[bborud]

Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset? Especially when to company has just announced changes that limit what users can do with their products.

The older I get the less I want to deal with companies that act like primadonnas and the technologies they make. This is also why I don’t do phone apps: your market access is 100% controlled by two companies that can wipe out your business overnight.

Imagine having to work with these people professionally. With real money involved. While probably not as high risk as mobile development, their customer representatives seem like real primadonnas. You’ll be happier without these people in your life.

[Aurornis]

> Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset?

I’m actually fully in favor of empowering customer-facing representatives to put reasonable limits on responding to customer abuse.

It should not be the job of a forum moderator to take abuse. Warning them about the rules of the forum and then enforcing the rules is forum management 101. It’s getting silly that people are attacking this person specifically for just doing their job.

[bborud]

When a company screws over entire segments of their customers people get angry. And they don’t get less angry when their frustration is belittled by someone how essentially says “your dissatisfaction means less to us than the words you choose to describe it”.

_Professionals_ de-escalate. This was not that.

[hluska]

I don’t want to register for this forum and I’m having trouble finding any kind of a sort. But are you referring to this comment?

* First, any bad language or abusive behaviour towards AMD, is not acceptable. If continued, we will proceed to block your profiles altogether.

If you are not happy with the new tier licensing flow, no one is stopping users (Students etc) to continue using the current versions of Vivado (any Vivado version prior 2026.1) and develop using free Vivado ML Standard Edition.*

If so, I have a different take on this. It could have been worded better, but I don’t think Anatoli is a native English speaker. Based upon a reply to @mkru, I also don’t think they have much visibility into marketing or if they do, they’re not very interested.

* For your specific question: Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier?

This is AMD's marketing decision.*

None of this is great, but English isn’t the easiest language to learn and de-escalation involves a specific speech pattern. And of everything they said in the answers I’ve found, ‘this is AMD’s marketing decision’ is the most blunt. Everything else has more information attached except for the little takedown at the beginning.

I know that’s a lot of words to say that I think belittling is a little strong. But brevity is a juicy topic… :)

[bborud]

Communication is tricky because it isn’t just about the words, but how they land. On the surface it may not seem like belittling someone’s pain. In reality this is exactly what it feels like for those on the receiving end. It also doesn’t help that it was delivered with a threat of expulsion. It communicates:

- we don’t care about your pain - those in charge find it below their dignity to explain the decision to you - we don’t feel we owe you an explanation, but we’ll take your license fees - we care more about how you say things than what you say - you are helpless and we can take away your voice (here) if we want to

Now, the problem isn’t just that some people are not native English speakers — quite a few in our industry come across as not being able to “speak human”. Which makes us prone to put more emphasis on words than how different people in different states of mind read those words.

[spaqin]

> Communication is tricky because it isn’t just about the words, but how they land

Please mind that English is not my native language, but as I aged, I found that to be true less and less. Exact word choice does not matter as long as the intent is conveyed properly. With some leeway, maybe benefit of the doubt. And misunderstandings can be cleared up.

In this case, customers are unhappy with the decision. No amount of weaseling around with any kind of word combination is not changing the decision. Whatever tone he might have used here would not help anyone or clear up anything. There is no further misunderstanding.

[throwaway85825]

People can be abused, corporations can't. They aren't living things.

[Dylan16807]

> I’m actually fully in favor of empowering customer-facing representatives to put reasonable limits on responding to customer abuse.

That's not the question that was asked.

Neither calling a company's actions disgraceful nor anything else in the posts that triggered that official reply were abusive to customer service.

[Aurornis]

I actually support companies who empower their customer facing employees to enforce civility.

It means the company cares more about their employees than sacrificing them in favor of maybe getting a few more sales from angry customers.

[dangus]

There were no uncivil comments in the whole thread.

Also, corporations don’t have feelings. They aren’t people. They are legal structures. No comments made were directed at moderators or employees.

[wormius]

Whether it's directed at you or not, as an employee it's still stressful AF and these people are like getting paid kinda shit wages to put up with people all day long.

I'm not arguing about whether or not this particular instance contained "uncivil comments" (do the mods have the ability there to delete the comments if they are uncivil?)...

But day in day out, on a mass level, it's such a goddamned drag, even if it isn't directed at you, it's energy and emotional bullshit. Every job has it, sometimes it's your boss or shit coworkers... But customer facing is such an awful position for the wages they usually make. Even if it's "good" wages. Even if they don't primarily face the public, but still have to engage in a secondary support role. I can't imagine what it's like to deal with this as a job when you're on the front line with an angry mob coming at you.

Again on this particular case I'm making no judgement, but it IS a stressor, regardless if directed at you, or not.

Especially in a high volume environment that probably has more incoming vectors of commentary/attack/vitriol than just the single comment thread.

[dangus]

If you want my opinion I think what these mods said had nothing to do with the stress of the environment, they’re just following something of a community moderator trope where they maybe aren’t even employees and at all but enjoy the authority of moderation.

They have no authority or knowledge of the topic at hand at all but can’t resist weighing in and throwing authority around.

[account42]

> Whether it's directed at you or not, as an employee it's still stressful AF and these people are like getting paid kinda shit wages to put up with people all day long.

Then don't take the job.

[bigbadfeline]

You know, it used to be "The customer is always right".

But it's become "Whaat? Are you talking to us you uncivilized, stinky hippy peons? How dare you? We serve only the rich corps now, we don't care about you or your money."

> But customer facing is such an awful position for the wages they usually make.

So you're saying that rich AMD doesn't pay their employees enough and for this reason, their unsatisfied customers should be careful not to say bad things about the company to the employees mistreated by that same company... There are too many logical errors here to describe in a short comment.

[NamlchakKhandro]

be more resilient.

end of story.

[Dylan16807]

I disagree that enforcing civility means that, especially if mkru's comments are considered too uncivil.

[esquivalience]

They were very sweary.

[angoragoats]

Nothing about swearing inherently constitutes abuse.

[throwaway85825]

Tone policing is a common distraction from addressing the point and a useful diversion from making unflattering admissions.

[nubinetwork]

> Yes, this struck me as rather odd and unprofessional too. Do you really want to depend on a company where customer facing representatives can’t handle people being upset

Typical phone CSR boilover from covid days. Most places I call these days have a message saying that they will hang up on you if you act pissy.

[Aurornis]

> have a message saying that they will hang up on you if you act pissy.

When I had some influence over customer support at a company once I set a similar expectation. We didn’t advertise it up front but if a customer was being abusive over support channels they could be cut off.

Big morale boost for customer support. Abusive customers are rare but they can think it’s their job to attack, threaten, and be uncivil. Being stuck in a position where you’re forced to placate angry man-children sucks.

It’s sad that there are so many comments here trying to attack the forum moderator for moderating the forum.

This person had no hand in the decision making. No reason to treat them as an outlet for anger.

[account42]

If customer support employees don't want to deal with angry customers they should take a job whose purpose is not dealing with unhappy customers. If you as a company have too many angry customers the response should be to fix your product/service, not to find excuses to ignore those customers.

All you're doing to forcing your customers to find other ways to fix their problems - either by finding someone higher paid than customer support and wasting their time instead or by going to a competitor and telling everyone to do the same.

[bborud]

Was the anger directed at the moderator?