Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
1–10 of 56 posts
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#2One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary.
The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Who knows?
You, as an engineer, should always always always assume that something is broken until proven otherwise. You must assume that there is a bug, until you can prove that there is not. Once you have ruled out a code error, then you can step into assuming the user is wrong. "OK, I did it the right way and was unable to reproduce it. Therefore, the user must have done something incorrectly."
Now you either try a bunch of different ways to accomplish it, or you go back to the user and say "I'm unable to reproduce this. Can you elaborate on the sequence of actions you took to cause this error?"
But what you should never, ever do is just dismiss the customer's complaint as invalid because you were unable to recreate it. If you can't recreate it, then you need to figure out why. Was the bug fixed by something else? Was the user mistaken? Does it only happen on Tuesdays at 3pm?
I'll say it again because it bears repeating: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. From a reputation standpoint, it's bad news.
The customer isn't always right, and you don't have to blindly believe them, but customers don't report things unless something isn't working for them. Trust that.
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#3One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Wh…
"It works for me" is not an answer, but it is the first step in a reasoning process. "It works for me, it clearly doesn't work for the bug reporter, so what's different between their setup and mine?" That then leads to questions about steps to reproduce.
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#4One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Wh…
would you rather "attempted to reproduce and could not"? dumb.
would you rather get nothing and assume an attempt to reproduce wasn't given?
you know who else wanted people to remove things from other things? hitler.
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#5One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Wh…
> Was the user mistaken?
99999 out of 100000 yes. Sorry but most bug reports, even from QA departments are noise at best, nuisance at worst. And as I posted here before: I am close 40, have 15 years experience as a professional in this industry, I have seen it all and yes it gets harder for you to break through to me because I will presume you have no clue what you are doing because so many before you didn't. Sorry if you are the one special snowflake.
This is not to say my software is bug free, of course not! But unless you can describe the steps you made clearly and also have an expectation/happened instead , your bug report is useless. Again, this doesn't mean I expect reproducable bug reports but I need something solid to work with.
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#6One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Wh…
> Was the user mistaken? 99999 out of 100000 yes. Sorry but most bug reports, even from QA departments are noise at best, nuisance at worst. And as I posted here before: I am close 40, have 15 years experience as a professional in this industry, I have seen it all and yes it gets harder for you to break through to me because I will presume you have no clue what you are doing because so many before you didn't. Sorry i…
Your experience certainly doesn't match my experience; I've worked with brilliant QA people who were able to diagnose problems both when deviating from spec and when performance is a feature that isn't being properly met. And when someone has not been up to snuff, in almost every case I've been able to teach the people you arrogantly dismiss as "noise" and make them better able to help us all create better things through that education.
Your attitude, however, does match my experience: it is why people think software people are assholes. So be more mindful, please, from up there on your high, high horse. For yourself and for us as a profession and a craft.
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#7Not recommended. Adobe Echosign allows NO WAY (at least no easy way) for regular users to export signed documents in a single batch. I've been a paying customer for 6 years. When I asked their tech support where this (surely obvious) feature was, they said that I must have an Enterprise account to export a batch of my own documents. For an account like mine with hundreds of signed documents in it, that would take hours. It took 27 (!!) messages with their support technicians to get a batch of my own documents. Sadly, it seems with the acquisition by Adobe, any hustle, humility, or innovation on the part of Echosign is out. Best of luck to Hellosign to make up for the slack.
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#8One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Wh…
"It works for me" is not an answer, but it is the first step in a reasoning process. "It works for me, it clearly doesn't work for the bug reporter, so what's different between their setup and mine?" That then leads to questions about steps to reproduce.
> "It works for me" is not an answer, but it is the first step in a reasoning process.
Exactly. "It works on my machine" has over time become the easiest way to get a death glare out of me. To rehash the old quote, we are not shipping your machine!
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#9One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for junior devs (and software engineers in general) is actually quite simple: Remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary. The rationale is equally simple: I wouldn't take the time out of my day to send a bug report if it "worked for me." The problem could be any number of things: buggy code, incorrect instructions, browser incompatibilities, race conditions. Wh…
it isn't that black and white. Many times it's simply a misunderstanding, the developer isn't actually testing the right thing. Saying "works on my machine" is the opening to a dialogue that involves "can you show me what you did?"
Re: Why, after a year with Adobe EchoSign, I’m taking my business elsewhere
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Was the user mistaken? 99999 out of 100000 yes. Sorry but most bug reports, even from QA departments are noise at best, nuisance at worst. And as I posted here before: I am close 40, have 15 years experience as a professional in this industry, I have seen it all and yes it gets harder for you to break through to me because I will presume you have no clue what you are doing because so many before you didn't. Sorry i…
Your experience certainly doesn't match my experience; I've worked with brilliant QA people who were able to diagnose problems both when deviating from spec and when performance is a feature that isn't being properly met. And when someone has not been up to snuff, in almost every case I've been able to teach the people you arrogantly dismiss as "noise" and make them better able to help us all create better things thr…
QA is not the same thing as a customer submitting a bug report, and quite frankly you're an asshole for conflating the two in order to respond to the above poster.