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A gentlemen's agreement

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Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#21

Post by racbart »

I disagree. I mean, you put the line at a wrong place.

So you say we shouldn't benefit from competitor's outages, but we can benefit from their failures of different types? Because every time you claim that you do something better than competition, it's simply you trying to benefit from their failure to do this thing right.

I think the line should be a bit further than you say. Benefiting from someone's downtime or any other kind of failure is perfectly fine, unless that downtime/failure wasn't easily avoidable. If the downtime/failure is because the company lack of professionalism then you should go and benefit from it. If their downtime is because they are hosting servers in their own office, under CTO's desk, and cleaning lady disconnected the cable, shame on them.

That said, this wasn't the case. DDoS isn't something anyone can easily protect from and because of that you shouldn't try to benefit from it. If you do, you basically lie to your customers by making impression that you could avoid such outage.

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#22

Post by themartorana »

amirmc wrote: post #9

I don't understand. Sure, this may be a special case related to the PyCon stuff (which should be more clearly referenced in the OP imho) but I don't see how it's a general point. What if you really do believe that you have a better service than that competitor? What if you can demonstrate better uptime/benefits/customer-service/whatever? Do you just sit around and wait until customers fall into your lap? While I appr…

Friend of the OP.

This is very focused on the current circumstances, but applies to similar circumstances as they happen.

They found themselves somewhat embroiled in this situation simply by providing a similar service. She's not arguing against marketing your company as the best of the possible solutions, that's just good business. What she is arguing is that blatantly kicking someone while they're down and calling it "marketing" is dirty pool - especially while in the same breath making promises no company can keep.

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#23

Post by jiggy2011 »

rm999 wrote: post #15
amirmc wrote: post #9

I don't understand. Sure, this may be a special case related to the PyCon stuff (which should be more clearly referenced in the OP imho) but I don't see how it's a general point. What if you really do believe that you have a better service than that competitor? What if you can demonstrate better uptime/benefits/customer-service/whatever? Do you just sit around and wait until customers fall into your lap? While I appr…

It's an implicit form of negative advertising, which is rarely noble or "gentlemanly". I think most people would be disgusted if a politician started running ads about how healthy he is when his opponent is in the hospital. This situation is similar: while the sites are touting themselves, it's the obvious contrast they are creating that makes it negative.

Not sure, I think if a politician had health problems that could affect his ability to govern it would be legitimate for his opponent to point that out.

If I ran a hosting service with better uptime than amazon I'd sure as hell let people know too.

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#24

Post by 87689769867 »

>>When someone you compete against is suffering, especially as a result of any kind of infrastructure issues, shut up and keep your head down.

Why? Seriously Why? Companies that are not attacked by their competitors become lazy. I think is fair game. They are not doing anything illegal and frankly I don't think the situation is scummy at all. This guy sounds like a kid yelling "is not fair" and "you are a big meanie". Where the fuck does he think he is?

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#25

Post by protomyth »

rm999 wrote: post #15
amirmc wrote: post #9

I don't understand. Sure, this may be a special case related to the PyCon stuff (which should be more clearly referenced in the OP imho) but I don't see how it's a general point. What if you really do believe that you have a better service than that competitor? What if you can demonstrate better uptime/benefits/customer-service/whatever? Do you just sit around and wait until customers fall into your lap? While I appr…

It's an implicit form of negative advertising, which is rarely noble or "gentlemanly". I think most people would be disgusted if a politician started running ads about how healthy he is when his opponent is in the hospital. This situation is similar: while the sites are touting themselves, it's the obvious contrast they are creating that makes it negative.

Politicians would wish their opponent a speedy recovery after their morning jog[1], like a website might say it won't take advantage of another's situation by writing a blog post with a link to the competitors problems[2] and pointing out some other competitor is acting poorly.

1) or tennis on The West Wing

2) I do believe their post is in good faith, but I spent a chunk of my life dealing with politicians and I think seeing the gears makes one a bit cynical

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#26

Post by EwanToo »

nmcfarl wrote: post #16

I don’t know - I think I’m a bit darwinistic here. Having suffered through some products with bi-weekly downtime, I tend to think competitors should be allowed tout whatever their strengths are including uptime if that’s one of them. And it doesn’t reflect poorly on them (in my eyes). When suffering I like to see solutions offered… Of course most companies with horrible re-occuring downtime, have no serious competiti…

To me, it's one thing to capitalise on a companies on-going downtime issues, that indicated an inability or unwillingness to resolve the issue, but it's another thing entirely to take advantage of a situation that could as easily be affecting you, no matter what precautions you take.

I've no doubt Sendgrid have been DDOS'd before and survived, and that this was a significant attack, so can their competitors honestly say there's no chance they'd of not gone down in the same situation?

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#27

Post by cryptoz »

By writing this post, you're actively working to benefit from someone else's outage. A bit hypocritical, no? Hitting the front page of HN with a post talking about how great you are? Yeah, okay, you're not trying to benefit off this outage at all.

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#29

Post by themartorana »

benatkin wrote: post #20

I agree with most of this, but they should have waited weeks to post this, so it didn't seem like they were trying to use reverse psychology to engage in the exact behavior that they're railing against. Also "gentlemen's agreement" was a poor choice of words because it isn't a gender neutral term.

I'm pretty sure the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, it's a definable, historical legal term. Better than titling it "An informal agreement between two or more parties simply understood as part of an unspoken agreement by convention or through mutually beneficial etiquette." (Apologies to Wikipedia)

Re: A gentlemen's agreement

#30

Post by bcoates »

This will do nothing, as it's not their decision to make. I'm occasionally in the position to be buying services from commodity providers. If your service goes down and I start shopping around, the question is not "Will I ditch you for someone who can deliver?", it's "Which one will I move to?".

You might as well try to be in the running with some well-timed advertising. I'm sure you're emotionally invested in being a nice guy to the folks in the booth next to you, but as your customer I can assure you I'd rather see you fight.

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