10 ms·

A gentlemen's agreement

110 points by dsabanin 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ericcholis 14y ago
Being a customer of Postmark's, I'm happy that they took this sort of stance. Their service has had it's share of issues, and they always have responded quickly and professionally. Not surprising that they responded in this manor.
frossie 14y ago
Yeah but. I somehow doubt that people leave a service over a single explainable outage. From my personal experience, I move when the outage is the straw that broke the camel's back - when I have been unhappy with the service but have lacked the time and urgency to do something about it, and then they are down and I'm thinking "Well, time I moved off here anyway". So in that respect, I think I am fair game to a "Switch to our service!" email and I don't see how that is unethical - happy customers don't move just because they get an email during an untypical service interruption. Dropbox could go down for the rest of the day, and I could get all the competitor emails they want to send me, and I am not going to switch. I did switch registrars during an outage, but that is because I had been less than ecstatic about them and just needed a kick.
- niggler 14y ago
  It depends. Rinkydink startups may not, but if a down service resulted in a nasty conversation with your biggest customer, then you probably should consider switching or diversifying
- ebbv 14y ago
  It depends on the outage. But any service provider can tell you there's always an increase of cancellations around any outage.
niggler 14y ago
I disagree strongly with the ultimate basis of this: it is a dog eat dog world. There is a finite pool of customers. I don't mean to say you should do what the other company did (email bashing while others are down) but you shouldn't be afraid to talk about your other strengths.
- yesimahuman 14y ago
  I wonder if the modern customer is more nuanced than that though? We've all been fucked over by capitalism, it's refreshing to see companies not be douches about it. I'm really happy with Sendgrid, but this really gave me a good feeling about who Wildbit is, and now I'm inclined to give them my business.
eterm 14y ago
"We shake hands with guys at conferences" Only the guys? ducks
- Nursie 14y ago
  See also "A Gentlemen's Agreement". Personally I think the language police can go and do something gender-appropriate and painful to themselves, but after the nature of that particular shitstorm, it does seem a touch out of place!
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    The definition of the phrase ("An arrangement or understanding which is based upon the trust of both or all parties, rather than being legally binding") doesn't specify a particular gender, though a word in the phrase can. Taking the phrase in the spirit it's intended would lead one not to consider it sexist, though if you take the position that any mention of sex (or any reference to old-world patriarchy) in speech is inherently wrong we'd be here all day.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      That's why I said I have no time for the language police! I find it an interesting phrase to have chosen for an article title in light of what the recent furore is all about, but not an offensive one. Then again I'm rather hard to offend.
amirmc 14y ago
I don't understand. Sure, this may be a special case related to the PyCon stuff (which should be more clearly referenced in the OP imho) but I don't see how it's a general point. What if you really do believe that you have a better service than that competitor? What if you can demonstrate better uptime/benefits/customer-service/whatever? Do you just sit around and wait until customers fall into your lap? While I appreciate the sentiment for the current circumstances, I don't think it holds generally. It almost feels like the opposite of hustle.
- rm999 14y ago
  It's an implicit form of negative advertising, which is rarely noble or "gentlemanly". I think most people would be disgusted if a politician started running ads about how healthy he is when his opponent is in the hospital. This situation is similar: while the sites are touting themselves, it's the obvious contrast they are creating that makes it negative.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Not sure, I think if a politician had health problems that could affect his ability to govern it would be legitimate for his opponent to point that out. If I ran a hosting service with better uptime than amazon I'd sure as hell let people know too.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    Politicians would wish their opponent a speedy recovery after their morning jog[1], like a website might say it won't take advantage of another's situation by writing a blog post with a link to the competitors problems[2] and pointing out some other competitor is acting poorly. 1) or tennis on The West Wing 2) I do believe their post is in good faith, but I spent a chunk of my life dealing with politicians and I think seeing the gears makes one a bit cynical
    - OzzyB 14y ago
      I want to give your brain a hug.
hnolable 14y ago
For those who don't know, it was Dyn. I personally liked the email. While sendgrid was down we were running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find a replacement. We started setting up postmark but didn't get it up before sendgrid came back up. We've been using DynECT for DNS for a long time and it's been perfect. Having them remind us they do email (at a time when it was critically needed) was actually great. At this point I'm planning on signing up for it and using them as a failover for sendgrid.
- larrys 14y ago
  Why do you feel it was dyn? I got that email and didn't remember it referring to anything in particular. I just took another look and here is the copy: "In today's demand-driven marketing world, getting email into the inbox and sending that email is as crucial as turning on the lights in the morning. Social media is awesome, but when it comes to the most trusted form of communication with customers, prospects and fans, email wins hands down. See that graphic above? That's a screenshot from about an hour ago, a visual representation of where emails sent through our servers are being read at that instant around the world. At a billion+ messages sent a month, there's no better time to move your email delivery services to Dyn. We've relaunched our packages, introducing an entry-level option for just $3 per month -- roughly the amount of a large coffee. Isn't your transactional email program worth more than that? It's time to deliver through Dyn. Sign up now. Send today. Be successful tomorrow." Explain why you feel that a) dyn sent this in reaction to the "situation" and b) even if they did how this was a bad thing. By the way here is the dyn.com blog post I'm not seeing anything there that dovetails and makes them the company the OP is referring to: http://dyn.com/blog/email-delivery-dynect-deliverability-scalability-iaas-no-downtime/ http://dyn.com/blog/email-delivery-dynect-deliverability-sca...
alrs 14y ago
I won't be signing up for this. Having an operations team that can keep things going through adversity is a competitive advantage that doesn't come cheap. Redundancy and ops talent cost money. If your competitor made a cost/benefit decision that let them down, I say tough luck.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Having an operations team that can keep things going through adversity is a competitive advantage that doesn't come cheap. True, but I don't think you can afford to have 100% uptime. Basically nobody can do that. Even in the heyday of the Bell system, Ma Bell couldn't quite guarantee 100% uptime. 99.9999999%, maybe, but do you have any idea how much engineering effort and work went into achieving that? I won't be signing up for this. What, acknowledging reality? Look, I don't think the OP was saying that you shouldn't compete on reliability and uptime and other quality guarantees. But if something extraordinary happens to a competitor - which could just as easily happen to you - then it's silly to launch a specific, targeted effort to try and steal away that competitor's customers in reaction that specific event. There's a difference between a demonstrated pattern of better uptime/reliability, woven into a consistent marketing message over time, and a predatory attack reacting to a moment of weakness.
  - alrs 14y ago
    My reference to "signing up" means that I won't be entering in to a gentleman's agreement. I'm on good terms with reality.
    - peterwwillis 14y ago
      You could just agree not to be a jerk...
- juan_juarez 14y ago
  If you actually have the infrastructure and ops to withstand a freak DDOS, you've got a leg to stand on. Taking advantage of a freak shitstorm to steal clients is dishonest because you have just been lucky enough to avoid a shitstorm. In all reality, the people that just went through the DDOS will be better prepared to stand up to one in the future than a system/team that hasn't recovered from one.
samolang 14y ago
I strongly disagree. That is not how capitalism works. You should take advantage of every opportunity you can to get people to try your product. If you have a superior product they'll stay, if you don't they won't.
- rz2k 14y ago
  Furthermore, "gentleman's agreements" like these are fundamentally anti-competitive. The sentiment is an us vs. them one, where 'us' is vendors, and 'them' is customers. While misleading statements about competitors should be unacceptable, since it hurts customers and the industry, the same cannot be said for vigorous competition. It is also worth pointing out that it's expensive to prepare for rare events, and the costs make you less competitive when those rare events are not occurring. This event was difficult to anticipate, but so are large natural disasters, and it isn't difficult to imagine even more random attacks. Maybe Dyn isn't any more prepared for an unpredictable DDoS attack of the same scale, but I don't know either way, but at the very least there is a case for being part of one's failover plan.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Furthermore, "gentleman's agreements" like these are fundamentally anti-competitive. That's quite a stretch, given the usual definition of anti-competitive. A "gentleman's agreement" to not lower prices, or not to expand into a certain market, etc., would be genuinely anti-competitive. This is simply an agreement to not kick somebody when they're down. That's just good sportsmanship and integrity. Personally, I think more companies should display this kind of thinking.
    - rz2k 14y ago
      Non-explicit agreements become popular when contracts are unenforceable. They also confer an advantage to groups that are more likable. Does that mean that only 'unlikeable' groups would oppose gentleman's agreements? Not really, because they also automatically favor incumbent firms over early stage firms or anyone who is disruptive. The nod and the wink about refusing to compete, and advocating an effective blacklist of companies that evangelize on the subject of reliability can't be anything more than a nod and a wink, because it would put the signatories in legal jeopardy. Alternately, they could build extra capacity, and sell terms on how often they would provide overflow capacity to each other, but that would cost more than simply campaigning to prohibit discussion of failures. There really isn't any kind of stretch to call this anti-competitive. It is pretty much the archetype for using an informal agreement as an enforcement mechanism in order to avoid a mutually detrimental nash equilibrium. More companies could engage in the type of behavior advocated here, but then it wouldn't be the dynamic industry that it is.
smithian 14y ago
The real reason not to do this is that it makes you look like a scumbag. It's not in your interest to make that association in your customer's minds. For instance, I run a small datacenter on the east coast. We had no downtime due to Sandy, but the level of MSP/CoLo/Managed hosting company cold calls I got in the two weeks after trying to use their uptime during the storm as a sales pitch was unbelievable. every single one of them went in my "scumbucket vendor" file.
nmcfarl 14y ago
I don’t know - I think I’m a bit darwinistic here. Having suffered through some products with bi-weekly downtime, I tend to think competitors should be allowed tout whatever their strengths are including uptime if that’s one of them. And it doesn’t reflect poorly on them (in my eyes). When suffering I like to see solutions offered… Of course most companies with horrible re-occuring downtime, have no serious competition… So there’s that.
- EwanToo 14y ago
  To me, it's one thing to capitalise on a companies on-going downtime issues, that indicated an inability or unwillingness to resolve the issue, but it's another thing entirely to take advantage of a situation that could as easily be affecting you, no matter what precautions you take. I've no doubt Sendgrid have been DDOS'd before and survived, and that this was a significant attack, so can their competitors honestly say there's no chance they'd of not gone down in the same situation?
- shill 14y ago
  OP is talking about kicking someone when they are down as the result of a random catastrophe. You won't gain many customers doing this, and the ones you do gain won't be very loyal.
  - nmcfarl 14y ago
    So perhaps what I’m saying is that at some point you have to kick when down, at least if a vendor is always down. Every marketing campaign I’ve ever been involved in ran for longer than 2 weeks. And in my example I was not joking - we were paying for a service that had roughly bi-weekly, unplanned downtime of multiple hours, for many many months. A marketing campaign would have inevitably run concurrent with a downtime. I agree - running attack ads after 1 random catastrophic event is in poor taste. But at some point - 3 in a year?, 3 in a month? - it becomes reasonable, and tasteful, to tout uptime as an advantage.
    - takluyver 14y ago
Shank 14y ago
I don't agree with this - because in all honesty, SendGrid probably should have had some sort of contingency plan setup to handle extremely high amounts of traffic. Sure, the public facing website may have gone down, but the API & other servers should have been able to scale up or down depending on load. When your service is as relied upon as an email provider, it needs to have near perfect uptime in order to keep trust. People were tweeting @SendGrid wondering why it was down for hours, and were looking for other providers to pick up anyway.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Getting 6 nines uptime costs money, if you make that investment in infrastructure/staff then you deserve to make it a selling point. OTOH I can certainly see an exception when it comes to what is effectively digital terrorism. There seems to be at least some belief that Adria was let go at least partly to stop the fallout from the DDOS attack. You can't let 4channers get the idea that they can set policy decisions that affect others and ultimately have nothing to do with them.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Getting 6 nines uptime costs money, if you make that investment in infrastructure/staff then you deserve to make it a selling point. Certainly, and I don't see the OP arguing against that. The OP just seems to be saying something that's analogous to the old schoolyard ethic of "don't kick someone when they're down".
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Well, that depends. If I can win customers by pointing out that company X is having problems and you wouldn't have those problems with my company (or at least would be less likely to) because we have superior infrastructure etc then I think it's perfectly fair to point that out. If OTOH they are suffering as a consequence of some retard-spasm of the internetz that could just as easily have happened to us and more crucially is more likely to happen to us if 4chan get their way this time around.
dwc 14y ago
This isn't a clear cut line not to be crossed. It's a matter of personal ethics. There are times when you do something differently precisely because you think it's a better way and gives your company and your customers an advantage. When that advantage becomes clear for all to see there's no reason to deny it, hide it, pretend that it's just blind misfortune that could have happened to you just as easily, when you have taken active steps to make sure it didn't. You don't need to tear down your competitors, but you shouldn't avoid pointing out why you are good/better.
benatkin 14y ago
I agree with most of this, but they should have waited weeks to post this, so it didn't seem like they were trying to use reverse psychology to engage in the exact behavior that they're railing against. Also "gentlemen's agreement" was a poor choice of words because it isn't a gender neutral term.
- themartorana 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, it's a definable, historical legal term. Better than titling it "An informal agreement between two or more parties simply understood as part of an unspoken agreement by convention or through mutually beneficial etiquette." (Apologies to Wikipedia)
- jnxfgf456 14y ago
  Really? I guess they need some "sensitivity" training. Idiot.
- lancefisher 14y ago
  The term "gentlemen's agreement" pretty well defines what she is talking about. I don't know if the fact that a woman wrote this post changes your mind.
racbart 14y ago
I disagree. I mean, you put the line at a wrong place. So you say we shouldn't benefit from competitor's outages, but we can benefit from their failures of different types? Because every time you claim that you do something better than competition, it's simply you trying to benefit from their failure to do this thing right. I think the line should be a bit further than you say. Benefiting from someone's downtime or any other kind of failure is perfectly fine, unless that downtime/failure wasn't easily avoidable. If the downtime/failure is because the company lack of professionalism then you should go and benefit from it. If their downtime is because they are hosting servers in their own office, under CTO's desk, and cleaning lady disconnected the cable, shame on them. That said, this wasn't the case. DDoS isn't something anyone can easily protect from and because of that you shouldn't try to benefit from it. If you do, you basically lie to your customers by making impression that you could avoid such outage.
87689769867 14y ago
>>When someone you compete against is suffering, especially as a result of any kind of infrastructure issues, shut up and keep your head down. Why? Seriously Why? Companies that are not attacked by their competitors become lazy. I think is fair game. They are not doing anything illegal and frankly I don't think the situation is scummy at all. This guy sounds like a kid yelling "is not fair" and "you are a big meanie". Where the fuck does he think he is?
- themartorana 14y ago
  "She," actually. And she is the owner of a company that benefitted from SendGrid's unfortunate circumstances. Being the owner of such a service, what she saw other competition doing disturbed her. So she wrote about it. Although Postmark did receive an uptick of signups, they didn't take the opportunity to market against SendGrid as an unreliable service, because they know there is no 100% reliable service, anywhere, ever.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
cryptoz 14y ago
By writing this post, you're actively working to benefit from someone else's outage. A bit hypocritical, no? Hitting the front page of HN with a post talking about how great you are? Yeah, okay, you're not trying to benefit off this outage at all.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  You do realize the logic of your argument results in "You can't comment on this because any exposure you receive based on your comment makes you a hypocrite based your comments"
  - xtrumanx 14y ago
    I disagree. I don't know Wildbit or who their competitors are. All it took for me to figure out the "shitstorm" that was referenced was to hover over the link. The same message could have been made with no reference to SendGrid but they chose not to. Whether that was a conscious decision is unknown.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
bcoates 14y ago
This will do nothing, as it's not their decision to make. I'm occasionally in the position to be buying services from commodity providers. If your service goes down and I start shopping around, the question is not "Will I ditch you for someone who can deliver?", it's "Which one will I move to?". You might as well try to be in the running with some well-timed advertising. I'm sure you're emotionally invested in being a nice guy to the folks in the booth next to you, but as your customer I can assure you I'd rather see you fight.
kefka 14y ago
This gentleman's agreement.. What crap it is. I have a story: a few years ago, the US had a nasty hurricane called Katrina. This hurricane directly hit New Orleans, and other cities. After this time, all insurance companies pulled all operations out... With exception of one. This company, once called Government Employee Insurance Company, realized that they could raise rates by 400% and be the only one willing to sell. The company is Geico, run by Berkshire Hathaway.
- staticfish 14y ago
  Interesting story, but I fail to see what on earth the comparison is with this piece of tech news.
IsaacL 14y ago
Doing this has the same advantages and disadvantages, for both businesses and customers, as price-fixing or forming a cartel. I'm not saying it's the same as forming a cartel, maybe a cartel lite. Think about it: from the point of view of the customer of a downed service, competitors doing some opportunistic PR is only beneficial. So competitors not doing opportunistic PR is depriving customers of a benefit, while helping the industry itself.
PuercoPop 14y ago
So you thought it is loable to not exploit your opponents weaknesses? And it is loable to leave potential customers stranded with a subpar service that has failed their expectations by not being available? It think you should read Sirlin's definition of a scrub[0], and decide if you want to continue being one, but you have no moral high ground, you are just limited by your own made up rules. [0]:http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html
- bjterry 14y ago
  The English word for loable is "laudable." Also, I agree that that is a great article. Cheers :)
  - PuercoPop 14y ago
    My bad I forgot to proof read it. Thanks.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  So you thought it is loable to not exploit your opponents weaknesses? There's a big difference between exploiting a weakness in general, and taking advantage of an extraordinary circumstance that harms your competitor. To me, this comes down to sportsmanship. To use a bit of an analogy... I wrestled in high-school. We trained to identify weaknesses in the game of our opponents, so I might well enter into a match with a guy thinking "I know he's susceptible to upper body takedowns like a lateral drop or an armspin, so I'm going to pointedly attack that way". That's trying to exploit a weakness, and it's totally reasonable, expected and fair. But if I'm wrestling a guy and he slips on a wet spot on the mat and tears a groin muscle and is laying on the mat writhing in pain, should I jump on him and try to score a quick pin? No, of course not. Good sportsmanship dictates stand back, let the ref step in, give the guy his medical timeout, and then see what happens. If he can't continue, then you either "win" via forfeit or the match is vacated completely (I forget exactly which would have happened in that case when I was in HS). Same in the business world... if my competitor has a known, exploitable weakness, like a less mature infrastructure and problems with uptime, and I market and sell based on an overall better quality of service, that's one thing. But if the competitor experiences a "black swan" event, should I "jump on and go for the quick pin"? I say "no", that doing that would be just as unethical as in the wrestling example.
vinceguidry 14y ago
I'm curious as to where she got that notion. Do things like this happen often enough among her market segment to where a reasonable person could form such an expectation? I mean, I can see having a personal conviction to not stoop to such levels, but expecting my competitors to share it? That sounds rather illogical, and could lead to getting caught flat-footed in such an event.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jusben1369 14y ago
Many of the comments here are missing the point a little. To summarize: "If your customer experiences a freak event that no one can really plan for trying to turn that into a win for yourself is inappropriate" - We should argue on the merits of that. Don't confuse this with a service that perhaps experiences ongoing issues. Those are material points that a buyer should know and are fair game to raise in marketing.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
steven2012 14y ago
The company I work for was disrupted by SendGrid's downtime, so this very question was something I was actually thinking about. I'm on the fence about this. One of my former bosses told me that you never take advantage of a competitor's bad press, because who knows when it will be you that get's the bad press. It makes sense, because you don't want to look opportunistic on someone else's bad luck. But if you're a startup, and you need to get some traction against a competitor, it might be a good way to get some new customers. You better be able to live up to your claims though otherwise your entire credibility is in question.
ahoyhere 14y ago
Sad to see the discussion is more about "what'll get you customers" instead of "what does it mean to do business ethically." Capitalism, fine. Competitiveness, fine. Postmark is not a company afraid of customers or competition. But they believe in competing in a classy, ethical way. Most importantly, their competitive advantages are based on facts, things they can control, things their competitors could control but don't. How can anyone disagree with that? But sure, let's look at it from a ruthless, ethics-free standpoint: What if you do run attack ads, what if you do kick the competitor when they have a freak event that they did not cause and could not have prevented -- an enormous DDoSing campaign by an organized group -- and which could happen to you, too? What if you lure customers away with these attack ads? What will those customers do when you have a freak event? No service has perfect uptime. DDoSing can happen to anyone. So even if you have the ethics of a rutabaga, all you get for your efforts are customers which do not tolerate the occasional freak event. What do you think they're going to do when you have something you have no control over? Your marketing will have created the results that you deserve. Business doesn't exist in a vacuum. You do not "win customers for life." Customers are not all equal (far from it). This is a long game. Being classy, being honest, is the best way to create a business you -- and your customers -- can live with for a long time.
- scott_meade 14y ago
  "all you get for your efforts are customers which do not tolerate the occasional freak event" <- spot on. Said another way: companies' customers are a reflection how the company behaves. If you want customers who are a pain to deal with, who threaten to switch at any unmet whim, and who will step all over you as a vendor, then by all means go ahead and step all over your competition to get those customers. A company that acts like a jerk is going to have customers who are jerks and who wants to deal with that. But if you want customers that are fans and proponents and evangelists for your company - then act in those positive ways yourself.
- mfenniak 14y ago
  I love this point of view. If every business person thought like this, and could visualize far enough down the road to see the effects their actions have, capitalism wouldn't have a bad reputation. :-)

110 points by dsabanin 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Being a customer of Postmark's, I'm happy that they took this sort of stance. Their service has had it's share of issues, and they always have responded quickly and professionally. Not surprising that they responded in this manor.

frossie 14y ago

Yeah but. I somehow doubt that people leave a service over a single explainable outage. From my personal experience, I move when the outage is the straw that broke the camel's back - when I have been unhappy with the service but have lacked the time and urgency to do something about it, and then they are down and I'm thinking "Well, time I moved off here anyway". So in that respect, I think I am fair game to a "Switch to our service!" email and I don't see how that is unethical - happy customers don't move just because they get an email during an untypical service interruption. Dropbox could go down for the rest of the day, and I could get all the competitor emails they want to send me, and I am not going to switch. I did switch registrars during an outage, but that is because I had been less than ecstatic about them and just needed a kick.

niggler 14y ago
It depends. Rinkydink startups may not, but if a down service resulted in a nasty conversation with your biggest customer, then you probably should consider switching or diversifying
ebbv 14y ago
It depends on the outage. But any service provider can tell you there's always an increase of cancellations around any outage.

niggler 14y ago

I disagree strongly with the ultimate basis of this: it is a dog eat dog world. There is a finite pool of customers. I don't mean to say you should do what the other company did (email bashing while others are down) but you shouldn't be afraid to talk about your other strengths.

yesimahuman 14y ago
I wonder if the modern customer is more nuanced than that though? We've all been fucked over by capitalism, it's refreshing to see companies not be douches about it. I'm really happy with Sendgrid, but this really gave me a good feeling about who Wildbit is, and now I'm inclined to give them my business.

eterm 14y ago

"We shake hands with guys at conferences" Only the guys? ducks

Nursie 14y ago
See also "A Gentlemen's Agreement". Personally I think the language police can go and do something gender-appropriate and painful to themselves, but after the nature of that particular shitstorm, it does seem a touch out of place!
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  The definition of the phrase ("An arrangement or understanding which is based upon the trust of both or all parties, rather than being legally binding") doesn't specify a particular gender, though a word in the phrase can. Taking the phrase in the spirit it's intended would lead one not to consider it sexist, though if you take the position that any mention of sex (or any reference to old-world patriarchy) in speech is inherently wrong we'd be here all day.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    That's why I said I have no time for the language police! I find it an interesting phrase to have chosen for an article title in light of what the recent furore is all about, but not an offensive one. Then again I'm rather hard to offend.

amirmc 14y ago

I don't understand. Sure, this may be a special case related to the PyCon stuff (which should be more clearly referenced in the OP imho) but I don't see how it's a general point. What if you really do believe that you have a better service than that competitor? What if you can demonstrate better uptime/benefits/customer-service/whatever? Do you just sit around and wait until customers fall into your lap? While I appreciate the sentiment for the current circumstances, I don't think it holds generally. It almost feels like the opposite of hustle.

rm999 14y ago
It's an implicit form of negative advertising, which is rarely noble or "gentlemanly". I think most people would be disgusted if a politician started running ads about how healthy he is when his opponent is in the hospital. This situation is similar: while the sites are touting themselves, it's the obvious contrast they are creating that makes it negative.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Not sure, I think if a politician had health problems that could affect his ability to govern it would be legitimate for his opponent to point that out. If I ran a hosting service with better uptime than amazon I'd sure as hell let people know too.
- protomyth 14y ago
  Politicians would wish their opponent a speedy recovery after their morning jog[1], like a website might say it won't take advantage of another's situation by writing a blog post with a link to the competitors problems[2] and pointing out some other competitor is acting poorly. 1) or tennis on The West Wing 2) I do believe their post is in good faith, but I spent a chunk of my life dealing with politicians and I think seeing the gears makes one a bit cynical
  - OzzyB 14y ago
    I want to give your brain a hug.

hnolable 14y ago

For those who don't know, it was Dyn. I personally liked the email. While sendgrid was down we were running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find a replacement. We started setting up postmark but didn't get it up before sendgrid came back up. We've been using DynECT for DNS for a long time and it's been perfect. Having them remind us they do email (at a time when it was critically needed) was actually great. At this point I'm planning on signing up for it and using them as a failover for sendgrid.

larrys 14y ago
Why do you feel it was dyn? I got that email and didn't remember it referring to anything in particular. I just took another look and here is the copy: "In today's demand-driven marketing world, getting email into the inbox and sending that email is as crucial as turning on the lights in the morning. Social media is awesome, but when it comes to the most trusted form of communication with customers, prospects and fans, email wins hands down. See that graphic above? That's a screenshot from about an hour ago, a visual representation of where emails sent through our servers are being read at that instant around the world. At a billion+ messages sent a month, there's no better time to move your email delivery services to Dyn. We've relaunched our packages, introducing an entry-level option for just $3 per month -- roughly the amount of a large coffee. Isn't your transactional email program worth more than that? It's time to deliver through Dyn. Sign up now. Send today. Be successful tomorrow." Explain why you feel that a) dyn sent this in reaction to the "situation" and b) even if they did how this was a bad thing. By the way here is the dyn.com blog post I'm not seeing anything there that dovetails and makes them the company the OP is referring to: http://dyn.com/blog/email-delivery-dynect-deliverability-scalability-iaas-no-downtime/ http://dyn.com/blog/email-delivery-dynect-deliverability-sca...

alrs 14y ago

I won't be signing up for this. Having an operations team that can keep things going through adversity is a competitive advantage that doesn't come cheap. Redundancy and ops talent cost money. If your competitor made a cost/benefit decision that let them down, I say tough luck.

mindcrime 14y ago
Having an operations team that can keep things going through adversity is a competitive advantage that doesn't come cheap. True, but I don't think you can afford to have 100% uptime. Basically nobody can do that. Even in the heyday of the Bell system, Ma Bell couldn't quite guarantee 100% uptime. 99.9999999%, maybe, but do you have any idea how much engineering effort and work went into achieving that? I won't be signing up for this. What, acknowledging reality? Look, I don't think the OP was saying that you shouldn't compete on reliability and uptime and other quality guarantees. But if something extraordinary happens to a competitor - which could just as easily happen to you - then it's silly to launch a specific, targeted effort to try and steal away that competitor's customers in reaction that specific event. There's a difference between a demonstrated pattern of better uptime/reliability, woven into a consistent marketing message over time, and a predatory attack reacting to a moment of weakness.
- alrs 14y ago
  My reference to "signing up" means that I won't be entering in to a gentleman's agreement. I'm on good terms with reality.
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    You could just agree not to be a jerk...
juan_juarez 14y ago
If you actually have the infrastructure and ops to withstand a freak DDOS, you've got a leg to stand on. Taking advantage of a freak shitstorm to steal clients is dishonest because you have just been lucky enough to avoid a shitstorm. In all reality, the people that just went through the DDOS will be better prepared to stand up to one in the future than a system/team that hasn't recovered from one.

samolang 14y ago

I strongly disagree. That is not how capitalism works. You should take advantage of every opportunity you can to get people to try your product. If you have a superior product they'll stay, if you don't they won't.

rz2k 14y ago
Furthermore, "gentleman's agreements" like these are fundamentally anti-competitive. The sentiment is an us vs. them one, where 'us' is vendors, and 'them' is customers. While misleading statements about competitors should be unacceptable, since it hurts customers and the industry, the same cannot be said for vigorous competition. It is also worth pointing out that it's expensive to prepare for rare events, and the costs make you less competitive when those rare events are not occurring. This event was difficult to anticipate, but so are large natural disasters, and it isn't difficult to imagine even more random attacks. Maybe Dyn isn't any more prepared for an unpredictable DDoS attack of the same scale, but I don't know either way, but at the very least there is a case for being part of one's failover plan.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Furthermore, "gentleman's agreements" like these are fundamentally anti-competitive. That's quite a stretch, given the usual definition of anti-competitive. A "gentleman's agreement" to not lower prices, or not to expand into a certain market, etc., would be genuinely anti-competitive. This is simply an agreement to not kick somebody when they're down. That's just good sportsmanship and integrity. Personally, I think more companies should display this kind of thinking.
  - rz2k 14y ago
    Non-explicit agreements become popular when contracts are unenforceable. They also confer an advantage to groups that are more likable. Does that mean that only 'unlikeable' groups would oppose gentleman's agreements? Not really, because they also automatically favor incumbent firms over early stage firms or anyone who is disruptive. The nod and the wink about refusing to compete, and advocating an effective blacklist of companies that evangelize on the subject of reliability can't be anything more than a nod and a wink, because it would put the signatories in legal jeopardy. Alternately, they could build extra capacity, and sell terms on how often they would provide overflow capacity to each other, but that would cost more than simply campaigning to prohibit discussion of failures. There really isn't any kind of stretch to call this anti-competitive. It is pretty much the archetype for using an informal agreement as an enforcement mechanism in order to avoid a mutually detrimental nash equilibrium. More companies could engage in the type of behavior advocated here, but then it wouldn't be the dynamic industry that it is.

smithian 14y ago

The real reason not to do this is that it makes you look like a scumbag. It's not in your interest to make that association in your customer's minds. For instance, I run a small datacenter on the east coast. We had no downtime due to Sandy, but the level of MSP/CoLo/Managed hosting company cold calls I got in the two weeks after trying to use their uptime during the storm as a sales pitch was unbelievable. every single one of them went in my "scumbucket vendor" file.

nmcfarl 14y ago

I don’t know - I think I’m a bit darwinistic here. Having suffered through some products with bi-weekly downtime, I tend to think competitors should be allowed tout whatever their strengths are including uptime if that’s one of them. And it doesn’t reflect poorly on them (in my eyes). When suffering I like to see solutions offered… Of course most companies with horrible re-occuring downtime, have no serious competition… So there’s that.

EwanToo 14y ago
To me, it's one thing to capitalise on a companies on-going downtime issues, that indicated an inability or unwillingness to resolve the issue, but it's another thing entirely to take advantage of a situation that could as easily be affecting you, no matter what precautions you take. I've no doubt Sendgrid have been DDOS'd before and survived, and that this was a significant attack, so can their competitors honestly say there's no chance they'd of not gone down in the same situation?
shill 14y ago
OP is talking about kicking someone when they are down as the result of a random catastrophe. You won't gain many customers doing this, and the ones you do gain won't be very loyal.
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  So perhaps what I’m saying is that at some point you have to kick when down, at least if a vendor is always down. Every marketing campaign I’ve ever been involved in ran for longer than 2 weeks. And in my example I was not joking - we were paying for a service that had roughly bi-weekly, unplanned downtime of multiple hours, for many many months. A marketing campaign would have inevitably run concurrent with a downtime. I agree - running attack ads after 1 random catastrophic event is in poor taste. But at some point - 3 in a year?, 3 in a month? - it becomes reasonable, and tasteful, to tout uptime as an advantage.
  - takluyver 14y ago

Shank 14y ago

I don't agree with this - because in all honesty, SendGrid probably should have had some sort of contingency plan setup to handle extremely high amounts of traffic. Sure, the public facing website may have gone down, but the API & other servers should have been able to scale up or down depending on load. When your service is as relied upon as an email provider, it needs to have near perfect uptime in order to keep trust. People were tweeting @SendGrid wondering why it was down for hours, and were looking for other providers to pick up anyway.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Getting 6 nines uptime costs money, if you make that investment in infrastructure/staff then you deserve to make it a selling point. OTOH I can certainly see an exception when it comes to what is effectively digital terrorism. There seems to be at least some belief that Adria was let go at least partly to stop the fallout from the DDOS attack. You can't let 4channers get the idea that they can set policy decisions that affect others and ultimately have nothing to do with them.

mindcrime 14y ago
Getting 6 nines uptime costs money, if you make that investment in infrastructure/staff then you deserve to make it a selling point. Certainly, and I don't see the OP arguing against that. The OP just seems to be saying something that's analogous to the old schoolyard ethic of "don't kick someone when they're down".
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Well, that depends. If I can win customers by pointing out that company X is having problems and you wouldn't have those problems with my company (or at least would be less likely to) because we have superior infrastructure etc then I think it's perfectly fair to point that out. If OTOH they are suffering as a consequence of some retard-spasm of the internetz that could just as easily have happened to us and more crucially is more likely to happen to us if 4chan get their way this time around.

dwc 14y ago

This isn't a clear cut line not to be crossed. It's a matter of personal ethics. There are times when you do something differently precisely because you think it's a better way and gives your company and your customers an advantage. When that advantage becomes clear for all to see there's no reason to deny it, hide it, pretend that it's just blind misfortune that could have happened to you just as easily, when you have taken active steps to make sure it didn't. You don't need to tear down your competitors, but you shouldn't avoid pointing out why you are good/better.

benatkin 14y ago

I agree with most of this, but they should have waited weeks to post this, so it didn't seem like they were trying to use reverse psychology to engage in the exact behavior that they're railing against. Also "gentlemen's agreement" was a poor choice of words because it isn't a gender neutral term.

themartorana 14y ago
I'm pretty sure the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, it's a definable, historical legal term. Better than titling it "An informal agreement between two or more parties simply understood as part of an unspoken agreement by convention or through mutually beneficial etiquette." (Apologies to Wikipedia)
jnxfgf456 14y ago
Really? I guess they need some "sensitivity" training. Idiot.
lancefisher 14y ago
The term "gentlemen's agreement" pretty well defines what she is talking about. I don't know if the fact that a woman wrote this post changes your mind.

racbart 14y ago

I disagree. I mean, you put the line at a wrong place. So you say we shouldn't benefit from competitor's outages, but we can benefit from their failures of different types? Because every time you claim that you do something better than competition, it's simply you trying to benefit from their failure to do this thing right. I think the line should be a bit further than you say. Benefiting from someone's downtime or any other kind of failure is perfectly fine, unless that downtime/failure wasn't easily avoidable. If the downtime/failure is because the company lack of professionalism then you should go and benefit from it. If their downtime is because they are hosting servers in their own office, under CTO's desk, and cleaning lady disconnected the cable, shame on them. That said, this wasn't the case. DDoS isn't something anyone can easily protect from and because of that you shouldn't try to benefit from it. If you do, you basically lie to your customers by making impression that you could avoid such outage.

87689769867 14y ago

>>When someone you compete against is suffering, especially as a result of any kind of infrastructure issues, shut up and keep your head down. Why? Seriously Why? Companies that are not attacked by their competitors become lazy. I think is fair game. They are not doing anything illegal and frankly I don't think the situation is scummy at all. This guy sounds like a kid yelling "is not fair" and "you are a big meanie". Where the fuck does he think he is?

themartorana 14y ago
"She," actually. And she is the owner of a company that benefitted from SendGrid's unfortunate circumstances. Being the owner of such a service, what she saw other competition doing disturbed her. So she wrote about it. Although Postmark did receive an uptick of signups, they didn't take the opportunity to market against SendGrid as an unreliable service, because they know there is no 100% reliable service, anywhere, ever.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

cryptoz 14y ago

By writing this post, you're actively working to benefit from someone else's outage. A bit hypocritical, no? Hitting the front page of HN with a post talking about how great you are? Yeah, okay, you're not trying to benefit off this outage at all.

jusben1369 14y ago
You do realize the logic of your argument results in "You can't comment on this because any exposure you receive based on your comment makes you a hypocrite based your comments"
- xtrumanx 14y ago
  I disagree. I don't know Wildbit or who their competitors are. All it took for me to figure out the "shitstorm" that was referenced was to hover over the link. The same message could have been made with no reference to SendGrid but they chose not to. Whether that was a conscious decision is unknown.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

bcoates 14y ago

This will do nothing, as it's not their decision to make. I'm occasionally in the position to be buying services from commodity providers. If your service goes down and I start shopping around, the question is not "Will I ditch you for someone who can deliver?", it's "Which one will I move to?". You might as well try to be in the running with some well-timed advertising. I'm sure you're emotionally invested in being a nice guy to the folks in the booth next to you, but as your customer I can assure you I'd rather see you fight.

kefka 14y ago

This gentleman's agreement.. What crap it is. I have a story: a few years ago, the US had a nasty hurricane called Katrina. This hurricane directly hit New Orleans, and other cities. After this time, all insurance companies pulled all operations out... With exception of one. This company, once called Government Employee Insurance Company, realized that they could raise rates by 400% and be the only one willing to sell. The company is Geico, run by Berkshire Hathaway.

staticfish 14y ago
Interesting story, but I fail to see what on earth the comparison is with this piece of tech news.

IsaacL 14y ago

Doing this has the same advantages and disadvantages, for both businesses and customers, as price-fixing or forming a cartel. I'm not saying it's the same as forming a cartel, maybe a cartel lite. Think about it: from the point of view of the customer of a downed service, competitors doing some opportunistic PR is only beneficial. So competitors not doing opportunistic PR is depriving customers of a benefit, while helping the industry itself.

PuercoPop 14y ago

So you thought it is loable to not exploit your opponents weaknesses? And it is loable to leave potential customers stranded with a subpar service that has failed their expectations by not being available? It think you should read Sirlin's definition of a scrub[0], and decide if you want to continue being one, but you have no moral high ground, you are just limited by your own made up rules. [0]:http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

bjterry 14y ago
The English word for loable is "laudable." Also, I agree that that is a great article. Cheers :)
- PuercoPop 14y ago
  My bad I forgot to proof read it. Thanks.
mindcrime 14y ago
So you thought it is loable to not exploit your opponents weaknesses? There's a big difference between exploiting a weakness in general, and taking advantage of an extraordinary circumstance that harms your competitor. To me, this comes down to sportsmanship. To use a bit of an analogy... I wrestled in high-school. We trained to identify weaknesses in the game of our opponents, so I might well enter into a match with a guy thinking "I know he's susceptible to upper body takedowns like a lateral drop or an armspin, so I'm going to pointedly attack that way". That's trying to exploit a weakness, and it's totally reasonable, expected and fair. But if I'm wrestling a guy and he slips on a wet spot on the mat and tears a groin muscle and is laying on the mat writhing in pain, should I jump on him and try to score a quick pin? No, of course not. Good sportsmanship dictates stand back, let the ref step in, give the guy his medical timeout, and then see what happens. If he can't continue, then you either "win" via forfeit or the match is vacated completely (I forget exactly which would have happened in that case when I was in HS). Same in the business world... if my competitor has a known, exploitable weakness, like a less mature infrastructure and problems with uptime, and I market and sell based on an overall better quality of service, that's one thing. But if the competitor experiences a "black swan" event, should I "jump on and go for the quick pin"? I say "no", that doing that would be just as unethical as in the wrestling example.

vinceguidry 14y ago

I'm curious as to where she got that notion. Do things like this happen often enough among her market segment to where a reasonable person could form such an expectation? I mean, I can see having a personal conviction to not stoop to such levels, but expecting my competitors to share it? That sounds rather illogical, and could lead to getting caught flat-footed in such an event.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jusben1369 14y ago

Many of the comments here are missing the point a little. To summarize: "If your customer experiences a freak event that no one can really plan for trying to turn that into a win for yourself is inappropriate" - We should argue on the merits of that. Don't confuse this with a service that perhaps experiences ongoing issues. Those are material points that a buyer should know and are fair game to raise in marketing.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

steven2012 14y ago

The company I work for was disrupted by SendGrid's downtime, so this very question was something I was actually thinking about. I'm on the fence about this. One of my former bosses told me that you never take advantage of a competitor's bad press, because who knows when it will be you that get's the bad press. It makes sense, because you don't want to look opportunistic on someone else's bad luck. But if you're a startup, and you need to get some traction against a competitor, it might be a good way to get some new customers. You better be able to live up to your claims though otherwise your entire credibility is in question.

ahoyhere 14y ago

Sad to see the discussion is more about "what'll get you customers" instead of "what does it mean to do business ethically." Capitalism, fine. Competitiveness, fine. Postmark is not a company afraid of customers or competition. But they believe in competing in a classy, ethical way. Most importantly, their competitive advantages are based on facts, things they can control, things their competitors could control but don't. How can anyone disagree with that? But sure, let's look at it from a ruthless, ethics-free standpoint: What if you do run attack ads, what if you do kick the competitor when they have a freak event that they did not cause and could not have prevented -- an enormous DDoSing campaign by an organized group -- and which could happen to you, too? What if you lure customers away with these attack ads? What will those customers do when you have a freak event? No service has perfect uptime. DDoSing can happen to anyone. So even if you have the ethics of a rutabaga, all you get for your efforts are customers which do not tolerate the occasional freak event. What do you think they're going to do when you have something you have no control over? Your marketing will have created the results that you deserve. Business doesn't exist in a vacuum. You do not "win customers for life." Customers are not all equal (far from it). This is a long game. Being classy, being honest, is the best way to create a business you -- and your customers -- can live with for a long time.

scott_meade 14y ago
"all you get for your efforts are customers which do not tolerate the occasional freak event" <- spot on. Said another way: companies' customers are a reflection how the company behaves. If you want customers who are a pain to deal with, who threaten to switch at any unmet whim, and who will step all over you as a vendor, then by all means go ahead and step all over your competition to get those customers. A company that acts like a jerk is going to have customers who are jerks and who wants to deal with that. But if you want customers that are fans and proponents and evangelists for your company - then act in those positive ways yourself.
mfenniak 14y ago
I love this point of view. If every business person thought like this, and could visualize far enough down the road to see the effects their actions have, capitalism wouldn't have a bad reputation. :-)