Who is Mike Vittiglio?
I am a husband and father of two from Queens, NY now living in the Mohawk Valley. I’ve worked in technical support, software development, and sales over the past 20 years over a number of different verticals. I’m often prone to saying that I’ve made fires, put out fires, and now sell fire safety equipment.
Tell us more about your role in LaunchDarkly?
I’m a Solutions and Success Engineer which means I spend my days presenting our platform to the curious and helping answer technical questions as they arise during the sales process.
What is the most difficult part of your job? But the most rewarding one?
The most difficult task is getting the very intelligent and diligent to understand and accept the vision of a world where things are easier. Oftentimes, individuals who’ve conquered the challenges of their domain learn to live with the toil and pains that they see every day in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. It’s often like trying to help someone out of a dysfunctional relationship. Please note that I’m not talking about the scenarios where LaunchDarkly wouldn’t be a good fit (few as those might be) but where the solution is clear yet its value is downplayed in favor of the familiar pain.
Is there anything that you would change about your professional path?
No. I never knew that I would end up where I was but I’m happy and would never change that.
What’s your key strategy for the development of your company?
I spend my time finding different ways to showcase the usefulness of our various use cases. Technology is stubbornly unintuitive to the uninitiated and I make it my business to make it easier for the uninitiated to bridge the gap between “I don’t get it” and “we MUST get it”. I do this by writing up micro-apps who showcase the platform in easy to digest portions.
What do you think about the next period of time, keeping in mind the pandemic and the new business climate? How will your industry be affected?
While the tides impact all ships, LaunchDarkly has proven resilient in the storm as we facilitate a need that does not go away even when times are tough for our customers. This benefit is compounded by the fact that new customers, upon discovering the value of our platform, see the platform as an investment into their business rather than an unproven expense. Software in general is also resilient to the remote lifestyle as the tools necessary to operate can be taken on by the individual employees easily from their homes.
Please name a few technologies which have the greatest impact on your business.
Communication software such as Slack, Discord, Zoom, and Google Hangouts are critical even should remote work simply disappear. The ability to share with customers and employees in other locations as if they were on the other side of a window cannot be overstated. Platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, and MS Azure are also immensely impactful as a majority of working software relies on them to operate on a daily basis.
What books do you have on your nightstand?
The High King by Lloyd Alexander (I read this series every couple of years), Full Stack React Projects by Shama Hoque, and The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.
Because of the current economic climate our publication has started a series of discussions with professional individuals meant to engage our readers with relevant companies and their representatives in order to discuss their involvement, what challenges they have had in the past and what they are looking forward to in the future. This sequence aims to present a series of experiences, recent developments, changes and downsides in terms of their business areas, as well as their goals, values, career history, the high-impact success outcomes and achievements.
