BUSINESS
HostGator Newsletter – September 2010
By admin at 5 January, 2011, 10:14 am
Gator Happenings August proved to be a record setting month for us here at HostGator, with over 26,000 sign-ups! The best part of all this is that we are currently so overstaffed that many of our employees have been complaining that there is no work for them to do. In the business world, a company that is overstaffed is traditionally looked upon as being mismanaged and/or poorly run. We have a different philosophy here and believe that the more overstaffed we are, the better it is for business. Being overstaffed allows us to provide a much higher caliber of support which in turn increases our reputation, and ultimately leads to faster growth. Many of you reading this may be worried that we may have grown too large to value a single account, however this is not and never will be the case. Should you ever have an issue with our traditional support mediums, simply request that your ticket be assigned to our owner, Brent. He will be more than happy to provide you with the V.I.P. attention that you deserve. HostGator Austin is still hiring! As you may have concluded, we have no plans to slow our hiring process, and currently we are aggressively seeking out experienced Linux administrators who are well-versed in cPanel and WHM. If you feel you may be a good candidate, you can find more information on our jobs page here . Not a computer guru? Not experienced in Linux administration? Not a problem! You can still get paid by HostGator for referring potential candidates that successfully complete 90 days of full-time employment. We are currently offering $2,500 for each qualified Admin you send us, and $500 for chat/phone techs. For more information on this, and to get started with your referrals, visit our referral page . Watch out GoDaddy! HostGator is mere weeks away from offering domain registration from our very own domain registrar service. Not only will the registration prices be significantly cheaper than GoDaddy, but you will also receive the legendary 24/7 around the clock support that you have come to know and love from HostGator. HostGator Abound You may have been seeing Snappy more and more lately. With our recent billboard placements, Nascar sponsorship, UFC fighter sponsorships, human inkings, and sponsorships of various other ventures, you may be asking, What’s next? Well, here it is: If you are a gamer, you will be seeing our hungry little gator on the trunks of a few fighters on the upcoming EA Sports: MMA! For more information on this game, and to pre-order, visit EA MMA’s page . That’s all for this month folks, until next month, stay happy, stay safe! – Daniel Collette and The HostGator team
Read More >>Highlights from Internal Company Email
By admin at 5 January, 2011, 10:13 am
Back in 2007 we leaked a company email from Brent Oxley , then HostGator CEO, to our blog. Since that time we’ve grown by leaps and bounds (to the tune of 610%), became the 21st fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000, added a new office location in Austin, TX, and are over 450 employees strong. With those feats, we’ve had our fair share of challenges along the way, however we’re all ready to bring HostGator to the next level. Below is the bulk of an internal e-mail from Brent Oxley sent on Nov. 18th, showcasing some big changes going on at HostGator. Hello Fellow Gators, I want everyone to read this so I’m going to start off with some fireworks… Every single Gator in the Houston office is getting a 10% raise starting immediately. This raise will be reflected on your next paycheck and will not take the place of any upcoming reviews, bonuses or other compensation you have coming. A while ago I sent a news email stating that once we had more automaton in place every employee would receive a raise. We don’t have the automation yet, but we are nearly there with the new billing system so I’ve decided to give part of it in advance. I believe through automation we will become 22%-30% more efficient with staffing. I’m really hoping this 10% raise is just the start and I hope to pass along every penny we save from automation to all of you. While remaining understaffed, HostGator is completely bloated at the same time. What very few of you understand is that some of our most underpaid employees are making over $100,000 a year while some of our most overpaid employees are making $30,000 a year. There are a few of us that perform on such a low level that if everyone did likewise the company would end up bankrupt. Likewise there are other employees that do the equivalent work of four or more of their peers. At HostGator, the sky really is the limit to what you can make, but in order for this to be the case you must always be learning and growing. You truly do create your own destiny at HostGator. Free Lunch for Everybody I’m temporarily taking away the lunch list and inviting everyone in both Austin as well as Houston to free lunches regardless of numbers, ratings, tardiness or absences. I’m going to think about making this a permanent change, but am not ready to make this decision just quite yet. This will go into effect on Monday the 22nd, which will give us a few days time to make arrangements with our vendors. Personal Browsing is Now Allowed You are all allowed to personal browse, respond quickly to a text message, and, in general, have more fun. Those who are doing this will not be written up, or punished in any shape or form. We are going to try giving you all more freedom and see what type of results we get. We are hoping some of the changes made will result in happier more productive employees. Of course if you do too much playing around it will reflect in your numbers, which will ultimately affect your pay and future growth at the company. If support gets out of control and everyone is slacking off we may have to undo this policy. Please help moderate each other, as I can see this having the potential to be taken advantage of. I’m placing a temporary freeze on write-ups for tardies and absences until further notice. Optional/Voluntary Relocation to Austin The Austin office is ready to start accepting voluntary re-locations for anyone who is looking for a change of scenery. We will not be providing relocation assistance if you decide to move to Austin. It makes no difference to us which office you work out of so we’re simply offering this as a perk. If you are interested in moving please contact HR. Depending on how much demand there is for relocation we may have to stagger the moves based on apartment leases expiring. HostGator is Not For Sale I have been shopping the possible sale of HostGator this last year and have finally decided that HostGator is no longer for sale. I received some very serious bids that would have made myself as well as many HostGator employees very rich. I turned down the bids for a multitude of reasons. The majority were turned down as I didn’t believe the number being offered reflected a large enough premium for what our future is worth. Other investors were turned down due to their plans of outsourcing your jobs. I couldn’t allow myself to walk away rich while putting many of you out on the streets. The last investment group we were in very serious talks with just couldn’t make it happen before the end of the year deadline I had. I do believe though that they would have been a great fit for the company and would have made many positive changes. My deadline for a possible sale has always been the end of 2010 and while they still want to acquire us, they are out of time. I’ve been sitting on my hands for far too long waiting on a sale to happen. I have great plans for us, and now that a sale is off the table there’s going to be major changes to make these plans a reality. The Future of the Company I’m going to do my best to take a much more active role with all of you. One of my goals is to meet with every employee individually to discuss ideas and possible changes to better all of our lives. There are a lot of us now (over 430 people), so please be patient with me. Once we are a little further along with systems integration and automation I want to introduce a new optional pay scale. I want to structure this new system so that pay is almost 100% based off of performance. Those who work hard will make 30%+ more then what they’re making now. Those who don’t work hard will never be penalized they simply won’t reach their full earning potential. I envision this ticket / chat / phone system updating real time with how much you’ve made as if it’s some type of video game. With this type of system we could even possibly get rid of schedules completely. If you don’t want to ever come to work you wouldn’t have to. If you want to put in extra hours you would make that much more. What’s more American than being rewarded for working harder than the next guy (or gal)? I’m going to hire a design firm to begin work immediately on designing a kick ass game room for Houston. This game room will take up the entire first floor of the building and should be just as nice as Austin’s. Houston is very close to being maxed out on space. Once this is done I’m going to turn the current training room into ongoing training for all employees. I want to put a serious emphasis on developing chat techs into admins and turning lvl 1 admins into upper tier administrators. We do not want Hostgator to be resume padding. We want you to be part of the family here and develop your skills, add new tools to your skillet, and have your compensation reflect that appropriately. We are going to come up with a program so that employees can propose projects they want to develop. If you have a great idea there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to use company resources to make it happen. There will be a screening and approval process so be thorough in your proposals! These projects won’t even necessarily have to be hosting related. I’m sure there are many of you sitting on multi million dollar ideas. Let’s cash in together! You are all on the ground floor of what’s going to turn into a billion dollar company. With time, many of you are going to become extremely rich. This next year we will be going directly after GoDaddy’s business. I plan on investing over a million dollars a month into TV commercials. We are going to grow extremely fast, much faster then any growth we’ve ever seen before. HostGator is a company that has always promoted from within and with the growth that lies ahead we will be need to expand our management team exponentially. I can see us having to open offices all over the country in order to keep up with staffing, and I can also visualize many of you here being called to run your very own office. We need managers! Lead by example! I apologize for what may be HostGator’s longest news email in history. I had a lot to cover and wanted to get as fresh of a new start as possible with all of you. We know morale is low, and we know that many of you are unhappy with the status quo. What we want now is to include everyone on working to improve while we become the worlds largest hosting company. Sincerely, Brent Oxley
Read More >>Identify With Your Domain Name
By admin at 14 June, 2010, 1:54 am
In this article, we will discuss why this subject is so important and how you can benefit from this information. Use everyday perceive when choosing a domain name because your domain name, or URL, can have an effect in both the online and offline marketing of your web-situate. Long or fractious to denote domain names [...]
Read More >>What Is A Domain Name ?
By admin at 14 June, 2010, 1:42 am
In this article, we will discuss why this subject is so important and how you can benefit from this information. A domain is a name that identifies IP addresses on the internet. The domain name Yahoo.com represents about fifteen (15) IP addresses. area names are worn to isolate Web pages. For example, in the URL [...]
Read More >>An Easier Way to Earn Money from Home
By admin at 17 September, 2009, 1:37 pm
In this global economic crisis it’s so difficult for us to get a job since most companies don’t have sufficient budget to hire new employees. In this case we should come up with better ideas on how to raise money. There are many ways we can get the money since we can get them both [...]
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