(Alt: The Drake meme. Upper panel shows him hiding his face from “Securing Customer Data”. Lower panel shows him smirking at “Securing Public API Documentation”)
(Alt: The Drake meme. Upper panel shows him hiding his face from “Securing Customer Data”. Lower panel shows him smirking at “Securing Public API Documentation”)
Any company that hides their documentation has an awful product that they are actually embarrassed about, from a tech perspective. They are hiding it because they are afraid to show it.
I’ve seen this so many times, and it’s a big red flag.
These companies work on the basis of selling their product the old-fashioned way, directly to management with sales-people and business presentations and firm handshakes, and then once you’re sold then developers (which management doesn’t care about by the way) have to do the odious task of getting everything working against their terrible and illogical API. And when you need help implementing, then your single point of contact is one grumpy-ass old dev working in a basement somewhere (because they don’t care about their own devs either) and he’s terribly overstretched due to the number of other customers he’s also trying to help, because their implementation is so shitty.
Conversely, public documentation is a great sign that companies took a developer-led approach to designing their solution, that it will be easy to implement, that they respect the devs within their own company, and they will also respect yours.
When I am asked to evaluate potential solutions for a problem, Public docs is like the number one thing I care about! It’s just that significant.
Side story - I once worked with one of these shitty vendors, and learned from a tech guy I’d made friends with that the whole company was basically out of office on a company-paid beach holiday - EXCEPT for the dev team. Management, sales, marketing, finance, they all got a company trip, but the tech peeps had to stay at home. Tells you everything you need to know about their management attitude towards tech.
Been there many times. Had one case where support had to through the reseller who sold licenses in our country. Actual people who knew what they were talking about was tier 3.
We had a bug and were trying to report it and get a fix or workaround. Just told no, we’re doing it wrong. After a lot of back and forth we had to pay for an “expert” to fly over and show us what we were doing wrong. Turns out he wasn’t an expert, he was a salesmen. Made a demo for us on the flight and the first time he ran it was in our meeting room on projector.
Failed in exactly the way we had been saying. It was very satisfying.
Finally he phoned the dev team who confirmed the docs were wrong and we couldn’t do what we were trying.
Haha yep. Not the support process you want. Glad you managed to let them eat some humble pie at least.
The support process you want is this: “We’ll make you a channel on our Slack, if you’ve got any issues you can talk with our devs direct!” - yes please!
Definitely. What I didn’t mention is all that took over a month!
Fun story! At a conference, I asked this vendor (the company collapsed now) if I can see their documentation. The obvious sales person made a big stink how it’s only for paid customers and I can see it when I paid.
I told him how stupid it was since his competitors have their docs open.
During a conference’s event where they parade their sponsors, the vendor got on stage and called me out with “And paid customers will have a wealth of support, like developer documentation… Especially for you [name]”.
In my nerd rage, I shouted from the audience “What kind of shit software is afraid to share their developer docs publicly?” I was escorted out by security.
And during the night event when everyone mingles (including sponsors), the guy didn’t show up. And apparently, news got around where by the last day of the event, the entire booth was taken down.
I dunno if it was me shouting and everyone agreeing with me, or the conference realizing that attacking a paid member of the audience wasn’t a good idea and told him to leave.
Either way… Tell it to their faces when their product isn’t dev friendly. These charlatans seem to get bolder and bolder with their garbage.
That’s gotta be satisfying that your vengeful anger took down their whole booth.
Haha sounds so familiar.
The duality of “we’re a tech company! :D” on the outside and “IT is a good for nothing cost centre >:(“ on the inside