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177 points foxfired | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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star-glider ◴[] No.43625781[source]
This isn't effective at a large org, but if you're running a small company/startup, just have an engineer "help out" with support every so often. We'd ask devs to run the support desk when the person was on vacation and also had a general rotation through.

It's good for building customer empathy but also for helping the people who build the product understand how it's used. The intuition you build up from those experiences is very powerful.

Also, about two hours into handling support tickets for the same issue, 99% of devs will just fix the problem. So you create a very elegant incentive structure for bugfixing that circumvents a lot of the traditional structural issues.

Of course you can't do this in a big company, which is one of the structural disadvantages that come with size.

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TheCoelacanth ◴[] No.43626590[source]
Probably should have PMs and engineering managers involved too so that you can also get rid of the "why are you wasting time on this" conversations.
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1. franktankbank ◴[] No.43626788[source]
Better yet just get rid of those positions and incentivize engineers via company ownership.