Technical Customer Service

Quoted from Joel On Software - Some interesting jobs:

"My pet theory is that if the person who takes the call when a customer is missing, say, the Pear Mail module, if this person is the same person who maintains the setup code, then they will eventually get sick of sshing into customers' servers and typing "pear install Mail" for them and they'll just fix it in the setup code once and for all. And I think a lot of people would find a job that combines problem solving with new software development is going to be pretty interesting,..." - Joel Spolsky

I agree 100% with Joel's theory on having the software developers also be the customer service department. I don't deal directly with external clients, but I do have to fix problems when things break. As a result, I like to fix them the first time so that I don't have to deal with it again.

It's a beautiful feeling when you can solve a problem the first time for N cases where N -> INFINITY!

As long as the business model empowers software developers to actually implement these solutions, this organizational style will be successful. I feel that I have this level of freedom at my company, and I'm fairly certain that this level of freedom exists at Fog Creek.