but this Enterprise Edition needed more.
I gave it some thought, for a few moments, and agreed. Years earlier I had helped with various versions of HP’s attempts at Remote Support but this was to be fully HP-wide across all products. This was going to be fun.
And it was. Time-consuming, but it was worth it. I’ll spare you from the details (As above) but I led a team of Engineers and Architects to define just what ISEE would be. In short, we came up with a two-way solution, one where the system and products/peripherals would use “the interweb” to alert HP to a problem or failure before (hopefully) they were aware of the fault. In cases such as our RAID storage products, a “rebuild” would be automatically started on the RAID drive, the Customer alerted, and an HP CE would be dispatched to remove the failed disk and install a new drive (A rebuild in RAID device had one or more redundant disks and should any fail the drives would work together to ensure no data was lost.) The project took our team nearly a year and a half, while in conjunction the engineering team would work from the bottom up to define, create, and test what our team added for a complete definition and release of ISEE.
Hewlett-Packard, Fullerton CA
1984 to 1988
Technical Support Engineer (TCE)
A TCE is needed for remote and/or on-site to lead field engineers battling unusual system issues. The TCE develops an "Action Plan" which is provided to the Customer to explain the proposed to the Customer (generally to their Head of IT) to explain the plan to them, answer any questions or concerns they may have and come to an agreement prior to invoking the plan.
This also includes both Product (future and existing) issues, along with future training and Product issues by design. Also provide CEs and Sr. CEs with advanced training HW and SW along with a strong focus on ensuring that the Customer is key throughout the entire process.
In my case I was either asked for, or expected to solve the impossible. Generally I would meet with the ACE and CEs to discuss the problem(s) and what had been done. I would put together an action plan in most cases and assist the CEs/ACEs as they were working online. In other cases I’d go to a site and meet with the IT manager and the CE/ACE managers to explain to the IT Manager actions we would take and why. Mostly this was to calm the IT Manager so they could rest-assured that HP was there to solve the problem, once and for all. The longest it took me/us was overnight and greet the IT manager with our results. Fortunately they were always positive results. (In rare cases I would have a very large mass storage dives, or a system to solve the problem.) From this experience I added this in my training classes, making it clear this was a last-chance “fix.” Better is how to train the CE as to how to prevent such overkill by training; always a better choice.
Hewlett-Packard, Fullerton CA
Customer Engineer (CE)
1982 to 1984
The CE is the person(s) who own several Customers with HP products and who support their operations/failures. Typically a CE will start the day to visit certain companies, either planned in advance or just to say “Hi” and “How is everything going?” Other times they are available to respond to a Customers problem system or to assist other CEs as needed. In short, their job is to be proactive in supporting their customer-base.
Hewlett-Packard, Fullerton CA Hewlett-Packard Fullerton CA
Associate Customer Engineer (ACE)
1980 to 1982
This role is essentially to learn. They will learn HP history, beliefs, processes, and technical devices (Enterprise) that later they will be assigned to them Customer Sites to resolve system problems and/or all concerns, questions, and how HP can help them as needed. In this learning phase they will learn "People skills," mentoring, presentations, along with technical skills. Such training will continue throughout their careers at HP.
Education
Devry Institute of Engineering
Full Scholastic Scholarship
MSEE
SW Development
C, C++, Java, Pascal, Visual BASIC, PHP, assembly-language (as needed), Python, because it seems rather simple, and it’s become fairly wide-spread. (While I have a BSEE, I found I preferred writing SW.) I worked with various other code languages, but these are at the top of my list.
About me
My previous jobs were far from my roles at HP. Some of my early jobs were:
Working for a man who owned a small butcher-shop doing everything such as stocking the store, cleanup, cashier, greeter, butcher (mostly from learning how to make Kielbasa (Polish sausage) and Bratwurst (German sausage.)
Worked at two K-Marts doing, at first, greeting, stocking, accounting for daily cash, and of course, bringing in the cars. The second role I had was the above, but I spent most of my time with longish hair, Levies and sandals and t-shirts where I would work in sort of an “undercover” role to find people tucking away things they hadn’t purchased. This wasn’t always “simple and easy” but it worked, and that’s the job I was given.
Further
This Resume is an admittedly “odd” format; it appears I write differently when a cellphone to write one. So I chose “Cover Letter <slash> resume.” I hope this covers enough of my long time at my other company, and I look forward to meeting you. – Dean
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