I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by Too » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

jkukul wrote: post #389

RachelF wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- Invest in good docs..." In my experience, end users don't read the docs or FAQ's or help search - they send you a question.

I think in the era of LLMs good docs/FAQ are of an even greater value. You can write a support bot that sends a user's question + docs/FAQ to an LLM to automatically deal with the basic questions and only involve a human in the loop once a question goes beyond what's in the docs.

For a side project?

Not even the big giants manage to create LLM bots that work.

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

#422

Post by qup » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

dayjah wrote: post #289

tda wrote: post #204

Earlier 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…

This is me almost every time I interact with ISP support. Except… recently I completely misdiagnosed something. So while I was getting politely frustrated with the support clerk, he was stepping me through a set of irrelevant seeming procedures which, indeed, resulted in identifying that a piece of hardware was broken. In this case it was the fiber to Ethernet adapter my ISP uses. He needed me to verify that, at ever…

I did the even more dumbass version of this once.

I had DSL with a router and modem. I never had problems with it, never required reset etc. Over the years somehow I forgot and thought it was a combo router and modem.

Then when I finally had a problem, I insisted to customer support I had done many power cycles already. They scheduled a tech to come out, but I realized my mistake before it went that far at least.

A power cycle fixed the modem, of course.

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

#423

Post by hermitcrab » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 8:16 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #420

hermitcrab wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reply to every support request that isn't an obvious scam. It feels rude not to.

I get it but main thing is you should know that's a choice and it shouldn't be a requirement/burden. For the common things I think I'd just setup an autoreply that said something like; Thanks for your message, please know that we are limited on time and only respond to critical issues. However, also please know that we do eventually read and monitor these emails; - Bug reports or issues on our current application: we…

Taking up to a week to respond to a bug report sounds like a long time. I would wonder that anyone would bother to submit a bug report if they think they might have to wait a week to get a response. But I guess its acceptable, if you set customer expectations accordingly.

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

#424

Post by justsomehnguy » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 9:25 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #393

rusticpenn wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job in a software maintenance project, I was overenthusiastic and was closing issues left and right. My manager called me to his office and told me that if I solved all the issues, the project will need much lesser people when they renew the contract, which might lead me, the junior most person, to be sent to the bench until they get a new contract.

Sounds like something that could be turned into an opportunity. Immediately start looking for a different job, and on the interview explain “I left previous job because I was too efficient at solving problems. After X time, there were no outstanding issues so I was no longer necessary. I’m looking for the next place where I can make a difference”. There are plenty of places that see fewer issues a positive.

> I left previous job because I was too efficient at solving problems. After X time, there were no outstanding issues so I was no longer necessary.

And so I was fired and could no longer support myself or my family, that's why I'm applying to a position with the lowest pay grade,

It's the capitalism, not a red cross

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

#425

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 10:09 PM UTC

ocodo wrote: post #390

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Support just completely disconnected from Engineering Yes. Unless you want to drive engineering insane / waste a ton of money.

As mentioned in another comment, support shouldn't be entirely disconnected.

If a customer seems to have discovered a legit bug in the software, there needs to be a path from support to engineering for the bug to get reported.

At the very least, support staff should be willing and able to attempt to recreate a bug that a user is reporting, rather than asking them to completely wipe their device and install everything from scratch for something that is easily reproduced.

Let's take a very simple example. Imagine you've got this Chess app, and whenever someone creates a checkmate involving two bishops, the game crashes, 100% of the time, but only in cases involving two bishops. Sure, maybe the first ticket you get, you go through the workflow of reinstalling, etc. But by the time you've got 100 tickets all saying their game crashed on a checkmate involving two bishops, that should have been escalated to engineering. At the very least, support should be saying it's a known issue. Honesty is going to be a lot less frustrating than to be told to take steps that both sides knows won't fix the issue.

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

#426

Post by kebman » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 2:01 AM UTC

hermitcrab wrote: post #264

kebman wrote: post #64

I think in terms of official correspondence, I don't think it's a good idea to ask criminals why they did a certain thing, ref the reply to the scammer about his access being revoked. Yes, it might feel good to berate him and ask "Why did you do that?" But what if he answers? Would you really entertain valuable business time arguing with a fraudster? In general, I also think it's a bad idea to entertain feature reque…

>In general, I also think it's a bad idea to entertain feature requests A lot of the best features in my products originate with feature requests from customers.

Yes, in bulk. If 100 people all mention essentially the same feature, it might be worthwhile. If just one person does it? Well, if it highlights something you never thought about, it can ofc be valuable, but it's not something I'd spend a lot of time on - especially if it's just adding to the overall feature creep.

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

#427

Post by exikyut » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 2:28 AM UTC

qup wrote: post #422

dayjah wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me almost every time I interact with ISP support. Except… recently I completely misdiagnosed something. So while I was getting politely frustrated with the support clerk, he was stepping me through a set of irrelevant seeming procedures which, indeed, resulted in identifying that a piece of hardware was broken. In this case it was the fiber to Ethernet adapter my ISP uses. He needed me to verify that, at ever…

I did the even more dumbass version of this once. I had DSL with a router and modem. I never had problems with it, never required reset etc. Over the years somehow I forgot and thought it was a combo router and modem. Then when I finally had a problem, I insisted to customer support I had done many power cycles already. They scheduled a tech to come out, but I realized my mistake before it went that far at least. A p…

I went as far as going out to one of the local metro offices for my ISP in the city, to demonstrate some bizarre problem that I was experiencing with my combo router / modem.

I was actually able to demonstrate the issue in person, and everyone was scratching their heads trying to figure out what was going on.

I decided to try factory resetting it as a hail mary... and instantaneously I got a perfectly functioning ADSL connection.

It would have been far less embarrassing for me to have thought to try that and make the effort at home. lol

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

#428

Post by Loxicon » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 3:45 AM UTC

shash7 wrote: post #37

Can 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…

> automating the heck out of everything

What kinda things did you automate?

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

#429

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#430

Post by ehnto » Fri, Aug 23, 2024, 6:59 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #408

make3 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it's a subjective very negative judgement about another human, and in polite conversation one should assume baseline positive things about other humans. it's basically like calling someone an asshole. as HN as a culture of politeness, you apologize first, even if it's justified.

It’s not a negative judgement. Everyone has different levels of entitlement in any particular context. Lots of people feel entitled to free, clean, potable tap water. Lots more people don’t because they live somewhere without it. There is nothing wrong with saying, “our product is not for people entitled to X”. There is no judgement there, let alone anything negative.

Semantically you are correct, contextually it had the potential to be rude. Words morph and twist in meaning all the time, based on context and individual interpretation. It was not that weird to apologise for calling someone entitled. It is often used as an insult.