Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

101–110 of 207 posts

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

#101

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…

I generally dislike this tone too.

If they really felt sorry for this particular customer, they would be actually solving their issues, not answering with automatic messages.

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

#103
post #62

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.

This reminds me of Discord

Discord, at least, has a vastly different audience than a B2B enterprise product. A different tone is more acceptable for something like that, IMO.

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

#104

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…

When your product is broken informality and conversational prose comes across as sloppy and unprofessional. It sends a bad message and it’s counter productive in this context.

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

#105
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…

I had another account tied to it already so it was easy for me to transfer funds out to empty Simple. Sucks it was a hard experience for you!

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

#106

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.

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 "cultura…

> pro-tip - unless you're are in great shape no one wants to see you in a tight fitting t-shirt

There's a decent chance that these people don't seek your approval. Also, how has "pro-tip" not made your list?

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

#108
We got tricked by the spreadsheet-like behavior of Notion too.

If you use any of the relational features in tables, they are exported only as URLs. There is no alternate export, and you can’t Copy&Paste the cells either.

Our CFO is unable to use this fancy relational table tool that we spent a lot of time and effort to build. Similar response from support.

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

#109

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.

They used ‘oof’, apologized and explained a workaround. This is a rather extreme amount of anger over one word.
Post reply on HN