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Google’s support is horrible across the board. It is the biggest reason places I’ve worked at continue to pay all the premiums of operating in AWS - despite bei

Google’s support is horrible across the board. It is the biggest reason places I’ve worked at continue to pay all the premiums of operating in AWS - despite being offered a treasure chest of free credits and the generally lower pricing of Google Cloud. AWS answers the phone (and chat, and email) and you get very high quality answers. Google support asked us to write a business case justifying how answering our support question benefited Google. It’s a world of difference. I wonder if Google thinks fresh faces might improve their support offering, or if it’s just the typical “offshore people are cheaper” move.

mathverse 5y ago
It's offshore people are cheaper move.
theevilsharpie 5y ago
> Google support asked us to write a business case justifying how answering our support question benefited Google. I have never had this experience with Google Cloud support (or support for any Google product -- free or paid), and couldn't even fathom what that kind of response would look like. The only time I've ever seen anything remotely along these lines was when requesting a new feature for an enterprise product that we sold at the time (we were a channel partner), and even then, it was an online form that was asking about competitive information (e.g., "does anyone else on the market have this feature?").
- idunno2468 5y ago
  they ask us a bunch. usually its to justify the severity level: if you put it p1 and they are about to page an engineer, they want to make sure its not a test project. i think its fair to justify even if the interface is a little annoying. my main issue with it is since its all web forms each interaction is like fifteen minutes delay
  - dekhn 5y ago
    oh, yeah, this is the same for aws- one of my team filed a p1 bug and paged an AWS engineer in the middle of the night. It was for something nontrivial in a test environment. After that we had a discussion about what consitutes "production", with me explaining that I'd only ever cause an eng to be paged if i was fully prepared to deal with the fallout of an incident.
singron 5y ago
I've never used Google's support, but AWS support isn't good either. They lack reading comprehension, give braindead answers to questions, and have less access than you do, so even a competent support person couldn't diagnose or fix anything that you couldn't yourself. I'm convinced that unless support is stellar, it's a complete waste of time and money.
- paco3346 5y ago
  I'm not sure what support level you've dealt with but I've always been very impressed with AWS support (granted, my org has enterprise support). They've been able to answer some really obscure technical questions without having to escalate.
- zxcvbn4038 5y ago
  Obviously I've had the complete opposite experience with AWS support and they have solved some tricky not-obvious problems that ended up being escalated to the development teams, as well as normal problems, and one guy actually stood by on a Zoom call for an hour listening to us solve problems just so my boss wouldn't panic - he'll may not really appreciate how much he helped the situation just by being there, but I got my AWS account rep to help get a thank-you note to him and his manager the next day. One thing I have found is that all of their new guys start off on e-mail support, and they tend to quote documentation at you more. If you have a real problem that is not you being too lazy to read (I see my peers open a lot of support tickets with questions I know are discussed clearly in the documentation), its best to start off with a chat so you can get a more senior support person involved, answer any of their questions or collect any screen shots or evidence they need, then let them exit the chat to do their research, testing, escalation on their side. You'll get a resolution within a couple hours.
wdb 5y ago
I have good experience with third party partners for Google Cloud Support. Cloud discount + good support great combination :)
dekhn 5y ago
"Google support asked us to write a business case justifying how answering our support question benefited Google. " how much is your spend?

mathverse 5y ago

It's offshore people are cheaper move.

theevilsharpie 5y ago

> Google support asked us to write a business case justifying how answering our support question benefited Google. I have never had this experience with Google Cloud support (or support for any Google product -- free or paid), and couldn't even fathom what that kind of response would look like. The only time I've ever seen anything remotely along these lines was when requesting a new feature for an enterprise product that we sold at the time (we were a channel partner), and even then, it was an online form that was asking about competitive information (e.g., "does anyone else on the market have this feature?").

idunno2468 5y ago
they ask us a bunch. usually its to justify the severity level: if you put it p1 and they are about to page an engineer, they want to make sure its not a test project. i think its fair to justify even if the interface is a little annoying. my main issue with it is since its all web forms each interaction is like fifteen minutes delay
- dekhn 5y ago
  oh, yeah, this is the same for aws- one of my team filed a p1 bug and paged an AWS engineer in the middle of the night. It was for something nontrivial in a test environment. After that we had a discussion about what consitutes "production", with me explaining that I'd only ever cause an eng to be paged if i was fully prepared to deal with the fallout of an incident.

singron 5y ago

I've never used Google's support, but AWS support isn't good either. They lack reading comprehension, give braindead answers to questions, and have less access than you do, so even a competent support person couldn't diagnose or fix anything that you couldn't yourself. I'm convinced that unless support is stellar, it's a complete waste of time and money.

paco3346 5y ago
I'm not sure what support level you've dealt with but I've always been very impressed with AWS support (granted, my org has enterprise support). They've been able to answer some really obscure technical questions without having to escalate.
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
Obviously I've had the complete opposite experience with AWS support and they have solved some tricky not-obvious problems that ended up being escalated to the development teams, as well as normal problems, and one guy actually stood by on a Zoom call for an hour listening to us solve problems just so my boss wouldn't panic - he'll may not really appreciate how much he helped the situation just by being there, but I got my AWS account rep to help get a thank-you note to him and his manager the next day. One thing I have found is that all of their new guys start off on e-mail support, and they tend to quote documentation at you more. If you have a real problem that is not you being too lazy to read (I see my peers open a lot of support tickets with questions I know are discussed clearly in the documentation), its best to start off with a chat so you can get a more senior support person involved, answer any of their questions or collect any screen shots or evidence they need, then let them exit the chat to do their research, testing, escalation on their side. You'll get a resolution within a couple hours.

wdb 5y ago

I have good experience with third party partners for Google Cloud Support. Cloud discount + good support great combination :)

dekhn 5y ago

"Google support asked us to write a business case justifying how answering our support question benefited Google. " how much is your spend?