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Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

blog.railway.app

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Re: Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

#2

Post by trynewideas »

> As a team of one, we were able to support 250k users, and now that we've crossed that bridge, our goal is to support two million users with our 2-person team for a 1M-to-1 ratio.

Is it weird then that they have an open req for a support engineer: https://railway.app/careers/support-engineer

Re: Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

#3

Post by ndneighbor »

trynewideas wrote: post #2

> As a team of one, we were able to support 250k users, and now that we've crossed that bridge, our goal is to support two million users with our 2-person team for a 1M-to-1 ratio. Is it weird then that they have an open req for a support engineer: https://railway.app/careers/support-engineer

heyo Angelo (author) here-

This is actually the original blogpost that we used to make our first hire!

> You will be working with our existing Support Engineer, Angelo - to build out processes, formalize policies, and build out integrations between systems to make it so that we can track and record issues.

I accidentally left that one open... but the Ashby interface is so confusing I don't know where to toggle the visibility. I will remove that and then wait for our jobs page to rebuild.

Re: Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

#5

Post by lotsofpulp »

ndneighbor wrote: post #3
trynewideas wrote: post #2

> As a team of one, we were able to support 250k users, and now that we've crossed that bridge, our goal is to support two million users with our 2-person team for a 1M-to-1 ratio. Is it weird then that they have an open req for a support engineer: https://railway.app/careers/support-engineer

heyo Angelo (author) here- This is actually the original blogpost that we used to make our first hire! > You will be working with our existing Support Engineer, Angelo - to build out processes, formalize policies, and build out integrations between systems to make it so that we can track and record issues. I accidentally left that one open... but the Ashby interface is so confusing I don't know where to toggle the vi…

FYI, not disclosing at least minimum pay means applicants should assume pay will be below average. Also, it says “remote - anywhere” at the top, and if you are hiring remote in California, Colorado, New York City, or Washington state, employers are legally required to advertise pay range on job listings and possibly other compensation details.

> At Railway, we provide best in class benefits. Great salary, full health benefits including dependents, strong equity grants, equipment stipend, and much more. For more details, check back on the main careers page.

Re: Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

#6

Post by swatcoder »

Congratulations on achieving this milestone and probably keeping your customers very satisfied along the way, but I eagerly look forward to the future where everyone is so sick of virtual assistants, bots, and knowledge bases that a low ratio is what gets celebrated as a growth milestone rather than a high ratio.

Automated triage is great for digital companies that want to scale cheaply, but not so great for the people who need to figure out how to usefully navigate them, with the brick wall support experience of Google/Facebook/etc being the already vivid example. It helped those companies grow and court techno-optimist investors, but nobody outside of their enterprise customers is happy about the customer service experience. Eventually, that becomes dirt on their reputation and works against their continued growth and success.

Re: Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

#8

Post by fishtoaster »

Seems like good tips for any support org trying to keep a handle on load:

1. Get a support tool (or in this case, roll your own, then buy one when you outgrow that)

2. Build/buy tooling to direct users to existing documentation that might answer their questions

3. Move any routine tasks that require a human to automated self-serve tools.

4. Rope your community into answering eachother's questions.

Re: Serving 250k developers with one support engineer

#10

Post by ndneighbor »

swatcoder wrote: post #6

Congratulations on achieving this milestone and probably keeping your customers very satisfied along the way, but I eagerly look forward to the future where everyone is so sick of virtual assistants, bots, and knowledge bases that a low ratio is what gets celebrated as a growth milestone rather than a high ratio. Automated triage is great for digital companies that want to scale cheaply, but not so great for the peop…

Honestly, you hit the nail on the head on what drives me. Before this I was a PM, and way even before that- I was an Infra Engineer. I think that brick-wall of contact when working on some Enterprise tool was what got me. ESPECIALLY so when there was a bug blocking my company and it felt like no one cared.

When I first joined- this is why I would take great pains to respond to everyone extremely quickly. When I realized that was not sustainable, the focus then shifted to really making sure that our users are heard and their concerns are acted upon. Sure first contact SLA of 30 mins is great but- doesn't mean shit if we don't solve your problem.

So I think yes, tooling should be first. I think there is just a way for that tooling to serve the developer, not some OKR.

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