I dunno about the engineers where you work, but a lot of the game programmers at (name witheld, but pick any company. They all seem similar) are not good with interpersonal soft skills. Granted, I didn't read the article before looking at the comments (helps me weed out articles that are a waste of time), but most of our engineers (myself included) would just walk away from the CS role on tilt having learned nothing more than to be grateful they don't have to interact with any people, much less people who have gotten angry enough to contact CS, as a means of making their living. Maybe I'm completely wrong and I just got unlucky with myself and the engineers at the 3 companies I've worked at with programmers, and they really do enjoy confrontational human interactions. I've been wrong before, but the stereotype fits pretty close, though exaggerated, with my experience.
I see a lot of myself in these traits; I don't have the best interpersonal skills. While I don't enjoy confrontation for its own sake, I do enjoy robust debate with my peers so long as it serves a purpose.
However, that in no way precluded me being a consummate professional on support calls. Being nice and polite to your customers isn't difficult, though it can require a bit of patience if they are slow or make mistakes as you talk them through stuff. Or biting your tongue if they are rude or nasty; that's generally due to the frustration the software you wrote caused them. Show them some sympathy! I can't say that I particularly liked doing support calls, but I think pretty much anyone can play the role and do a decent job if they can use some basic common sense when talking to the person at the other end of the phone and keep their cool in the face of an angry caller. If a developer can't handle a routine telephone call in a civilised and respectful manner, I'm not sure I'd want them on my team.
I know a number of engineers who are extremely socially competent. I also know a lot who fit the description you give. It just depends on who you hire, and what the emphasis is on. Personally, I'd strongly prefer the type that can talk to customers without raging, because it's also their job to understand what users want, and build that.
I know plenty of socially competent programmers who are also good programmers.
However, some people really do associate lacking social skills with technical skills. That sometimes informs company culture - be it by peefering to hire more stereotyped people or by creating culture where unnecessary confrontational style wins the day. In such culture people who have good social skill adjust the way they communicate (full disclosure: I personally did through I am not claiming super superior communication).
This is really nothing more than a stereotype. You find what you are looking for. There are entirely too many engineers in the world for a generalization like this to be accurate.
>There are entirely too many engineers in the world for a generalization like this to be accurate.
For a generalization to be accurate it doesn't need to apply to everybody in a group, just to a larger percentage of people in the group than in the general population.
It doesn't also need to apply absolutely to each one of the group that it does apply: it just needs to apply more than it does to an average person in the general population.
Yeah. I answered phones and emails for a few years at a B2B software company, and the most I got was a veiled threat that they'd send a formal complaint. In general, abusive customers were were few and far between.
People I know who've worked on B2C support got verbal abuse almost daily.
As someone who has also worked primarily B2B or at least B2(Small Busines) in the technical arena...
In these situations I'd like to remind you that the person you are talking to very likely may be copping that abuse from their customers or managers, and most don't pass it on. So try to help them out, they're literally making your job less miserable :)
> People I know who've worked on B2C support got verbal abuse almost daily.
Is this generally the case? I've answered thousands of customer service queries for my (mostly B2C) startup. I can count on two hands the number of angry/abusive emails I've received.
Yes. In a past life I did phone and email support for two wildly different industries (cellular and banking). I helped train new hires during the first couple of weeks that they answered calls, and several times people broke down in tears during the first few days. Average tenure at one company was only 3-4 months. The other managed close to a year.
I don't know how big your startup is, but I'd hazard a guess that you're small enough for your support to still feel "human." I think this is the biggest issue with most bigco CS.
