> Is dedicating 20% of your team to support _that_ much different than the entire team spending 20% of their time on support?
Yes, it's [much] worse. Because nobody wants to be the support crew, so you end up with the 20% most junior, least outspoken people. Then the other 80% cares less about what support requirements will come out of the code they're writing because it's not their problem.
It's the perfect scenario for the aggressive prima donna who thinks their code is golden and everyone else's is dogshit.
I feel strongly that your front-line support should be full-time (not rotating) front-line customer support. That should be their job. If I reach out to a company for support I don't want my first contact to be with someone who writes code 95% of the time and this is their one week answering Zendesk tickets. I want it to be someone whose entire job is fielding customer issues and resolving them quickly and efficiently.
That's why you rotate everyone, not just those that "volunteer"... This way, you're spreading knowledge to everyone, e.g. if I'm forced to deal with an issue on code you wrote, I'm forced to learn about it.
Of course, I might have to ping you and get you to help me with it, so it's less efficient. Then again, if you leave the company, I have some knowledge about the feature, so... There's tradeoffs for sure.
Yes, it's [much] worse. Because nobody wants to be the support crew, so you end up with the 20% most junior, least outspoken people. Then the other 80% cares less about what support requirements will come out of the code they're writing because it's not their problem.
It's the perfect scenario for the aggressive prima donna who thinks their code is golden and everyone else's is dogshit.
I feel strongly that your front-line support should be full-time (not rotating) front-line customer support. That should be their job. If I reach out to a company for support I don't want my first contact to be with someone who writes code 95% of the time and this is their one week answering Zendesk tickets. I want it to be someone whose entire job is fielding customer issues and resolving them quickly and efficiently.