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by tekkub
6121 days ago
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There will always be people that don't like what we do, no matter what we do. Drink? Someone will hate us for it. Act like professional business executives, someone will think we take ourselves too seriously. I think the trick is to find the right balance for our target market, and I think the guys are doing quite well at that. I don't think any of us expect to pick up big businesses for Firewall Install at meetups, we're going to get those customers by way of developers that are already using git, and from the talks we give about git and GitHub at places like Yahoo. If all people see is us drinking every other Thursday, they're missing a lot. Customers complaining about performance certainly have a valid point. But if they believe that these issues are caused by a lack of dedication or just general "goofing off", I think they're mistaken. Frankly, Tom's been working his ass off since April with the Rackspace move. At the same time, Chris has focused nearly all of his time into keeping the site up as is and doing everything he can to maintain or improve performance with the hardware we have. There's simply hardware bottlenecks blocking our way at the moment. I'm sure everyone knows my feelings about GFS by now. Proof certainly is in the pudding, and I think everyone is going to love the pudding we'll be serving up from Rackspace. I know it's hard to be patient and wait for the move to happen... trust me I really do. I'm the one on the front line every day with unhappy customers who have to deal with the latency and job queue backups. I don't think there's anyone that wants the move to happen more than me. |
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You're absolutely right about this.
>I think the trick is to find the right balance for our target market
Again I agree. And maybe losing a customer or two who dislike the blog posts about drinking is acceptable, if the get togethers gain you more than enough clients to make up for that occasional loss. You are going to be the judge of the value of blogging about parties versus retaining some customers.
As far as I can tell, the customer in question was upset principally about the blogging about the parties, not necessarily the fact that you are having a bunch of drinks with customers and potential customers. You might consider whether continuing with the customer parties, but refraining from blogging in indiscreet detail about them, is a better strategy for retaining frustrated existing customers. Is there a cost to not blogging about drinking?
> If all people see is us drinking every other Thursday, they're missing a lot.
I'm not a reader of your blog, but how many posts do you make saying "Tom upgraded X today, and is working on Y now," "Chris managed a major XYZ this week, and is working on optimizing ABC"? What is the ratio between posts highlighting you guys working your asses off and you guys having drinks with customers? Perhaps you should consider adjusting that ratio, if frustrated customers perceive it to be out of balance. What is the cost to you of making that change?