It's my understanding that Google has ramped up enterprise cloud support by outsourcing it. We ran into evidence of this recently. It's not helpful when the heavily accented, scripted Indian support guy at the other end is less technically informed than yourself, and there's no magic phrase to get bumped up to the next support level.
We're on Google Cloud Platform because of Kubernetes, and I'm dreading the day where we will need urgent support for something. My only consolation is that the Kubernetes community is very active, with lots of googlers on Github, Slack, Google Groups, and so on. We're trying to avoid using services outside of GKE in order to keep our vendor lock-in minimal (Kubernetes potentially allows us to switch vendors), and to stay within the realm of Kubernetes.
You have to face it -- Google's reputation has been severely damaged over the years, not just things like Reader, but also AppEngine, Google Apps support, arbitrary account shutdowns, and so on. Even innocuous, well-intentioned deprecations are hurting your rep these days, and you should consider avoiding this just to let your karma recharge; people will eventually forget and forgive, but if a new breaking change happens every month, they won't. (Contrast the situation to AWS, which has hardly deprecated anything since they started up, and manages to keep unpopular products running years after they became effectively obsolete.)
Commenting on mobile - but no, GCP support is not outsourced. I deal with and am good friends with some of those on the frontline for GCP support - that team works a few cubicles down from me, and from what I've seen incredibly passionate about providing stellar support.
Are you sure you didn't perhaps just talk to a Googler who happened to be Indian? It's possible I'm misreading tone on the go - but 1. Google is very multicultural, 2. As a non-white, I admit I can be a little touchy when people assume things about technical chops based on your race, or what accent your English is.
Regarding the fact you felt the person you dealt with wasn't well informed, that's not good to hear. Do you want to 1:1 details to me?
Also, I assume you've purchased GCP support right? That's a paid offering, and having dealt with them as an outsider, they're pretty decent (I mean, you are paying them...). I only ask because sometimes people post in public forums and assume they're dealing with official support. Our actual enterprise support teams are separate.
Comments
It's my understanding that Google has ramped up enterprise cloud support by outsourcing it. We ran into evidence of this recently. It's not helpful when the heavily accented, scripted Indian support guy at the other end is less technically informed than yourself, and there's no magic phrase to get bumped up to the next support level.
We're on Google Cloud Platform because of Kubernetes, and I'm dreading the day where we will need urgent support for something. My only consolation is that the Kubernetes community is very active, with lots of googlers on Github, Slack, Google Groups, and so on. We're trying to avoid using services outside of GKE in order to keep our vendor lock-in minimal (Kubernetes potentially allows us to switch vendors), and to stay within the realm of Kubernetes.
You have to face it -- Google's reputation has been severely damaged over the years, not just things like Reader, but also AppEngine, Google Apps support, arbitrary account shutdowns, and so on. Even innocuous, well-intentioned deprecations are hurting your rep these days, and you should consider avoiding this just to let your karma recharge; people will eventually forget and forgive, but if a new breaking change happens every month, they won't. (Contrast the situation to AWS, which has hardly deprecated anything since they started up, and manages to keep unpopular products running years after they became effectively obsolete.)
Commenting on mobile - but no, GCP support is not outsourced. I deal with and am good friends with some of those on the frontline for GCP support - that team works a few cubicles down from me, and from what I've seen incredibly passionate about providing stellar support.
Are you sure you didn't perhaps just talk to a Googler who happened to be Indian? It's possible I'm misreading tone on the go - but 1. Google is very multicultural, 2. As a non-white, I admit I can be a little touchy when people assume things about technical chops based on your race, or what accent your English is.
Regarding the fact you felt the person you dealt with wasn't well informed, that's not good to hear. Do you want to 1:1 details to me?
Also, I assume you've purchased GCP support right? That's a paid offering, and having dealt with them as an outsider, they're pretty decent (I mean, you are paying them...). I only ask because sometimes people post in public forums and assume they're dealing with official support. Our actual enterprise support teams are separate.