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Reliability: It’s not great

(community.fly.io)
1226 points bishopsmother | 7 comments | 06 Mar 23 17:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.617s | source | bottom
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yamrzou ◴[06 Mar 23 19:09 UTC] No.35046052[source]▶
I'm not a user of Fly.io. I can't help but notice how remarkable the effect of open communication on potential end users like me. I remember reading about their reliability problems on HN some time ago. That biased my view of the company. After reading this, the open communication and transparency restored my trust in them, and would make them again a potential candidate for future projects. Because now I know that they acknowledge the problem and that they are trying to improve things.
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gizmo ◴[06 Mar 23 20:05 UTC] No.35046831[source]▶
This post is carefully worded corporate messaging, but because they write for their developer audience it has an informal "oh shucks we messed up bad y'all" vibe to it. But make no mistake, this is 100% corporate messaging.

I get that growing is super hard. And maybe fly will grow up to be a good platform some day. But that's the future. Today, they're flying by the seat of their pants and I mostly feel sorry for people who were tricked into thinking this platform is ready for production use.

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spoiler ◴[06 Mar 23 20:56 UTC] No.35047467[source]▶
I'm not sure why the cynicism around their candor. Do you think it's not genuine just because it was posted by a company employee?

Your post implies corporate messaging is bad. And anything posted by a company—or at least I don't know where you draw the line—can be considered corporate messaging. Am I just reading too much into your phrasing?

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1. gizmo ◴[06 Mar 23 21:19 UTC] No.35047753[source]▶
It's strategic messaging. It can't be genuine, because of what it is. The benefit they get is publicity and damage control, and as you can tell by the many responses here, it buys them time because many developers are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Companies that engage in this kind of candor are careful not to disclose those things that would really hurt their business. Those things are still kept secret. If the CEO accidentally sexually harassed an employee that's not getting disclosed. A mea culpa is only offered for the issues that are already known regarding scaling, downtime, and missing features. Struggles they have because they're choosing to grow so fast.

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2. dadrian ◴[06 Mar 23 22:24 UTC] No.35048619[source]▶
Sorry, what? Do you expect that no company can think about what to write before they post it, or that any post about anything internal must cover all internal issues? Posts must be either all roses or a no-thought laundry list of everything bad?
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3. ignoramous ◴[06 Mar 23 22:49 UTC] No.35048900[source]▶
> Do you expect that no company can think about what to write before they post it...

I guess, you and GP are in agreement for the strategic part of the argument at least, if not the genuine part of it.

As someone who's been active on Fly's community forums for close to 18 months now, I think Fly employs some of the most genuine and helpful engs you'll see, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

4. gizmo ◴[06 Mar 23 23:36 UTC] No.35049442[source]▶
Of course not. The point is that the reader should recognize corporate communication for what it is: fundamentally self-serving. Corporate communication should therefore be met with thoughtful skepticism, and not with naivety or cynicism.
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5. polishdude20 ◴[07 Mar 23 01:42 UTC] No.35050422[source]▶
Yeah I agree with you. Corporate messaging is still corporate messaging. If you go the candor route, it's a tactic of many you can employ.
6. simonw ◴[07 Mar 23 02:32 UTC] No.35050813{3}[source]▶
There is a world of difference between the tone and content of that Fly post and the tone and content that most people expect from cover-your-ass corporate blog posts.

Sure, both are examples of "self-serving corporate communication" - but it's clear that the way Fly communicate here is more valuable and trustworthy than so many other examples of this kind of thing handled poorly.

7. spoiler ◴[07 Mar 23 21:17 UTC] No.35061366[source]▶
I don't think this means that it can't be genuine. I mean, the intent was to buy some good will with their customers who have experienced problems, that's for sure. But it's not a "bad" motive I think.

If I had a bad day and didn't get to complete something within my estimate, I'll tell my boss I had a bad day and ask for more time. Does that mean I have ulterior some ulterior motives? No, I just had a shit day, and needed some compassion.

They have been going through a rough patch recently with their scalability problems. And they realised they might not address it as easily or as quickly as they'd like. So they just wanted to buy time. I think that's better than "bunkering" and not letting your customers know what's up.

They do have the benefit that their audience is tech savvy as they are, so they can go into more details (and be less formal, I suppose) to get some understanding from their customers. As in, most devs have struggled at some point with a problem that exceeded the initial scope/time estimate. It sucks, and we know it sucks. So, why not give them the benefit of the doubt here?

Like, I think understand what you mean: their goal was to buy more time, and they achieved that. But even though it was corporate messaging, I still think it was genuine. I assume they felt a bit like "ok shit, we gotta talk to our customers, they deserve to know what's going on".

I guess they wouldn't air most their internal issue, since those don't aren't felt by the customers. So there's no need to apologise and explain themselves.