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Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#71

I'm not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one. It's one thing to make a new feature request and have the response be "sorry, we'll get to it when we get to it." It's quite another to have a bug in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say "sorry, our engineers have a big backlog." Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature t…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#72
post #46

I was recently looking at self-hostable Notion alternatives for my team, and I was impressed with Outline. [0] I ended up going with Notion because it was overall more user-friendly and handled image embeds easier, but Outline would be a nice option if you want to control your own data. https://www.getoutline.com/

Also the similar problem like with other alternatives - no mobile apps.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#73

My suggestion would be to stop using Notion. It's a novel approach, but 90% of what you want is achievable with Google Docs/Drive, Office 365, etc. My suggestion might be different if the business side was in a healthier shape.

Step 1: OP should export their data, then import to their desired service. Oh wait..

The block concept doesn't cleanly carry over to services. Bugging Notion for exports, brings them here:

Step 2: Import blocks to {Some other cloud service}

Which just isn't realistic. Having step 1 changes nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, if there’s one thing I hate it’s that condescending millennial speak to cover up a serious issue. > Oof, so sorry about this... What??? If your company is broken don’t make it seem like a funny “aw shucks” blunder.

Interesting, I've written stuff very much like that before for customers that were hitting bugs. I wasn't trying to be "aw shucks" funny. I legitimately feel sorry that my shitty software was breaking on them. That they provided a workaround seemed like a nice thing to me. In fact that whole message seemed pretty good to me. It's probably not entirely that employee's fault but they're still trying to empathize and he…

it's disrespectful to respond like that, to me. infantilizing; like I'm incapable of processing a response that is genuine.

"uwu we'we sowwy dis isn't wewking anymowe.. pwease don't be angwy wiff us"

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#75
post #64
post #41

Empathy. A lot of these suggestions here don't show it. Sure, Notion should fix this feature. If your backlog is completely free of features that are no brainers, raise your hand. Anybody with your hand raised should be ashamed of yourself because I bet it's not true :) Sure they should fix this -- but is this something they should be fined for? Or be DDOS-ed by Hacker News readers? Or GDPR reported for? It's just no…

There would be a lot more empathy if they would be voluntarily offering any kind of compensation, which really is the least you could ask for.

I dunno -- if you work on software you get used to the fact that there's always something that could be better, something that could be fixed. Something that could have a smoother user experience. This is just part and parcel of the nature of the medium. Given that they likely didn't realize this was a high priority feature until the pile-on here, and given that they're likely to re-prioritize this item to the top of that long backlog... do they really owe compensation for just having a backlog?

I mean -- I kind of feel like if you're going to store your core business information in software, you're just going to have to deal with the fact that software has bugs. It's the nature of the beast. So, is it really something they owe compensation for?

Probably they owe a bugfix, that I grant you, but compensation? I mean I guess if there was an explicit contract for the feature that tied compensation to it I could see a good argument that they owe compensation. But do they owe compensation to the good people of Hacker News who are suddenly talking about DDOS-ing the feature? That seems like a much harder case to make.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#76
post #33

I'm not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one. It's one thing to make a new feature request and have the response be "sorry, we'll get to it when we get to it." It's quite another to have a bug in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say "sorry, our engineers have a big backlog." Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature t…

I recently closed a bank account (due to Simple being acquired and the debacle of BBVA and now PNC) and it was quite difficult. I just wanted a "you send me a check with my remaining balance and we're done," and instead they told me I needed to withdraw my cash to zero (with limits that would have taken months), and only then could I close my account. Eventually, I was told a workaround where I could "Bill Pay" my ow…

> they told me I needed to withdraw my cash to zero (with limits that would have taken months)...

I think that some state or federal banking regulators might have expressed displeasure if you had informed them of that policy.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#77
T-10 before founder shows up here and says something like, “I’m sorry that you feel this way, I’m going to personally fix this”. That will not go well. After about, say 5/6 hours of “reflection”, “soul searching”, “meditation” - they’ll offer a better non apology. Finally a day later, “we screwed up, we broke your trust and we own it”.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I've written stuff very much like that before for customers that were hitting bugs. I wasn't trying to be "aw shucks" funny. I legitimately feel sorry that my shitty software was breaking on them. That they provided a workaround seemed like a nice thing to me. In fact that whole message seemed pretty good to me. It's probably not entirely that employee's fault but they're still trying to empathize and he…

it's disrespectful to respond like that, to me. infantilizing; like I'm incapable of processing a response that is genuine. "uwu we'we sowwy dis isn't wewking anymowe.. pwease don't be angwy wiff us"

Interesting. To me, its a strong signal that the person on the other end is not an offshored, overworked drone but someone who is treated well by the company and cares enough to express empathy.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#79
post #23

This is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software. I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use i…

> Git + Github

You mean, you “own” copies of your data, but unless the person who controls the interface with that popular happy workflow that Everyone Already Knows How To Use lets you store it on their server, a lot of people who might otherwise be willing to collaborate with you will go “eh” and give up, and therefore, since so many marginal things require that to get anywhere, you can still just lose completely if you don't agree to the GitHub Terms of Service?

I imagine you didn't mean that part primarily, of course—but it's another thing to be aware of. There's a lot of potential for SaaSS interface lock-in—I think this is much worse for users with less technical inclination or less mental slack, but even in the realm of “people who are already developers who use Git”, this becomes a large friction source. And with more-social smaller-world flows, the coordination-control aspect has a stronger grip.

That said, it's also worth looking at how the “cloud” model is in a way reifying the folk model many users were already using. People thinking of their documents as being “in” (for instance) Word, and having no idea where they are in a filesystem or what that is in the first place, is already seared into the cultural memory of people who were family tech support in the 1990s. The default consumer cloud model is an easy extension and solidification of this: now it totally is “in” Google Docs rather than being a leakier folk-model weakening of accessing your your hard drive, and now Google Docs is accessible from anywhere. Everything is like you expect! No need to panic when your machine breaks, just get a new one and it's all still there!

And those upsides are real in their own way. But a number of downsides which are also real are less obvious and immediate.

Re: Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

#80

Here's what Notion.so says about this on their website. https://www.notion.so/Back-up-your-data-1a8eb5bdfce34d19a636... - *I tried clicking the `Export all workspace content` button but received an error message.* Oof, so sorry about this For particularly large workspaces, the `Export all workspace content` function may have some trouble completing the export. We're investigating this issue and hope to have a resolut…

God, if there’s one thing I hate it’s that condescending millennial speak to cover up a serious issue. > Oof, so sorry about this... What??? If your company is broken don’t make it seem like a funny “aw shucks” blunder.

Yeah I'm a millenial and I can't stand it either. Doggo, pupper, adulting, ninja/rockstar/awesome, oof, yikes, "my dude"... and don't even get me started about dressing like you're still in high school (pro-tip - unless you're are in great shape no one wants to see you in a tight fitting t-shirt).

Big reason why I'm now a "programmer in the X industry" as opposed to an "X programmer". I guess I just wasn't a "cultural fit" - yikes.

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