[luka-birsa]

A suggestion for engineers that lack business experience. As soon as your project grows beyond the non-hobby scale and starts making real money, invest some time to reach out to company providing the services that keep it alive and find an account manager that will take care of you.

We're a Google customer and of course we had our fair share of issues (btw: it's the same with Azure, based on our experience), and we always escalate to our account manager. That usually starts turning the wheels much faster.

Also, do not be afraid to ask your account manager for additional discounts. Everybody in sales has some wiggle room to get you a better deal. With Google their account manager actually suggested that we work through a reseller and we're getting % off the list prices.

Dealing with Google, Amazon, etc.. is not like dealing with code. It's not only transactional and you need to invest some time in the relationship even if you're the customer.

[jnsaff2]

I found the Azure reps to be completely useless for any of the actual problems.

I worked for couple of really big enterprises, one of which had such a high commitment that Azure sent two engineers to sit with the teams working on their cloud. Highest level Enterprise support .. and yet for actual non-obvious problems it took them a month to reply with: can't help you with this, you must be doing it wrong.

This was techsupport tho, I'm sure the billing for multi-million commitments was just fine and dandy including wining and dining.

One other company was a big AWS user (and some Office365 so there were Azure pitches too) and GCP tried to get in with the business as well. When we went to their offices the level of patronizing smug that came from their reps was astonishing, so off-putting that I refused all further interaction with them as I wanted to barf.

[dharmab]

I worked for one of Azure's biggest customers and our account management teams were fantastic. A few individuals were some of my favorite people I've worked with. That's where all the talent in the Azure support org goes- promoted to the biggest contracts.

[Gibbon1]

You comment reminded me of what my dad said about service contracts from IBM back in the 1970's. They promise they'll get a tech on site in 24 hours. They don't promise he'll know how to do anything.

[nXqd]

just like any other reps from Microsoft services, just completely useless.

[notyourday]

I have dealt with Google and AWS under 4 different companies that spent between low double digit to high triple digit a month.

General view:

* AWS - Great customer service. Steak house level customer service when moved from cc billing to contract billing.

* GCP - terrible service regardless of spend and regardless of dynamic or contract billing. AM do not know products. AM's are equivalent of BOA branch employees that solve a problem by calling the same number the customer calls and give the phone to the customer who came to see them in their branch, except that the customer service phone is the same opaque process the customer is subjected to. The only GCP product that had good customer service was the original App Engine, supported out of Germany ( I think ). We could get in touch with engineers responsible for it over video chat.

[MOARDONGZPLZ]

Same experiences here. AWS was awesome. They did crazy things I wouldn’t expect like spend days in person and join us at equinix colo to get the direct connect working. We didn’t even spend that much relatively, under $100k/mo.

[imroot]

Ironically enough, the last time I was "Courted" by google cloud to move some of our infra there (after it went public that we had raised a round), they were up front about how their "account management sucks" and that we'd have a better "customer experience" if we went through a reseller.

That...always sticks out to me, but, when dealing with the Google Education folks, there were some things that even resellers couldn't do, and I had to email people directly (via LinkedIn stalking) only to have my issue disappear a few days later with no reply.

[upupandup]

Thing is parent's advice is horrible because the account manager at google simply started to ignore my billing issues. Like I could reach out to no one, the account manager realized I was going to leave and stopped responding.

So the "make sure you invest in an account manager" is not really an option at Google. AWS does this very proactively.

Unfortunately after 5 years, I can still see Google Cloud screwing over their customers like this. They seem determined to send more customers to AWS.

[bastardoperator]

This is an easy way to accelerate the sale without having to do any of the leg work. The same thing happens when people use procurement vendors like SHI.

As a sales person I'm thinking sweet, I get to send a PO to SHI for example, I don't have to negotiate price, volume discounts, or go back and forth with legal departments depending on whos paper we used. You just need to approve and I get paid, probably quicker than if I used an internal deal desk.

[samstave]

TOTALLY.

-

I had amazing AWS reps, that I had a good personal relationship. Request your rep to visit your office, and have lunch.

Seriously.

The best reps I had from AWS moved to GCP, and while I couldnt move my loads from AWS to GCP, I still had a good relationship with them. One of the best things an account rep can do is understand your business, and, in my case, actually pushed for changes in the system to our benefit based on how we were using the system.

They have evolved a lot since that occurred, but a good rep is going to seriously push for your success. (They want you to be successful and increase your use! :-) and thats a good ting)

So, make requests for your reps to meet with you face to face.

[dheera]

Someone should invent a sue-as-a-service ("SaaS") where you can just sue companies in a couple clicks if they shutdown your services or have bad account management that leads to downtime.

Considering the problems are repetetetive, the legal documents can easily be templated and reused and the victim would not have to waste much time or effort in court. Scale the lawyers just like we scale cloud instances.

Maybe even have a way to programmatically sue based on automated downtime metrics.

[anonymousiam]

The reason this hasn't been done is that the ToS for all enterprise-scale cloud services would prevent success, either by requiring arbitration vs. litigation, or via a disclaimer of liability.

[karpierz]

Isn't that what a class-action lawsuit is for?

[brightball]

This is sound advice in my experience. The last company I worked with who was utilizing Google Cloud had a great experience, an account manager and a reseller who offered training as well.

[patchtopic]

after Azure sunk my employers project with no recourse or discussion allowed, I always advise everyone I meet to run far away from Azure if they value a reliable service.

[exikyut]

"No discussion allowed" sounds impressive, almost like legal impetus was involved. What parts of the story can be shared?

[mylons]

lol. trying to get an actual human being at google to talk to you is an insane task if you’re not a substantial sized account.

[whoevercares]

That’s a good suggestion - it worth noting it comes with a cost (eg X% of your cloud bill) but you get much better interaction with the support and service team.

AWS sometimes even connects small players with service team PMs and managers. It was really great but probably only for greenfield services

[happyopossum]

> it worth noting it comes with a cost (eg X% of your cloud bill) but you get much better interaction with the support and service team.

An account manager doesn't cost you anything - neither would a CE (or SE). There would likely be a minimum spend required, or if you're below that a commit, but there's no %age of annual spend charged for having an AM. In reality, and AM will save you money, as you can negotiate with them, whereas you can't with a website.