I’ve Spoken with Hundreds of Engineers About Platform Support.
Their Horror Stories Made Me Thankful I Bought Gigalixir
Last week, I posted a rant on LinkedIn about one of the reasons why I bought the Gigalixir deployment platform.
I expected maybe 5 likes from my network. (Since I never posted for the first 20 years of my career) Instead, my DMs started creeping up with new people reaching out.
Engineers from Fortune 500s to funded startups started to fill my inbox with their support stories. The pattern was clear: behind every “Enterprise-grade support” promise is a call center employee making $18/hour, googling error messages, and racing to hit their 50-tickets-per-day quota.
After reading all these stories, I knew I could add my own, from the decade I’ve been owning and operating online businesses too. The entire support industry sometimes feels so broken. And chatbots aren’t going to solve it.
Here’s what I’ve seen and other engineers have told me…
Why This Is Personal
My first job as a VC-funded post-sales consultant was to do live customer support. I didn’t know the answer to a single question sent my way. Not one. Nobody else in support did either.
Why? I’d never deployed any live production applications with the product. But I was the first line of support.
That was 21 years ago. Guess what? Nothing’s changed. Except now many companies just offer no support at all.
That’s why I bought Gigalixir in 2022, to build the opposite of everything I hated as a Silicon Valley engineer.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me show you what these engineers told me.
The LinkedIn Post That Started This
Here’s what I posted that apparently hit a nerve:
“I acquired a deployment platform to fix the many things I hated about VC / Silicon Valley DevOps… Nobody’s $500-5000/month deployment platform should have customer service that sucks. I bought Gigalixir to prove it’s possible.”
Within 48 hours I had more engagement than ever (which is kinda easy since I never did much social until now)
The stories ranged from frustrating to angering. But they all had one thing in common: platforms treating paying customers like annoyances instead of partners.
What Engineers Told Me About Enterprise Support
The phrase “enterprise support” came up in a lot of the messages. Always sarcastically.
“Enterprise support is paying $5,000/month to talk to the same clueless call center, just faster.” – CTO, FinTech
Here’s what made me angry: These aren’t small companies complaining about free tier support. These are funded startups and enterprise teams paying thousands per month for “priority” treatment.
The reality they shared:
- Support staff disconnected from the engineering of the product
- Zero production deployment experience
- Ticket-closing quotas that reward speed over solutions
- No escalation path to actual engineers
I’ve been that support person. I know the pressure. But charging enterprise prices for call center service? That’s fraud with extra steps.
The 4 Reasons Engineers Gave for Switching Platforms
After reading all the messages, four themes kept appearing:
1. “They Don’t Even Know Our Stack”
This one hit close to home. Multiple engineers specifically mentioned having to explain their entire technology stack to support.
“I spent 45 minutes explaining what Elixir was. They kept sending me Node.js solutions. For a DATABASE issue.” – Lead Engineer, Healthcare Startup
When platforms don’t understand the technology you’re using, every interaction becomes a teaching session.
At $500-5000/month, you’re paying to train their support team.
When I was in customer service decades ago, I didn’t realize that was exactly what was happening. I was trained on our customers dime.
2. “They Measure the Wrong Things”
A former support engineer I know DMed me about the incentive structure:
Tickets closed is the only metric that matters. Actually solving problems? That just meant the ticket took longer to close.
The incentive structure is broken:
- Agents measured on tickets/hour
- Bonuses for low handle time
- Zero accountability for actual problem resolution
3. “Real Help Costs Extra”
The pricing games made engineers especially angry:
- Basic: Offshore scripts
- Standard: Faster offshore scripts
- Premium ($5k+): Maybe talk to someone technical
“Their solution when we couldn’t afford premium support? ‘Try ChatGPT or Stack Overflow.’
Trust me when I say this, any engineer employed today already did that.
4. “Response Times from the Stone Age”
The numbers engineers shared were shocking:
- Average first response: 48-72 hours
- Critical issue response: 24-48 hours
- Auto-closed without resolution: ~30% of tickets
One engineer summed it up: “By the time they respond, we’ve either fixed it ourselves.”
More Pretty Bad Stories
Some stories were so bad I had to verify them. They checked out.
The “All Green” Lies
Over 20 engineers specifically mentioned status pages showing “All Systems Operational” during complete outages.
“Their status page is fiction. Just gaslighting their own customers.”
Why Big Platforms Will Never Fix This
Here’s where my background helps me understand what’s happening.
Having worked in Silicon Valley and now running bootstrapped companies, I see both sides. The big platforms aren’t broken by accident, they’re treating us bad by design.
The VC Math Doesn’t Care About You
Several engineers who’d worked at VC-backed platforms confirmed what I suspected:
“Every quarter after a funding round, support got worse. More customers, same headcount, cheaper labor. The board only cares about growth metrics.”
Your $2,000/month means nothing when they just raised $100M. You’re not the customer, you’re the product they’re selling to investors so they can exit.
Nobody Has Skin in the Game
At Gigalixir, if we lose a customer, I make less money tomorrow. It’s that simple.
At VC platforms? The support agent makes the same whether you stay or leave. The executives are focused on the next round and an exit, not next month’s revenue.
What These Stories Taught Me About Gigalixir
I didn’t write this to pitch Gigalixir. But these stories validated every decision we’ve made.
When engineers told me about their experiences, I kept thinking: “This is exactly why we try to do things differently.”
Six months ago during a DDoS attack, we messaged affected customers: “Yeah, it’s a bit of a zoo right now, but we’re fixing it. Hang tight…“
One customer’s response? “First time ever a company has been forthcoming about the truth during an outage.”
That shouldn’t be revolutionary.
We’re not perfect. We’re small. We can’t match AWS’s global infrastructure or Heroku’s feature list.
But we can answer your fucking support ticket. With engineers. Who understand your stack. In minutes, not days.
The Mass Exodus Nobody’s Talking About
Here’s what surprised me most: how many teams have already switched.
Of the group of engineers who contacted me:
- ~40% had already moved to smaller, specialized platforms
- ~30% were actively evaluating alternatives
- ~20% were “stuck but looking”
The platforms they’re choosing instead? Names you’ve probably never heard of. Specialized providers who:
- Actually understand specific technology stacks
- Have engineers handling support
- Respond in minutes, not days
- Build relationships, not ticket numbers
The exodus from big platforms isn’t about features or price. It’s about respect.
This Conversation Isn’t Over
The response to my LinkedIn post showed me this problem is bigger than I thought. Engineers are angry. CTOs are frustrated. And platforms are getting worse, not better.
Your deployment platform should work as hard as you do. If it doesn’t, maybe it’s time to join the exodus.
P.S. Yes, I own Gigalixir. Yes, we do support differently. But this isn’t about selling you anything, it’s about fixing an industry that’s fundamentally broken. Though if you’re running Elixir and tired of explaining what it is to support agents, you know where to find us.
About the Author
Michael Frew spent 20 years as an engineer in cybersecurity and consulting before he got tired of watching big companies treat customers like ticket numbers.
Since 2013, he’s acquired and operated multiple profitable online businesses, including Gigalixir, QuotaGuard and WP Folio.
When he’s not answering support tickets personally, he’s probably acquiring another business that frustrates him.
Connect with me on LinkedIn where I regularly rant about VC culture and bootstrapped alternatives.
