As someone who's worked a lot in support and has been out of it for a while now, this article utterly misses the point and reeks of whining and excuse-making.

As someone who's worked a lot in support and has been out of it for a while now, this article utterly misses the point and reeks of whining and excuse-making. Anyone who's spent time in the support trenches knows that the rest of the company has contempt for them and doesn't know what actually happens on support calls. Getting everyone to do support, at least for a little while, shows what kind of problems support people encounter, both technical and social. Developers in particular see support staff as below them, not equals, and without any CS experience they're often clueless about what goes on in CS - they get a bit more empathic when they've actually seen what happens. It was actually laughable when the article talked of CS being considered a finely-honed skill that takes years; I can guarantee you, that's not how anyone treats support staff. No-one ever talks of a concept like a "10x support staffer". In any case, CS is like hospitality: it's an unpleasant job that can be done without much training, isn't well-paid, and few people like it or want to stay in it long-term. It's that unpleasantness which is the real reason why the author doesn't want to do it, not some supposed passion for high-quality CS.