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I dunno, they could get more involved in the product so that they can diagnose more simple issues without having to pass it on to one of the devs. They could ge

by robryan 16y ago

I dunno, they could get more involved in the product so that they can diagnose more simple issues without having to pass it on to one of the devs. They could get more involved in design based on the feedback that gets passed through them, they would have a good sense of what is well received and doesn't work well. For straight up customer service person you would be right, but I think there is a lot of room to move there in a flexible organisation. Depends on the person I guess, it doesn't surprise me really they would see more turnover here than they would of developers.

vacri 16y ago
There is still only so far you can go as customer support. I wear that hat in my current company (along with a few others, including planning) and no, there really isn't much depth you can get into with devs without becoming a dev. Most devs (not all) largely disregard customer support and feedback anyway, since support doesn't 'see the big picture' (a less charitable person would say 'because support works with existing products, and we've already covered that now-boring ground' - after all, how many laments do we hear of devs that have to work on 'maintenance' rather than new prod development :). The key point is that even if you're interacting directly with the devs, you're still not really being proactive or learning concrete skills. The job is still pretty much reactive. If you're driven or feel the need to develop, there really isn't much to strive for. You're not the one that gets to figure out code, or create marketing campaigns. There's not really any ongoing feeling of "I made this!". And if you move into design/planning, that's not really support anymore. I don't mean to rag on support - they are the ditch-diggers of the IT world - but if you're driven, then it's got nothing to offer you after a fairly short while.

by robryan 16y ago

vacri 16y ago

There is still only so far you can go as customer support. I wear that hat in my current company (along with a few others, including planning) and no, there really isn't much depth you can get into with devs without becoming a dev. Most devs (not all) largely disregard customer support and feedback anyway, since support doesn't 'see the big picture' (a less charitable person would say 'because support works with existing products, and we've already covered that now-boring ground' - after all, how many laments do we hear of devs that have to work on 'maintenance' rather than new prod development :). The key point is that even if you're interacting directly with the devs, you're still not really being proactive or learning concrete skills. The job is still pretty much reactive. If you're driven or feel the need to develop, there really isn't much to strive for. You're not the one that gets to figure out code, or create marketing campaigns. There's not really any ongoing feeling of "I made this!". And if you move into design/planning, that's not really support anymore. I don't mean to rag on support - they are the ditch-diggers of the IT world - but if you're driven, then it's got nothing to offer you after a fairly short while.