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Comment by zalmoxes | Hacker News Reader

I'm neither an employee nor a customer, just someone who was following the project on twitter because it looked very intriguing. I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally wrong. - The company is founded by Blake Mizerany https://twitter.com/bmizerany?lang=en an engineer known for Sinatra and a bunch of other well respected projects. - The users adopting an early stage startup's product are likely friends/former colleagues who are putting personal trust into the team. Does anyone really think nobody got a heads up, or possible support deals while they migrate?

Second, Backplane really looked like great tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43wFJBRTHG0

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The customers did find out at the last minute. Weeks notice is last minute.

I think zalmoxes' point was that they may have found out through direct contact from the founders, or a customer-only email 2 weeks ago - rather than just by loading up the homepage today.

> Weeks notice is last minute.

Well, no, it's literally not. It's actually a reasonably long lead time for “going out of business”, which basically no one ever announces before essentially all hope of finding a way to keep the business running is exhausted, which intrinsically means there is little runway left.

Yep, it literally is last minute for a platform product used by others during a time of the year when the developers responsible for finding/building a replacement would otherwise have gone on vacation.

If this were a tangible product, a week notice would be fine since it gives customers time to stock up.

> Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute?

Two weeks notice at a time where people frequently take vacation time is very much "last minute".

> That the company would leave its users without any support?

"It's all gonna stop working on December 29th" does seem to do exactly that.

> I just want to say that the comments on this thread are absolutely ridiculous and I expected better. Does anyone actually think the customers would find out at the last minute? That the company would leave its users without any support? It's baseless speculation and my guess is it's totally wrong.

Well, it's their baseless speculation and your guess, so a level playing field. You can make the same point without baiting other commenters—in fact you just make your point without baiting other commenters, that's how.

It sounds exactly like customers got last minute notice right before the holidays when everything shuts down.

Of all the times they could have chosen to shut down, they chose the absolute worst.

If I still programmed, I would never use this guy's products ever again.

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