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As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

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Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#91

Post by oblio »

tomcooks wrote: post #85
erader wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there! Support manager here. I've been leading support teams for years, led support QA teams, built troubleshooting processes and worked very closely with dev teams. A lot of what I wanted to bring up doesn't apply so much to solo dev's, but I want to vouch for non-devs and anyone that might start working on team. Support brains and developer brains are actually not that different. I see on HN way too often that d…

Great presentation and insights on a profession that is kind of considered less important by a lot of people, thanks

I think the main reason for the hierarchy we have in IT is basically necessity, and I say this as someone who's more into devops & co.

You can't have a product without developers. You can have a product without QA, support, Ops, etc.

Managers are another story cause there we get into more social aspects...

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#92

Post by cdubzzz »

doomlaser wrote: post #5

I created a shareware Tetris clone for OS X in the mid 2000s and provided my cell number in the readme. I'd get a trickle of calls from all over the world at all times of day. That's where I learned never to have a serial number generator that included the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0. It was weird to be out and about and suddenly get a tech support call, but people were usually really nice.

What clone? I was involved with Quinn on OS X back in the day until we got a C&D from The Tetris Company.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#93

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal »

cyberferret wrote: post #11

I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do). The main reason - I am a solo developer. And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. It was basically impossible for me to get into 'flow' state during a normal working day. Even one phone call during the day took me away from my creative, pr…

Over the last couple of years I've had to accept I can really only do one thing at a time, multi-tasking is something I simply cannot manage, I either do one thing or I get nothing done so I agree, I enjoy providing support too and I enjoy coding, but I can only do one or other at one time.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#94

Post by mk89 »

kqr wrote: post #46
cyberferret wrote: post #11

I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do). The main reason - I am a solo developer. And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. It was basically impossible for me to get into 'flow' state during a normal working day. Even one phone call during the day took me away from my creative, pr…

> And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. This is something I can have trouble with even personally. I have noticed that when I get home from a long day of cold, analytical problem-solving, I mbrain bad at shifting my brain to empathetically listen and provide emotional support for my wifes problems.

oh, and I thought I was a bad person... interesting that others have the same issue (?)

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#95

Post by majewsky »

cyberferret wrote: post #43
BurningFrog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution is to have phone support days or hours. If you only accept support calls at certain times, you can plan to do development at other times.

When dealing with local clients, that is certainly a possibility (and indeed was the case with me at one stage). But when you have customers all over the world, you have to basically be on call 24hours a day (also the case with me).

Do you allow clients to shake you out of your sleep?

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#96

Post by codingdave »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
kqr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. This is something I can have trouble with even personally. I have noticed that when I get home from a long day of cold, analytical problem-solving, I mbrain bad at shifting my brain to empathetically listen and provide emotional support for my wifes problems.

I've found a short (20 minute) nap can help a lot with this.

I've found that a short (20 minute) commute can help a lot with this.

I'm actually serious -- the commute is like a palate cleanser between work and home. It helps even more when I ride a motorcycle, as the concentration on my safety totally wipes the coding from my brain, and I walk in the house with a clean slate.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#97

Post by majewsky »

holografix wrote: post #10
doomlaser wrote: post #5

I created a shareware Tetris clone for OS X in the mid 2000s and provided my cell number in the readme. I'd get a trickle of calls from all over the world at all times of day. That's where I learned never to have a serial number generator that included the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0. It was weird to be out and about and suddenly get a tech support call, but people were usually really nice.

I remember back in the early days of shareware and freeware apps and games where the developer would ask for a postcard if you enjoyed the app! If I ever develop something really small and useful one day I’d love to get post cards from around the world!

I actually thought about adding a similar remark to my programs' READMEs just today, but I don't particularly want my snail-mail address floating around the internet any more than necessary. (Maybe I'll get a postbox, if that's not too expensive.)

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#98

Post by emodendroket »

Man, I did a job that was nothing but phone support for 8 months, and while I think it was great training for designing UIs that won't confuse people you'd have to pay me a lot to go back to doing that. Many people are not kind, patient, or understanding, and they assume you're unintelligent and uneducated (or else why would you be answering phones for a living?). The misery of that experience was the spur that made me abandon plans for a career in Japanese translation and learn IT (and eventually programming) in the first place.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#99

Post by bonesss »

SyneRyder wrote: post #20
Terr_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0. Just throwing this out there in case the problem comes up again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base58

It's also worth skipping out the letters S and number 5, the letter G and number 6, and the letter B and number 8. I also omit vowels to avoid accidentally creating words in serial codes.

I autogenerate passwords exclusively using lower case 'L's, the letter i in both cases, the number 1, and pipe characters.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#100

Post by Cthulhu_ »

codingdave wrote: post #96
nicoburns wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found a short (20 minute) nap can help a lot with this.

I've found that a short (20 minute) commute can help a lot with this. I'm actually serious -- the commute is like a palate cleanser between work and home. It helps even more when I ride a motorcycle, as the concentration on my safety totally wipes the coding from my brain, and I walk in the house with a clean slate.

Yeah I've seen some people that work from home mention this - the ritual or transition of going from work to home is something they miss. To a degree of course, I mean 20 minutes isn't too bad, for me it's often more than an hour which is a bit much.
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