Tl;dr: IT guy gets temporarily conscripted into a “fixer” role servicing a deep-pocketed client, discovers procurement is exhausting in a completely different way than IT, comes away with marginally more empathy for users. Marginally.

As was portrayed in the documentary The Website is Down #1: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude, IT people have always been exasperated with Sales people. Disconnected means “broken”, slow means “not working”, user errors are “bugs”. And why on earth can’t I sort icons by penis?

Hi, hello. I’m a solo IT jack-of-all-trades for a medium sized company. Before this I was an engineer for a certain semiconductor manufacturer. Never worked in an external customer facing job in my life. Despite being completely unprepared for the task, I was temporarily roped into what is essentially a high-stakes sales agent/customer service role. Here’s the story.

My company is not in the US, and is in a somewhat backwater area with a relatively low-socioeconomic population. Everybody learns English in school here, but people with strong English skills are less common here than they would be in more developed parts of the country.

I speak at a native level.

Recently a very large, deep-pocketed US entity set up shop in our area. We were in a unique position to work with them as we are very much a one-stop shop for a wide variety of services and products, and even when it comes to things not directly under our umbrella, we have accounts with many different kinds of suppliers and can procure things on demand.

My direct boss, the owner of this whole outfit, connected with these people via infrastructure and earthworks services provided by one of our companies. To hear him put it, they did a 3 month job in 2 months, and the windfall as a result of that contract was large enough that they rebalanced that company’s finances because they were suddenly flush with cash. Good for him, he was out there in the field 16 hours a day getting it done, must’ve gained 8kgs.

A few weekends ago, I was talking to him (yes, I hang out with my boss sometimes on the weekends) and he was thinking out loud how he should find a way to introduce me to these US folk, because they need a lot of things, don’t know the area, and with my English things would move much faster.

Within days I crossed paths with said Americans while my boss was showing them around one of our sites (in broken English), he called me over and immediately dubbed me their go-to guy. To paraphrase him “whatever they ask for, the answer is yes. If you don’t know how to make it happen, talk to me.”

Within a week I’d facilitated more sales to these guys than our sales agents’ monthly target. They were thrilled with the arrangement, word of mouth spread and soon I was talking to 5 different groups, doing everything from setting up equipment rentals to dropshipping gym equipment to escorting groups of them to my recommended barber. They were happy to pay whatever markup we charged as long as we got things done quickly. By this point we were tagged as an “approved supplier” by their accounting, so they could purchase things through us that they couldn’t just order off Amazon with their magical bottomless credit cards. So while it started as things that were our usual fare like forklift rentals and construction materials, soon it was gym equipment and supplements, furniture and appliances.

After this first week, I noticed that my whole mindset had started to shift. Gone was the methodical problem solving and taking time to be thoughtful. Things moved FAST. Find this NOW. The truck’s there RIGHT NOW, where’s the client? Oh, he’s heading over there RIGHT NOW. Couldn’t find this product? Find an alternative. Go, go, go.

My mind was on afterburner at all times. Evenings were spent tracking down goods I didn’t find earlier because I was too busy double checking imperial vs metric dimensions or figuring out how to even describe this obscure product to the procurement office. I was distracted and absentminded at home, I know this because my wife irritably pointed it out. My brain was plastically deforming under the strain of a completely unfamiliar set of problems to solve.

It wasn’t completely alien. Some of my IT-related skills came in handy, especially when it came to technical supplies. My Google-fu is strong, I often succeed where LLMs fail. Where our procurement office would just talk to the supplier they know and accept whatever they offered, I’d actually Google the product, look at a few different suppliers, and point out that we can get this same product for a third of the price if we just order from this site over here. The client’s paying up front, so can we.

When the client asked for a bunch of power inverters, I immediately pointed out that we’re on 220V over here, and the client is probably thinking in 110V, so we’d better make sure we get step-down transformers and universal power strips if they need them. We ran into several bureaucratic hiccups when it came to our ERP vs the client’s accounting needs. Wouldn’t you know it, I’m the ERP admin and developer, problem solved in 20 minutes.

I like novelty, so as long as something isn’t excruciating for me, I’m enjoying myself if it’s new. Even with that going on, I can tell that there is something fundamentally unsatisfying about this work. It’s challenging for sure, I’m fucking exhausted, but it’s challenging in more of a visceral way then an intellectual one. You just push through.

Yes, I believe IT is more intellectual and thoughtful than sales/customer service, there’s a piping hot take right there.

I would be lying if I sappily claimed a newfound respect for sales/procurement people. These people have been my users for years, I know them. But the experience of things moving so fast, and any technical problems being an infuriating obstacle rather than a task is pretty jarring. I never thought they were psychopaths, but I’d say this experience has highlighted the pressure that they’re under to get things done quickly. And their unwillingness to distinguish their own fat-fingering from “the password changed” is a little more understandable, I guess.

Their unwillingness to learn basic Excel skills still grinds my gears, though.

This is a gold rush because the Americans are setting up, gotta make hay while the sun shines. It’ll eventually die down and I’ll retreat to my nerd cave and things will return to normal. But until then, this is going to be a very interesting few months.

And for those of you who will inevitably demand to know if the owner is compensating me appropriately given my role in the aforementioned gold rush, don’t you worry about me, I’m doing just fine. My home gym just got some upgrades. Whoa, now. Unclutch your pearls, my dudes, I did NOT skim anything. I just piggybacked on a big existing order and got a tasty discount plus free shipping. With my employer’s blessing.

Also, since decently written content is sometimes met with skepticism as to whether or not it was written with AI, I have this to say: strawberry tiddy sprinkles.