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I have been a enterprise customer of google cloud. There is a chasm between google cloud and microsoft azure. Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really

I have been a enterprise customer of google cloud. There is a chasm between google cloud and microsoft azure. Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. With Google I got a guy that knows Kubernetes less than me. I sometimes get embarrassed asking them questions because they don't know how to answer but must come up with something to answer because the account manager is in the call. It feels like their poor account managers take a uphill battle just to get someone to talk to us. I feel sorry for them. Guess what happens? must deployments are in azure, even if the azure CLI sucks, the azure portal is a mess and azure products are inconsistent. But Google's GKE ingress takes 20 minutes to update (there is a years old bug opened, nobody cares), vs Azure application gateway taking 30 seconds. Both being very bad for us, but I get to talk to the Microsoft the guy who worked on that integration and discussing with him the pros and cons of using ingress-nginx instead. Google don't want us as costumers, they just want to brag about having a better cloud (they don't). (as a PS, please microsoft your employees don't like to answer questions on stack overflow. But great to be able to get stackoverflow answers from the product managers).

dekhn 4y ago
if you're on a call with an account manager and a support person, and the support person is clueless, politely shut down the meeting early, and then schedule a 10-minute with the account manager to tell them the support person isn't helping. As much as I hate personal relations, I frequently have to "herd cats" (contractors and cloud vendors). On the other hand, once in the while I get an absolute superstar and I work to keep them on my projects as long as possible.
- motoboi 4y ago
  Yeah, this is what they can give me. Microsoft people offered us high profile people for free.
com2kid 4y ago
> Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. When I was at Microsoft, the highest tier of support contract got you meetings with the lead developers of whatever product you found a pri0 bug in. Found a way to crash the compiler and simple code changes weren't enough to work around it? A meeting with a member of the C++ compiler team would be arranged. Microsoft has a history of customer focus, though I fear that was very much diluted when MS got rid of their dedicated test orgs.
- wbsun 4y ago
  How does that scale if there are many customers that need to meet the lead developers like OP get in weekly 1:1?
garisingh 4y ago
Sorry to hear about your experience thus far. I'm actually on the GKE team. Happy to find some time to chat and get you in touch with the right folks from the GKE networking team. DM me on Twitter at @garitweets and we can connect.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  HN support forum in full force.
  - osdotsystem 4y ago
    That's a new HN tag
nnurmanov 4y ago
I used to work for a big enterprise software company and believe me, their support is the same. Unless the issue is highly escalated, there is no way that the support engineers pay enough attention to it. I used to say, that the best customer is the customer who knows the answer. You are all by yourself most of the time:) But you have to pay support fees without any delays.

dekhn 4y ago

if you're on a call with an account manager and a support person, and the support person is clueless, politely shut down the meeting early, and then schedule a 10-minute with the account manager to tell them the support person isn't helping. As much as I hate personal relations, I frequently have to "herd cats" (contractors and cloud vendors). On the other hand, once in the while I get an absolute superstar and I work to keep them on my projects as long as possible.

motoboi 4y ago
Yeah, this is what they can give me. Microsoft people offered us high profile people for free.

com2kid 4y ago

> Azure sucks as a product, but they really, really, really want you as costumer. Damn, I get a weekly one-to-one with the guy which was part of the team that created their kubernetes offering, just because I needed someone with expertise in the matter to help us maximize the benefit or ours. NO EXTRA COST. When I was at Microsoft, the highest tier of support contract got you meetings with the lead developers of whatever product you found a pri0 bug in. Found a way to crash the compiler and simple code changes weren't enough to work around it? A meeting with a member of the C++ compiler team would be arranged. Microsoft has a history of customer focus, though I fear that was very much diluted when MS got rid of their dedicated test orgs.

wbsun 4y ago
How does that scale if there are many customers that need to meet the lead developers like OP get in weekly 1:1?

garisingh 4y ago

Sorry to hear about your experience thus far. I'm actually on the GKE team. Happy to find some time to chat and get you in touch with the right folks from the GKE networking team. DM me on Twitter at @garitweets and we can connect.

fbdab103 4y ago
HN support forum in full force.
- osdotsystem 4y ago
  That's a new HN tag

nnurmanov 4y ago

I used to work for a big enterprise software company and believe me, their support is the same. Unless the issue is highly escalated, there is no way that the support engineers pay enough attention to it. I used to say, that the best customer is the customer who knows the answer. You are all by yourself most of the time:) But you have to pay support fees without any delays.