What is the biggest difference between working for the OEM vs a third-party service provider? 

 

“You can only do so much at a third-party company. You don’t have all the information on the units because you’re working on units that you can’t put software into. So, you can only do so much. Almost kind of like a window washer—because there’s some times all you can do is walk up to the machine, wipe it down, and walk away because you can’t control it, you can’t do anything with it. 

 

It wasn’t that great of the gig. I mean, you got paid and you ran around a lot and the things you could work on were fine, but there’s a lot of things you couldn’t work on at all.” 

 

 

What are some common issues you encounter in the field?

 

“It depends on the type of site it is. The big data centers all have pretty clean stuff, but the smaller guys often have filthier units due to neglect.  

 

I was at one site, the whole place was covered in soot, so all the components inside the UPS were black from whatever kind of dust was coming through the room. They called us out there because they had a battery fault, but the batteries were swollen and all almost destroyed.

 

I had actually written them up in 2019 or 2020 to change their batteries, and they were still the original batteries from when I wrote them up…and that was just last week! It’s an emergency to get you out there, but extremely avoidable since you told them five years ago, “hey, you’re probably going to need to change this and clean this up…”

 

You don’t see a lot of that, especially not with the bigger sites since they like to take care of their stuff because they get fired if anything dumb happens. But the smaller places seem to be the ones that really kind of let things go a lot.”

 

 

What is something people should know when looking for the ideal UPS?

 

“The ideal UPS is normally something that fits right in the room, sized for your load, and not placed up against the wall in case you need to do something behind the unit. You want to have the right space for the unit and the right ventilation and make sure it’s a clean room, if at all possible.  

 

You don’t want to be running a UPS at 90% load all the time. You kind of want to get it around that 40-50%, if you can. You also don’t want to have a unit that you only put 10% load on, and you’re never going to get up higher than that either. 

 

You probably want to make sure it’s a Mitsubishi Electric unit, too. That way, we’re all happy haha.”

 

 

What is the biggest difference between Mitsubishi Electric UPS systems and the competition? 

 

“If you ask all the other guys that work in all these companies, they’ll tell you the same: Mitsubishi Electric’s always been one of the rock-solid UPSs that almost never breaks. You’ll hear that a lot. It’s just always been that way. Mitsubishi Electric has always been up there really good with their reliability.”

 

 

How would you describe Mitsubishi Electric’s Field Service team, specifically your team in the North East? 

 

“It’s been good. We have a good group of guys over here. I travel a lot to New Jersey, and there’s a few new guys down there that I’ve been semi-training whenever I get down there. I do a lot with those guys and they’re coming along good. 

 

I also see a lot of the other guys down in Virginia and a little bit of the Florida guys – sometimes even the guys on the West Coast. Most of the people in the company, except some of the new guys, have been here for 5+ years.  

 

I think we have a good group of people. I always see all the guys trying to help each other and do whatever they can. There are group chats and people reach out to help each other if they can.”

 

 

What is your most memorable story from the field? 

 

“Around here, there’s not too much excitement for the most part. Occasionally you get some job that you’re running around crazy, but the hardest stuff was when I was with a third-party company because you had to do a lot more work and they didn’t have time limits.  

 

It had to be like 15 years ago or so when New York had their big blackout that came down from Canada and everybody lost power. I was up in Vermont on the Canadian border, and I got dragged down to central Massachusetts to grab a generator truck, even though I wasn’t a generator guy.

 

They had everybody in the company grabbing generator trucks to pull generators out to New York. Thursday night till Monday morning we drove around hooking up temporary generators to Verizon sites so they could get their cell phones back up and running because, back then, Verizon didn’t have generators at their sites; only Nextel did. All Verizon customers were down for the beginning part.

 

So, we literally drove around for 3 days straight and no hotel rooms. We just slept for a little while in the truck and then kept going and we did the whole thing.  That was probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But when you work for a third-party company, you pull over 24-hour shifts often, so there’s a lot different than over here.

 

At Mitsubishi Electric they shut it down after around 16 hours, sometimes a little longer, but they’re pretty good at telling you to go to a hotel or go home.”

What is your favorite food from New England? 

 

“There’s a lot of seafood you can get. I like crabs. You get a lot of razor crabs and all kinds of different crabs around here.

 

If you like fish, there’s a lot of different kinds of fish between striper and cod to haddock… and lobsters are always around. I’m not a huge lobster guy, but those are always there. King crab legs. Not that they’re from around here, but you know, they’re still good.

 

Clam chowder, clam cakes. Those are always a big staple. Those are all over the place. I don’t need a ton of that stuff, but they’re always pushing it. That’s the first thing everyone that comes out here goes for is some clam cakes and chowder.”

 

 

What is your go-to comfort food? 

 

“I guess pizza. Pizza is always good. I’m a meat lovers guy. So meat lovers or a CBR (Chicken Bacon Ranch). CBR is always good.”

 

 

If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why? 

 

“Be able to transport myself and other people. I guess if you could transport everyone, you could sell it. So I guess… become really rich. How about that? haha.”

 

 

What is the best advice you have received, personally or professionally? 

 

“Always lookout for yourself because nobody else is going to lookout for you like you will. That was probably the best thing I ever got from somebody, I think. Just pretty true. A lot of places take advantage of you, so always look out for yourself.”