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I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

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Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#201

Post by gknoy »

Aachen wrote: post #168
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't need to be AI, most customer support was already automated before ChatGPT rose to prominence. Hell, I developed a mobile website once for a power company that was basically a wizard / checklist of "Have you checked for known outages? Have you checked your breakers? Have you checked if your neighbours have issues too?" before they were shown the customer service number. Human contact doesn't scale, or is prohi…

24 people on 2.5 million users and you say it doesn't scale ?

    2.5 million users : 24 support staff
    1 billion users   : 9600 support staff
If it scales linearly, that's about 10k support per billion users. I was going to say that a 10,000 person department for handling customer support sounds like it doesn't scale, but maybe I'm wrong, given that that is only about 5% of google's headcount.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#202

Post by eek2121 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #144
Vegenoid wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. All the time when I worked in IT: Me: Please try these 3 things and let me know how it goes: (list of 3 things with instructions) Them: I tried (thing #1) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try these 2 things and let me know how it goes Them: I tried (thing #2) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try this thing and let me know how it goes Them: (no response) Me: Just checking in to see if this is re…

And sometimes the last one becomes: Them: Don’t close the ticket, I hadn't had a chance to check that yet. Life gets in between and this one library or project is usually hardly the only thing that person juggles. We need to accept, that sometimes issues remain open for an extended duration. The worst is, when you have the same error or issue someone else had already, but their issue got closed by an effin github bot…

This. Usually if you are looking at tickets closed, that means you are using that as a metric, which is a BAD idea. Ticket lifetimes and movement are more appropriate metrics.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#203

Post by hluska »

wruza wrote: post #116
duxup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learne…

Would you care for a counterpoint?

This comment should be three paragraphs. As written, it’s very hard to read and I get lost.

If this was a professional communication and you had asked three questions, I might understand one or might not. Now I have no issues saying “dude, your writing is very hard to follow.” But what if your colleagues are nicer than I am?

Or just spitballing. You’ve admitted that you’re the kind of person who will set traps for your colleagues. What if they’re just sick of your shit but are too conflict avoidant to say that?

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#204

Post by tda »

Vegenoid wrote: post #126
duxup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

Yep. All the time when I worked in IT: Me: Please try these 3 things and let me know how it goes: (list of 3 things with instructions) Them: I tried (thing #1) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try these 2 things and let me know how it goes Them: I tried (thing #2) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try this thing and let me know how it goes Them: (no response) Me: Just checking in to see if this is re…

Me: This very specific thing is broken in general for your product when I do a and b. Just like users x,y and z report on .

(Siemens) Support: Before I can help you, please find the serial number via , and the exact version of subsystems .

Me: Here you go, though I fail to see how my specific setup is relevant as the problem has been reported on forums for years, and it is easily reproducible

Support: Please update to latest version x.

Me: Version x has known regression which will break the machine for the customer. I did the 1 hour procedure anyway but the issue is still present.

Support: Please execute this and download the log from with SCP

Me: O well, did that here is the file. Don't understand why you can't run it on your machine

Support: Please try , reboot (wait 5 minutes) and run the trace again

Me: (Gives up)

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#205

Post by treetalker »

I just want to express my admiration and thanks for the practical information and advice both in the post and throughout the comments. Threads like this one make me happy and thankful to be a part of this community.

I’ve upvoted the post and the best comments — but threads like this make me wish I could upvote certain posts and comments more than once.

Thanks again, everyone, and go HN team! :-)

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#206

Post by HappMacDonald »

wruza wrote: post #116
duxup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learne…

There is a Youtuber and AI safety researcher that I support on Patreon's "poor person tier" and they were gonna do a Q&A video so asked us to offer questions for the video, so I offered five in one post as a list.

They wound up answering every question in my list of five, spent enough time on some of them that I think that may have been part of the motivation for them to break it up into two videos, and even emailed me the answer to the one out of five points they didn't address in the video.

In contrast if I render a list at any of my colleagues or vendor dev teams there is a So AI researcher has.. ..list comprehension. (YEAAAH!!)

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#207

Post by Aachen »

gknoy wrote: post #201
Aachen wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 people on 2.5 million users and you say it doesn't scale ?

2.5 million users : 24 support staff 1 billion users : 9600 support staff If it scales linearly, that's about 10k support per billion users. I was going to say that a 10,000 person department for handling customer support sounds like it doesn't scale, but maybe I'm wrong, given that that is only about 5% of google's headcount.

Also in terms of costs: if those support staff cost 100 grand a year in salary and other costs, staffing the 2.5M-user company with those 24 support crew 24/7 (3 shifts, let's pretend it's equally busy at 3AM) results in some 25 cents per month per user that need to be priced into the product. The transaction fees on a monthly billing system are likely higher than that of a skilled support team if this is a representative scale for the industry

I frankly doubt the numbers, surely it costs more than this for an average company?

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#208

Post by HappMacDonald »

generic92034 wrote: post #162
wruza wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learne…

In written communication it often works for me to create an explicit numbered list with indentations and plenty of white space between the items. It also makes it easier to refer to the items in the following communication.

I have to be really careful to never write a paragraph to a colleague or vendor dev under any circumstances. (God forbid a run-on sentence..)

I have to give every idea it's own sentence, and every sentence must be separated by double space at minimum.

And then I can't offer more than maybe four complete ideas, no more than one of which can demand a response.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#209

Post by ants_everywhere »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #161
zelphirkalt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sometimes the last one becomes: Them: Don’t close the ticket, I hadn't had a chance to check that yet. Life gets in between and this one library or project is usually hardly the only thing that person juggles. We need to accept, that sometimes issues remain open for an extended duration. The worst is, when you have the same error or issue someone else had already, but their issue got closed by an effin github bot…

I almost never see bots close issues that are less than 30 days old. Many projects can change a lot in 30-90 days and the bug may no longer exist, keeping issues open when they may no longer be relevant isn't helping anyone either. If it is still relevant, it can simply be re-opened. I don't see any downside to semi-aggressively closing stale issues. If it's easily reproduced then most good projects will mark it so t…

I encounter prematurely closed tickets all the time, practically every day.

So many software projects close bugs with bots, and they have an unrealistically rosy picture of how bug-free their software is.

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