So there's been some speculation on the forums as to why I've left (and Mike, but he can speak for himself if he feels like it). Having been a very active participant in them for the past two years, I think it's reasonable that I say my piece instead of everyone guessing what's going on.
Two years ago, Mike and I started the forums as an experiment. We both love forums and prefer them to mailing lists when it comes to the dissemination of information. However, I started the forums off as a very minor idea. It was never intended that the forums would be my job. I was hired as an engineer and not a customer service rep, after all.
After two years of administration and moderation duties, it was time to turn the reins over to the customer service people. This change was both a personal and a managerial one.
On the managerial front, the customer service people wanted the chance to step into the forums and use it as a customer service front (which is sensible, since that's what the forums were intended to be!). However, with me answering things so voraciously, I wasn't giving the CS staff the chance to do their jobs, which was problematic.
Most importantly... On the personal front, the forums were becoming less and less fun. I spent more time taking crap from people, and less time actually enjoying helping out. What's more, the forums were taking up way too much of my personal time. This is a key point which some people in their speculations seem to have missed -- the forums was something I worked on almost entirely in my spare time. To put it into perspective, I determined I spent roughly 5 hours of REAL Software time a week in the forums (about an hour a day), which is really a drop in the bucket in terms of overall time to spend engineering. However, I was spending 14 to 20 hours a week of my own personal time on the forums. That's a lot of personal time to devote to something you aren't enjoying or getting paid for. Coupled with the fact that it was now affecting people's whose job is customer service, and I realized that it was time for me to fade into the background.
It's been an interesting adjustment for me since I pretty much quit cold turkey. But overall, I am very happy with the decision. It frees up a lot of my personal time (as well as a minor amount of my work time, though not nearly as much as some people seem to assume) which I can put to good use with the wedding coming up and all. It also has removed a fair amount of stress from my day, which makes me happy. :-)
So what does this mean for forum users? Not too much, really. The forums are certainly self-sustaining in terms of the current user base. We have a ton of very smart, very helpful customers who are willing to help other customers out. This is exactly what I had hoped for when I was first pushing the forums, so it tickles me pink to see it working out! Also, the customer service staff will also be active in the management of the forums. And for the sticky questions, they're supposed to come ask me for answers -- so while you won't see me posting very frequently (if at all), you'll still get pearls of wisdom from me via the CS staff.
It's been an awesome two years, and I'm very proud of what the forums have become. I'm positive things will carry on just fine without me playing such an active role. Thanks for all the good times!
You sure are going to be missed over there.
I guess I always took your forum help for granted; I felt shocked when you disappeared.
Life goes on. :-)
@Russ -- thanks! It was a very abrupt departure, to be sure. But I know myself, and without a drastic measure, I'd not really change my habits over there. I actually *tried* to ease my way out of it when I heard that CS wanted to take over a bit more, and I failed miserably at it. :-P
Aaron,
Good move - you need to do what is best for you and the Realbasic development. I rather see you developing than doing support.
Thank you for all the help in the past...
Thomas
It was rather much of a shock that you suddenly left the forums. You could have given us some kind warning ;) That might have prevented such speculation. Either way, you will be missed. After years of seeing you on RealGurus and the RS forums, the change worried me for a while.
Enjoy your new found time! Good Luck!
@jdiwnab -- I had contemplated giving some sort of official statement or warning on the forums, but things progressed very quickly. I imagined there would be some speculation, and it's not been nearly as bad as it could have been. ;-) But I am still a part of the community, and so that's why I felt the need to write this blog posting. I consider many of the people on the forums to be "professional friends", and it would be rude of me not to let friends know what was up. That, and this will hopefully stem the emails asking whether I've quit or not. :-P
And to think that I thought you guys did this as a full time job!!!
Thanks Aaron. You are certainly going to be greatly missed, but as I said on the forum, you have got a lot of excellent people contributing from the user community and it grows and grows. Looks like your efforts to get it going have been a huge success. Well done.
Just reflecting on the flak issue. There certainly are times when a lot of mud is thrown around and it can't have been at all pleasant for you, so thanks for putting up with it (up 'til now!!). I think it it would be helpful if RS took a more pro-active role in communicating its policies and decsions in the forums rather than letting the conspiracy theorists run riot in the absence of information from the company. I would suggest that someone from PR/Corporate Communications or whatever you call it, establish a presence on the forum - perhaps in the Announcement track, rather than leaving it all to Customer Services. Part of this person's job would be to pro-actively communicate what's going on at REALsoftware.
Thanks for letting us know on this occasion.
All the best for your future role in the company. Expectations are high.
Cheers
jamesee
Aaron, I am a guy who pretty much learnt RB through the forums. More often than not you were there helping out in the threads.
Seriously a HUGE thank you, you will be missed Im sure.
Nice to hear that you have your personal life back. More of us need to learn to do that. :)
I know how you feel. You can only be battered and sleepless for so long. ;) Good move. So, what's your pager number again ?? ;) ;)
I will miss you in the Windows forum ;-)
Anyway, I think that was a good decision for you and RS.
Aaron,
I cried when I read your blog post about how and why you left the forums. You and Mike have provided so much * strong and clear * support for users that I ASSumed it was on company time and planful (or mostly so). You are clearly passionate about creating quality software (and coaxing/coaching others to understand how to use it.)
Like other posters, I understand and support your reasons for withdrawing (even though I regret that you felt like you were taking more crap than beautiful praise for your committed work).
Michael
Well Aaron... there's not much I can say that has not been said before.
Anyway, I'll say that, even though I'm new to the RB community, I noticed almost at once how much effort you were putting into bridging users to RS. I consider a fluent relationship with the customers to be a very important part (I HATE how big companies add layers and layers of incommunication between people and them), and you were playing that role of communicator from my POV. I thanked you in the forums for that and I thank you again now.
I hope you can use your newly found free time in other things that matter to you.
Take care.
KollK
Thanks for your active responses in the forums. I'm looking forward to working with Jason and the crew there also.
I haven't gotten involved myself yet, but I hope you'll get some feedback juice in contributing to the RB wiki. :-)
REAL seems to add some beneficial community/transparency venue every few years, with the last being the forums. (other examples, REALWord, Feedback system, ..)
I'll suggest the next effort to be more cust--COMMUNITY involvement (beyond hazy report counts) in upcoming bug and feature committments. A start for the tone would be changing the "submit a dead simple project/example code" to "Add a Unit Test to _our_ public/community test suite". The current test community expectations are consistently disparate, and if RS wants more than "do your apps still run?" we need a common app. other than the IDE.
Hello Aaron,
Thank you very much for all the support and information during the past years. You where and are a very helpfull person and your explanations are always very clear to follow.
I will miss you too but I wish you very good luck and success in everything you do.
Hope to meet you again, somewhere, some time, some place!
Friendly greetings,
Bad_Wolf
"you'll still get pearls of wisdom from me via the CS staff"
hmmm... not so very pearly so far. If they're asking you the questions, please make sure you answer them :)
We miss you (you have no idea how much) but if you're getting more personal time and more Lis time, it's all worth it.
Minor update: Well, so far, so good. :-) I appreciate all the kind words, and I'm sorry for causing problems with my departure. But it sure has been nice having the extra time on my hands! I still peek into the forums every once and a while, and the topic about why I left has been rather entertaining. Someone's missed the point entirely. ;-) Lis and I have been spending more time together, which has been nice. We spent about five hours at her lab last night. She was working on genetics stuff, and I was playing HoMM5 (with blue screens and all) keeping her company. We even had something which resembled TexMex food! The excitement for today is grocery shopping, cleaning and whatnot. Heh, we're so domestic. :-P
There's so many unanswered posts or post replies that just dont cut-it when it comes to what youself and Mike would provide. Although family comes first at the end of the day I guess :)
And if your woundering what im on about when I say unanswered posts check out the networking section. Some have 200 to 100 views and no replies.
You shall be greatlly missed!
@WinGuy: I second that - the forums has lost the drive. Sad but not unexpected... The only good thing (for RB) is that I now feel forced to sign up for a developer support program as the forums now only can be used for reference material. I just hope that the paid support ($500 for 12 questions...) is quick and accurate... :-(
/msa
Well I posted in the forums about this... I certainly hope CS doesn't go the route I've seen in some 4 companies past...
Trying to turn support forums into profit centers is a nasty business that will quickly lose RB loyal customers. While no one has mentioned this, the departure of truly knowledgeable engineers from the forum was the first step in every other case I've seen.
The other thing that worries me about an "absolute departure" on the part of the engineers is that I believe that there is value to be learned in seeing first hand (not through some CS generated summary) what issues people are seeing and struggling with out there.
I'm a software engineer for biomedical devices and I would NEVER remove myself from the front line. There is simply too much lost in the translation from the FSE to myself with respect to the problems encountered. But... that's just me.
I'd estimate I spend 2 hours daily reviewing customer operations (detail logs, comments, etc). There are some 400+ instruments around the world and while I can't keep up with all of them I sure do have a very clear idea of those things that need to be different in the next software release. I would have NEVER gotten that from the FSEs alone.
Good luck with your extra time. Trust me... once you have kids under foot you can count on any spare time you just gained disappearing completely.... Heck... I'm trying to pass 5th grade again!!! :-)
Mark
I had always figured that you were doing most of it on your own time. Especially after I found out that you were doing engineering over there too. I tried to figure out how you were doing both jobs while on duty at work (then realized it was impossible).
I appreciate all that you have done in the forums. I also appreciate your blog and the many articles that you have written.
And I'd say the forums are great success. As you said, there are many users that help each other out now more than ever.
Any ways, I say:
Good for you! Enjoy your newly found time.
You and Mike will be missed from the forums as much as you guys are from the NUG.
Direct access to you guys was always one of the things I truly appreciated about REAL.
It's a pity to loose such an awesome technician from the frontline.
As far as the taking crap from people in the forum goes ... if you take a look at the feedback-system and see serios bug-reports and features still open for ages, some of them even over 8 years(!) makes every developer feel crappy and like RB is selling a pup.