This is actually kind of validating. I work for a company that spends almost 1mm a year on GCP. We've never had an actual support contract with them because the numbers work out to, at a minimum, being 10% of our spend. We've yet to encounter a situation where we actually needed GCP support, so we've held off. In the moments where we'd like to get some support (mostly around datastore behavior) we've managed to work around it or figure it out ourselves. So it's good to know we haven't missed out on much. Beyond the offensive aspect of GCP offering no support if we aren't willing to cough up a non-trivial percentage of our spend, I'm pretty happy with it.
replyIt's because they're measured on something, unsure which metric, but it's definitely not how helpful they are to you.
replyDon't know about GCP, but our AE on AWS was also continuously rotating, and as best I can tell, their job was to figure out what we are planning to build, and to ensure that we should always use <INSERT AWS SERVICE DU JOUR> for that, rather than a competitor product or build it ourselves.
replyExactly the same experience for us as well. I just don't bother with them.
replyBefore I just cut them off entirely, I used to tell them my primary concern was cost savings and that I wanted them to recommend ways I could cut 25% off my bill every month and watch the glorified salespeople fumble over trying to avoid that conversation.
replyIt’s ok though, Claude helped us cut >45% of our monthly costs. I’m surprised they haven’t been beating down my door after we made that level-shift. Probably in AE transition. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For what it's worth - I'm not sure what the criteria is (I assume we're "medium sized / not a big upsell opportunity"?) - our GCP rep quickly pushed us to switching to using a GCP reseller. They took over our billing so that we can pay via ACH, and provide both free first-line support/escalation and paid engagements for bigger projects; they don't charge a premium on top, apparently Google pays them for supporting us. Hasn't made much of a difference in how we operate, but at least we have a direct-ish line for issues when they come up.
replyThat's exactly why I'm less pleased with GCP: to trust a CSP (or any service), I need to be assured that when (not if) things go wrong, I could escalate to a team that would have my back.
replyIt doesn’t worry you enough that someday you could have a serious problem and they wouldn’t be able to help you?
replyOn the list of things that worry me the most about our company's stuff, an issue I cannot solve w/o help from a human at GCP is around #900000042.
reply