Automation Ladies
The podcast where girls talk industrial automation!
We interview people from all walks of life in the Industrial Automation industry. Through a personal narrative/conversational framework we talk about PLCs, SCADA, IIoT, Machine Vision, Industrial Robots, Pneumatics, Control Systems, Process Automation, Factory Automation, Systems Integration, Entrepreneurship, Career Stories, Personal Journeys, Company Culture, and any other interesting and timely topic we want to discuss.
Co-Hosted by Nikki Gonzales, Ali G & Courtney Fernandez - find them on LinkedIn!
Automation Ladies
From Beer Bar to Buildathon: Margarita Rosenkrans’ Journey with Ignition
When a chance conversation at a beer bar introduced her to the word “SCADA,” Margarita Rosenkrans had no idea it would spark a career in industrial automation. In this episode, Courtney and Alicia chat with Margarita—Sales Engineer at Inductive Automation—about her path from graduating in the middle of a hiring freeze to thriving in both support and sales engineering roles. We cover her behind-the-scenes insights from OT SCADA CON, the culture and community at Inductive, favorite Ignition features, troubleshooting war stories, and even how she used Ignition’s Maker Edition to build her wedding website. Whether you’re an Ignition pro or just automation-curious, you’ll enjoy this mix of career lessons, tech talk, and personal stories.
Thank you to Inductive Automation for sponsoring this Episode and the recent support of OT SCADA CON - where we were lucky enough to meet Maggie in person!
Find out more about the Ignition Community Conference happening Sept 16 - 18 in Sacramento CA and get your tickets to Level Up! your SCADA game.
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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.
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Get in touch with us at automationladies.io!
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Welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies. This one's not going to have Nikki, just because Nikki still has pneumonia, so let's send her some good get well vibes. But we do have Courtney. And then today's guest is Maggie Rosenkranz, or Margarita, which is a really cool name. This episode is sponsored by Inductive Automation, and we just came back from OT SCADA CON.
Ali:It's been about a week of getting back to the regular rhythm of things and it's been, I think, tough on everybody, because we all had lots of fun but also felt like it was unreal some of it. I think I'm pretty sure I dissociated like twice during it just because, like it's just a lot bigger than it was last year and we got really good feedback. Maggie works for Inductive Automation. I love Ignition. I think I started messing with it in 2014. And I just remember loving Inductive University because of just how easy it was to use and it was free for any technician to get certified and I thought that was like a really amazing way to just break into the market and they definitely did really successfully break in. It was a full takeover. Honestly, I don't know if, courtney, if you have anything you want to say about your recap of OT SCADA CON before we get into it.
Courtney:Yeah, I wasn't ready for it to end. Like you said, we had a lot of fun. I didn't want to go back to the real world afterwards Every single time. Really, what blows me away is the fact that there's so much to know and there's not like one person that's going to know every single thing, like every subject in that room, and it's one of the only places where, as a technical person, you can feel okay, like not knowing stuff, so loved it.
Ali:There was lots of brain power in that room for sure. I love the idea of having Loved it wouldn't have come to otis gaycon, because that would be weird. So everyone that showed up was just trying to share what they already know. So today's episode is about Maggie Rosenkrants. Can you tell us, Maggie a little bit about your background and how you ended up working in industrial automation?
Maggie:I have a background in support. I graduated with my degree in computer science in 2020. And I was just trying to find a job. At the time. There was a hiring freeze, so I was just looking for something, although what brought me into this industry was a gentleman at a beer bar. I was beer tending and gentleman was here. I was talking to him about my education, what I was doing for school, and he was telling me you really got to get into SCADA. And I was like what he goes? Yeah, scada, it's like traffic lights. And I'm like what? And he kept saying this word, scada. And I kind of shrugged him off a little bit because I was like I have no idea what he's talking about. I'm just trying to get my degree and find a job in something I don't know. And I had reached out to some of my peers to be like have you heard of this word before? Do you have any idea what this guy might be talking about? And everybody around me was like we have no idea. It looks very out of the bounds of what we're studying right now, which is programming and software, and so I didn't try to pursue that any further.
Maggie:At the time. It was within my last two semesters of school. So in my last semester I was in a database class and my professor, Kathy Applebaum, is a developer at Inductive Automation and she let everyone know hey, the company I work for is hiring. We make a data software and I was like I've heard that word before. It sounds like a good opportunity for me. And at the time there was actually just an open house and I had attended the open house. Travis Kotz gave everyone a demo of Ignition and I saw buttons lighting up and he made it sound really exciting. So I applied and I had gotten a job in support as a support engineer. So that is all my experience in industrial automation and now I am a sales engineer. I've been with the company for five years.
Ali:It used to be rough graduating in 2020. Because you talk about a hiring freeze. Honestly, nobody knew what they were doing. They were laying people off, not hiring new people. And when I graduated it was 2010, which was two years after, basically, the housing bubble collapsed and we had a pretty big, I guess, recession. So it was a similar thing where, like, people weren't sick, but a lot of people lost their homes or a lot of people lost everything that they had, and so there was no hiring at that time. And if there was hiring, I didn't have the grades for it. But what got you into computer science?
Maggie:I had originally started studying biology with no reason for why I picked biology other than just picking a degree. And from there I had said Well, I don't know what I'm doing with this degree, let me just do something that I do have an interest in, which is was the dental field. So I was pursuing dental hygiene and I wasn't getting the grades I needed to get into a program there. So I had some talks with my mom and she's like just pick something that you can get some certification in and just do that job. So that led me to x-ray technician just by random, and they had a intro to computer science course requirement and I took that class and it was very, very entry level.
Maggie:I think we had used like an Arduino to learn the basics of programming and I was like this is interesting, it requires a little bit of math, at least at the time, a little bit of math and some logic in my head. So I said, well, let me get a degree in something that I could apply to probably various industries. So again, picking a degree that I didn't have very much direction in, but I just wanted a degree and I just stuck to it. My mom pushed me. She was just like just just finish your degree, just do something, and it was an interesting time studying computer science.
Ali:A lot of people talk about knowing exactly what major they want to be, and like I'm in your boat, I was like I have no idea, and when I picked chemical engineering, I had no idea what that really was or what jobs really looked like at all. My dad was a real estate developer and before that he sold timeshare. So he's a sales guy, and my mom passed her real estate broker exam in the state of Colorado, but otherwise she was either a real estate agent or a stay-at-home mom, so neither of them could help me with calculus, and so I would take these high-level math courses, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think what I thought about was I didn't want to get a PhD, I didn't want to get multiple degrees, I wanted something that I could make money with within four years of school, and so that's why I think I picked engineering, and then chemical engineering organic chemistry killed chemistry for me.
Ali:I was like I don't like this anymore. I thought I liked chemistry Just kidding, I don't like this. But I stuck with the major and I was like well, let's see what happens. I wish people didn't ask 18-year-olds what are you going to do with your life? Because we don't know, they don't know you would have aspirations, I guess because some people are like I knew I was going to be an engineer since I was five years old. Well, most people don't have that inclination. I don't think, especially because you don't teach kids every single job type, you just let them play right. That's what you should do.
Courtney:Now, computer science, I think, is an interesting one because you had to have had some kind of I don't want to say natural aptitude towards it but some kind of enjoyment out of it. I think, because as a I mean just as an engineer I tried to double major and throw computer science in there and I failed my computer science classes because they were really hard, like it's not just math and it's not just logic, like algorithms and stuff, it's just really it's difficult to grasp and if you don't have kind of a natural like tendency to understand that stuff or enjoy that stuff, it can be really off-putting. So I'm always impressed by people who do computer science because that's, you know, as determined as I was, I could not do it. I had to drop it.
Maggie:Yeah, I would definitely say the logic is what attracted me to it, before I had even pursued computer science. I recall taking a philosophy class at the first college I went to, and it was like this, really basic logic, and that came really easy to me. I was like, oh, this is intriguing. But I didn't connect that to computer science until I started taking that first intro course. What I struggled with, though, was the math. I didn't realize how much math would be involved in computer science, and I was that kid who was in seventh grade taking remedial math classes. I had retaken so many math classes I should have a math degree, so that was a bit of a struggle and not all math is the same.
Courtney:So you know I get that I had to redo several math classes too. Like discrete math and like arithmetic are not the same math. Which one did you find hardest? Out of curiosity, like because all the different kinds of math pretty much are there in computer science.
Maggie:Definitely statistics. I really had a hard time reading a problem and understanding. What are you really asking me here?
Ali:I did not like statistics either.
Courtney:Same. Well, because it was always a question. Like you know, I don't know lots of things like population of foxes versus rabbits and stuff that I just you know. I'm like I don't care about this, I want to hear about electricity, yeah iIoT platforms.
Ali:You know these companies, from what I've seen, do hire a lot of people that graduate with computer science degrees. Have you seen the same thing? Do you know if there's a lot more people like at Adductive that also have like computer science degrees? Because I think I'm seeing a trend. I'm not sure.
Maggie:Yes, at least during my time in support, the majority of the team were computer science graduates, not electrical or mechanical engineering students, and I think that's just because we're a software company. And how do you get to software engineering or development? You start at the bottom. I say bottom in air quotes actually because I think support is underrated.
Ali:What was the name of that professor that worked for Inductive Kathy Applebaum. Okay, because, yeah, she said that. You know she worked for a SCADA company. I think that's the easiest way to say it, because I always thought that's exactly what Inductive Automation sells. But I guess the more over-encompassing word for it is IIoT platform, because it can do a lot more than just SCADA, even though SCADA is complicated enough as it is, but people don't know what to call it, and so I thought that's what Ignition was. It's just a SCADA and it's like no, it can do MES and it can tie ERP to MES, so you can do anything with ignition. Can you talk about what the difference between ignition is and like perspective for people that don't know?
Maggie:yeah, uh well, Ignition is the platform and Perspective is just one of the visualization options in Ignition perspectives. Um, it's a module that lets you develop an app, that's a web-based application, to do your real-time or historical or controls.
Ali:How many modules are there? There seems to be like it grows.
Maggie:There's a handful, a couple handfuls I don't recall the count off the top of my head. But for visualization there's Perspective and Vision, and then there's also reporting.
Ali:And I don't know if Courtney's going to be able to go to that, but me and Nikki have to go to SPS, so we're going to miss out. But like the times that we have gone to it, like we really enjoyed it, can you talk more about like what it is, how it's changed over the years, because I heard like it just keeps getting bigger.
Maggie:And it's still a community conference. Yeah, so we're going to have our community conference, ICC, happening September 16th through that's a Tuesday through Thursday and yeah, it's a, it's a community conference. We're going to have lots of sessions to learn different angles involving ignition. There's also some community and network based events that happen throughout the conference. So there's table talks where there's different departments hosting a table to host specific discussions. So last year I was in support and I was a part of the support table talks where anyone can come by and ask us anything that was support-related. I know sales engineering will have their own tables as well. And then some other sessions we're going to have prove it sessions. I'm not sure if you're familiar with prove it. I believe there was like a conference a little bit earlier this year we went yeah, we went to it, you went to it.
Ali:Yeah, we did. All of automation ladies went to it. It was really good.
Maggie:Yeah, I heard great things. So they're bringing that to ICC where they're going to have little sessions, I think, like Opto 22 is having one of their own to show some use cases of ignition. And then another new section this year is the CoLab, and that's going to be connection-based activity. So one of the things happening there is the design challenges, which will be just a mini version of the Build-a-thon. So we're still going to have the Build-a-thon, but then you're going to have opportunity to come in and take challenges yourself and there will be a leader board for those.
Ali:Can you talk about the Build-a-thon, like how that's set up and like what is it for people that have never heard of that, because it's kind of an exciting part of ICC.
Courtney:And I hear build-a-thon and I get excited too. It made me think I'm going to create something for more than just my salary, it should be two.
Ali:Battling it out or trying to prove something?
Maggie:The build-a-thon is a series of challenges that amount to the final Buildathon at ICC, and at ICC we have the Buildathon live, where the two integrators showcase their projects to the audience let's talk about, uh, your personal life.
Ali:I read you recently were just got married.
Maggie:I did, and you like did you meet yeah how did you meet him? So we met at work. I met my husband, joe, in the support department. We were just co-workers and then friends and now we're married and he is still in the support department. He is the enterprise account support manager and I am now in sales engineering, so I don't work that closely together anymore. But yeah, we met at work, that's awesome. We talk a. Yeah, we met at work, it's awesome. We talk a lot about Ignition at home.
Maggie:We built our wedding website with Maker Edition, which is our Ignition's free community home version. That was an interesting project and sharing it with my family, so we just gave our family a URL. It opened up Perspective on their phone so that they could check out the dates, the location we hosted our pictures there. So if anybody wants to upload pictures, there's a link for that. And then we also integrated Spotify into it so our family could just use the website to add songs for our reception playlist without having to go to Spotify add songs for our reception playlist without having to go to Spotify.
Maggie:So what do you like about doing sales versus support? So what I like about sales engineering specifically versus support is being on the proactive side of issues before they arise. So I spent a lot of time remediating issues after the fact, after things have already been lost or broken or just non-functional. In this role, it's really interesting to be able to talk with folks and try to prevent something from happening in the future, especially when we get to talk about system architectures, making sure that they are set up for success, for growth in the future, versus oh no, we ran out of space. I didn't know we were going to have to size up our server.
Ali:The support side. What are some things that you wish you had known, kind of like advice for people in support? I did support, but I did it for an OEM and one of the things that I would explain to myself before I went into it is that the people that are asking you for help are all kinds of levels. So don't assume necessarily because I would say something like check the fan and they're like what does a fan look like? I'm like, oh my God, so just you know the level of people, so I'd have to describe them like it's circular and it's black plastic. Get really into the details of what they're looking for. What are some of the challenges or things that you wish you had known as part of giving advice to people that do software support?
Maggie:I wish I would have been more open to asking the person I was helping troubleshoot what do things really look like on your side? It's really difficult to troubleshoot something when you don't have a remote connection. And then it's also additionally like extra stressful when you don't know what the other side of their computer looks like and they're saying I'm plugging in my device but I'm not able to connect. I don't know what's going on, but you don't know what else is what might be there. Maybe they have a router or a switch between their device and their computer. You don't know that and that makes quite a big of a difference to your connection. So I would definitely say be more open to finding out. What do things?
Ali:look like and even have them send pictures and be like show me everything you got going on over there, because then you could see like okay, there's a router. Or like what is this thing?
Courtney:uh, point that out okay, and you have to kind of take them at their word for it when you can't see what's really there, which is like the worst thing to do in support.
Ali:Um, because if they knew what was going on they would not be calling you. So usually what they think is wrong is not it. And I've struggled with that, where it's like they've already decided what they think is wrong, and I mean they care about making it run whatever it is right, whether it's the software or whether it's a coffee roaster, and so they've already kind of had their biases or whatever, and they've already decided what they think is wrong, and so they don't want to check other things. And you're like can you just humor me and just check this anyway? And sometimes that's what they needed and they're like oh, I didn't know that mattered. It's like, yeah, because you already decided. You're like who's supporting who here? Yeah, definitely.
Ali:I learned that troubleshooting just ends up being asking the right questions and not really knowing the solution you know right off the bat and being okay with that. Have you ever ran into a really long one that just like strikes your mind just because it took you so long to like figure it out, but then you never have to go through that same level of trouble again because you learn so much from this one worst support call.
Maggie:Yeah, there was one that I recall from my my first year um in support, and those are always the most memorable, because I'm extra stressed out, not only because you got this big problem, but also because I'm new and I don't know if I know what I'm saying is correct. There were a handful of issues that definitely went on for months, but this particular issue was an issue where they were losing historical data because their storm forward engine was full and we couldn't figure out why is it full? Why is it not getting through to the database If you don't know what? Our storm forward engine? It's basically a buffer between ignition and your database. It can get full, it can get full and if it's full you will lose records.
Maggie:And we were having a really hard time figuring out why it was full, why it was not pushing through fast enough, and we eventually took their Stormboard engine onto an offline gateway that was not receiving any data and we imported it and just waited. I think we waited a few days and after a few days the records did eventually go through. The problem at the end of the day was just that they were storing way faster than what their throughput was to their database. So now I know it's usually not an issue with the engine, it's usually just an issue with, not even an issue. It's just how much are you storing? What is the throughput to your database? What is that connection to?
Courtney:that's a good one so do you guys have some kind of central repository for all these issues that you've encountered? And then like when you start seeing them come up a lot like what is the what is the tactic for that? Because I've seen that handled a few different ways at different companies, but you start getting the same customer support phone call over and over again.
Maggie:You know, I feel like at that point you should initiate a set of actions like this is becoming a problem yeah, if it's, if it's a common issue, that's not necessarily like a bug with the software that can be fixed by updating the software. We will make like a knowledge base whether it's an internal or public facing knowledge base for the team so that they don't have to go through the beginning steps again and spend more time troubleshooting than something that can be easily remediated with an answer from that document thing that can be easily remediated with an answer from that document. But I know that we also will spend, you know, time communicating those common issues within team meetings and we have a pretty good amount of search functionality to search tickets and also within internal conversations to make sure that you know we're covering our bases before we're going through all that grunt work for something somebody else has already figured out.
Courtney:So somebody gets charged with recreating that issue and effectively making a white paper doc out of it for everyone.
Maggie:Yeah, Usually replication comes into play when it's a bug and at that point we go through our process to check with our teams to make sure that we can replicate it and fix it and put out a fix.
Courtney:Out of curiosity I'm wondering how much of your day-to-day that kind of thing occupies, like is it a lot? Is it 10%?
Maggie:We can vary. It just depends on the issue and also one of the things about support is that tickets don't stop coming in and we don't always have the time to dedicate to just replicating an issue, whether it takes eight plus hours. So a lot of the times we will have teams dedicated to those things so that we can get those, get through those and get back on the queue. It really varies. I can't put a percentage behind that.
Courtney:Fair, I felt like sometimes I spent more than half of my time doing that, so I'm always curious to talk to others if they feel like they're doing the same.
Maggie:Yeah, that's definitely a common thing that comes up in support where something doesn't look right but maybe you're not sure because you didn't develop the software, you didn't develop the module or that component for that matter, and we have channels where we get an opportunity to ask the team, and then developers are also watching those channels and if they see something in their subject area, they will say, yeah, that's not right, that's not how that's supposed to work, or yes, that's intended behavior.
Ali:This is why what is your favorite part of your new job?
Maggie:it's really that prevention, but also the. You know, the, the I guess in customer meetings not really's not really considered networking, but it's the meeting the customers. I feel like I'm meeting them as they are, for their role, so like if they're a project manager. I'm meeting them for that rather than I'm meeting them for a problem. Oh, that's nice. There's not a lot of relationship happening there, at least from my experience, and I think that's just because I was a little bit hesitant to F, because I don't want to waste anybody's time. You know I'm here to fix a problem. Let's do that. Move on Versus here. I feel like there's a lot more relationship building and I really enjoy that.
Ali:How long did you do support before you switched over to sales?
Maggie:So I was a support engineer for two years, and then I was a manager for two years, and then I switched to sales engineering.
Ali:I imagine that you get calls and you know exactly what is going on, because you've been asked that before. What are some of the common things that people call about that are easy to solve, or is it really scattered?
Maggie:or is it really scattered? I'd say it's pretty scattered only because a lot of the times, the interpretation of an issue from a customer might be very different from how you deal with the issue. They could, you know, say, oh, my perspective screen is broken, but really all they mean is I'm just not getting the data I'm expecting to see. And that's a very different conversation. Going in thinking, oh, I'm going to fix something that has, like a red overlay, a bad quality overlay, when really what you're going to go in there and do is ask them what is the data supposed to be? Where is the source of that data? How is it going in? And, you know, troubles you from a completely different angle.
Ali:Do they mostly let you remote in to their computers?
Maggie:yeah, I would say most, let us do that and the ones that don't?
Ali:that's okay, we can work through it, but it is a little bit more challenging how much longer do you think it takes if you can't actually like remote into there Double?
Maggie:So on average I would say a ticket could take 45 minutes to an hour and if you can't remote and maybe it's an equivalent issue it might take and it also depends on the communication. Might take maybe an hour to an hour and a half. It really depends on a the issue and be communication. It really depends on A the issue and B communication.
Ali:Okay, I guess we can switch over to sales. So what are some things that people consider when they're looking at, like, are you usually selling them a module or are you selling them on switching over from a different platform, or both?
Maggie:Yeah, all of the above. I would say most of my conversations have been. I know I want to get Ignition, but I don't know what I need and I don't know how to build it. I don't know, will I need one gateway or will I need five gateways? Which additions do I need? Standard or edge? Most of my conversations are like that, but I have had a handful where it is like today I had one where they were like oh, we're going from iFix to Ignition, but we need to know why. Awesome. I don't know the cons or I don't know the pros of the other ones either, and that was the nice thing about OT's data con is being able to hear what other people are saying about the other software.
Ali:So ICC, you said it was going to be September 16th through the 18th um where, where is it located?
Maggie:this year it's loaded located at the safe convention center. In past years it's been hosted at the harris center, so this new location is at least in square footage. It's double the size and that's especially nice for someone like me because I'm four foot 10. I am not very loud in my voice. So walking into the Harris Center and just having a wall of people and I'm like I don't know what to do with myself. I haven't even learned how to network yet. That's an incredibly intimidating environment. Learned how to network, yet that's an incredibly intimidating environment. Walking into ICC this year, I feel like I'm going to be able to breathe a little bit more, physically and mentally. I would definitely say that the OT SCADA CON gave me really good practice and networking to walk into this a little bit more confidently.
Courtney:You have the communication skills necessary to do the networking. I think people who don't communicate enough or who are super intimidated by it struggle a lot.
Ali:Do they make everyone that works for inductive like go to the ICC? Is that a thing? Or do they have like some people working in the office, like while everyone's mingling, or do they have like some people working?
Maggie:in the office, like while everyone's mingling, yeah, so not everyone gets the opportunity to go in support. I only got to go for about half the day, for one of the days, and this year at least, sales engineering, I believe, is going in full to the conference, so it'll be definitely a different experience for me this year.
Ali:Yeah, I guess it makes sense to have sales go into that. So let's talk about your experience at OT SCADA CON. I was very impressed with your karaoke skills. Can you talk about how it went? And I saw that, like you know, Dan White was holding the phone for you, so I think you were streaming to your husband, which is awesome.
Maggie:Yeah, I had to have my husband there for some support. I think there was two people in the entire room that knew the song I was singing and that's what I was nervous about, because I was like thinking they're not gonna get it, but the ones who got it got it, and I had my husband there for some support what else did you like about the networking?
Maggie:the networking specifically one. It was a challenge for me. The first half of that first day was really mentally exhausting for me because I felt like I was. That was really like my first time fully networking alone and I feel like I've gone to events in the past and I'm just you know, I will hide behind the booth, I will stay where I'm comfortable, I will stay with the people I'm familiar with. So this really pushed me out of my comfort zone and it really gave me a good time to reflect on, like what questions should I be asking?
Maggie:Because everyone that I ran into already knew ignition and if they had not already been using Ignition, they were thinking about Ignition. So those were some good opportunities to demo and show and just like kind of connect a little bit more personally and understand like what, what are you doing? And then I realized, okay, I should be asking what are they doing? What does it look like? So I got a lot of good information on how people are using Ignition and then also just the professional development. I feel like I gained just talking and listening.
Ali:If I have to go somewhere by myself to network, I will just talk myself out of it normally. So that's a huge reason why, like Automation Ladies is an entire like support group honestly for me, because if I don't have Nikki to go there, nikki can just do this stuff on her own. She could know absolutely nobody and just talk to anyone. She can just talk to random people on the street or just anywhere, and I can't do that because I'm too far in my head and so I mean I commend you for you know doing OT SCADA CON you know with nobody to, you know be with you. But I'm really glad that you were able to get like something positive out of it instead of. I know that, like Nikki has been to events before and obviously, like we strive to be as far away from this as possible, but you know she's been to places where basically nobody wants to talk to her and so she she wants to talk, like she has you know her, you know her talking points, but like everyone just kind of just wants to like shrug her off, and so I'm glad that like yeah, that this, this first time you being on your own, did it like kind of kill your soul in terms of like you know what it feels like to go out and like network on your own, and it's nice that people already knew what ignition is.
Ali:But yeah, ignition is really famous in our industry. So as soon as you say that like no one's gonna be like, oh, you work for ignition, like no, like the chances of that are really really low because, like the contenders or the competitors, like they just don't have anything, they can't hold a candle, they can't hold anything to ignition. And you know ignition is just yeah, it took off and it's just been massively successful. And so you're in a good spot in terms of like not having to defend your product and your product, you know, in some ways selling itself and you just kind of helping people guide or guiding them to what they you know, what they can be doing and how to just feel more comfortable using it, because it seems like that's kind of like the biggest part of like the sales job is like getting them comfortable with the terminology that they're going to be using and what it is all that they're going to be using and what it is all that they're going to be using.
Courtney:Well, do you ever find like I personally found this to be kind of fun when I worked for UR, and you know, when you talk about collaborative robots, like everybody's heard of them, so like I walk in and I'm ready to like have some talking points, I've got a whole plan in mind, and you know, obviously the other person's like oh yeah, I've heard of you are, I've got three URs, they're all doing a whole bunch of stuff, and then you're sitting there like great, now what do I talk about for another 45 minutes? How do you, where do you pivot when you get to that point?
Maggie:Usually, yeah, I definitely ran into that that first day, where they're like, yeah, I'm using ignition for X, y, z and I'm like, cool, now, what do I say? But for me personally, what I realized is I really should be asking is like how, what are you doing with it? How are you doing with it? Did you create your own components for this thing?
Ali:And how can they make it better?
Courtney:Yeah, what do you hate about it? It's an awkward question to ask, but sometimes you just got to find that stuff, stuff out that is a good question to ask.
Maggie:I'll definitely have to have that in my back pocket for the next event especially in robotics, people are super ready to tell you that stuff too.
Courtney:Like if you can't figure out what to talk about.
Ali:As soon as you say like hey, I'm here to hear what you don't like about it, they're ready to talk yeah, is there a um, like a, a pathway for, yeah, taking that kind of feedback, you know, up the chain and just being like or I think at this point Ignition's been out for so long that, like, anything that people did want to improve has already been kind of worked on and like deployed, I think. But is there a pathway that you know of for that?
Maggie:So one pathway is through our ideas portal where folks can go in there, submit ideas or find ideas and upvote or comment on it. The other way is just to open a support ticket. Support might not like me saying that, but me as a support engineer and also I've done this as a sales engineer I've heard the feedback and I play with whatever it is that they're wanting to improve or wanting to do something a little bit differently than what currently functions. I play with it. Does it make sense to me? Okay, I'll make a request to our development team. I recently did that for one of our chart components and I just asked is this reasonable? Is this possible? Is it reasonable? Yes, is it possible? Maybe, and then we go from there. So I find that to be really I'm trying to think of the word, but I don't want to dismiss the customer, the customer's experience. I want them to have a good experience. I don't want them to have like gripes about anything with the software.
Courtney:And even though the people on the other side of JIRA or whatever you guys use, you know, to open support tickets, might not want to hear that, you know, as a solution, but really there's no other way to like escalate issues if you haven't done that step at first, and it's the thing that makes it visible to everybody. So the greater good, even if it's a nuisance.
Ali:It seems like Ignition or Inductive. You know, Automation loves to do community-based events. They sent you to OT SCADA CON, but I've seen that they just love getting involved, Like the Maker Edition being free for people to use and if they can find a cause, they'll just help them use the free version of it. I really like that about Inductive Automation cause like they'll just help them use the free version of it. I really like that about inductive automation. Is that something that you've, you know, noticed in terms of, like their involvement in the community as much as possible?
Maggie:Definitely definitely something I'm noticing more now as a sales engineer, I think in support. I'm just behind the tickets, I'm just troubleshooting, I'm just worried about the problems. I'm not really seeing what's happening outside of the company, and now I definitely am seeing that a little bit more and I think I'm also just open to seeing that a little bit more. I've been to a couple college events. One was a recruiting or not recruiting, but career fair and then we are also invited to the uc davis college of engineering senior capstone. It's like a fair where all the seniors have their projects out and they're asking us for feedback on their projects. So I think they the company definitely does a good job of being involved with college students, which I wish I would have been able to be more part of in my college experience. But I'm here now and I'm trying to also stay involved in those sorts of events.
Ali:I think college students definitely want to see younger people, just so they can see themselves right, like people that are like not that far into their career, hear what they have to say about the jobs. So it's definitely really helpful if you can like show up and like recruit based on just like your experience. Yeah, I guess, what's your, what's your overall experience? I mean, we've talked about kind of you, um, but what is what is how? How do you feel about you know the entirety of inductive automation and your co-workers and then you were a manager. What do you think sets that apart? Kind of like your pitch to other people looking for a forever home in industrial automation.
Maggie:Yeah, I definitely feel like I've been lucky to have been able to work for a great company right out of college. I feel like the company definitely focuses on growth and maintaining employees, but what I mean by that is that Like keeping them, because it's one thing to hire and it's another thing to like.
Ali:Keep yourself, yes, from leaving so.
Maggie:I definitely felt like the selection or like the interview process was geared towards finding the best fit that's, not just the person with the best technical skills, but the right personality, the right energy and the right motivations and I definitely tried to keep that alive. As a manager, I had the opportunity to go into management through support and I don't think I would have been able to have that sort of opportunity at any other mainstream company. I think I would have had to show a lot more years of experience in not only the technical but also in other leadership roles, and I had no leadership experience whatsoever going into this. All I had was the empowering words of my managers at the time, their encouragement, and that was incredibly helpful. And I definitely feel that energy throughout the whole company with all of the departments that I've interacted with. So I do feel really lucky and very happy.
Ali:Did you enjoy being a manager?
Maggie:big learning curve, really, really big learning curve. I really like data and data analysis and as a team lead, I got to do that for my manager or with my manager, and I thought, oh, is this all being a manager? This is great. That's knowledge. I would say I wasn't, like, mature enough for that type of role. It's a big. It's a big responsibility to oversee recent grads that are support engineers or aspiring support engineers, and I had a team upwards of 22 at one point. That's a lot of people to oversee as well, and I could not. I just couldn't keep up, and so, hey, don't feel bad.
Ali:I feel like I'm still not, you know, mature enough to be a CEO. When I started my company, it was just me doing what I already know how to do, and then, when I started actually delegating work to other people, like that's the least fun I've ever had and I would say that I feel not cut out for it. So I know exactly what you mean. But, yeah, the human aspect, because people are not like machines. People have feelings and they cry, especially the feelings part. Machines don't have feelings. They're just like I'm broken and here's why. And that's it, humans, it's just so much more complicated. They're just like I'm broken and here's why. And that's it, humans, like it's just so much more complicated.
Ali:And then you have to worry about your relationship with them, but also their relationship with each other, and that's even harder to control because they have to work together and then or maybe they don't like a customer and you have to deal with everybody's feelings about everybody else.
Ali:And I think that's the most difficult part is, you know you can't just talk to people like they're machines, because they aren't, and, as simple as that would be, it doesn't work like that and so you really do have to have a kind of relaxed personality type, but also just like not take things that seriously. I think, in order for you to be a good manager of a group that big or bigger than that Because I mean, imagine you taking everything to heart for every little problem, like you can't do that, your heart will blow up. And so you know, depending on how much we care about detail or how much empathy we have, I think you could be a leader with too much empathy, and I say that as someone who has extreme amounts of empathy. My mom is the only one that's a little bit worse than me. She doesn't like it when I kill spiders. She has empathy for the spider and I'm like now I feel bad, but that thing was gross.
Courtney:Managers manage resources and leaders lead. People know people don't like to be seen as resources, even if on a piece of paper they are. So what you're saying and what I've been noticing is people with a higher eq uh tend to do a little bit better in leadership roles, because a higher iq is going to help you understand why the machine's broken, but a higher eq is going to help you communicate better with the humans around you. So the best thing you can do to be a better leader is raise your EQ, and I don't know like too much empathy is kind of I like the idea of that because, yeah, you've got to kill the spider once in a while.
Ali:You could go too far into the empathy and then now you're feeling what you know, all these negative things that your people are feeling, and that's a little bit too much, because how are you supposed to be the collected one to help and I do really love servant leadership. That's a huge one, Because if you can just help people do the best job that they can do instead of tell them all what to do, but then you have to have a particular type of working for you that are already trying to do things on their own. What are they like? A self-starter or an initiator? Those are the best people or the easiest people. For servant leadership to be really effective is you just have a group of people who are already trying to do stuff anyway, versus just being told you know, oh, you didn't do this and you didn't do that and you need to do all these things. Maybe they're in the wrong job if they're not fired up enough need to do all these things.
Courtney:Maybe they're in the wrong job if they're not fired up enough. Inductive has a good culture in that respect, like everybody I talk to seems to have that drive that you're talking about.
Maggie:Yes, everyone I have interacted with, or that I've seen, you know through Slack, definitely has that mindset. I would say as a manager, it was a little. It was very difficult to find a view and find that like I don't know, I still don't know how they, how you do it, I don't know how to interview properly, um, ask the right questions so that you really find that. Um, I really struggled to get through that and you know, sometimes we, you know I'd have someone on the team and they turned out very differently from how they interviewed and I'm like, oh, what do I do? And then I struggled with balancing the empathy and then you know, firmness with you know you need to improve here.
Ali:So know you need to improve here, so awesome. Can you talk about uh, where people can contact?
Maggie:you. If they have questions, you know about you, or? Yeah, definitely. Um, I would say linkedin is the place to be. There is only one of me, margarita rosencrans with an s. At least, from what I saw, there was only one of me. Thanks for having me.
Ali:Thank you so much. Everyone should go to ICC.
