[mjpizz]

sure, as far as "job responsibilities" go, I agree that keeping the site running trumps answering support emails. That's the primary job of an engineer or ops guy/gal. But hopefully urgent events like this aren't the hour-to-hour norm for a company.

To answer the first half of your question: as an engineer myself, I am personally very invested in good customer service skills. Admittedly, doing a startup (vs. being part of a much larger organization) probably drives my customer interest quite a bit. However, even from an engineering perspective the customer interaction has definitely helped to focus my work on solving real (often recurring) customer pain points and requests, and communicating those back to the customer in a way they understand.

anybody out there with similar experiences as an engineer doing both customer support and development?

[jeffclark]

Totally understandable, especially in a startup area.

This specific case is my day job. We're still startupy-ish, but a little more established (you've definitely heard of us). We have a support team and all that, and the engineers are working on new features and scaling more-so than bug fixes.

I (of course) am working on my own thing and handle 99% of the customer service on it - not only because I want my customers to be happy, but just like you said, I want to work on what really pains my customers.

[brendan]

Right on. I'm an engineer (and one of the founders of Wistia), and I really enjoy talking to customers and doing support. I can understand that this type of behavior might not be typical, but it's such a huge advantage to have the people building the product interacting directly with the people who are using/buying it. I love it.