Unofficial DPTPB Nutanix Dynamic Visio Shapes: Why unofficial shapes?

Some of you might wonder why this shape collection or stencil set is unofficial. Since I’ve also created the G7 and G6 generation official Nutanix Visio Stencils, why not make them official?

Here is why…

Visio = Adult Puzzles?

No, not the kind of you might have thought of…

One of our favorite hobbies with my wife is to make jigsaw puzzles, especially funny comic puzzles by artist called Jan Van Haasteren.  Making puzzles is a good way to unwind from busy professional life by doing something else that requires your total concentration. Having been together for quite long time, you can run out topics to discuss, puzzles are nice way to spend some time together while enjoying the silence 🙂

For me playing with Visio is an adult version of jigsaw puzzles and I find it relaxing. Sure making Nutanix shapes helped me professionally and I have made some money out of it, but those are just fringe benefits.

Unofficial Nutanix shapes, V0.1

Originally I made some unofficial Nutanix Visio shapes for my own use, because at the time the official Nutanix Visio shapes had some quality issues. Later on I shared these unofficial shapes trough this blog.

Turning “Pro”

For some time Nutanix tried to improve their shapes inhouse, but after few failures they asked if I was interested in licensing my unofficial shapes to them and I ended up making a new official shape collection for them.

Making Nutanix Visio shapes has always been a “passion” project for me. It started with making tools for myself, making them to fit my style of drawing and continued to be that way throughout the official stencil set development cycles, at least for the most part. Getting paid to do the official Nutanix stencils was an additional nice bonus, but I would have probably continued my “passion” project anyway.

Once you start making money out your hobby, your hobby might get spoiled as it has tendency to morph into work and you might not enjoy doing it as much.

Money for shapes, great?

While I am grateful for the compensation I received for making the official Nutanix stencils, money or the lack of money started to limit the Nutanix Visio shape development. With fairly limited budgeted funds the development was sporadic and not much funds were reserved for possible fixes and advanced features.

After the latest G7 release of the official Nutanix stencils, I notified Nutanix that there are some issues related to NIC connection points and NIC shape orientation that I’d like to fix. I presented them options for the fixes, ranging from bare minimum dirty fix of few hours of work, 10-20 hours for proper fix, all the way up to completely redesigned and much more user friendly dynamic stencil set, around 170 hours. I even offered them discounted rates and flexible payment schedule for the latter one. Unfortunately it took few months for Nutanix to make up their mind and they finally sent a short note saying “Sorry, but we don’t have budget at this time”.

Back to basics

Therefore I’ve decided to “resign” from the official Nutanix Visio stencil development and continue the shape development as I see fit without having to worry about budget constraints. Back to the basics making the shapes for fun, just how I like them, at my own pace.

Since you are not paid, why bother publishing the dynamic stencil set?

I had just quit my day job at Arrow to look for more technical opportunities, I had plenty of time in my hands. I also had about 80%-85% of dynamic shapes already done, so I decided to finish the the dynamic shapes anyway, for fun without any compensation, to keep myself occupied. One can only watch Netflix so much…

Nutanix Technical Champion?

Nutanix Technical Champion (NTC) application window was also open at the time when I started to work with the Dynamic shapes, so I submitted my NTC application. I was hoping if getting funding for the shapes failed, at least publishing new fresh content about Dynamic Nutanix Visio shapes might help me towards getting the title.

Unfortunately it took too long for Nutanix to decide to not to fund the dynamic shapes. By that time NTC application window was already closed. As a result I didn’t have much activity to show for and maybe that is one of the reasons why I didn’t make it to NTC 2020 list. Maybe next year 🙂

Working with/for Nutanix?

Also I might want to work with/for Nutanix at some point of time, maybe putting some effort into Dynamic shapes might help with that one.

However landing a job at Nutanix seems to be difficult. I can’t quite understand or appreciate the way their recruiters are behaving.

Few weeks ago, one of Nutanix recruiters initiated contact and approached me with email:

“Hey Sami, We think your profile is a great match for the XXX role. Let me know if you’re open to discussing your interests and how we can help you accomplish your career goals.“

I replied within five minutes;

“Yes, I am interested. How do you want to proceed?”

Since then the recruiter hasn’t got back to me.

After a week, I used a link from their “intro” email to access their recruiting platform and was given an option to schedule three possible days for calls.

I also sent follow up email.

But no calls & no emails from the recruiter in question, nada, only sound of crickets chirping

Quite strange, maybe (in five minutes) they found a profile that was better than “great match”, maybe “exact match”…

This kind of behaviour by their staff does not exactly display “hungry, humble & honest” company slogan attitude.

Furthermore it doesn’t motivate me to apply open positions at Nutanix. Since their recruiters haven’t even bothered to reply to conversations they initiated, how likely it is that they would respond to any application submitted by me?

Update 31.3.2021:

I was contacted by a recruitment manager from Nutanix. Nutanix wanted to apologize how their employee had acted and I was told that the recruiter in question was no longer employed by Nutanix. Not sure if these events are any way related, but apology accepted – it is all good now 🙂

What a heck, I will publish the dynamic shapes anyway

Even though I would not directly benefit from publishing the dynamic shapes and there has been few hiccups with my relationship with Nutanix, it would be shame to keep the Dynamic Nutanix shapes hidden and forgotten in my “desk drawer”.

So I’ve decided to publish them on my blog, maybe something good comes out of it…

Naturally with unofficial shapes there are no guarantees, you can use them at your own risk and I may or may not update the stencils or may stop to develop them completely.

I wish Nutanix good luck with developing and maintaining their official Visio stencil set in the future. If you need my help, you know where to find me.

Downloads

Please visit the Nutanix stencil download page for the latest dynamic stencil package.

Since these are unofficial Visio shapes, they are not available on visiocafe.com, where the official stencil package resides.

Further documentation

2 thoughts on “Unofficial DPTPB Nutanix Dynamic Visio Shapes: Why unofficial shapes?”

  1. Hey Sami, your experience with Nutanix is not very encouraging. I have had similar experiences with recruiters, it seems to be pretty endemic at the moment, despite all the companies saying it is sooo hard to find qualified staff. Nutanix EMEA seems to be very keen to keep their headcount down. However rest assured your fine work is much appreciated by us that work with the product. Many thanks for your hours of effort from my part.

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    1. Hi Colin,

      Thanks for kind words

      I was actually contacted by Nutanix recruitment manager and he apologized on behalf of his staff, so it is all good now. Nutanix head count in Finland has been declining as well and most of the OG crew has “left the building”.

      Lately I haven’t been too active with Nutanix content, but that might change soon as I start as Presales@Fujitsu … Maybe Fujitsu specific Nutanix Visio stencils, not sure yet.

      BR,

      Sami

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