4 ms·

The article is incorrect and misleading. Railway did have an account manager and they did call them and they did pick up the phone and work with them to restore

by MrDarcy 5mo ago

The article is incorrect and misleading. Railway did have an account manager and they did call them and they did pick up the phone and work with them to restore service.

Forgeties79 5mo ago
An account manager overseeing such a major client should’ve never let this happen. If they don’t, why the hell are they the account manager? What are they even doing to earn their keep? This was such a preventable situation. I once worked at a company that had their domain lapse because of an internal error at the company that was paid for the domain. There was no alert, there was no attempt to rectify the situation, one day we woke up and we simply did not have control of our website for a full week. There was nothing wrong with our payment method, there was no reason the payment shouldn’t have happened, it was completely their fault. They found out because we called them in a panic. This was a major company. We left them a week later and our CEO talks about it constantly as a horror story to other companies and there is no way our situation was unique. It’s not just about the value of the contract. This whole situation has been in the news for days now. It’s terrible PR and I guarantee you it is costing them business in the long run. All I have seen for days is people talking about how poor Google’s support is, and I’m not even somebody who makes those decisions. I get it, “Google is too big to fail.” But eventually, that stops being true
- esrauch 5mo ago
  I'm not sure what you think account managers do that they can prevent accidents/bugs like that?
  - cco 5mo ago
    Typically a strong account team builds processes with other teams (compliance, engineering, etc) that enshrines and insulates important accounts from accidents like this. In this case, I'd expect major accounts (and maybe Railway isn't above this level?) to be in a protected tier that is immune from automated suspensions like this. If suspicious traffic occurs that _would_ trigger a suspension like that, the account team would be paged. Because this may mean your important account was compromised, shipped a bug, has been hit by something and you should immediately start working _with_ them to figure it out. Fairly basic for a company with any customer management motion at all.
    - thibaut_barrere 5mo ago
      See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231538, they appeared to have everything you can have, and it wasn’t enough to prevent this.
      - cco 4mo ago
        Oh I was just describing to GP what a strong customer motion would do to protect against these things, not commenting on what Railway had or didn't. But clearly GCP _doesn't_ have a strong customer motion or this story wouldn't have happened.
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- ralph84 5mo ago
  The account manager was almost surely just as blindsided as the customer.
  - Forgeties79 4mo ago
    Then they’re not doing their job OR Google has bad systems in place that make it so their account managers aren’t equipped to do their job. Neither is a good look!
sreekanth850 5mo ago
What is the use of Account manager if a billion dollar company got screwedup for straight 5 + hours?
- aurareturn 4mo ago
  Without an account manager, you submit a ticket and no one looks at it for a few days. With an account manager, you call this person up immediately, and they hound the devs in person or call up the devs personally.
  - sreekanth850 4mo ago
    If iam an enterprise customer, the least i expect will be a prior communication and a warning email before account termination. Is this too much?
    - aurareturn 4mo ago
      This problem likely had nothing to do with the account manager though. I doubt it was the account manager making the call to suspend the account.

by MrDarcy 5mo ago

The article is incorrect and misleading. Railway did have an account manager and they did call them and they did pick up the phone and work with them to restore service.

Forgeties79 5mo ago

An account manager overseeing such a major client should’ve never let this happen. If they don’t, why the hell are they the account manager? What are they even doing to earn their keep? This was such a preventable situation. I once worked at a company that had their domain lapse because of an internal error at the company that was paid for the domain. There was no alert, there was no attempt to rectify the situation, one day we woke up and we simply did not have control of our website for a full week. There was nothing wrong with our payment method, there was no reason the payment shouldn’t have happened, it was completely their fault. They found out because we called them in a panic. This was a major company. We left them a week later and our CEO talks about it constantly as a horror story to other companies and there is no way our situation was unique. It’s not just about the value of the contract. This whole situation has been in the news for days now. It’s terrible PR and I guarantee you it is costing them business in the long run. All I have seen for days is people talking about how poor Google’s support is, and I’m not even somebody who makes those decisions. I get it, “Google is too big to fail.” But eventually, that stops being true

esrauch 5mo ago
I'm not sure what you think account managers do that they can prevent accidents/bugs like that?
- cco 5mo ago
  Typically a strong account team builds processes with other teams (compliance, engineering, etc) that enshrines and insulates important accounts from accidents like this. In this case, I'd expect major accounts (and maybe Railway isn't above this level?) to be in a protected tier that is immune from automated suspensions like this. If suspicious traffic occurs that _would_ trigger a suspension like that, the account team would be paged. Because this may mean your important account was compromised, shipped a bug, has been hit by something and you should immediately start working _with_ them to figure it out. Fairly basic for a company with any customer management motion at all.
  - thibaut_barrere 5mo ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231538, they appeared to have everything you can have, and it wasn’t enough to prevent this.
    - cco 4mo ago
      Oh I was just describing to GP what a strong customer motion would do to protect against these things, not commenting on what Railway had or didn't. But clearly GCP _doesn't_ have a strong customer motion or this story wouldn't have happened.
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ralph84 5mo ago
The account manager was almost surely just as blindsided as the customer.
- Forgeties79 4mo ago
  Then they’re not doing their job OR Google has bad systems in place that make it so their account managers aren’t equipped to do their job. Neither is a good look!

sreekanth850 5mo ago

What is the use of Account manager if a billion dollar company got screwedup for straight 5 + hours?

aurareturn 4mo ago
Without an account manager, you submit a ticket and no one looks at it for a few days. With an account manager, you call this person up immediately, and they hound the devs in person or call up the devs personally.
- sreekanth850 4mo ago
  If iam an enterprise customer, the least i expect will be a prior communication and a warning email before account termination. Is this too much?
  - aurareturn 4mo ago
    This problem likely had nothing to do with the account manager though. I doubt it was the account manager making the call to suspend the account.