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The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

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Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#71

Post by ido »

xofer wrote: post #67
teekert wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so a US thing. In my country an adult is just expected to be able to look at a slide, judge it as dangerous, have te freedom to do it anyway, receive medial help if needed, feel the shame, experienced a learning moment. Get laughed at, Laugh about it. In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault. It always feels like a not-so-nice place to be. Then again it makes for great lawyer and medical s…

I'm in the US and for years wrote software for the medical industry. I was contracted by a European company to write an app, and of course filled it with disclaimers and extra clicks asking "Are you sure?" When I demoed it, they asked what all that crap was for. I said something like, "Umm, liability, duh." Their response: "Oh, we don't sue people for honest mistakes here."

I just want to mention this in case someone reads your comment and does something inadvisable: "European" is an insufficiently general term. Some countries in Europe are more litigious than others.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#73

Post by brightball »

Hippocrates wrote: post #50

My company used Rackspace back in 2013. It was my first gig where I was "managing servers" and "deploying to production". The rest of the team was as inexperienced as I was. We paid extra for the support services that entitled us to unlimited 24/7 human support. Whenever I was stuck on an issue with deploying, scaling, crashing etc. my boss would say "try calling support." Initially you'd get a first-line operator bu…

I was with a company back in 2007-08 who was using Rackspace. I'll never forget the day I was sitting at a command prompt looking at htop trying to figure out what was straining the server so much...when I got a message in the terminal from Rackspace telling me exactly what was happening and what we needed to change to fix it.

Support person just chatting with me right there in the terminal, without me even having to call for help. It was incredible and I'm really sad to see them struggling now. That turned me into a fan.

When they picked up Slicehost, I was initially really happy about it but the benefits never really seemed to materialize. Then Digital Ocean appeared as essentially "the new Slicehost" not too much later and progress continued from there.

Just never adapted as a viable cloud option. For a while there, before GCP and Azure were prominent a lot of conversations were "Amazon or Rackspace".

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#74

Post by ghaff »

ido wrote: post #71
xofer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the US and for years wrote software for the medical industry. I was contracted by a European company to write an app, and of course filled it with disclaimers and extra clicks asking "Are you sure?" When I demoed it, they asked what all that crap was for. I said something like, "Umm, liability, duh." Their response: "Oh, we don't sue people for honest mistakes here."

I just want to mention this in case someone reads your comment and does something inadvisable: "European" is an insufficiently general term. Some countries in Europe are more litigious than others.

Furthermore, while confirmation prompts can certainly be taken to an extreme (and they probably don't do much good if people get inured to just clicking "Yes"), they absolutely make sense for some operations.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#75

Post by hotpotamus »

teekert wrote: post #55
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a "use this slide at your own risk" sign be enough to prevent any lawsuits?

This is so a US thing. In my country an adult is just expected to be able to look at a slide, judge it as dangerous, have te freedom to do it anyway, receive medial help if needed, feel the shame, experienced a learning moment. Get laughed at, Laugh about it. In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault. It always feels like a not-so-nice place to be. Then again it makes for great lawyer and medical s…

How much does it cost to repair a broken leg in your country? In the US it will probably be 5 figures, so getting it paid is a pretty big concern.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#76

Post by hotpotamus »

dizhn wrote: post #33
opsunit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They bought and then shuttered Slicehost in an attempt to occupy that market segment.

DataPipe (another company where tech support was the #1 priority) was also acquired by Rackspace. However I don't know if it was acquired by the original owners or the current org.

Onica too, which I don't know a whole lot about but my impression is that they were the top tier of cloud consultants.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#78

Post by rrdharan »

brightball wrote: post #73
Hippocrates wrote: post #50

My company used Rackspace back in 2013. It was my first gig where I was "managing servers" and "deploying to production". The rest of the team was as inexperienced as I was. We paid extra for the support services that entitled us to unlimited 24/7 human support. Whenever I was stuck on an issue with deploying, scaling, crashing etc. my boss would say "try calling support." Initially you'd get a first-line operator bu…

I was with a company back in 2007-08 who was using Rackspace. I'll never forget the day I was sitting at a command prompt looking at htop trying to figure out what was straining the server so much...when I got a message in the terminal from Rackspace telling me exactly what was happening and what we needed to change to fix it. Support person just chatting with me right there in the terminal, without me even having to…

That seems pretty sketchy from a data access perspective.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#79

Post by nickelcitymario »

xofer wrote: post #67
teekert wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so a US thing. In my country an adult is just expected to be able to look at a slide, judge it as dangerous, have te freedom to do it anyway, receive medial help if needed, feel the shame, experienced a learning moment. Get laughed at, Laugh about it. In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault. It always feels like a not-so-nice place to be. Then again it makes for great lawyer and medical s…

I'm in the US and for years wrote software for the medical industry. I was contracted by a European company to write an app, and of course filled it with disclaimers and extra clicks asking "Are you sure?" When I demoed it, they asked what all that crap was for. I said something like, "Umm, liability, duh." Their response: "Oh, we don't sue people for honest mistakes here."

That's wild! I'm in Canada, which I generally consider to be much less litigious than the US and A, but we still cover our bases for liability all the time.

Re: The death of Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’

#80

Post by bad416f1f5a2 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #75
teekert wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so a US thing. In my country an adult is just expected to be able to look at a slide, judge it as dangerous, have te freedom to do it anyway, receive medial help if needed, feel the shame, experienced a learning moment. Get laughed at, Laugh about it. In the US there is always a lawsuit and it's someone's fault. It always feels like a not-so-nice place to be. Then again it makes for great lawyer and medical s…

How much does it cost to repair a broken leg in your country? In the US it will probably be 5 figures, so getting it paid is a pretty big concern.

And if you can't work due to your injury and are one of the many Americans who does not have paid time off, the best case for you is using FMLA to at least retain your job so you can work - but your absence won't be paid. Hopefully your emergency fund is higher than the American median of $2000.
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