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I think Market Cap relates -loosely- to financial capacity of the company to have employees playing the support role. On the paying tiers of FAANG-like, Is cr

I think Market Cap relates -loosely- to financial capacity of the company to have employees playing the support role. On the paying tiers of FAANG-like, Is crazy that these companies charge market price for their services yet the support is usually quite poor.

Scoundreller 3y ago
A lot of people have forgotten that you can actually call companies and they do/will assist. Called Walmart and they got extra bike racks installed at my location. Have had to call eBay a number of times as a small-time seller. PayPal too. Got Google to replace my chromecast remote and they went through thorough troubleshooting steps before RMAing it. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions but not worth pretending that paid (by the vendor) support doesn’t exist.
- b112 3y ago
  I believed, until you said PayPal support was helpful. PayPal support is what I envision the DMV in Soviet Russia was like. The outcome is support that makes you feel like you're bothering them, is barely concealing their hostility, lies about what's happening, and one wrong word and horrible, horrible things will happen to you. That's PayPal support on the best of days, like after the support person just received a 20% raise, or had a baby. On the bad days...
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    In Soviet Russia you'd be lucky to deal with the DMV. For that you'd have to have a car, and the waiting list to buy one was years long.
    - fl7305 3y ago
      - "We can deliver the car in ten years" <Flips through calendar> - "Sorry, I'll get my new dishwasher then"
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - southernplaces7 3y ago
    I generally hate Paypal and will happily shit on them at any opportunity for all kinds of great reasons (cough, blatant theft of client funds for completely arbitrary reasons), I also don't trust them with anything but the as-temporary-as-possible storage of the least possible amount of payment funds when I have no other choice. However, weirdly, on the few occasions in which I've had to contact their customer support, they've been surprisingly friendly and helpful so far. But maybe I've just been lucky.
latency-guy2 3y ago
For a minor explanation, support is just prohibitively expensive no matter what you do, and quite frankly the only people actually capable of support is going to be the devs who made the product for various bugs/issues, and that is just a handful of people, some of whom have left the company even. Finding good support is also hard. I worked in product areas with dedicated support for paying customers, and the number of support staff that I would consider actually helpful is precisely 3 people, out of a few hundred. Those 3 people are paid a ton to keep them around, and while I don't know exactly what they're paid they usually get moved up and into a role that at minimum exceeds typical senior eng pay, the rest just bounce tickets back and forth collecting traces with at best a poor understanding of the product. On average no understanding. Another problem is that a good support staff would probably do better to be a dev anyway, the knowledge required is pretty much the same, just missing development experience.
- fyokdrigd 3y ago
  support cost is inversely prop to quality (code and design) knowing code quality levels at those companies and how they replace actual designers with PMs... it was their goal to have the most expensive support!
- pid-1 3y ago
  I've used a few SaaS products with decent support: AWS, GitLab, Microsoft (for certain products), Fortinet (for certain products)... On the bad side I can think of Google and Databricks. So it's not an unsolvable problem, there are people getting support right.
  - crunchbang-excl 3y ago
    AWS support can be very hit or miss. I've had experiences where they will claim that something is possible when it is absolutely not, and you have to provide a lot of supporting information to get them to see reality.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Ye support is in many cases a about as qualified role as building it. If not more qualified if the product is bad.

Scoundreller 3y ago

A lot of people have forgotten that you can actually call companies and they do/will assist. Called Walmart and they got extra bike racks installed at my location. Have had to call eBay a number of times as a small-time seller. PayPal too. Got Google to replace my chromecast remote and they went through thorough troubleshooting steps before RMAing it. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions but not worth pretending that paid (by the vendor) support doesn’t exist.

b112 3y ago
I believed, until you said PayPal support was helpful. PayPal support is what I envision the DMV in Soviet Russia was like. The outcome is support that makes you feel like you're bothering them, is barely concealing their hostility, lies about what's happening, and one wrong word and horrible, horrible things will happen to you. That's PayPal support on the best of days, like after the support person just received a 20% raise, or had a baby. On the bad days...
- dale_glass 3y ago
  In Soviet Russia you'd be lucky to deal with the DMV. For that you'd have to have a car, and the waiting list to buy one was years long.
  - fl7305 3y ago
    - "We can deliver the car in ten years" <Flips through calendar> - "Sorry, I'll get my new dishwasher then"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  I generally hate Paypal and will happily shit on them at any opportunity for all kinds of great reasons (cough, blatant theft of client funds for completely arbitrary reasons), I also don't trust them with anything but the as-temporary-as-possible storage of the least possible amount of payment funds when I have no other choice. However, weirdly, on the few occasions in which I've had to contact their customer support, they've been surprisingly friendly and helpful so far. But maybe I've just been lucky.

latency-guy2 3y ago

For a minor explanation, support is just prohibitively expensive no matter what you do, and quite frankly the only people actually capable of support is going to be the devs who made the product for various bugs/issues, and that is just a handful of people, some of whom have left the company even. Finding good support is also hard. I worked in product areas with dedicated support for paying customers, and the number of support staff that I would consider actually helpful is precisely 3 people, out of a few hundred. Those 3 people are paid a ton to keep them around, and while I don't know exactly what they're paid they usually get moved up and into a role that at minimum exceeds typical senior eng pay, the rest just bounce tickets back and forth collecting traces with at best a poor understanding of the product. On average no understanding. Another problem is that a good support staff would probably do better to be a dev anyway, the knowledge required is pretty much the same, just missing development experience.

fyokdrigd 3y ago
support cost is inversely prop to quality (code and design) knowing code quality levels at those companies and how they replace actual designers with PMs... it was their goal to have the most expensive support!
pid-1 3y ago
I've used a few SaaS products with decent support: AWS, GitLab, Microsoft (for certain products), Fortinet (for certain products)... On the bad side I can think of Google and Databricks. So it's not an unsolvable problem, there are people getting support right.
- crunchbang-excl 3y ago
  AWS support can be very hit or miss. I've had experiences where they will claim that something is possible when it is absolutely not, and you have to provide a lot of supporting information to get them to see reality.
rightbyte 3y ago
Ye support is in many cases a about as qualified role as building it. If not more qualified if the product is bad.