
A gentlemen's agreement - dsabanin
http://wildbit.com/blog/2013/03/22/a-gentlemans-agreement/
======
alrs
I won't be signing up for this.

Having an operations team that can keep things going through adversity is a
competitive advantage that doesn't come cheap.

Redundancy and ops talent cost money. If your competitor made a cost/benefit
decision that let them down, I say tough luck.

~~~
mindcrime
_Having an operations team that can keep things going through adversity is a
competitive advantage that doesn't come cheap._

True, but I don't think you can afford to have 100% uptime. Basically nobody
can do that. Even in the heyday of the Bell system, Ma Bell couldn't quite
guarantee 100% uptime. 99.9999999%, maybe, but do you have any idea how much
engineering effort and work went into achieving that?

 _I won't be signing up for this._

What, acknowledging reality? Look, I don't think the OP was saying that you
shouldn't compete on reliability and uptime and other quality guarantees. But
if something extraordinary happens to a competitor - which _could just as
easily happen to you_ \- then it's silly to launch a specific, targeted effort
to try and steal away that competitor's customers in reaction that specific
event.

There's a difference between a demonstrated pattern of better
uptime/reliability, woven into a consistent marketing message over time, and a
predatory attack reacting to a moment of weakness.

~~~
alrs
My reference to "signing up" means that I won't be entering in to a
gentleman's agreement. I'm on good terms with reality.

~~~
peterwwillis
You could just agree not to be a jerk...

------
hnolable
For those who don't know, it was Dyn. I personally liked the email. While
sendgrid was down we were running around like a chicken with its head cut off
trying to find a replacement. We started setting up postmark but didn't get it
up before sendgrid came back up.

We've been using DynECT for DNS for a long time and it's been perfect. Having
them remind us they do email (at a time when it was critically needed) was
actually great. At this point I'm planning on signing up for it and using them
as a failover for sendgrid.

~~~
larrys
Why do you feel it was dyn? I got that email and didn't remember it referring
to anything in particular. I just took another look and here is the copy:

 _"In today's demand-driven marketing world, getting email into the inbox and
sending that email is as crucial as turning on the lights in the morning.
Social media is awesome, but when it comes to the most trusted form of
communication with customers, prospects and fans, email wins hands down.

See that graphic above? That's a screenshot from about an hour ago, a visual
representation of where emails sent through our servers are being read at that
instant around the world. At a billion+ messages sent a month, there's no
better time to move your email delivery services to Dyn.

We've relaunched our packages, introducing an entry-level option for just $3
per month -- roughly the amount of a large coffee. Isn't your transactional
email program worth more than that?

It's time to deliver through Dyn. Sign up now. Send today. Be successful
tomorrow."_

Explain why you feel that a) dyn sent this in reaction to the "situation" and
b) even if they did how this was a bad thing.

By the way here is the dyn.com blog post I'm not seeing anything there that
dovetails and makes them the company the OP is referring to:

[http://dyn.com/blog/email-delivery-dynect-deliverability-
sca...](http://dyn.com/blog/email-delivery-dynect-deliverability-scalability-
iaas-no-downtime/)

------
amirmc
I don't understand. Sure, this may be a special case related to the PyCon
stuff (which should be more clearly referenced in the OP imho) but I don't see
how it's a general point.

What if you really do believe that you have a better service than that
competitor? What if you _can_ demonstrate better uptime/benefits/customer-
service/whatever? Do you just sit around and wait until customers fall into
your lap?

While I appreciate the sentiment for _the current circumstances_ , I don't
think it holds generally. It almost feels like the opposite of hustle.

~~~
rm999
It's an implicit form of negative advertising, which is rarely noble or
"gentlemanly". I think most people would be disgusted if a politician started
running ads about how healthy he is when his opponent is in the hospital. This
situation is similar: while the sites are touting themselves, it's the obvious
contrast they are creating that makes it negative.

~~~
protomyth
Politicians would wish their opponent a speedy recovery after their morning
jog[1], like a website might say it won't take advantage of another's
situation by writing a blog post with a link to the competitors problems[2]
and pointing out some other competitor is acting poorly.

1) or tennis on The West Wing

2) I do believe their post is in good faith, but I spent a chunk of my life
dealing with politicians and I think seeing the gears makes one a bit cynical

~~~
OzzyB
I want to give your brain a hug.

------
jusben1369
Many of the comments here are missing the point a little. To summarize:

"If your customer experiences a freak event that no one can really plan for
trying to turn that into a win for yourself is inappropriate" - We should
argue on the merits of that. Don't confuse this with a service that perhaps
experiences ongoing issues. Those are material points that a buyer should know
and are fair game to raise in marketing.

------
smithian
The real reason not to do this is that it makes you look like a scumbag. It's
not in your interest to make that association in your customer's minds. For
instance, I run a small datacenter on the east coast. We had no downtime due
to Sandy, but the level of MSP/CoLo/Managed hosting company cold calls I got
in the two weeks after trying to use their uptime during the storm as a sales
pitch was unbelievable. every single one of them went in my "scumbucket
vendor" file.

------
jiggy2011
Getting 6 nines uptime costs money, if you make that investment in
infrastructure/staff then you deserve to make it a selling point.

OTOH I can certainly see an exception when it comes to what is effectively
digital terrorism.

There seems to be at least some belief that Adria was let go at least partly
to stop the fallout from the DDOS attack.

You can't let 4channers get the idea that they can set policy decisions that
affect others and ultimately have nothing to do with them.

~~~
mindcrime
_Getting 6 nines uptime costs money, if you make that investment in
infrastructure/staff then you deserve to make it a selling point._

Certainly, and I don't see the OP arguing against that. The OP just seems to
be saying something that's analogous to the old schoolyard ethic of "don't
kick someone when they're down".

~~~
jiggy2011
Well, that depends.

If I can win customers by pointing out that company X is having problems and
you wouldn't have those problems with my company (or at least would be less
likely to) because we have superior infrastructure etc then I think it's
perfectly fair to point that out.

If OTOH they are suffering as a consequence of some retard-spasm of the
internetz that could just as easily have happened to us and more crucially is
more _likely_ to happen to us if 4chan get their way this time around.

------
nmcfarl
I don’t know - I think I’m a bit darwinistic here.

Having suffered through some products with bi-weekly downtime, I tend to think
competitors should be allowed tout whatever their strengths are including
uptime if that’s one of them. And it doesn’t reflect poorly on them (in my
eyes). When suffering I like to see solutions offered…

Of course most companies with horrible re-occuring downtime, have no serious
competition… So there’s that.

~~~
shill
OP is talking about kicking someone when they are down as the result of a
random catastrophe. You won't gain many customers doing this, and the ones you
do gain won't be very loyal.

~~~
nmcfarl
So perhaps what I’m saying is that at some point you have to kick when down,
at least if a vendor is always down. Every marketing campaign I’ve ever been
involved in ran for longer than 2 weeks. And in my example I was not joking -
we were paying for a service that had roughly bi-weekly, unplanned downtime of
multiple hours, for many many months. A marketing campaign would have
inevitably run concurrent with a downtime.

I agree - running attack ads after 1 random catastrophic event is in poor
taste. But at some point - 3 in a year?, 3 in a month? - it becomes
reasonable, and tasteful, to tout uptime as an advantage.

~~~
takluyver
I don't think anyone's really disagreeing with this. If you can make a real
case that you can offer a better service, that's fine.

As another example: say a meteorite takes out your competitor's data centre.
If you are running from independent data centres with capacity to handle a
sudden failure of one, feel free to highlight that. If you're running from one
data centre, you should probably just count yourself lucky that it happened to
them and not you.

------
ericcholis
Being a customer of Postmark's, I'm happy that they took this sort of stance.
Their service has had it's share of issues, and they always have responded
quickly and professionally. Not surprising that they responded in this manor.

------
Shank
I don't agree with this - because in all honesty, SendGrid probably should
have had some sort of contingency plan setup to handle extremely high amounts
of traffic. Sure, the public facing website may have gone down, but the API &
other servers should have been able to scale up or down depending on load.

When your service is as relied upon as an email provider, it needs to have
near perfect uptime in order to keep trust. People were tweeting @SendGrid
wondering why it was down for hours, and were looking for other providers to
pick up anyway.

------
cryptoz
By writing this post, you're actively working to benefit from someone else's
outage. A bit hypocritical, no? Hitting the front page of HN with a post
talking about how great you are? Yeah, okay, you're not trying to benefit off
this outage at all.

~~~
jusben1369
You do realize the logic of your argument results in "You can't comment on
this because any exposure you receive based on your comment makes you a
hypocrite based your comments"

~~~
xtrumanx
I disagree. I don't know Wildbit or who their competitors are. All it took for
me to figure out the "shitstorm" that was referenced was to hover over the
link.

The same message could have been made with no reference to SendGrid but they
chose not to. Whether that was a conscious decision is unknown.

------
steven2012
The company I work for was disrupted by SendGrid's downtime, so this very
question was something I was actually thinking about. I'm on the fence about
this.

One of my former bosses told me that you never take advantage of a
competitor's bad press, because who knows when it will be you that get's the
bad press. It makes sense, because you don't want to look opportunistic on
someone else's bad luck.

But if you're a startup, and you need to get some traction against a
competitor, it might be a good way to get some new customers. You better be
able to live up to your claims though otherwise your entire credibility is in
question.

------
kefka
This gentleman's agreement.. What crap it is.

I have a story: a few years ago, the US had a nasty hurricane called Katrina.
This hurricane directly hit New Orleans, and other cities. After this time,
all insurance companies pulled all operations out... With exception of one.
This company, once called Government Employee Insurance Company, realized that
they could raise rates by 400% and be the only one willing to sell.

The company is Geico, run by Berkshire Hathaway.

~~~
staticfish
Interesting story, but I fail to see what on earth the comparison is with this
piece of tech news.

------
racbart
I disagree. I mean, you put the line at a wrong place.

So you say we shouldn't benefit from competitor's outages, but we can benefit
from their failures of different types? Because every time you claim that you
do something better than competition, it's simply you trying to benefit from
their failure to do this thing right.

I think the line should be a bit further than you say. Benefiting from
someone's downtime or any other kind of failure is perfectly fine, unless that
downtime/failure wasn't easily avoidable. If the downtime/failure is because
the company lack of professionalism then you should go and benefit from it. If
their downtime is because they are hosting servers in their own office, under
CTO's desk, and cleaning lady disconnected the cable, shame on them.

That said, this wasn't the case. DDoS isn't something anyone can easily
protect from and because of that you shouldn't try to benefit from it. If you
do, you basically lie to your customers by making impression that you could
avoid such outage.

------
frossie
Yeah but. I somehow doubt that people leave a service over a single
explainable outage. From my personal experience, I move when the outage is the
straw that broke the camel's back - when I have been unhappy with the service
but have lacked the time and urgency to do something about it, and then they
are down and I'm thinking "Well, time I moved off here anyway".

So in that respect, I think I am fair game to a "Switch to our service!" email
and I don't see how that is unethical - happy customers don't move just
because they get an email during an untypical service interruption. Dropbox
could go down for the rest of the day, and I could get all the competitor
emails they want to send me, and I am not going to switch. I did switch
registrars during an outage, but that is because I had been less than ecstatic
about them and just needed a kick.

~~~
ebbv
It depends on the outage. But any service provider can tell you there's always
an increase of cancellations around any outage.

------
niggler
I disagree strongly with the ultimate basis of this: it is a dog eat dog
world. There is a finite pool of customers. I don't mean to say you should do
what the other company did (email bashing while others are down) but you
shouldn't be afraid to talk about your other strengths.

~~~
yesimahuman
I wonder if the modern customer is more nuanced than that though? We've all
been fucked over by capitalism, it's refreshing to see companies not be
douches about it.

I'm really happy with Sendgrid, but this really gave me a good feeling about
who Wildbit is, and now I'm inclined to give them my business.

------
eterm
"We shake hands with guys at conferences"

Only the guys? _ducks_

~~~
Nursie
See also "A Gentlemen's Agreement".

Personally I think the language police can go and do something gender-
appropriate and painful to themselves, but after the nature of that particular
shitstorm, it does seem a touch out of place!

~~~
peterwwillis
The definition of the phrase ("An arrangement or understanding which is based
upon the trust of both or all parties, rather than being legally binding")
doesn't specify a particular gender, though a word in the phrase can. Taking
the phrase in the spirit it's intended would lead one not to consider it
sexist, though if you take the position that any mention of sex (or any
reference to old-world patriarchy) in speech is inherently wrong we'd be here
all day.

~~~
Nursie
That's why I said I have no time for the language police!

I find it an interesting phrase to have chosen for an article title in light
of what the recent furore is all about, but not an offensive one. Then again
I'm rather hard to offend.

------
dwc
This isn't a clear cut line not to be crossed. It's a matter of personal
ethics. There are times when you do something differently _precisely_ because
you think it's a better way and gives your company and your customers an
advantage. When that advantage becomes clear for all to see there's no reason
to deny it, hide it, pretend that it's just blind misfortune that could have
happened to you just as easily, when you have taken active steps to make sure
it didn't. You don't need to tear down your competitors, but you shouldn't
avoid pointing out why you are good/better.

------
bcoates
This will do nothing, as it's not their decision to make. I'm occasionally in
the position to be buying services from commodity providers. If your service
goes down and I start shopping around, the question is not "Will I ditch you
for someone who can deliver?", it's "Which one will I move to?".

You might as well try to be in the running with some well-timed advertising.
I'm sure you're emotionally invested in being a nice guy to the folks in the
booth next to you, but as your customer I can assure you I'd rather see you
fight.

------
PuercoPop
So you thought it is loable to not exploit your opponents weaknesses?

And it is loable to leave potential customers stranded with a subpar service
that has failed their expectations by not being available?

It think you should read Sirlin's definition of a scrub[0], and decide if you
want to continue being one, but you have no moral high ground, you are just
limited by your own made up rules.

[0]:<http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html>

~~~
mindcrime
_So you thought it is loable to not exploit your opponents weaknesses?_

There's a big difference between exploiting a weakness in general, and taking
advantage of an extraordinary circumstance that harms your competitor. To me,
this comes down to sportsmanship.

To use a bit of an analogy... I wrestled in high-school. We trained to
identify weaknesses in the game of our opponents, so I might well enter into a
match with a guy thinking "I know he's susceptible to upper body takedowns
like a lateral drop or an armspin, so I'm going to pointedly attack that way".
That's trying to exploit a weakness, and it's totally reasonable, expected and
fair. But if I'm wrestling a guy and he slips on a wet spot on the mat and
tears a groin muscle and is laying on the mat writhing in pain, should I jump
on him and try to score a quick pin? No, of course not. Good sportsmanship
dictates stand back, let the ref step in, give the guy his medical timeout,
and then see what happens. If he can't continue, then you either "win" via
forfeit or the match is vacated completely (I forget exactly which would have
happened in that case when I was in HS).

Same in the business world... if my competitor has a known, exploitable
weakness, like a less mature infrastructure and problems with uptime, and I
market and sell based on an overall better quality of service, that's one
thing. But if the competitor experiences a "black swan" event, should I "jump
on and go for the quick pin"? I say "no", that doing that would be just as
unethical as in the wrestling example.

~~~
pseut
I like the general sentiment, and I generally act the same way, but I can't
help but think, "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." Another analogy: I
played tennis in high school and in every match I've played in my life, there
are no refs and the players call balls in or out on their own. Some people
cheat on that and, all else equal, they tend to win more points. If I had
millions of dollars at stake on these matches, I'd be a hell of a lot more
likely to cheat than I did. As it was, I'd try to call things fair unless my
opponent was cheating; then I'd blatantly call balls out to, um, "persuade" my
opponent to knock it off. None of your opponents choked you in high school? No
hard to see punches?

The analogy somewhat falls apart because reputation matters more in business:
the OP is to some degree PR.

~~~
ahoyhere
If you play for points, of course it makes sense to cheat.

If you play to be a better human being, and better at tennis, you are just
fucking yourself in the ear if you cheat.

When you cheat, you know you can't win in a fair fight. You may win -- but you
know you don't "deserve" it. You can tell yourself you "deserve" it because
you were smart enough to take advantage, but some part of you will know you're
a liar, and you couldn't hack it in a fair fight.

This is also why lying to people is a waste of time, because it creates a
layer between you and the rest of the world. Chronic liars often find
themselves facing depression because "nobody knows the real me." And cheats,
when in a position where cheating won't help them, lack confidence.

~~~
pseut
Yours is far from a universal opinion. Plenty of people who cheat could
probably win a fair fight, but cheating makes it easier. Watch any sport at
any level and you'll see "cheaters" win.

------
IsaacL
Doing this has the same advantages and disadvantages, for both businesses and
customers, as price-fixing or forming a cartel.

I'm not saying it's the same as forming a cartel, maybe a cartel _lite_. Think
about it: from the point of view of the customer of a downed service,
competitors doing some opportunistic PR is only beneficial.

So competitors _not_ doing opportunistic PR is depriving customers of a
benefit, while helping the industry itself.

------
vinceguidry
I'm curious as to where she got that notion. Do things like this happen often
enough among her market segment to where a reasonable person could form such
an expectation? I mean, I can see having a personal conviction to not stoop to
such levels, but expecting my competitors to share it? That sounds rather
illogical, and could lead to getting caught flat-footed in such an event.

------
benatkin
I agree with most of this, but they should have waited weeks to post this, so
it didn't seem like they were trying to use reverse psychology to engage in
the exact behavior that they're railing against. Also "gentlemen's agreement"
was a poor choice of words because it isn't a gender neutral term.

~~~
themartorana
I'm pretty sure the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time,
it's a definable, historical legal term. Better than titling it "An informal
agreement between two or more parties simply understood as part of an unspoken
agreement by convention or through mutually beneficial etiquette." (Apologies
to Wikipedia)

------
samolang
I strongly disagree. That is not how capitalism works. You should take
advantage of every opportunity you can to get people to try your product. If
you have a superior product they'll stay, if you don't they won't.

~~~
mindcrime
_That is not how capitalism works. You should take advantage of every
opportunity you can to get people to try your product._

What a load of bunk. Nothing about capitalism per-se prohibits a firm from
having a sense of ethics, or from having principles. Promoting this way of
thinking is the reason so many lefties find so much ammunition to attack
capitalism.

Firms (especially privately held ones) certainly can choose to withhold from
certain kinds of behaviour while competing fiercely, and succeeding, in the
market.

~~~
samolang
You don't have to do anything unethical to take advantage of your competitors'
struggles. Was it unethical for domain registrars to offer sales when Go Daddy
was catching flak for supporting SOPA?

All I'm saying is capitalism works best when customers are sensitive to
problems. The more alternatives they try, the more likely they try the best
alternative, the more likely the best companies succeed.

~~~
mindcrime
_Was it unethical for domain registrars to offer sales when Go Daddy was
catching flak for supporting SOPA?_

No, but that wasn't a "black swan" event that GoDaddy could not control. They
_chose_ to support SOPA. In my mind, that's a pretty different scenario.

 _All I'm saying is capitalism works best when customers are sensitive to
problems. The more alternatives they try, the more likely they try the best
alternative, the more likely the best companies succeed._

I basically agree with that; I just think the OP's post is pointing out a very
specific edge case where a certain sort of behaviour is indicated.

~~~
samolang
In my mind it's a harmless crime. If you are doing something unethical then
you risk turning off customers with your scummy behavior. If you have the
superior product, then you are doing the customers a favor. If you have an
inferior product, then the customer will simply switch products again.

I don't think a 'gentlemen's agreement' is needed.

------
87689769867
>>When someone you compete against is suffering, especially as a result of any
kind of infrastructure issues, shut up and keep your head down.

Why? Seriously Why? Companies that are not attacked by their competitors
become lazy. I think is fair game. They are not doing anything illegal and
frankly I don't think the situation is scummy at all. This guy sounds like a
kid yelling "is not fair" and "you are a big meanie". Where the fuck does he
think he is?

~~~
themartorana
"She," actually. And she is the owner of a company that benefitted from
SendGrid's unfortunate circumstances. Being the owner of such a service, what
she saw other competition doing disturbed her. So she wrote about it.

Although Postmark did receive an uptick of signups, they didn't take the
opportunity to market against SendGrid as an unreliable service, because they
know there is no 100% reliable service, anywhere, ever.

------
ahoyhere
Sad to see the discussion is more about "what'll get you customers" instead of
"what does it mean to do business ethically."

Capitalism, fine. Competitiveness, fine. Postmark is not a company afraid of
customers or competition. But they believe in competing in a classy, ethical
way. Most importantly, their competitive advantages are based on _facts_ ,
things they can control, things their competitors could control but don't.

How can anyone disagree with that?

But sure, let's look at it from a ruthless, ethics-free standpoint:

What if you do run attack ads, what if you do kick the competitor when they
have a _freak event_ that they _did not cause_ and _could not have prevented_
\-- an enormous DDoSing campaign by an organized group -- and which could
happen to you, too?

What if you lure customers away with these attack ads?

What will those customers do when _you_ have a freak event?

No service has perfect uptime. DDoSing can happen to anyone.

So even if you have the ethics of a rutabaga, all you get for your efforts are
_customers which do not tolerate the occasional freak event_. What do you
think they're going to do when _you_ have something you have no control over?

Your marketing will have created the results that you deserve.

Business doesn't exist in a vacuum. You do not "win customers for life."
Customers are not all equal (far from it). This is a long game. Being classy,
being honest, is the best way to create a business you -- and your customers
-- can live with for a long time.

~~~
rz2k
Their is a long time debate between the ideals of communitarism and the ideals
of cosmopolitanism, but another term for courteous noncompete agreements with
your competitors is cronyism.

When does being nice to your competitors undermine your users' best interests?
When does generosity toward people within your industry community benefit your
industry at the expense of other communities, and how old does your company
have to be before you can call that behavior cronyism? Do you have to smoke
cigars in a poorly lit room? What if you just like being more generous to
people who smoke cigars in dark rooms more than people who occasionally go
outside, and are active? Does that make you a crony?

Reading these comments I get the impression that people want to be nice to
others in companies like their own, more than they are describing any type of
universal ethical guidelines.

~~~
ahoyhere
"but another term for courteous noncompete agreements with your competitors is
cronyism."

And another term for this sentence is a strawman argument. Nobody at all said
there was a gentleman's agreement _not to compete_. Please read the article.

~~~
rz2k
You might argue that it is a slippery slope argument, which is not a problem
in itself, especially since there is a loose definition for what constitutes
cronyism, but it is not a straw man argument.

The post calls for not drawing attention to when a competitor experiences a
failure. That sort of chumminess does not encourage more robust
infrastructure, it makes it difficult for new entrants to compete based on
better reliability, and ultimately does not benefit customers.

