[kruczek]

While reading the article, I got a feeling that reading support emails is only one step away from answering support emails - and here you are, suggesting just that.

I've seen further steps down this road - if there are engineers already answering support emails, then why do we need support people at all. After all, engineers have better knowledge of technical details and can make changes themselves. No need for intermediaries.

I understand the reasons for having engineers read (or maybe even sometimes answer) support emails, but still I'd be extremely wary of again working for a company that walks this path.

[anilakar]

The reason lower-tier support personnel are employed is because someone reasoned that the engineers' time is too valuable. If 90 % of incoming support requests will be escalated to developers, it makes little sense to have extra people whose main task is to create SAP tickets or press "forward" in Outlook.

Another extra perk of making devs handle the support is that they also have the chance to fix the underlying problem. Remember that for an engineer, fixing broken software is always less of a burden than correspondence with customers.

[mike22]

For our on-prem enterprise software, we have two levels before a ticket reaches the dev team. Level one handles RTFM-type answers, and asks for log files (and then provide RTFM answers or engage a dev). Level two handles demos, implementation and architecture guidance, and reproducing more complex bugs. Dev handles the most complex issues that trickle down, and backup when staffing is short (mainly only around holiday weekends).

[MBCook]

> Remember that for an engineer, fixing broken software is always less of a burden than correspondence with customers.

Don’t be so sure. Just because you’ve identified the issue or a good fix doesn’t mean the ticket won’t go in the backlog to die a slow death before you’re allowed to fix it.

[Aeolun]

Best way to make me improve software is to force me to use it.

[arkades]

> While reading the article, I got a feeling that reading support emails is only one step away from answering support emails - and here you are, suggesting just that.

I didn’t get that impression. The article mentioned reading these emails for 30m a week. Going from there to doing tech support yourself as a CTO is...

It seems to me that a CTO doing tech support either understand something I really don’t, or really fails to understand something I do. Superficially, it sounds like the sort of low-level digging around you get from engineers that got the CTO title but never got comfortable with the transition.

[scrollaway]

Obviously I wouldn't recommend people do full time support if it's not their role, and the larger a company gets the less practical it is especially in the executive roles.

But the attitude displayed in some of the replies is exactly what I'm talking about when I say some people think support is beneath them.