Hatchling Gators
Written by Chad Bean on April 17, 2008 – 8:31 pm -HostGator has been growing in record numbers lately, and hiring employees just as fast. We thought it might be interesting to go around and harass some of the new trainees. Without further ado, meet our new employees as recorded by Justin…
The first few people we interviewed for the video started saying how much we sucked, but after canning them the morale suddenly increased as you can see in the above video.
The employee culture at HG has generally stayed the same over the years. I started at the company when there were just 4 of us in a small office in Florida, and now we’re closing in on 200 employees in our Houston office.
One of the cool things about the company is you’ll see the owner, Brent Oxley, at the office every day working more hours than just about any other employee. Many new hires would never expect him to be the owner of the company, which reminds me of a prank we pulled on Vincent when he first started.
Vince was heading home after his shift, when he ran into Brent. Not knowing that Brent was the owner, Brent was asking him how he liked it at the job. Of course Vince, like the other new fish you saw in the video, declared his love for the job. He was a bit surprised, however, when Brent started going off on how much he hated the company. Acting as though he was a disgruntled employee, Brent mentioned how he was going to come back the next day with a gun to shoot the place up.
Brent went on for a minute complaining about the “owner” of the company and how much of an @!^hole the owner was before he asked if Vince had met him yet. Vince had tried to reason with Brent not to shoot the place up, until Brent finally broke the news and introducing himself to him.
Good thing Vincent loved his job that day.
P.S. We’re looking for excellent System Administrators and Support Techs to join the fold. Apply today if you want to love your job too.
Tags: Comedy, employees
Posted in Gator Politics | 9 Comments »
Selling Out
Written by Brent Oxley on October 6, 2007 – 1:14 am -Is HostGator “selling out”?
As many of you may already know, we have updated our shared hosting and reseller hosting plans yesterday. The plans went from crazy to just downright insane in terms of us adding HUGE amounts of disk space and bandwidth without increasing the price. I’m going to do my best to explain the whole situation and assure you that the new plans aren’t going to put HostGator out of business.
We have many customers who are going hysterical from being so happy about the plan increases. These are the same customers with whom the majority were using less then 1% of the old plan. It’s like going into an all you can eat buffet and being told you can eat more. I really don’t understand why everyone gets so excited because all we really did was go from unlimited to more unlimited.
Yes I said unlimited! The forbidden word we use to worn potential hosting customers to stay away from, and now HostGator has officially sold out and joined the competition with offering scam plans (we actually did this the last time when we increased our plans, but shhhh).
What exactly is unlimited? Well, I just got done going to the top 5 largest web hosting companies I could think of and the lowest plan I could find was for a few 100 gigs of disk space with thousands of gigs of bandwidth for less then $10 a month. These are all scam plans because like most hosts we have something called a Terms of Service that mentions CPU and memory limits. It is close to impossible to use what we are all selling you without being suspended for going over CPU and memory.
Of course many of you reading this will be shocked and rush off to one of our competitors to ask them if you can really use all the disk space and bandwidth without being suspended, and I’m positive they’ll tell you yes. In fact, my employees would have told you the same thing if they didn’t read this blog post.
Just ask yourself one thing…
How do all us shared web hosting companies sell more disk space and bandwidth for ten bucks then the dedicated server providers sell for hundreds?
It’s an easy concept really. Every web host has a terms of service with CPU and memory limits. If your website consumed too much of its share of CPU or memory then most web hosts will require you to upgrade. When you purchase a dedicated server you can’t get shut down for CPU or memory abuse so they have to sell you a plan based on what your site could use with less restrictions. At HostGator, we pretty much get an unlimited amount of bandwidth from our provider thanks to having thousands of servers. We also have 10,000’s of gigs disk space not being used. Giving away unlimited disk space and bandwidth doesn’t really cost us anything. It’s the CPU and memory that has a real value. A server will usually become extremely overloaded way before you ever get close to using the amount of disk quota and bandwidth it comes with.
If you plan on reading a hosting companies TOS to find out if they have CPU and memory limits it’s usually going to be a waste of time. We are all going to put some CPU and memory limit in there that can’t truly be tracked. However all us hosts have to provide a mystical usage number in order to answer a customers question which is… “how much CPU and memory can I use.” It really is as simple as if you crash a server or slow it down you will be suspended. At HostGator we put 200′ish customers per box and if the server load increases, it can generally be attributed to just one person on that server causing 90% of the problem. Sure, we have ways to track but in the end boils down to not wanting to sacrifice every other users’ experience on that same sever for just one or two websites using all the resources.
The number ends up being less then half a percent of customers per box that get suspended. I know this sounds terrible but if we didn’t suspend the .5% of customers that are a problem the other 99.5% would have many outages and slow load times. The .5% we suspend usually are the ones that even if they were on the server by them self they would still be crashing it. They are the ones that truly need dedicated servers.
Yeah I know how screwed up everything I just said is, but unfortunately this is the cut-throat marketplace that Hostgator is playing in. Take a look at our old hosting tips page written many years ago. Things have definitely changed since then. We’ve held out longer then any of the other larger hosts with offering these scam plans that I can think of, but in the end trying to educate potential customers has failed. It was either follow the trend to stay competitive or start shrinking as a company.
This is my plan for becoming so scummy…
Anyone we find crashing a server will be moved onto a server with only twenty accounts on it for the same monthly hosting price, instead of being suspended. Twenty customers will be paying us just shy of $200 a month on a server which at our cost has a $1,200 setup and about $250 a month leasing fee. You heard me… We are going to be giving abusers hosting below our cost. I’m not even factoring in merchant fees, support costs, or server administration time! If this isn’t good enough for the less then .5% of customers that crash our servers then there just isn’t any pleasing them.
I guarantee if HostGator starts sucking it’s not going to have anything to do with the crazy plans we are offering. Our new offering is no different then the last due to the TOS limiting the CPU and memory which is what truly affects performance. The reason most hosting companies start going downhill after a plan increase is a result from sales skyrocketing and the lack of man power to keep up with growth. If HostGator starts having this problem I’ll switch the site back to the old plans in a heartbeat. There’s no way I’m going to risk everything we built in exchange for a few more sales.
I could have lied as most hosting company blogs and CEO’s do by saying something along the lines of… “We are very excited that our growth has allowed us to negotiate better pricing which we are passing on to our customers in the form of larger plans.” HostGator is one of biggest hosting companies in the world so I know a statement like this is BS. I’m sure many of you will be upset with me writing this as the truth hurts, and I’m sure some of you would even prefer I lie to you, but really in the end honesty is the best way to go.
Posted in Brent Oxley, Gator Politics | 37 Comments »
My plan to save the housing market, the economy, and HostGator simultaneously…
Written by Brent Oxley on September 27, 2007 – 3:56 pm -First off HostGator is not in any kind of trouble so don’t let the title scare you.
One of the biggest issues plaguing HostGator from day one has been finding qualified system administrators. Getting business is the easy part for us! At times we purposely slow down sales in order to allow for the hiring of support techs to keep up with growth. The majority of job applicants we receive are from qualified system administrators with a great deal of experience in this industry, but they reside overseas. If they had a quick, easy, and legal way to come over to America, than we would be hiring them left and right. Unfortunately, this is not an option.
The plan:
I propose we allow any foreigner who purchases a home and lives in it, to become a US Citizen. What about their family? Allow them to stay on some type of visitor pass requiring them to live at the same house until they one day move out to purchase their own home. We could even charge a visitor tax that will contribute toward any costs that may come from their stay, such as schooling. The money generated from this program would result in billions of dollars a year in tax revenue.
The housing market currently has approximately 4.5 million unsold homes. I have no idea how many home sales something like this would generate, but I’m willing to bet it would be at least a million. HostGator alone would purchase a dozen plus homes if it meant a highly skilled admin from another country could come to America to work for us. This would be a major boost to the housing market, crashing home prices would stabilize and perhaps even start to rebound. If an immigrant is required to purchase a home before becoming a US citizen, than they are most likely either going to be making a very good living.
These people coming to the U.S. would be the system administrators, doctors, engineers, programmers, and would fill the void of many other specialized jobs that companies like HostGator are in dire need to fill. Do we need to worry about terrorists entering our country this way? Sure, but not anymore than we do about the 9 million illegal immigrants currently living in our country. Do we need to worry about American jobs being lost? They are already being lost due to the outsourcing that occurs. HostGator does not outsource and we actively seek employees that are local to our Houston office. However, with a field as specialized as web hosting, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the right talent.
We are paying our Chief Technology Officer $100,000’s of dollars a year through our Canadian office, yet he is not legally able to come work for us in America. We have spoken to several immigration lawyers, and no one can get him in. He has been denied at the border numerous times. Our CTO, David Collins has no criminal record and is by far the most honest person I have ever met.
Our government needs to stop bleeding money and start running a more like a business. Dave is begging to work for us in America, and would be paying taxes on his high salary income. He is the smartest administrator anyone in our company knows, and if it was not for him the 100+ HostGator employees would most likely be unemployed. We have a lot of businesses and people willing to pay big bucks in order to be allowed to live and work in America.
What makes a company great? Is it the pretty office, the cool name, or nifty business cards? No!
To be the best you have to have the best working for you. If our country keeps turning away the brightest such as Dave it’s only a matter of time before we are no longer the most powerful nation in the world. If you’re a part of the U.S. Government and are reading this please stop forcing American businesses to outsource to other countries. Allow us to bring in the talent we need to stay competitive with other nations. You can play it off and pretend it’s not a problem. After all HostGator, which is not that big, is the only company with this issue, right? It looks like Microsoft, is being forced to open a Canadian office to find the talent it needs.
“Microsoft Corp. plans to set up house in the Vancouver area this fall with a new software development centre that would attract talent without encountering U.S. immigration issues.” “The company said the new location will “allow the company to continue to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by the immigration issues in the U.S.”
Source: http://www.thestar.com/article/232774
$50,000 Reward:
We our offering a $50,000 cash reward to anyone that can get our CTO
David Collins legally into America! If it’s a bribe we have to make, it’s a
bribe we shall. If you’re sure you can do it contact jobs@HostGator.com
We are also offering a $3,000 reward to anyone that can refer us a
system administrator that we hire. Please email jobs@HostGator.com for
more information
Posted in Brent Oxley, Gator Politics | 11 Comments »
Live Chat Numbers
Written by Jay Weissman on June 22, 2007 – 4:18 pm -Well, it seems like Brent was pretty happy about the feedback on my previous entry Company Email, and as you can tell I still have my job! But not only was he happy about it, he asked me to leak more information!
As most of you are aware, we have our livechat staffed 24/7 for presales and basic support questions/issues. What most of you don’t know is just how many chats we get in a day! Here are some statistics, and some of our top chat techs. Give these guys a pat on the back, it can get rough out there on the front lines!
Big thanks to Angela R, our Day Shift Supervisor for compiling these stats.
June 1 to June 14, 2007
Total Number of Chats: 13,355
Total Surveys Returned: 4,170Overall HostGator Experience
Excellent: 1,895
Very Good: 984
Good: 784
Fair: 378
Poor: 129Chat Technician Rating
Awesome: 2,301
Good: 1,464
Needs Improvement: 396Top Phone Score: Justyn S at 381 calls taken
Top Chat Score: Tin P at 891 chats taken
Top Ticket Score: Jason R at 230 tickets completed
Top Awesome Score: Kevin N at 141 awesome surveys returned
Top Score Overall: Tin P at 1011 Chats/Tickets/Phone calls completed
Keep up the great work guys!
Check out the total number of chats! 14,000 in a period of two weeks! Live Chat may not always be the best solutions to your problems, but from the surveys alone we can tell we are doing something right.
In the future we will have a team of employees who will contact anyone who has left a poor chat review, we hope this will help with issues that aren’t resolved in chat, and find out what we can do to improve our livechat service!
If you have any questions or need assistance with HostGator services be sure to check out Live Chat!
Posted in Gator Politics, Jay Weissman | 10 Comments »
Company Email
Written by Jay Weissman on June 5, 2007 – 6:09 pm -Recently I read a review of the new HostGator blog. One of the comments in that entry really stood out to me.
HostGator’s appears to be aimed at selling you their service. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s faceless, and damn boring.
At first I thought, “Well, of course they are wrong; our blog is perfect!” But after some further consideration I noticed they could be right. Although I did not consider the quote very fair based on us only having three posts so far, I know this blog could go two ways. The first way is how they say it, and the second way is how I vision it. Although we will be posting coupons and promotions often, I also want this to be a fun and personal look at HostGator, our employees, and even our customers! We’d be lying if we said part of the reason for having a blog was not to promote sales, and most of you would see right through that.
Now to the point! Recently Brent sent out a very important email to the company, this went to employees only and is a great look at the direction HostGator is moving. Im going to give you the unedited version of this email. This is the first time one of these has ever been released outside of the company, heck Brent doesn’t even know im posting it! I might get in trouble, but I promised inside information and i’m going to give it to you. ;) Here it goes!
Hello Gators,
Congratulations you have made it through boot camp!
I’m sure most of you are reading this not even realizing a boot camp was going on. Let me explain…
About two months ago hostgator was at about 50 employees. We’ve been on a rampage hiring everyone that came through the door with little or no screening.
This boosted our numbers to over 100 employees with our customer base increasing only by a few thousand. Since then we have over doubled the amount of employees while only increasing customers about 3%.
When you hire as many people as fast as we did there’s going to be slackers, slow learners, bad conduct, and a plethora of other issues bringing down the performance of everyone. We’ve been very hard on everyone in order to separate the weak from the strong. We made the final round of cuts today and believe we are now left with the best. If you are reading this you are either an amazing employee or we see potential in you.
Since most of you have been hired we have been putting the focus on numbers rather than quality and truly helping the customer. Part of our boot camp strategy was to boost everyone’s numbers, and focus at a later date on quality. I have great news that will be a huge relief to most of you! Ticket counts will not matter at ALL until July 1st, and when July 1st hits we will only be doing reviews going forward. I repeat we will not be looking at your counts.
Think of this as a time to learn and improve your abilities to become a better employee.
I want this company to be ran by you the employees for the next month and a half. I’m extremely curious to see what can be achieved without management breathing down your neck about numbers. The focus is going to be shifted to quality with stress being placed on every employee to help a customer as much as humanly possible. I want EVERYONE here to think of themselves as quality control. It’s time we take our level support up a few notches and amaze the hosting community!
How do we do this?
No more fluffing tickets and passing the buck. If you aren’t sure how to help the customer don’t rest until you find a person that can. If you can’t find anyone that better mean you knocked on my door as a last resort! If I’m not here get someone to call me. Find a way to help whether it’s a chat, phone call, or ticket.
No more asking a customer to check if something is working. You better have verified yourself that their problem is resolved. If you see this done in a previous response talk to the employee.
If a customer forgot to include a domain name you better have tried looking them up by their email or past ticket history. No more needless responses to boost ticket counts. If you see anyone doing this talk to them. If a customer is upset about something go the extra mile and call them to help them with their issue! I really want to be seeing this as it is non existent currently.
If you see that a fellow employee did not help the customer PERFECTLY in a previous response track them down to correct their mistake and teach them what to do next time. If they aren’t at work make a note to do it later. DO NOT FORGET. If an employee keeps making the same mistake address it with a manager or myself. If you see someone not putting fourth the extra effort that we are now requiring address it nicely with them and if they do not improve bring it to managements attention. You are no longer going to be expected to perform well yourself, you are going to be expected to perform as a team. One mistake is the mistake of all.
Now that boot camp is over we want this to become your dream job. I need everyone’s help and suggestions in order how to make this a great place to work. We have a few really cool ideas were tossing around but are two definite changes for you…
- Every Friday will now be free pizza day for all shifts.
- We are working out details for two 15 minute paid breaks on top of your hour every day. This will be announced in the next week until then stick to the current policy.
We will also be starting to do some activities outside of work. In the next week or two I’m going to organize a hostgator paintball outing paid for by the company, so until then build up the nerve to challenge me. =)
Congratulations everyone! Thank you for all the hard work and wonderful job that you have been doing.
–
Sincerely,
Brent Oxley
Look forward to more of this in the future, even pictures and videos of the office and our company events! I am always open to suggestions, so if any of you have good ideas for the blog please let me know! Just comment, email me directly, or post on our forums. I’d love to hear from you!
Posted in Brent Oxley, Gator Politics, Jay Weissman | 19 Comments »
