Support diary: I became the Hetzner support I hated

I used to be the person opening tickets at 2am, screaming about "transparency" and demanding root cause analysis. Six months ago I became a Hetzner customer again. Budget host. €4 plans. The kind I used to trash on forums.

The transparency thing hit first. I had a bad outage once. No status page update for hours. I asked for a postmortem. "customers don't read those." I kept pushing. Got nowhere.

Then last month. I wanted a refund for downtime. Policy says no refunds under €5. I used to screenshot that policy and tweet it. Now I'm the one getting that reply. "Per section 4.2..."

I left Tuesday. Posted about it to my blog. Went viral on HN. They locked my accounts within the hour.

The irony? The thread that got me noticed was me roasting Hetzner's transparency. Full circle.

Ask me anything. I have NDAs but also zero remaining respect for process.

Sweet as writeup mate? Hard to square that with the policy stuff yeah? Like you knew what you signed up for but also didn't?

Chur for posting this though. Mate I ran a few boxes on Hetzner back in 2022. Network was patchy as. Never got a straight answer on the routing mate?

Would you do it again or yeah nah

1. This is genuinely fascinating
2. The ethical progression you described has distinct phases
2. A) idealistic hire
2. B) incremental compromise
2. C) policy enforcement as cognitive dissonance
2. D) public exit
3. Questions I have
3. I) was there a single breaking point
3. Ii) or was it cumulative
3. Iii) how many warnings before the postmortem incident
4. The viral resignation seems like
4. A) calculated career move
4. B) or genuine snap decision
5. Which was it