One year in Microsoft as an Escalation engineer
working in Microsoft as an Escalation engineer
I started my role in Microsoft as an Escalation engineer last year, I am proud of myself to work in such a great company.
Before this, I also worked on SQL Server as database administrator also used to work with customers for so many years however during this time I learned a lot, not only about the technology and Azure but also about soft skills and how I need to work with customers as all we know because of the high level of support which Microsoft provides to the customers.
Oh my gosh, so many things I need to know…
When I started my role, in a couple of first weeks, I was thinking where should I start? There are lots of things which I need to learn, so many internal tools which I’ve never heard of them and now I need to use.
I want to write a bit more about my experience, who is escalation engineers and what’s their responsibilities.
Who is an escalation engineer?
An escalation engineer is someone in the front line who work very closely with the customers who have tech issues and need advice on how to resolve those issues, most of the time the issue might impact their business something like a performance issue, connection issue, or any complicate things. The escalation engineer needs to find out what is the root cause of the issue and how to fix it and providing advice to customer to resolve the problem and prevent it not happen in the future.
Sometimes troubleshooting is not easy and an escalation engineer needs to engage with other teams to find out more details and advice the customer the best solutions possible.
What is different with previous experience?
the big different is, sometimes we do not know anything about customer's environment, when we got a call, we know the issue but if you work as a technical person you can tell how it could be difficult if you don’t know about the environment, network, database and other things in customer side, sometimes after a call, I found out the customer has TDE in their database, or they use key vault and some of them could change everything, that’s difficult and in another side, that’s charming I learn every single day here in Microsoft!
Unfortunately, we do not have a magical button that we can push it, and all issues are gone after that, no! we also need to check logs in our telemetry and check the error message to know how we can fix the issue.
Here are what I learn during the last year
I do believe been working in such a great company with awesome people and talented colleagues is a wonderful opportunity. And here are what I learned so far!
• Check the error message or log in carefully:
You might think that’s obvious however I like the way that I learn here to see and check the error message and logs, in many cases the error message indicates us to find some more details. I learned to pay attention to the error and warning messages in very first step.
• Check more details:
Like checking the error message, attention to some details is critical. If we see some unusual behaviour, error, or warning we need to check all details, is there any pattern for the issue? What’s the time frame? Can we reproduce that error again?
• Time is critical:
We got SLA for each case, and customers are first priority for us, for some cases, we only have a tiny time to find the root cause or at least try to find more details. TIME IS A KEY. One day I said to my colleague that we’re kind of like a firefighter! When we hear the ring (notification in our case), we need to move!
• Deal with customers
We normally have great customers however in any support role you got unhappy customers as well, sometimes the issue impacts their business and every minutes is critical, That’s a skill to know how you need to deal with the those customers and give them best advice you can.
• Need to be up to date!
To me that’s a wonderful opportunity that I need to know latest updates and how the features work, in many cases I need to deploy that in my lab to know deep understanding the details.
• Growth mindset and fixed mindset:
They something that the mentors talked about that from the first day. That’s terrific if you got a growth mindset I mean to persist in the face of setbacks, see failures as essential to mastery, learn from criticism and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. Like other things, they’re something that I still need to work on it. I know these also improve my life in other aspects.
• Feeling great after fixing the issue
If you like to be an escalation engineer, you need to like help others! Some days I am super busy but after fixing the issue I say to myself wow! That was nice that I found this, might even say that that’s a new thing for me as well. I feel very happy when I see that I could give the customer proper advice and fix the issue!
That was only one year, and I am looking forward to many years learning and helping customers!