I carry the attitude that withholding the fact they suck is being selfish and ignorant. How else are they supposed to improve? ๐
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Old Man Yells at Cloud
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So I tied a Tamagotchi to my belt, which was the style at the time
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After my third "per my previous email..." or "I've asked thrice for documentation regarding..." I realize I need to basically scrap the whole response and start over.
Working with FOSS software has set extremely high expectations that vendors cannot seem to meet. Like, all these projects are built by unpaid volunteers and have amazing documentation. We're paying you a lot of money - what's your excuse?
๐
Here's the thing, people who suck at what they do are usually either
A. Stupid
B. Overworked
C. Under-qualified
D. Under-compensated
It doesn't matter which one(s) of those apply to them, your interactions with them should be adjusted the same regardless of why they suck. Limit all emails, all requests, and all questions to one topic only. Don't try to get answers to 3 different things because it's not going to happen. Address one subject, and only move onto the next after you have resolved that subject. Trying to do anything else is an exercise in futility.
EXACTLY! I mean I'm coming from a sysadmin side, but I've definitely been spoilt by all the manpages, flexibility, stability, etc of foss. It's insane how some vendors can ship a product with pretty much no logging and call it a day.
That's where I'm at: sysadmin side of things. We spent 2 weeks going back and forth on an issue with the reporting component that was only solved by a Zoom meeting. The culprit was a missing config key/value, and they had the gall to say "oh, you should have had that configuration option set; this isn't our fault."
And I pointed to the documentation they gave us regarding that:
Like, the config is an uncommented JSON file with no defaults/examples whatsoever. There is literally no way for us to know what key/values are valid because none of it is documented. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. lol
At least our project manager was on my side and fought them to not charge us for that "support" call.
My god. Per-call charges should really cease existing. If it'a number of support calls that's making you money and not the product - your product sucks.
Sure, let's setup a sprint to address your concerns
Happy to hop on a Zoom call and we can screen share.
Screen share my balls motherfucker, fix your product and its docs.
(twitch)
I've gotten almost exactly that response from their project management bot (or maybe it's a parrot?) many times.
Don't worry it's not just the lowest bidder.
Worked with several enterprise tier products that were far pricier than the rest of the market.
At an end user forum where the lead software engineer says, "our next release is February and should have these new features. But, you know how we are. It probably won't be February"
The important thing to remember is that the "you suck" emails go to real people. So keeping professional even when "you suck" is deserved is an important balance.
I remember when I was in school, I'd sometimes write a joke paper for an assignment I really hated, before scrapping it and writing something real. It was cathartic to write a page or two on why the material was dumb as nails, and sometimes I'd even get some usable material from the process.
I feel the same way writing emails to vendors. Next time, I think I'll take my initial draft and send it through an LLM to make it more "professional".