One thing I didn't see the author mention in his list of lessons learned: You shouldn't be surprised that you have to deal with a lot of idiots when you make a product for idiots. His market here is the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, and there's a price that comes with that.
I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
231–240 of 441 posts
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
I wonder how flows like that happen. Is Support just completely disconnected from Engineering? Do they not have a way to report issues and indicate that many customers are having a specific issue? Does the company believe that giving a customer a runaround will make them less upset than saying "Sorry, this is a known issue. We're working on it but do not have a timeline"? Certainly at some point, some support person…
If you're working with a large company, Support is outsourced to a bunch of people reading scripts in Manila/Bangalore, and the external company employing them is actively incentivized to never resolve the root cause of any issue, because doing so would mean less tickets and less billable hours.
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#233The amount of fraud and scammers out there is insane. I worked on a platform that only had a few hundred in revenue a month (just starting out). We did many smaller transactions, and getting hit with disputes was a killer. If someone did 15 transactions, they could get hit with 15 chargebacks up to 3 months later. So for every transaction, even if it only generated $3 in revenue, the chargeback could be potentially $…
Chargebacks are a creditcard thing. In some countries people are willing to pay with methods that do not allow chargebacks. Also chargebacks do not work for wiretranfers. So you can ask them to do a wire transfer instead
You honestly think someone is going to set up wire transfer for an online subscription service?
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#234Earlier 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…
> If it is still relevant, it can simply be re-opened.
I've seen places where tickets were not allowed to be re-opened. If a ticket was closed for any reason at all besides a misclick, a new ticket had to be opened with a link to the old ticket if necessary.
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's this old story about an old farmer and his horse. You see, this old farmer had a horse that he loved dearly; took great care of it and pampered it. But he was getting old, and wanted to retire to the City, where he could not keep a horse. So what do I do with this horse, he wondered? He asked a wise friend, who told him: sell the horse for the highest amount of money that you can. What?!? replied the farmer;…
Or, give it to someone who can't afford a horse but really needs one, because it will be worth more to them than to someone who can afford to overpay for it.
As someone who lives on a horse rescue farm, I can assure you that this logic does not hold!
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#236I have a moderately successful hardware side project (eink calendars) and I am constantly torn and questioning myself.
Am I spending
* too much time on it, given how little money it makes?
* or too little time on it, given that it’s already making money and maybe if I worked on it more, I could grow it enough so I can quit my day job ?
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#237Can relate, I've been in a similar boat running a small B2B Saas over the last 2 years. It does get easier over time. I've learnt a few tricks for managing early stage pain points. - You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. - Inve…
> You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support
If this makes you uneasy, it can be easier if you sign initial support replies under another name.
Hey, this is John, I'll be happy to help you with that.
Let me know if that helps.
--JohnRe: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#238Can relate, I've been in a similar boat running a small B2B Saas over the last 2 years. It does get easier over time. I've learnt a few tricks for managing early stage pain points. - You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. - Inve…
Ive had tremendous success submitting files to AI and just having it produce a structured readme.md for the logic within the code, I'll do a thing where I say Give me a readme, include description of functions, logic, how its invoked, dependencies, monitoring and give me a mermaid and swim diagram of the workflow.
Its great.
Another thing I do with an AI helper is when I have it write out a function for me I have it write out the descriptor that can go in the readme for that function. I also have it write a header with version description path etc.
It was an experiment which started with the goal is to have all the code for a simple project with its associated readme functions loaded into a textai workflow and postgres DB and I can dynamically call the readme functions for everything by having a bot yank all the MD table for all the functions and just put together a real-time readme. As I add txtAI workflow scripts, they put their MDs into the DB, I try having it spit a JSON of its MD to a mongo?
The point is playing with ways to have the system self document as I/it develops.
Because one of the ways I have been using Claude to learn is through a F-ton of iterating on an initial thought and bird-walking through implementing a tool wrapped around it.
This way, as I iterate through many many version of a concept or script/function/api/crawler - it keeps a reminder readme for when I want to know what the heck was I thinking (I have had super awesome moments of brilliance, and then after a sleep or lengthy distraction - totally loose the Mode and have no idea what I was doing, or how I came up with BrilliantIdea(TM)
ADHD is a helluva drug :-(
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#239two tips that I've found that help take the load off support:
- document everything obsessively; 80% of support tickets can be answered by 20% of your documentation
- use subreddits and discords and let your users help one another
Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
I wonder how flows like that happen. Is Support just completely disconnected from Engineering? Do they not have a way to report issues and indicate that many customers are having a specific issue? Does the company believe that giving a customer a runaround will make them less upset than saying "Sorry, this is a known issue. We're working on it but do not have a timeline"? Certainly at some point, some support person…
Yes. Engineering time is expensive. Support exists to resolve problems without needing engineer time except when the company thinks that the problem is worthy of being addressed.
The tendency to wall off engineers is often taken to a counterproductive level.