That's a question I hear often, or another form of it: "How do you get people to do things that nobody wants to do?" I usually answer this with two questions:
1. If everyone deeply cares about the culture and longevity of the company (which is a prerequisite), and nobody wants to do it, does it really need to get done? The answer is often no. But if the answer is yes…
2. How do you turn that into a celebrated task where everyone wants to do it?
One example of this at GitHub is support. Developers hate doing support. But we have decided that it is absolutely vital to our company to both provide good support and to have developers involved in it so we are constantly getting feedback about what is working and what is not.
So we created the "King of Developers", which is a position that is held by a developer for one week at a time, in which that developer's primary responsibility is support. Along with that comes a pimped out desk at our HQ in San Francisco and tons of street cred. We even have a ridiculous internal website to go along with it (http://dribbble.com/shots/554836-GitHub-King-of-Developers). There are currently 9 developers signed up waiting to be the King.
Thanks for the detailed response. At my current work place everyone rotates through support as well (dev, sales, ops), and I agree with you: the only way to make these kinds of things work is with an exceptionally strong culture, and not compromising.
1. If everyone deeply cares about the culture and longevity of the company (which is a prerequisite), and nobody wants to do it, does it really need to get done? The answer is often no. But if the answer is yes…
2. How do you turn that into a celebrated task where everyone wants to do it?
One example of this at GitHub is support. Developers hate doing support. But we have decided that it is absolutely vital to our company to both provide good support and to have developers involved in it so we are constantly getting feedback about what is working and what is not.
So we created the "King of Developers", which is a position that is held by a developer for one week at a time, in which that developer's primary responsibility is support. Along with that comes a pimped out desk at our HQ in San Francisco and tons of street cred. We even have a ridiculous internal website to go along with it (http://dribbble.com/shots/554836-GitHub-King-of-Developers). There are currently 9 developers signed up waiting to be the King.