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I'm a Googler working on an internal-only product. We do have an internal-only support forum and I can tell you: one can't give good expert answers to everyone
by lrem 5y ago
I'm a Googler working on an internal-only product. We do have an internal-only support forum and I can tell you: one can't give good expert answers to everyone even at three orders of magnitude smaller audience. Being a TL working on the thing for more than 3 years, you keep finding yourself taking a couple hours to answer a single interesting question. So, for the uninteresting ones, you leave the users to fend for each other. Which is the point of a support forum, instead of a support email alias (or any other form where you expect "an official answer" to everything).
- axiosgunnar 5y agoFor a long time I had the suspicion that Big Tech creates products that are only profitable because they externalize most of the cost factors on users or society, and your post confirms this. Facebook also always argues that „sorry having humans monitor all Facebook posts would mean we would go out of business!“ Well, then maybe you should go out of business? :-) Or at least have gotten too big and should be split up?
- kcartlidge 5y agoToo true. Scale becomes an excuse for avoiding responsibility, whereas unfulfillable responsibilities should be a reason to not scale.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoWell put.