Month: January 2016

 

That first day on the support queue. Hundreds of messages were in it. It seemed like it scrolled forever.

I felt like a tiny fish in a tank of sharks. Luckily, I was not completely without aid, as the support veterans were not far away, virtually and physically, and I slowly gleaned wisdom from them, even as I took notes and learned not only how our hosting system works, but filled in gaps in my knowledge of how the web works.

I could bounce a question (or 2, or 10…) off a grizzled tech, or a lead, and usually, they let me know what’s up, or, better, how I could proceed towards a solution or unlock tge needed knowledge. I definitely worked with some wizards (and still do!)

Nearly 9 years later, I don’t see that queue so often these days, but I do still learn things, even as I work to improve the support the company provides. I was warned, even though the job felt like a dream job, the pitfall of cynicism was tricky to avoid.

I think I’ve avoided becoming jaded pretty well. I think that has been made easier by seeing pretty regular successes, even with the missteps that can happen to any growing company.

This is the longest I’ve been with any company. I’m glad it’s worked out and look forward to each day because of getting through those initial months when it was “sink or swim.”

What about you, kind reader? See other responses here:

Sink or Swim

Photo credit: Matthew Wiebe – unsplash 

Perhaps it was an app ahead of its time. Its vision involved taking on one of the big social networks, by allowing users to control and retain direct ownership of their content, while also hosting a community around the sharing of that content. I’m not naming the app out of fondness for it.

For whatever reason, it never gained enough traction to justify the expense of its continued existence. Thus, its backend was shut down, and its development ceased. The life of many apps do go down that path sometimes.

The app’s original version was fairly basic, but perhaps a little too ambitious to take on an encumber the in its chosen niche. Some of the community has remained loyal to the vision, if not to the developer themself.

I still see myself as a bit of a lurker when it comes to most of the online communities I choose to follow, and, despite things not working out, for that app, I still follow its developer, and that’s paid off a bit. The developer kept working on new ideas, and has even had an award-winning app following the failed one.

Persistence, when seen in action like this, is very inspiring. It must have been more difficult towards the end of the failed project for the developer to focus on working on the app, knowing that downloads had plateaued(it was free to use, but also had paid extras. The sad, but understandable decision was made, based on performance of the app’s sales, and its popularity waning, to put it out of its misery.

This seemed to be a case where the unpopular choice didn’t work out, but I’d hardly say it was wrong. I had made the choice to watch the developer, in order to catch when their newest project was nearing completion as well, since they’re very good at transparently communicating about their own development process. I’m really looking forward to a new set of characters and community growing up around “whatever’s next”. The latest project seem promising, and it’ also due to it going after an area of usefulness that many similar apps have fallen short of capturing.

We’ll see. 🙂

Unpopular