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Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

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Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#411

Post by RajT88 »

belter wrote: post #152
intellectronica wrote: post #115

Generally, all cloud providers have two ways of engaging with and billing customers. One is using a credit card, which is very easy for getting started. The other one is having an established relationship with a sales / account team and setting up billing by invoice. Smaller companies sometimes don't understand that and stick with credit card billing for too long. Once you move to production and have your own custome…

These type of stories, that appear regularly on HN, seem in the vast majority, related to only one specific provider.

A fellow I know used to do contract work with GCP. Same horror stories.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#413

Post by exikyut »

patchtopic wrote: post #402
luka-birsa wrote: post #386

A suggestion for engineers that lack business experience. As soon as your project grows beyond the non-hobby scale and starts making real money, invest some time to reach out to company providing the services that keep it alive and find an account manager that will take care of you. We're a Google customer and of course we had our fair share of issues (btw: it's the same with Azure, based on our experience), and we a…

after Azure sunk my employers project with no recourse or discussion allowed, I always advise everyone I meet to run far away from Azure if they value a reliable service.

"No discussion allowed" sounds impressive, almost like legal impetus was involved. What parts of the story can be shared?

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#414

Post by [deleted] »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #133
intellectronica wrote: post #115

Generally, all cloud providers have two ways of engaging with and billing customers. One is using a credit card, which is very easy for getting started. The other one is having an established relationship with a sales / account team and setting up billing by invoice. Smaller companies sometimes don't understand that and stick with credit card billing for too long. Once you move to production and have your own custome…

Ah yes, it was the customer's fault. Stupid customer using method recommended by service provider.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#415

Post by nXqd »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #396
luka-birsa wrote: post #386

A suggestion for engineers that lack business experience. As soon as your project grows beyond the non-hobby scale and starts making real money, invest some time to reach out to company providing the services that keep it alive and find an account manager that will take care of you. We're a Google customer and of course we had our fair share of issues (btw: it's the same with Azure, based on our experience), and we a…

I found the Azure reps to be completely useless for any of the actual problems. I worked for couple of really big enterprises, one of which had such a high commitment that Azure sent two engineers to sit with the teams working on their cloud. Highest level Enterprise support .. and yet for actual non-obvious problems it took them a month to reply with: can't help you with this, you must be doing it wrong. This was te…

just like any other reps from Microsoft services, just completely useless.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#416

Post by notyourday »

luka-birsa wrote: post #386

A suggestion for engineers that lack business experience. As soon as your project grows beyond the non-hobby scale and starts making real money, invest some time to reach out to company providing the services that keep it alive and find an account manager that will take care of you. We're a Google customer and of course we had our fair share of issues (btw: it's the same with Azure, based on our experience), and we a…

I have dealt with Google and AWS under 4 different companies that spent between low double digit to high triple digit a month.

General view:

* AWS - Great customer service. Steak house level customer service when moved from cc billing to contract billing.

* GCP - terrible service regardless of spend and regardless of dynamic or contract billing. AM do not know products. AM's are equivalent of BOA branch employees that solve a problem by calling the same number the customer calls and give the phone to the customer who came to see them in their branch, except that the customer service phone is the same opaque process the customer is subjected to. The only GCP product that had good customer service was the original App Engine, supported out of Germany ( I think ). We could get in touch with engineers responsible for it over video chat.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#417

Post by dharmab »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #396
luka-birsa wrote: post #386

A suggestion for engineers that lack business experience. As soon as your project grows beyond the non-hobby scale and starts making real money, invest some time to reach out to company providing the services that keep it alive and find an account manager that will take care of you. We're a Google customer and of course we had our fair share of issues (btw: it's the same with Azure, based on our experience), and we a…

I found the Azure reps to be completely useless for any of the actual problems. I worked for couple of really big enterprises, one of which had such a high commitment that Azure sent two engineers to sit with the teams working on their cloud. Highest level Enterprise support .. and yet for actual non-obvious problems it took them a month to reply with: can't help you with this, you must be doing it wrong. This was te…

I worked for one of Azure's biggest customers and our account management teams were fantastic. A few individuals were some of my favorite people I've worked with. That's where all the talent in the Azure support org goes- promoted to the biggest contracts.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#418

Post by jwaldrip »

In terms of customer experience, GCP is amazing and its why we chose Google. When you work with an account manager, the experience is far better than any other service. If you only work with support, you aren't going to have a good advocate for your account.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#419

Post by raxxorraxor »

intellectronica wrote: post #115

Generally, all cloud providers have two ways of engaging with and billing customers. One is using a credit card, which is very easy for getting started. The other one is having an established relationship with a sales / account team and setting up billing by invoice. Smaller companies sometimes don't understand that and stick with credit card billing for too long. Once you move to production and have your own custome…

AWS seems to be patient with that. Had the wrong credit card information from a customer once. Credit card validation seems to take a while and only fails a day later or so. Put in the wrong info a few times and invoices were already piling up since I only checked once a week or so. Probably still a good tip to move to a better payment scheme.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#420

Post by rglullis »

spopejoy wrote: post #379
rglullis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll buy that when the German auto makers get to pay properly for Dieselgate. Until then, EU regulation will be just a demonstration that money and power still talks just like in the US, the only difference is that Europeans are better at fooling themselves about their moral superiority.

This is a non-sequitur. EU has shown plenty of effectiveness enforcing consumer-facing regulation especially in tech/internet. Dieselgate is a case of corruption in Germany, a particularly horrific and embarrassing one sure. But the existence of corruption in a single member state is not sufficient to disregard EU-wide regulatory efforts in a broad swath of consumer-facing industries.

The point is that no matter how good they are at enforcing, they still can't manage to use the regulations to actually regulate behavior of the economic agents in a way that is beneficial to society.

"Strict emission laws" did not stop EU car makers to focus on ICE cars, it worked only to give consumers a false belief that their cars were not as clean as they believed. It's not regulation that is changing the industry, it is Tesla.

GDPR did not (and will not) stop big companies to collect and exploit user data.

"Right to repair" did not get the big manufacturers to stop producing devices that are consumer friendly and don't stop planned obsolescence.

Europeans have this stupid sense of moral superiority, but the people still buy from China, still look at cost above ethics and just use the "but our govt is strong" as an excuse to redeem themselves of personal responsibility.

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