Make yours and other people's life easier! Do support!

In order to become a better developer you’ll have to spend some time doing support!

Here at GitHub developers help out with support on a regular basis, leading to a better experience for our customers. Some even work on both: half development, half support. I’m going to show you why I think support is awesome and how it makes you better at writing code!

Transcript

1. ! Make Your and Other People’s Life Easier: Do Support!
2. ! ! Why help out with
 customer support?
5. GitHub makes it easier to work
 together than to work alone!
6. ! ! Ermahgerd, why Support?
9. 1876 1894 20th century
13. ! ! Support at GitHub?
14. !
15. !
18. !
19. !
21. !
22. !
23. ! ! Core principles
24. NO FIGHTS
25. NO INSULTS
26. NO EXCUSES
27. NO SUPERPOWERS
28. NO ADVERTISING
29. tl;dr: Be a human! Be nice!
30. ! ! Birth of a Superfan™!
31. User: Totally loving what you did with the Windows client and been loyally using it since it came out. But does it really need to take up 2.5GB of space? :(
32. User: Totally loving what you did with your Windows client and been loyally using it since it came out. But does it really need to take up 2.5GB of space? :( Paul Betts: That's totally not cool (and not expected)! Can you tell us specifically which folders are taking up so much space?
33. Paul Betts: That's totally not cool (and not expected)! Can you tell us specifically which folders are taking up so much space? User: Totally loving what you did with your Windows client and been loyally using it since it came out. But does it really need to take up 2.5GB of space? :( User: As soon as I get back home, I'll send you the juicy details. That will happen tomorrow. ! I must say I'm positively surprised by your responsiveness. Thought it would take a day or two at the least for any reply to arrive!
35. ! ! Why help out?
36. Stable software
37. Valuable insights
38. Other applications
39. Who? Them!
40. Learning by doing
42. ! Thanks! Image credits: Otto Yamamoto * Trevor Coultart * butupa * Davide Simonelli * Daniel Imfeld * Adam Fagen *
 James Forsyth * Michael Kuhn * J. Michel Carriere * Andrew Eason * 401 K * Chris Isherwood * Travis *
 Costa Ricas Callcenter * Arbeitgeberverband Gesamtmetall * United States Forces * Drew Bennett * Quinn Dombrowski Want to follow-up? @fooforge || mike@github.com