Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to work at Google in support. You were not talking to a random engineer - the support people are all dedicated support contractors. Most of the teams are all non-technical and the only thing they know about how the product works is from a two week training where most of the time is spent on learning how to avoid lawsuits.
How do people think google puts software engineers on the phone randomly? That's just an insane idea. I mean, these guys all make what 150k starting with 250k+ salaries not unheard of and you really expect their managers to go, "Oh btw, you're on helpdesk this week. Put on your headset and talk to clueless people for 8 hours today."
I once worked at a startup-bought-by-bigco that did almost exactly this. Granted it was level 4, not level 1 support; and it was on a quarterly, not weekly, basis.
