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Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

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Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#341

Post by vhiremath4 »

alwaysanon wrote: post #304
vhiremath4 wrote: post #193

We spend 100s of 1000’s of dollars a month on AWS. Our rep tried getting me to upgrade to paid support, and I said there was no way I was going to do that. I’m already paying AWS millions a year and will be giving them more and more business as Loom continues to skyrocket in usage. No way I’m paying for support at that scale. It’s a bogus model to charge your customers more when they’re continuing to accelerate in gr…

The way that support is paid for within AWS is roughly like the way that tipping works in the US at a restaurant. The cost of the 'food' doesn't include the cost of your server/support person. Everybody knows that and so you pay the server separately in the form of a tip - usually as a % of the bill.

Does AWS not pay their support staff and engineers salaries?

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#342

Post by milesward »

Clewza313 wrote: post #264
milesward wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hit me, more than happy to make fun of the salient GCP rep for you in a way they really won't like :)

Bit of a surprising comment coming from the CTO of a large Google partner? https://sada.com/about/leadership-team/miles-ward/

I think you’ll find me surprising :) It’s surfacing and chasing down root cause of these misses that make things better for all customers, and that’s my goal :)

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#343

Post by milesward »

trulyme wrote: post #235
milesward wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hit me, more than happy to make fun of the salient GCP rep for you in a way they really won't like :)

Curious what your approach would be? That said, this is not some poor rep's problem. This is a problem of Google culture and one that will be very difficult to fix. They simple don't care much about their customers and never needed to.

I’ve seen both! Plenty of culture issues, or tools, and sometimes someone’s just checked out...

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#344

Post by paulyy_y »

ciguy wrote: post #271
markdog12 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does RDS not do this to their customers? This alone would make me seriously consider taking my business away from GCP.

Absolutely not. I'm sure it's happened but I have never personally seen an RDS instance go down, in over 10 years consulting and building in AWS. Google Cloud SQL was going down for multiple minutes every month for one of my clients, and their support just said there was nothing they could do about it. That cost Google cloud at least a million dollars in revenue over the next few years as this was a fast growing star…

Do y'all just like, ignore SLO's? Cloud SQL has a 99.95% SLO, going down for multiple minutes every month is within that. No smoke and mirrors here, there are ways to mitigate it but it's not Google messing around with expectations. HA doesn't mean 100% uptime.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#345

Post by webo »

nostrebored wrote: post #260
verst wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I was one of 3 people globally that was the entirety of the GCP support team :) You should have seen the extent to which the rest of the team and I tried to resolve customer issues. Random App Engine app getting 500s calling an Open ID endpoint (the service wasn't strictly speaking managed by GCP). I absolutely could not reproduce this and had no other reports, but I knew it was happening for the cus…

One thing that AWS Premium Support does very well is make situations like this seem unremarkable. This is the default way you do work. Going above and beyond is solving the issue, the next issue the customer hasn't asked you about, and giving practical guidance on things like cost optimization or availability concerns after weeks of deep diving. I'm not saying you didn't do great work, but I think the secret to succe…

Is paying extra 3-10% of your already expensive invoice worth the premium support that you _might_ need? Not sure I would consider that customer obsession... more like insurance.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#346

Post by tomjuggler »

cocochanel wrote: post #283
0df8dkdf wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Cloud, AWS, MS Auzra are made to lock you into their system. I guess if fine if you are ok with it and you don't have an experienced systemadmin/dev op on hand. There are plenty of cloud agnostic platform out there that does VPS, load balancers. digital ocean, linode, etc. If you want to be green there is also the Advania they use geothermal energy. And since it is in iceland better data protection policy than…

Couldn't agree more. I am on both DO and Linode for many years and I have had an amazing experience. Not affiliated with any of them, just a happy customer.

Yeah, Digital Ocean $5 per month is where I started. Do it yourself, the tools are out there!

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#347

Post by verst »

nostrebored wrote: post #260
verst wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I was one of 3 people globally that was the entirety of the GCP support team :) You should have seen the extent to which the rest of the team and I tried to resolve customer issues. Random App Engine app getting 500s calling an Open ID endpoint (the service wasn't strictly speaking managed by GCP). I absolutely could not reproduce this and had no other reports, but I knew it was happening for the cus…

One thing that AWS Premium Support does very well is make situations like this seem unremarkable. This is the default way you do work. Going above and beyond is solving the issue, the next issue the customer hasn't asked you about, and giving practical guidance on things like cost optimization or availability concerns after weeks of deep diving. I'm not saying you didn't do great work, but I think the secret to succe…

What I am saying is that this obsession was normal to us also. I didn't know any Googlers (whether in support or engineering) who didn't care about customers.

We did whatever it took to resolve a support case in the quickest yet most satisfactory manner, even if it meant doing some crazy research, meanwhile we got of course overloaded with more support cases coming in.

I had 100% customer satisfaction from all surveys. That was definitely hard to achieve because happy people usually don't complete surveys. :)

These were the early days of many GCP services. I worked there when Compute Engine and Big Query GA'd. This was just before and possibly during the time the paid support tiers were launched (I don't recall). I left mid 2013. No idea what their support is like now.

And those technical account managers just bounced customer questions to us 3-5 support engineers (technical solutions engineer)

Anyways, your AWS comparison may apply to the GCP support culture now (I have no idea) but back then we were all extremely customer obsessed - by choice.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#348

Post by lanstin »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #300
matheusmoreira wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't care about my company at all So why is Google this way? They already have a terrible reputation for their non-existent support. Never thought they'd treat actual companies this way though. It makes no sense...

Inevitable. The entire company is built on a scalable business that required no direct contact with customers. Direct person to person interaction is the antithesis of their successful business model. Of course, now when they enter a business that needs direct customer interaction, it shouldn't be surprising that they aren't good at it. No supportive processes and probably no internal appreciation for what reps do. T…

Even their customer facing engineers who aren’t total a holes act like they are from a superior type of existence and we should be honored to be graced with their specialness without meaning to, but it is ground into them.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#349

Post by renewiltord »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #338
dragonwriter wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Aurora MySQL/Postgres are just forks, I think they are a completely custom datastore behind a MySQL or Postgres-compatible interface (which probably uses a lot of non-engine code from the open-source base database.)

Regardless it looks like anyone choosing Aurora should not hold their breath for Mysql 8 or Postgres 10+ compatibility. Seems like only one major version bump has happened since they launched the first one (Mysql 5.6-to-5.7). Which is fine. It can just be a little confusing as they drift and the caveats grow.

I use it in Postgres 12 mode.

Re: Google Cloud vs. AWS Onboarding Comparison

#350

Post by estreeper »

randlet wrote: post #2

Title should maybe be switched to "Google Cloud vs AWS Onboarding Comparison for YC companies". Not to say that isn't a useful article on its own, but it's hard to draw too many meaningful conclusions for the rest of us when the first line of the AWS bullet points is "reach out to dedicated YC email".

For what it's worth, as a non-YC company, I found the GCP onboarding process to be far superior in every way, and my experiences were essentially reversed. For context, we started with GCP for Startups 1.5 years ago when we were just getting beyond a demo, and with AWS Activate 1 year ago, when we had almost no revenue and just about 1,000 users. We were based in the Santa Fe Business Incubator (NM, USA).

All in all, it had taken our incubator at least 1.5 years to get enrolled in AWS Activate, and 4 days in GCP for Startups.

When we applied for GCP for Startups, we were approved in a week, and were contacted right away by an account manager and a support engineer who offered us help with anything we needed. When we applied for Activate, it took a month with lots of followups, and being shuffled between 4 support team members who were communicating with the Activate team (there was no way to contact them directly).

It definitely felt like our business was important for GCP, and for AWS, it wasn't. It was an easy choice.

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