Confession of the boss: how to work while traveling, to dismiss half of the department in LA and why to sponsor MeksetnoExp Tyoma Lebedev
Traveling is not only an opportunity to see something new, but also to change yourself and your attitude to the world. Over a dozen years I travel almost continuously. The history of our company began with this, I flew to live in Dahab and planned to work in the diving industry, and as a result, a few years later an article appeared “ua-hosting.company” or how to become a hosting provider from scratch and generate more traffic than all Belarus . On my way, I was lucky to meet wonderful people who had something to learn from, and maybe I taught them something. I still remember the words of my technical diving instructor, Andrey Chistyakovwho performed 7 dives to depths of over 200 meters (one of which was a solo dive to 240 meters, as part of the study of the micro-bubble decompression model), which significantly changed my mind:
“Larry Green told me that the right approach to business is not "Teach me to dive into the caves", and "can I learn from you to dive into the caves"? Students learn from me, and I always learn from students. The wrong attitude leads to death, this is the problem, not the mistakes, but the wrong attitude, which leads to a series of mistakes. ”
Andrei is a very wise person who changed the attitude of many people to the business, loved to make non-standard and interesting dives, and sought to show the underwater world to others such as they did not see him, mainly because of incorrectly set skills and incorrect attitude. Nevertheless, he abandoned a successful diving career, bringing hundreds of thousands of euros, without regrets, as soon as he saw how wrong the attitude of society was towards diving, including technical, which killed a lot of divers. Diving has become commercialized, the quality of courses has deteriorated, and if earlier divers were more or less professional, and most importantly, conscious people who take courses responsibly and clearly understand the physics of processes (at least the Buhlmann algorithm and micro bubbles did not cause cognitive dissonance), now the audience has changed. The largest market players have opened access to water for everyone with the goal of making money. Sometimes instructors have worse skills than students of good diving instructors. And technical diving was not a way of exploring something new and contemplating the amazing underwater world, a way to improve skills, which makes recreational diving even more comfortable and safe, but another way for successful business people (after all, this is expensive, one dive can cost 1,500 euros and more) put an additional “tick” in the form of a figure on a computer - 200 meters, make the so-called “space tourism”, because at a depth of 200+ meters there were much fewer people than astronauts in space. Or, even worse, check your own limit. And being at the limit - you die!on the school’s website , explaining in detail the reasons . I was lucky, after closing, to learn diving in caves in Florida, perhaps the best place in the world, to master such a “pensioner” discipline as cavediving. Indeed, it is not surprising that in central Florida many retirees plunge into caves, performing sometimes the most difficult research programs. This is by the way how some of the people actively spend their retirement, which is rarely seen in the territories of the post-Soviet space.
But let's not talk about sad things. Today we will talk about travel, which became possible precisely due to the prevalence of Internet access. And this access became possible, in particular, thanks to the underwater highways that encircle the Earth. I talked about them in detail in an article that may take you an entire evening, but I highly recommend reading it: Messages in depth: an amazing story of the underwater Internet .
If you familiarize yourself with our history, then you are aware that our administrators are relatively independent and decide their own managerial affairs, while we, sellers and “developers” of customer solutions, work together. So it’s convenient for us and so it’s been effective for many years, in July of this year we are 10 years old!
Having opened an office in Kiev, I also tried to instill in my employees a love of travel, in particular diving, not in order to teach me how to dive, but in order to change their attitude, because this diving was with the right people to learn from. Our sales department flew courses to the right diving instructors in Egypt, sometimes we lived for 2 months in Dahab on the beach.
In the past 15 years, a small town on the Sinai coast, Dahab, located just 90 km from the bustling Sharm El Sheikh, with unforgettable flavor, has become extremely popular among the “wintering” from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.
Some British nationals and many Europeans made Dahab their home; they fly to Dahab to spend the winter with families with children and from the United States, despite the difficult political situation in Egypt. There is a trilingual school (Russian, English, Arabic).
The city has become different, and it continues to change people. Many people are stuck in it for many years, especially if there is real estate in their homeland that can be rented and remote work that can be done while living in Dahab, where until recently life was several times cheaper than life in Moscow or Kiev, and the rental of decent apartments began from 200 euros per month. And this is despite the fact that until recently, the Internet was extremely slow and a DSL connection without taking into account 2 Mbps traffic cost about 400 EGP (LE) per month. Once upon a time, it was $ 80, but with the advent of 3G and LTE, prices have fallen and today you can buy 40 GB of Vodafone mobile traffic for about $ 20 a month. The only inconvenience is blocking part of the Internet by the Egyptian authorities, as well as blocking most types of VPN tunnels,
How expensive was it to live and work there? Not expensive. 1000 euros per month for a five-room house on the beach. While it could have taken 6,000 per month to eat at restaurants in Dahab easily (we had 6 people in Dahab and 2 in Kiev at that moment). All this was provided as a bonus, in addition to charging. circuit boards. Including, so as not to be bored, sometimes we went to rest in neighboring Israel and Jordan.
I did not spare funds for the training of employees, for me they were always a family for the development of a level which did not feel sorry for anything, although it is possible that sometimes I was not the best leader, since I do not like people in general, but I love personalities and saw potential each, trying to reveal it to the maximum, and when this did not happen, he was terribly buzzing. In particular, if someone "messed up". Not because he was mistaken, only fools and those who do nothing are not mistaken, but because of their unconscious attitude. Then, alas, it was not easy with me.
We studied diving in Dahab, the courses were fully paid by ua-hosting.company, and already for experienced divers we organized a diving safari on a yacht with significant discounts. The right yacht for recreational and technical diving remains the Faissela yacht - Red Sea Explorers, offering a safari not only for wrecks of the Red Sea, the southern reefs of Dedalus and the islands of the Brothers, but also to Sudan.
The right instructor of recreational diving was and is Evgenia Peskova, and she specially flew from Moscow when she no longer lived in Dahab to teach our “fighters”, or recommended another instructor in Dahab, who, in her opinion, was not bad for training and who had something to learn from. Unfortunately, at the moment, the industry has spit it out of business, since the price tag for courses has always been a couple of hundred euros more than the average for the “hospital”. Just because there were 2 more days of “open” water than commercialized standards required, as well as the best equipment suitable for technical diving - a long hose + wing, instead of the inconvenient BCD. But students, including due to the fact that Egypt was closed to the Russian Federation, have come to study in recent years much less. In addition to this, it’s far from always clear to beginners and what is the correct instructor and what should he be and why should he pay money without a guarantee of receiving a diving certificate card. Yes, certification after the courses Eugene did not give to everyone, for example, at one time I was not given a Divemaster card, for a gross mistake and I was right, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also, as it is incomprehensible to new customers, why our price is higher than in Hetzner / OVH, although in reality it is much lower if we consider the platform for production solutions and stable operation on high-performance high-end hardware :) I was right for a gross oversight, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also, as it is incomprehensible to new customers, why our price is higher than in Hetzner / OVH, although in reality it is much lower if we consider the platform for production solutions and stable operation on high-performance high-end hardware :) I was right for a gross oversight, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also, as it is incomprehensible to new customers, why our price is higher than in Hetzner / OVH, although in reality it is much lower if we consider the platform for production solutions and stable operation on high-performance high-end hardware :)
Some trips, which included a good rest and only a little work in the shift process, for example, to Bali and Singapore, were partially made at the expense of the participants, with financing of MOST of the costs from ua-hosting.company.
A feature of diving in Bali is sometimes high waves and currents, when you need to have time to run out and run in a full set of equipment until you are killed by a wave. Although sometimes the waves, for example, on White Sand Beach, are more entertaining than deadly in nature, they significantly exceed your height and can be painful.
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore was 100% paid, as I understood that employees are unlikely to be able to afford a room worth $ 700 (at that time it was a lot more money than now) and at the same time I wanted to give people the opportunity to see one of the “wonders of the world” is complete, because we had people working, not only from Kiev, but also from Shostka, who had not seen anything outside Ukraine before, not to mention Singapore.
But the Internet allowed us to make such sorties. It was everywhere, in Bali (with the exception of the Agung volcano, more than 3 km high, where communication was not provided, but the climb was carried out after hours due to the time difference and the work was not affected), in Egypt, and even in the middle of the Red Sea on a yacht - mobile communications with EDGE and 3G "got" us from mobile towers located on the shore tens of kilometers from us. If it weren’t for the prevalence of the Internet, we would all be friendly in an office in Kiev and there would be no “tours” and “team building” that our clients noticed only in the form of a more effective solution to their problems, sometimes outside the working hours. But we went even further. Our office worked only 3 days a week, when all shifts coincided, so that we could learn something together and discuss important issues. In my deep conviction, daily walking to the office is meaningless, you need to be there only for efficient communication or when the atmosphere is not at home. On office days, our “working chat” was empty and communication was carried out in the most efficient way, and not through instant messengers. I consider this approach to business to be the right one.
How was employee performance monitored at other times? At first, nothing. I trusted. Then I discovered that some of the employees devote half their time to their tasks, and not to their work. In fact, they steal from the company, because the payment was hourly, only the rate per hour, of course, which depended on the efficiency of work, therefore, in principle, the move is not entirely clear, apparently they did not suspect about it, or it was simply done unintentionally. Nevertheless, after listening to a big flood of indignation when installing the solution from Yaware on computers, especially from the "heroes of the occasion", the problem was partially resolved. Why not completely resolved? You can list the whole list:
The problem is that sometimes people just do not fulfill their tasks. People have problems with the so-called "follow direction". It is very difficult for an adult to follow the path given to him. We say: "this is the way, we are following it." We can give a way, open the door, but we cannot force a person to enter.
Breakdowns happen for various reasons, but mostly they happen when a person does not have 100% commitment: somehow he wants it, if he had it, he would be happy, but if not, he can live like that. Do something? Here difficulties already begin ... Failure does not come from the fact that there is no possession of some subtle moments, but from the fact that the principles of fundamental successful behavior are violated. Slavery trash, technology violations in us sitting.
We need people who perform simple, elementary things on a regular basis and then there will be a miracle. Because a miracle only happens where you are, albeit a little bit, but every day and in the right direction. And then a miracle comes. It is because of this that we pay special attention to development, encourage employees to learn something new, both during working hours and simply through life.
Have a free moment? Take an interesting topic and write an article on Habr, understand the topic! For articles, we always had an additional bonus of $ 100 on average for wages, the upper limit was not limited and depended on the success of the article and the complexity of the topic. Forgive us, Habr’s audience, for the fact that some articles were not as good as they could be, but I assure you that all the articles were good! And our guys and I personally tried. Speaking of numbers, over the entire existence of the blog, we have paid authors over $ 100,000 in the form of salary bonuses. Perhaps this is not a lot, but so far we have only 1000 articles on our blog, the thousandth was published a few days ago this month.
The logistics that we give as a result can be successfully applied everywhere in life. A good motivation, in my opinion, should always be the following phrase:
Nevertheless, we motivate our employees, first of all, with interesting trips, the opportunity to see and learn something new, and how they will take this opportunity, remain in the ass or move on - everyone decides for himself.
Several times we went to all kinds of European conferences, and even simply, to our Dutch partners, to the wonderfully organized AirShow by them.
At the same time, visiting the EvoSwitch data center, so that our employees understand what they are working with and how it does not look in the pictures.
As a rule, these were not just plane flights, which would be much cheaper, but the auto tours organized by us, with visits to European cities along the route and all kinds of amusement parks, such as Holiday Park in Rust, Germany.
By the way, for many years Holiday Park has been hosting the Cloudfest conference dedicated to cloud hosting solutions.
Or a giant indoor tropical pool near Berlin, although the latter is just an interesting structure, where you can not stop on the way for a short time to see firsthand the course of engineering, reminiscent of something with an airship.
That is why when the proposal came to become the sponsor of HostigCon Global 2017 in Los Angeles, ua-hosting.company acquired a gold sponsorship package, which provided, in addition to colorful advertising during the event, up to 5 invitations with full access to the conference as a bonus (participation was worth around $ 500 per person, I don’t remember exactly).
But since the sales department at the time of the application for sponsorship was made up of 8 of us, we asked, as an exception, to expand the number of invitations to 8.
It was decided to fly to the USA with the whole team, taking with them even the newest team members, so that everyone can get some new experience. 6 people were sent to the US Embassy and successfully passed a group interview. Yes, working at ua-hosting.company allowed everyone to get ten-year visas to the USA, even those who had new passports, where there were no stamps besides Egypt. By the way, no one ran away and did not violate the visa regime.
The trip involved a flight along the route Kiev-Istanbul-New York. During the flight, the aircraft used satellite Internet, which kindly provides its passengers with Turkish Airlines, then night and day in New York, because you can not be in the United States and not visit New York, a cultural program with a tour of the city.
And this despite the fact that we all needed to work, the difference in time zones allowed this, the work began at about 2 in the night, and was carried out in the morning in shifts, so that everyone had the opportunity to sleep, and later there was time for leisure and sightseeing. Here the problem got out that we don’t know how to organize shifts, there is no proper communication between each other, although the team is only 8 people. Everyone is used to working at the same time, or individually.
Nevertheless, customers almost did not notice any deviations, and we almost did not violate the SLA per hour, since we even worked from the New York subway.
Another advantage of the prevalence of the Internet. On the route Istanbul-New York, the Internet was not only there, but also worked well, Turkish Airlines offers satellite Internet on board for a reasonable fee or even for free, depending on the class of service on the plane. The speed is up to 500-700 Kbps, the download is worse, but the main thing is a more or less stable channel, sufficient for operation. If the process starts to fail and sessions break too often, the VPN connection helps.
Then transfer to Baltimore and Washington. Where one day - a visit to the data center of our partners, a meeting with the leadership and discussion of further development strategies.
And the rest - a cultural program, with a visit to the main attractions of the National Mall, including perhaps the most interesting of the American museums, which in Washington, by the way, are free, the National Museum of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
We even managed to take a trip to Great Falls National Park, which is located near Washington DC. After that we had a flight to Los Angeles, where another week was spent, 2 days of which were spent attending the conference.
Perhaps we have become a company with the largest number of representatives. Some of the participants asked me: “Will it ever pay off?” Did you consider ROI? We took only two people, because it’s expensive, although we are from the USA, and you are from Ukraine. ”
I had an answer to this question before the start of the trip - of course not. But it is worth noting that this is only in their understanding, because I did not even try to explain why. Here I am so crazy ... The budget boldly exceeded $ 50,000, and no income and profitable contracts with the same hosting providers like us, who were present at this conference, as well as data centers, did not promise the opportunity to make a profit of such a size and recoup costs fast. But another thing was much more important to me - attitude, change people's attitude to business for the better, provide an opportunity to gain new experience and maybe even find a new employer, if suddenly work in our company ceased to suit someone for many years.
Yes, I believe ua-hosting.company is a good school for sales staff and sometimes even for those. department, as we, sales people, invent not boring and not trivial tasks for techies. I have always made every effort so that our employees not only imagine what we are selling, but most importantly, understand why we are doing this. Our principle is not to sell what the client thinks he needs, but to tell the client what he really needs. No, the client is not always right! Yes, we refused to clients in cooperation who wanted to get the wrong decisions, based on our experience, and didn’t give in to our beliefs and arguments. More than 90% of customers themselves do not know what they want or do not understand, which configuration will be optimal for their tasks and why it is not always necessary to take the most expensive or, conversely, save.
In Washington, we met with our partners, LeaseWeb USA, which at that time began actively buying up data centers in the USA and increasing the number of points of presence, and discussed further cooperation.
It was very nice to see people with whom we worked for more than three years, such meetings are extremely important. For example, after a previous meeting in 2015 in the Netherlands of the employees of our abuz department with the employees of the abus department of the data center, an “invisible” connection was established between them and the handling of complaints went to a completely different level. Communication became more efficient during off hours, when the client needed to unblock the IP address here and now, urgently, despite the fact that the client himself missed the acceptable reaction time, and the employee of the abuz department who had access to complete the task successfully spent leisure time in which one of the bars of Amsterdam. Yes, sometimes work is done after hours and from a mobile phone, and even while intoxicated, even in large companies. The main thing is that the client does not notice anything and is as efficiently served as possible.
Having flown to Los Angeles, we attended a conference for which, in fact, we arrived. Conferences are a good way to communicate with industry in an informal setting. But they can not be allocated more than 2 days - the liver can’t stand it.
Therefore, the rest of the time, it was decided to give leisure, visiting the national parks of the USA, Las Vegas, Universal Studio in Los Angeles, although the latter was much inferior to the one in Orlando, but those who are there for the first time receive great impressions, namely for them we flew to the USA.
It might seem that we had a very friendly and harmonious team, and we worked successfully for many years, but we were not without flaws. However, some kind of tolerant degree of unconscious attitude was naturally present. Someone began to take something for granted, to violate the deadlines for the implementation of the tasks, while not wanting to communicate with colleagues to the extent necessary to correct the situation, for various reasons, of which, of course, customers could suffer. Yes, our work, the sales department, could easily be performed by 1-2 people per shift and the department should have been halved for a long time, because most of the work was automated by technical means for many years. I knew this, but the main task has always been and has been - training and development. Articles. Improving the level of English - we regularly conducted courses during working hours and promised to raise salaries two times as a motivation, simply for good language proficiency and a successful test, since we have a lot of foreign clients and this would significantly increase the speed and literacy of communication , which, quite possibly, would increase the company's profit. Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... just for good language proficiency and a successfully passed test, since we have a lot of foreign clients and this would significantly increase the speed and literacy of communication, which, quite possibly, would increase the company's profit. Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... just for good language proficiency and a successfully passed test, since we have a lot of foreign clients and this would significantly increase the speed and literacy of communication, which, quite possibly, would increase the company's profit. Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ...
Because of what, communication with a part of the team was broken and reasonable grievances arose from them. However, so that it doesn’t happen, no matter what the leader is in the opinion of the subordinate tyrant - clients should never suffer from this, you should not be scored for work when they count on you. There is a good book on the topic - The black book of the manager , written by Slava Pankratov, I recommend reading it.
Following the results of two days, I realized that half of our friendly team just needed to move on and that they simply “got stuck” and could not step over themselves. But, alas, I screwed up, because I did not manage to find the most effective application, to motivate them properly, although I tried to do it with all my might, but we have been fighting against an impenetrable wall for a long time and getting worse. I'm also not without flaws.
Layoffs ... I never fired people and did not want to do this. We have a small company - a little less than 20 people, given the administrators who, by the way, quit and changed quite often, with the exception of those who grew up to older ones, but I, fortunately, did not supervise this process. For me, everyone, as a member of the family, I always did not back down and did not give up, and worked as much as I could, trying to share my experience as much as possible. Even if a person then leaves for another place, I will be pleased that he worked for us and has grown to new heights. In parallel, I also gained experience, learned something from them and with them. If someone did not really succeed in something, we solved it. As a rule, people, if they left, then left themselves simply to move on, or realizing that this is still not quite what they see themselves as and in their place new good people came. The main thing is the right attitude, no matter what you do.
But it seems that I myself, this right attitude has spoiled a little. Having allowed the disclosure of salaries, incorrectly believing that knowing everything, employees will be motivated and work better to achieve the same financial result or more. But this was categorically impossible, because not healthy competition was generated, but a “snake cube” and someone always harbored an insult to someone. Also, having demonstrated that you would never be fired, so that it would not happen, an unimaginable freedom was ensured, which, alas, corrupted ... Eh, how good it is to be a wage worker, when everything is decided for you and you can always turn to the management - they won’t refuse will help. Alas, I was like that.
However, dismissing does not mean saying goodbye forever, but letting go free. This is a healthy process, which, perhaps, should be, but which was extremely painful for me, because I worked with some representatives of the team for many years, and personally knew much more. Some were childhood friends and it was extremely difficult for them to share working relationships and friendships. Sometimes in order to realize something, you need to stop. It's like diving - stop, think, act. A person needs to leave, or experience a new experience, and then return with new powers and knowledge, or find himself in a better place. All our guys are megatalented people with great potential. I never remembered the bad, because I thought and still think that working disputes and unconsciousness in any processes are the norm that needs to be taken into account.
Only a real idiot will spend money on people whom he is going to dismiss and will do so without making any profit from the corporate trip in which everyone was. Meet me - I'm such an idiot, because I love everyone to leave the maximum chance of success, albeit at their own expense. After two days, I wished half of the guys success in the new place, paid all the salaries without any deductions, not forgetting to mention that they are all really talented and good people and that they will certainly find themselves somewhere else. Since at that moment I became the ballast that had to be thrown away, but they still needed to start moving forward, but they were probably afraid. I chopped off the ballast, providing a unique opportunity at the conference to find new, better employers, at the expense of the company, since we screwed up, I screwed up. Although no
As a result, one employee decided to return and is now doing what she is most effective at, perhaps in the future we will still make some kind of report with her. I would very much like to see her more involved in the field of research, but here everything depends on her. The rest - somewhere there, beyond the limit, continue to receive new invaluable experience, which will definitely be useful and lead them to new achievements. I am very glad that I was lucky to work with them. Thanks you.
As for me, I continue to comprehend new limits, our staff is gaining a wider geography. In two years, much has changed. We are now registered in Latvia and we have a new Latvian CEO, not me :), represented by our programmer, who quit some time ago to move on and received Latvian citizenship, but now decided to return with renewed vigor and for new projects that we hope you will soon be pleased anyway. After all, the main idea that arose 15 years ago was not hosting, but its own thematic Internet resources, of which there are so few on the Internet, simply because it is difficult and unprofitable.
Of course, we mainly automate everything, in order to minimize stupid work for people and involve them not so much in processing orders as in research, our task is to be able to work together and remotely, but as efficiently as possible for our customers. Several thousand people rent servers from us, and now, we have achieved such efficiency that 1 person per shift at a time is enough, only two are sometimes required, and 3 people work directly with sales tickets. The remaining 3 do not deal with tickets, and now there are only 6 of us, not counting the administrators, of whom there are more than a dozen, because there are more routines and little can be automated. But it is very important that everyone can work remotely, without having to go to the office.
And the Internet helps us with this. Personally, it’s extremely difficult for me to sit in one place, and like a shark, to breathe, you need to be in motion or surrounded by an “office” of effective people who lead to movement in the right direction. Working from different locations around the world is the most important task, it allows you to look around, get new experience or look at an existing one, on the other hand, improve communication processes in a team. I wish all companies to make corporate trips more often, despite the fact that it eats budgets, but it extremely dilutes the routine. In fact, we live now in an amazing time when you can be anywhere and at the same time be in the workplace at the same time. Remote regions are becoming closer due to global internetization. For many years I have been visiting beautiful French Polynesia, perhaps the best place in the world,
And if Tahiti, Moorea, Hua Hin, Rayatea, Bora Bora and Tahaa are connected by high-speed fiber optic connection using submarine cables, and the Internet, instead of a fee of 50 USD per day access at low speed, has become high-speed and relatively cheap. On the remote islands, the Hotspot WDG satellite is still popular.
Costing from 5 euros to 1.52 euros per hour of access at a maximum speed of 256-512 Kbps, which is quite inexpensive for a full-fledged bi-directional satellite Internet, when compared with the existing solution from BGAN, which cost $ 5 per MB or 5000 dollars a month if you sign an annual contract and buy at least 10 GB of traffic per month. The solution provides discounts if the terminal has fixed coordinates, however, as a rule, large telecoms come to remote islands that can sell full-fledged satellite Internet cheaper, OTP / Vini is such a provider in French Polynesia.
Vini provides mobile communications and 3G on almost all the islands of the country, which are scattered across the South Pacific Ocean in an area the size of Europe, in which only 280 thousand people live, another 100 thousand are tourists annually throughout the country. Last year, when I got to an amazing place called Tetamanu Village , located in the southern part of Fakarava Atoll, I did not hope that there would be any connection and electricity. Since the only hotspot available was located in the north of the island, next to a huge satellite dish, which provides the island with a population of several hundred people, with the outside world and the main island of the country - Tahiti.
But it was two hours on a fast boat from us, 70+ km through the lagoon, covering an area of thousands of square kilometers, since the village was in the south of the atoll, where people were practically absent.
But there were sharks, hundreds of reef sharks, which, while preparing breakfast, were fed as usual, like dogs and cats were fed in our villages.
And here, in this "ass" of the world, there was a mobile tower with a radio channel directed to the north of the island, and by transmitting a signal through a satellite dish and a radio channel, communication and even 3G were provided at a good speed, 512 Kbps and even more.
The cost of traffic was 1000 Pacific francs, about $ 10, for 140 MB, but you could buy a 3G package while in Tahiti, with a price of about $ 40 for 2 GB of traffic. True, at one point, the system crashed, and the only person who understood how the system worked was in New Zealand. The local population, alas, is not very much in IT and really needs it.
This year, "optics" comes to Fakarava, Rangiroa and Tikehau. More precisely, it already arrived last year, now it’s time to complete the connection work, OTP invested serious money in the project and finally the underwater trunk reached the Tuamotu archipelago. How much will the project pay off? Extremely long, the total population of many atolls included in the archipelago does not exceed 16 thousand people. Some of the atolls can only be reached by boat, swimming across the open ocean from another, larger atoll. However, everyone understands that access to the Internet is now extremely important.
And today, being on the remote Cook Islands, the difference with Kiev and MSC is now -13 hours, perhaps in one of the few places in the world where optics have not yet reached (expected this year on Rarotonga Island), it becomes clear how much IT can greatly improve people's lives. People who call the islands their home are mostly forced to reside from time to time in New Zealand or Australia and, as a result, have relatives there with whom it is extremely important to keep in touch. At the moment, the Internet is more or less available through BlueSky hotspots to residents of the Rarotonga and Aitutaki islands, free WiFi can be found only at Rarotonga Airport, 30 minutes per device. Everything else - with megabyte tariffing, or free, depending on the hotel, in the amount of 100-450 MB per day. By the way, sometimes billing is late,
Recently, a large telecommunications center also appeared on Atiu, which provides up to 50 Mbps for download, but the local network on the island is so terrible that sometimes you have to go directly to the communication center in order to access the Internet, which was done by one family, last Sunday, instead of attending Sunday service. Apparently, even for communication with the gentleman, good internet is required.
A woman with a laptop worked from the trunk of a car, and apparently her husband settled on a coil of telecommunication cable.
At the same time, prices for Internet access are relatively expensive for the local population, 3 GB of traffic for a month is now costing New Zealand dollars 50 (you need to divide by 1.5 to realize how much is in USD), and there are stocks on Wednesdays when you can buy a double limit traffic for the same money, which I certainly took advantage of, buying 12 GB of traffic for 100 New Zealand dollars, and after that I decided that I needed to buy another voucher. For updates here, sometimes, they consume a lot, and the OS does not allow them to be turned off adequately, the Macbook is not without flaws, and the web today is not very optimized for expensive and limited network access ...
Sometimes there were auctions of unprecedented generosity for local residents, when 15 GB of traffic per month cost only 15 NZD, but now the company does not offer such good conditions, usually they can be even worse. Which is somewhat strange, because last year, since the arrival of optical fiber was expected, access to the hotspot on Rangiroa, in French Polynesia, was provided for free, due to the extremely poor quality, despite the rather impressive satellite dish and servers that were installed in one of the hotels that needed to continue to be served.
Immediately, the high cost continues to persist, and the consumer decides whether to buy with such money and with such quality access or not. For example, on Aitutaki, hourly access without traffic (and unlikely at a speed of 50 Mbit / s) is offered, it was not possible to test, since access simply did not work.
Although, usually tourists do not come here for this, but quite the contrary, take a break from access to the network, relaxing in beautiful lagoons, where even mobile communication is not available. But if you come for a long time and you need to not only relax, but also work - the search for access to the network can be a real challenge for you.
So the next time you complain about the Internet, remember the Cook Islands, or better yet, fly here before the optics reach this region too, to visit these amazing islands and feel the contrast. When Internet access is not possible or the page is downloaded from the twentieth time, and the sale of delay in stores is a common thing. So what, that 04.06.2019 is normal, less than a month has passed, but May is no longer good. And why? Despite the fact that cargo happens once a month, there is practically no IT, logistics, procurement management and accounting for their demand over time. Well, food prices are high, respectively. Bread, if available, costs about NZD 5, despite the fact that many have a salary of about 11,000 NZD per year. Of the entertainment at remote locations, ecotours and alcohol tours remain with a real license to drink local alcohol. And this is not a joke! By the way, it’s a very good idea, the bar knows how much you need to pour so that you are in good condition and are not late for a plane to Rarotonga, which flies three times a week from an airport that looks like a small house, rather than a terminal, with a strip of reef grinding.
I believe that with the advent of fiber, life in such remote places will become better, at the moment of the 15 islands only 3 are covered by a network, to visit part of the islands in the region, especially the northern group, you need to charter a private plane, as regular flights do not fly, in view of high cost and small population. It is likely that the communication problem of mankind will be solved by a cloud of low-orbit satellites, which are planned to be implemented in the coming years, and the Loon project, which will cover the entire Earth with the Internet and communications. And then communication even in such remote places will not be problematic, but even now, almost everywhere you want to go, there will be Internet access. Not always good, sometimes you need to wade through the jungle or sail 70+ km in a boat, as communication has failed, but it will.
Traveling and the possibility of remote work, now provide not only the possibility of generating new ideas, but also allow you to introduce and improve many existing ones, which previously in other parts of the world were simply not known. Do not lose your chance to improve this world - travel and inculcate this culture in your companies.
Speaking of travel. Artemy Lebedev, the owner of the design studio of the same name, who has visited almost all countries of the world, has been organizing various EthnoExpies for several years with the aim of exploring different regions in order to see and show them the way that few people saw them before. As a result, quite interesting articles, reports and videos from trips come out, and sponsoring of these trips is partly on the shoulders of sponsors, who, for a relatively small fee, get the opportunity not only to support such a useful project, but also free advertising. Numerous EthnoExpos have already been held, which you can find on the project website - PacificEthnoExp, ChinaEthnoExp, IndoEtnoExp, CaribEtnoExp, VologodEtnoExp, WeekendEtnoExp. This year, no less grandiose project is planned - MexEtnoExp.
In turn, we decided not only to sponsor the Artemy project, but also to encourage others to do the same. We are not paid for this, and perhaps we will increase the number of competitors, as a result, much fewer people will see our ads, however, the more money we collect together with you, the more interesting the trip can become, and, in turn, the greater the effect of advertising will receive each of the sponsors.
The cost of a sponsorship package, consisting of stickers on cars, suitcases and laptops of MexetnoExpa participants, links in a cozy zhezheshek, telegram, instagramchik, unearthly respect, eternal glory and laurel wreaths - only $ 6000. This is an extremely low price, for comparison, we threw about that much on advertising in a few days, as a result an article appeared“The hoster spent $ 150,000 in advertising on AdWords. The exhaust is almost zero ” , of course, the plan was paid off not by advertising, but by telling about its inefficiency and it went off with a bang. But now you have a unique opportunity to spend relatively little money on a useful business, and get a much greater effect than advertising on Google AdWords or any other advertising. The cost of affiliate packages (sponsorship package plus intelligent product placement, thematic partnership and a place on the ground) is discussed individually.
Write to tema@tema.ru. I am sure you will agree and everyone will be happy with the result.
If you are a private individual and you do not need advertising, but you want to allocate funds to sponsor such projects in the future, you can support us by placing an order or recommending your friends to use our services. This will help us to become sponsors of many more similar projects in the future. Moreover, now a 30% discount for Habr users is still available on a unique analogue of entry-level servers that was invented by us for you: The whole truth about VPS (KVM) E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) 10GB DDR4 240GB SSD 1Gbps from $ 20 or how to divide the server? (options are available with RAID1 and RAID10, up to 24 cores and up to 40GB DDR4).
Dell R730xd 2 times cheaper? Only here2 x Intel TetraDeca-Core Xeon 2x E5-2697v3 2.6GHz 14C 64GB DDR4 4x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100 TV from $ 199 in the Netherlands! Dell R420 - 2x E5-2430 2.2Ghz 6C 128GB DDR3 2x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100TB - from $ 99! Read about How to Build Infrastructure Bldg. class using Dell R730xd E5-2650 v4 servers costing 9,000 euros for a penny?
“Larry Green told me that the right approach to business is not "Teach me to dive into the caves", and "can I learn from you to dive into the caves"? Students learn from me, and I always learn from students. The wrong attitude leads to death, this is the problem, not the mistakes, but the wrong attitude, which leads to a series of mistakes. ”
Andrei is a very wise person who changed the attitude of many people to the business, loved to make non-standard and interesting dives, and sought to show the underwater world to others such as they did not see him, mainly because of incorrectly set skills and incorrect attitude. Nevertheless, he abandoned a successful diving career, bringing hundreds of thousands of euros, without regrets, as soon as he saw how wrong the attitude of society was towards diving, including technical, which killed a lot of divers. Diving has become commercialized, the quality of courses has deteriorated, and if earlier divers were more or less professional, and most importantly, conscious people who take courses responsibly and clearly understand the physics of processes (at least the Buhlmann algorithm and micro bubbles did not cause cognitive dissonance), now the audience has changed. The largest market players have opened access to water for everyone with the goal of making money. Sometimes instructors have worse skills than students of good diving instructors. And technical diving was not a way of exploring something new and contemplating the amazing underwater world, a way to improve skills, which makes recreational diving even more comfortable and safe, but another way for successful business people (after all, this is expensive, one dive can cost 1,500 euros and more) put an additional “tick” in the form of a figure on a computer - 200 meters, make the so-called “space tourism”, because at a depth of 200+ meters there were much fewer people than astronauts in space. Or, even worse, check your own limit. And being at the limit - you die!on the school’s website , explaining in detail the reasons . I was lucky, after closing, to learn diving in caves in Florida, perhaps the best place in the world, to master such a “pensioner” discipline as cavediving. Indeed, it is not surprising that in central Florida many retirees plunge into caves, performing sometimes the most difficult research programs. This is by the way how some of the people actively spend their retirement, which is rarely seen in the territories of the post-Soviet space.
But let's not talk about sad things. Today we will talk about travel, which became possible precisely due to the prevalence of Internet access. And this access became possible, in particular, thanks to the underwater highways that encircle the Earth. I talked about them in detail in an article that may take you an entire evening, but I highly recommend reading it: Messages in depth: an amazing story of the underwater Internet .
If you familiarize yourself with our history, then you are aware that our administrators are relatively independent and decide their own managerial affairs, while we, sellers and “developers” of customer solutions, work together. So it’s convenient for us and so it’s been effective for many years, in July of this year we are 10 years old!
Having opened an office in Kiev, I also tried to instill in my employees a love of travel, in particular diving, not in order to teach me how to dive, but in order to change their attitude, because this diving was with the right people to learn from. Our sales department flew courses to the right diving instructors in Egypt, sometimes we lived for 2 months in Dahab on the beach.
In the past 15 years, a small town on the Sinai coast, Dahab, located just 90 km from the bustling Sharm El Sheikh, with unforgettable flavor, has become extremely popular among the “wintering” from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.
Some British nationals and many Europeans made Dahab their home; they fly to Dahab to spend the winter with families with children and from the United States, despite the difficult political situation in Egypt. There is a trilingual school (Russian, English, Arabic).
The city has become different, and it continues to change people. Many people are stuck in it for many years, especially if there is real estate in their homeland that can be rented and remote work that can be done while living in Dahab, where until recently life was several times cheaper than life in Moscow or Kiev, and the rental of decent apartments began from 200 euros per month. And this is despite the fact that until recently, the Internet was extremely slow and a DSL connection without taking into account 2 Mbps traffic cost about 400 EGP (LE) per month. Once upon a time, it was $ 80, but with the advent of 3G and LTE, prices have fallen and today you can buy 40 GB of Vodafone mobile traffic for about $ 20 a month. The only inconvenience is blocking part of the Internet by the Egyptian authorities, as well as blocking most types of VPN tunnels,
How expensive was it to live and work there? Not expensive. 1000 euros per month for a five-room house on the beach. While it could have taken 6,000 per month to eat at restaurants in Dahab easily (we had 6 people in Dahab and 2 in Kiev at that moment). All this was provided as a bonus, in addition to charging. circuit boards. Including, so as not to be bored, sometimes we went to rest in neighboring Israel and Jordan.
I did not spare funds for the training of employees, for me they were always a family for the development of a level which did not feel sorry for anything, although it is possible that sometimes I was not the best leader, since I do not like people in general, but I love personalities and saw potential each, trying to reveal it to the maximum, and when this did not happen, he was terribly buzzing. In particular, if someone "messed up". Not because he was mistaken, only fools and those who do nothing are not mistaken, but because of their unconscious attitude. Then, alas, it was not easy with me.
We studied diving in Dahab, the courses were fully paid by ua-hosting.company, and already for experienced divers we organized a diving safari on a yacht with significant discounts. The right yacht for recreational and technical diving remains the Faissela yacht - Red Sea Explorers, offering a safari not only for wrecks of the Red Sea, the southern reefs of Dedalus and the islands of the Brothers, but also to Sudan.
The right instructor of recreational diving was and is Evgenia Peskova, and she specially flew from Moscow when she no longer lived in Dahab to teach our “fighters”, or recommended another instructor in Dahab, who, in her opinion, was not bad for training and who had something to learn from. Unfortunately, at the moment, the industry has spit it out of business, since the price tag for courses has always been a couple of hundred euros more than the average for the “hospital”. Just because there were 2 more days of “open” water than commercialized standards required, as well as the best equipment suitable for technical diving - a long hose + wing, instead of the inconvenient BCD. But students, including due to the fact that Egypt was closed to the Russian Federation, have come to study in recent years much less. In addition to this, it’s far from always clear to beginners and what is the correct instructor and what should he be and why should he pay money without a guarantee of receiving a diving certificate card. Yes, certification after the courses Eugene did not give to everyone, for example, at one time I was not given a Divemaster card, for a gross mistake and I was right, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also, as it is incomprehensible to new customers, why our price is higher than in Hetzner / OVH, although in reality it is much lower if we consider the platform for production solutions and stable operation on high-performance high-end hardware :) I was right for a gross oversight, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also, as it is incomprehensible to new customers, why our price is higher than in Hetzner / OVH, although in reality it is much lower if we consider the platform for production solutions and stable operation on high-performance high-end hardware :) I was right for a gross oversight, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also, as it is incomprehensible to new customers, why our price is higher than in Hetzner / OVH, although in reality it is much lower if we consider the platform for production solutions and stable operation on high-performance high-end hardware :)
Some trips, which included a good rest and only a little work in the shift process, for example, to Bali and Singapore, were partially made at the expense of the participants, with financing of MOST of the costs from ua-hosting.company.
A feature of diving in Bali is sometimes high waves and currents, when you need to have time to run out and run in a full set of equipment until you are killed by a wave. Although sometimes the waves, for example, on White Sand Beach, are more entertaining than deadly in nature, they significantly exceed your height and can be painful.
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore was 100% paid, as I understood that employees are unlikely to be able to afford a room worth $ 700 (at that time it was a lot more money than now) and at the same time I wanted to give people the opportunity to see one of the “wonders of the world” is complete, because we had people working, not only from Kiev, but also from Shostka, who had not seen anything outside Ukraine before, not to mention Singapore.
But the Internet allowed us to make such sorties. It was everywhere, in Bali (with the exception of the Agung volcano, more than 3 km high, where communication was not provided, but the climb was carried out after hours due to the time difference and the work was not affected), in Egypt, and even in the middle of the Red Sea on a yacht - mobile communications with EDGE and 3G "got" us from mobile towers located on the shore tens of kilometers from us. If it weren’t for the prevalence of the Internet, we would all be friendly in an office in Kiev and there would be no “tours” and “team building” that our clients noticed only in the form of a more effective solution to their problems, sometimes outside the working hours. But we went even further. Our office worked only 3 days a week, when all shifts coincided, so that we could learn something together and discuss important issues. In my deep conviction, daily walking to the office is meaningless, you need to be there only for efficient communication or when the atmosphere is not at home. On office days, our “working chat” was empty and communication was carried out in the most efficient way, and not through instant messengers. I consider this approach to business to be the right one.
How was employee performance monitored at other times? At first, nothing. I trusted. Then I discovered that some of the employees devote half their time to their tasks, and not to their work. In fact, they steal from the company, because the payment was hourly, only the rate per hour, of course, which depended on the efficiency of work, therefore, in principle, the move is not entirely clear, apparently they did not suspect about it, or it was simply done unintentionally. Nevertheless, after listening to a big flood of indignation when installing the solution from Yaware on computers, especially from the "heroes of the occasion", the problem was partially resolved. Why not completely resolved? You can list the whole list:
- You can move the mouse around the screen every 3-5 minutes so that the program does not go into standby mode;
- You can be smarter and even switch between windows and applications, simulating violent activity, because you shoot yourself to check so many screenshots and you still can’t understand by the tracker that the employee imitated the activity, unless you check the amount of work actually done, which is also not always easy estimate;
- You can put next to yourself a TV, an additional laptop and watch a movie while you work, or write in your phone in the messenger another nice one, but what - the tracker will never notice this, but the fact that the employee’s efficiency decreases by a certain amount percent - do not care, because the employer will not see, you can also deceive, if you really want to.
The problem is that sometimes people just do not fulfill their tasks. People have problems with the so-called "follow direction". It is very difficult for an adult to follow the path given to him. We say: "this is the way, we are following it." We can give a way, open the door, but we cannot force a person to enter.
Breakdowns happen for various reasons, but mostly they happen when a person does not have 100% commitment: somehow he wants it, if he had it, he would be happy, but if not, he can live like that. Do something? Here difficulties already begin ... Failure does not come from the fact that there is no possession of some subtle moments, but from the fact that the principles of fundamental successful behavior are violated. Slavery trash, technology violations in us sitting.
We need people who perform simple, elementary things on a regular basis and then there will be a miracle. Because a miracle only happens where you are, albeit a little bit, but every day and in the right direction. And then a miracle comes. It is because of this that we pay special attention to development, encourage employees to learn something new, both during working hours and simply through life.
Have a free moment? Take an interesting topic and write an article on Habr, understand the topic! For articles, we always had an additional bonus of $ 100 on average for wages, the upper limit was not limited and depended on the success of the article and the complexity of the topic. Forgive us, Habr’s audience, for the fact that some articles were not as good as they could be, but I assure you that all the articles were good! And our guys and I personally tried. Speaking of numbers, over the entire existence of the blog, we have paid authors over $ 100,000 in the form of salary bonuses. Perhaps this is not a lot, but so far we have only 1000 articles on our blog, the thousandth was published a few days ago this month.
The logistics that we give as a result can be successfully applied everywhere in life. A good motivation, in my opinion, should always be the following phrase:
How to motivate yourself to do something? No way - stay in the ass.
- Artemy Lebedev
Nevertheless, we motivate our employees, first of all, with interesting trips, the opportunity to see and learn something new, and how they will take this opportunity, remain in the ass or move on - everyone decides for himself.
Several times we went to all kinds of European conferences, and even simply, to our Dutch partners, to the wonderfully organized AirShow by them.
At the same time, visiting the EvoSwitch data center, so that our employees understand what they are working with and how it does not look in the pictures.
As a rule, these were not just plane flights, which would be much cheaper, but the auto tours organized by us, with visits to European cities along the route and all kinds of amusement parks, such as Holiday Park in Rust, Germany.
By the way, for many years Holiday Park has been hosting the Cloudfest conference dedicated to cloud hosting solutions.
Or a giant indoor tropical pool near Berlin, although the latter is just an interesting structure, where you can not stop on the way for a short time to see firsthand the course of engineering, reminiscent of something with an airship.
That is why when the proposal came to become the sponsor of HostigCon Global 2017 in Los Angeles, ua-hosting.company acquired a gold sponsorship package, which provided, in addition to colorful advertising during the event, up to 5 invitations with full access to the conference as a bonus (participation was worth around $ 500 per person, I don’t remember exactly).
But since the sales department at the time of the application for sponsorship was made up of 8 of us, we asked, as an exception, to expand the number of invitations to 8.
It was decided to fly to the USA with the whole team, taking with them even the newest team members, so that everyone can get some new experience. 6 people were sent to the US Embassy and successfully passed a group interview. Yes, working at ua-hosting.company allowed everyone to get ten-year visas to the USA, even those who had new passports, where there were no stamps besides Egypt. By the way, no one ran away and did not violate the visa regime.
The trip involved a flight along the route Kiev-Istanbul-New York. During the flight, the aircraft used satellite Internet, which kindly provides its passengers with Turkish Airlines, then night and day in New York, because you can not be in the United States and not visit New York, a cultural program with a tour of the city.
And this despite the fact that we all needed to work, the difference in time zones allowed this, the work began at about 2 in the night, and was carried out in the morning in shifts, so that everyone had the opportunity to sleep, and later there was time for leisure and sightseeing. Here the problem got out that we don’t know how to organize shifts, there is no proper communication between each other, although the team is only 8 people. Everyone is used to working at the same time, or individually.
Nevertheless, customers almost did not notice any deviations, and we almost did not violate the SLA per hour, since we even worked from the New York subway.
Another advantage of the prevalence of the Internet. On the route Istanbul-New York, the Internet was not only there, but also worked well, Turkish Airlines offers satellite Internet on board for a reasonable fee or even for free, depending on the class of service on the plane. The speed is up to 500-700 Kbps, the download is worse, but the main thing is a more or less stable channel, sufficient for operation. If the process starts to fail and sessions break too often, the VPN connection helps.
Then transfer to Baltimore and Washington. Where one day - a visit to the data center of our partners, a meeting with the leadership and discussion of further development strategies.
And the rest - a cultural program, with a visit to the main attractions of the National Mall, including perhaps the most interesting of the American museums, which in Washington, by the way, are free, the National Museum of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
We even managed to take a trip to Great Falls National Park, which is located near Washington DC. After that we had a flight to Los Angeles, where another week was spent, 2 days of which were spent attending the conference.
Perhaps we have become a company with the largest number of representatives. Some of the participants asked me: “Will it ever pay off?” Did you consider ROI? We took only two people, because it’s expensive, although we are from the USA, and you are from Ukraine. ”
I had an answer to this question before the start of the trip - of course not. But it is worth noting that this is only in their understanding, because I did not even try to explain why. Here I am so crazy ... The budget boldly exceeded $ 50,000, and no income and profitable contracts with the same hosting providers like us, who were present at this conference, as well as data centers, did not promise the opportunity to make a profit of such a size and recoup costs fast. But another thing was much more important to me - attitude, change people's attitude to business for the better, provide an opportunity to gain new experience and maybe even find a new employer, if suddenly work in our company ceased to suit someone for many years.
Yes, I believe ua-hosting.company is a good school for sales staff and sometimes even for those. department, as we, sales people, invent not boring and not trivial tasks for techies. I have always made every effort so that our employees not only imagine what we are selling, but most importantly, understand why we are doing this. Our principle is not to sell what the client thinks he needs, but to tell the client what he really needs. No, the client is not always right! Yes, we refused to clients in cooperation who wanted to get the wrong decisions, based on our experience, and didn’t give in to our beliefs and arguments. More than 90% of customers themselves do not know what they want or do not understand, which configuration will be optimal for their tasks and why it is not always necessary to take the most expensive or, conversely, save.
In Washington, we met with our partners, LeaseWeb USA, which at that time began actively buying up data centers in the USA and increasing the number of points of presence, and discussed further cooperation.
It was very nice to see people with whom we worked for more than three years, such meetings are extremely important. For example, after a previous meeting in 2015 in the Netherlands of the employees of our abuz department with the employees of the abus department of the data center, an “invisible” connection was established between them and the handling of complaints went to a completely different level. Communication became more efficient during off hours, when the client needed to unblock the IP address here and now, urgently, despite the fact that the client himself missed the acceptable reaction time, and the employee of the abuz department who had access to complete the task successfully spent leisure time in which one of the bars of Amsterdam. Yes, sometimes work is done after hours and from a mobile phone, and even while intoxicated, even in large companies. The main thing is that the client does not notice anything and is as efficiently served as possible.
Having flown to Los Angeles, we attended a conference for which, in fact, we arrived. Conferences are a good way to communicate with industry in an informal setting. But they can not be allocated more than 2 days - the liver can’t stand it.
Therefore, the rest of the time, it was decided to give leisure, visiting the national parks of the USA, Las Vegas, Universal Studio in Los Angeles, although the latter was much inferior to the one in Orlando, but those who are there for the first time receive great impressions, namely for them we flew to the USA.
It might seem that we had a very friendly and harmonious team, and we worked successfully for many years, but we were not without flaws. However, some kind of tolerant degree of unconscious attitude was naturally present. Someone began to take something for granted, to violate the deadlines for the implementation of the tasks, while not wanting to communicate with colleagues to the extent necessary to correct the situation, for various reasons, of which, of course, customers could suffer. Yes, our work, the sales department, could easily be performed by 1-2 people per shift and the department should have been halved for a long time, because most of the work was automated by technical means for many years. I knew this, but the main task has always been and has been - training and development. Articles. Improving the level of English - we regularly conducted courses during working hours and promised to raise salaries two times as a motivation, simply for good language proficiency and a successful test, since we have a lot of foreign clients and this would significantly increase the speed and literacy of communication , which, quite possibly, would increase the company's profit. Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... just for good language proficiency and a successfully passed test, since we have a lot of foreign clients and this would significantly increase the speed and literacy of communication, which, quite possibly, would increase the company's profit. Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... just for good language proficiency and a successfully passed test, since we have a lot of foreign clients and this would significantly increase the speed and literacy of communication, which, quite possibly, would increase the company's profit. Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ... Conference reports, some non-standard tasks in the industry, discussion of new ideas, were also included in the TO DO list. However, for some reason I did not manage to motivate people to the proper degree, I turned out to be a poor leader, apparently always putting myself in the place of an employee and faithfully believing that he would do the same as I would, being in his position. Motivated as I would have been motivated, but I was wrong ...
Because of what, communication with a part of the team was broken and reasonable grievances arose from them. However, so that it doesn’t happen, no matter what the leader is in the opinion of the subordinate tyrant - clients should never suffer from this, you should not be scored for work when they count on you. There is a good book on the topic - The black book of the manager , written by Slava Pankratov, I recommend reading it.
Following the results of two days, I realized that half of our friendly team just needed to move on and that they simply “got stuck” and could not step over themselves. But, alas, I screwed up, because I did not manage to find the most effective application, to motivate them properly, although I tried to do it with all my might, but we have been fighting against an impenetrable wall for a long time and getting worse. I'm also not without flaws.
Layoffs ... I never fired people and did not want to do this. We have a small company - a little less than 20 people, given the administrators who, by the way, quit and changed quite often, with the exception of those who grew up to older ones, but I, fortunately, did not supervise this process. For me, everyone, as a member of the family, I always did not back down and did not give up, and worked as much as I could, trying to share my experience as much as possible. Even if a person then leaves for another place, I will be pleased that he worked for us and has grown to new heights. In parallel, I also gained experience, learned something from them and with them. If someone did not really succeed in something, we solved it. As a rule, people, if they left, then left themselves simply to move on, or realizing that this is still not quite what they see themselves as and in their place new good people came. The main thing is the right attitude, no matter what you do.
But it seems that I myself, this right attitude has spoiled a little. Having allowed the disclosure of salaries, incorrectly believing that knowing everything, employees will be motivated and work better to achieve the same financial result or more. But this was categorically impossible, because not healthy competition was generated, but a “snake cube” and someone always harbored an insult to someone. Also, having demonstrated that you would never be fired, so that it would not happen, an unimaginable freedom was ensured, which, alas, corrupted ... Eh, how good it is to be a wage worker, when everything is decided for you and you can always turn to the management - they won’t refuse will help. Alas, I was like that.
However, dismissing does not mean saying goodbye forever, but letting go free. This is a healthy process, which, perhaps, should be, but which was extremely painful for me, because I worked with some representatives of the team for many years, and personally knew much more. Some were childhood friends and it was extremely difficult for them to share working relationships and friendships. Sometimes in order to realize something, you need to stop. It's like diving - stop, think, act. A person needs to leave, or experience a new experience, and then return with new powers and knowledge, or find himself in a better place. All our guys are megatalented people with great potential. I never remembered the bad, because I thought and still think that working disputes and unconsciousness in any processes are the norm that needs to be taken into account.
Only a real idiot will spend money on people whom he is going to dismiss and will do so without making any profit from the corporate trip in which everyone was. Meet me - I'm such an idiot, because I love everyone to leave the maximum chance of success, albeit at their own expense. After two days, I wished half of the guys success in the new place, paid all the salaries without any deductions, not forgetting to mention that they are all really talented and good people and that they will certainly find themselves somewhere else. Since at that moment I became the ballast that had to be thrown away, but they still needed to start moving forward, but they were probably afraid. I chopped off the ballast, providing a unique opportunity at the conference to find new, better employers, at the expense of the company, since we screwed up, I screwed up. Although no
As a result, one employee decided to return and is now doing what she is most effective at, perhaps in the future we will still make some kind of report with her. I would very much like to see her more involved in the field of research, but here everything depends on her. The rest - somewhere there, beyond the limit, continue to receive new invaluable experience, which will definitely be useful and lead them to new achievements. I am very glad that I was lucky to work with them. Thanks you.
As for me, I continue to comprehend new limits, our staff is gaining a wider geography. In two years, much has changed. We are now registered in Latvia and we have a new Latvian CEO, not me :), represented by our programmer, who quit some time ago to move on and received Latvian citizenship, but now decided to return with renewed vigor and for new projects that we hope you will soon be pleased anyway. After all, the main idea that arose 15 years ago was not hosting, but its own thematic Internet resources, of which there are so few on the Internet, simply because it is difficult and unprofitable.
Of course, we mainly automate everything, in order to minimize stupid work for people and involve them not so much in processing orders as in research, our task is to be able to work together and remotely, but as efficiently as possible for our customers. Several thousand people rent servers from us, and now, we have achieved such efficiency that 1 person per shift at a time is enough, only two are sometimes required, and 3 people work directly with sales tickets. The remaining 3 do not deal with tickets, and now there are only 6 of us, not counting the administrators, of whom there are more than a dozen, because there are more routines and little can be automated. But it is very important that everyone can work remotely, without having to go to the office.
And the Internet helps us with this. Personally, it’s extremely difficult for me to sit in one place, and like a shark, to breathe, you need to be in motion or surrounded by an “office” of effective people who lead to movement in the right direction. Working from different locations around the world is the most important task, it allows you to look around, get new experience or look at an existing one, on the other hand, improve communication processes in a team. I wish all companies to make corporate trips more often, despite the fact that it eats budgets, but it extremely dilutes the routine. In fact, we live now in an amazing time when you can be anywhere and at the same time be in the workplace at the same time. Remote regions are becoming closer due to global internetization. For many years I have been visiting beautiful French Polynesia, perhaps the best place in the world,
And if Tahiti, Moorea, Hua Hin, Rayatea, Bora Bora and Tahaa are connected by high-speed fiber optic connection using submarine cables, and the Internet, instead of a fee of 50 USD per day access at low speed, has become high-speed and relatively cheap. On the remote islands, the Hotspot WDG satellite is still popular.
Costing from 5 euros to 1.52 euros per hour of access at a maximum speed of 256-512 Kbps, which is quite inexpensive for a full-fledged bi-directional satellite Internet, when compared with the existing solution from BGAN, which cost $ 5 per MB or 5000 dollars a month if you sign an annual contract and buy at least 10 GB of traffic per month. The solution provides discounts if the terminal has fixed coordinates, however, as a rule, large telecoms come to remote islands that can sell full-fledged satellite Internet cheaper, OTP / Vini is such a provider in French Polynesia.
Vini provides mobile communications and 3G on almost all the islands of the country, which are scattered across the South Pacific Ocean in an area the size of Europe, in which only 280 thousand people live, another 100 thousand are tourists annually throughout the country. Last year, when I got to an amazing place called Tetamanu Village , located in the southern part of Fakarava Atoll, I did not hope that there would be any connection and electricity. Since the only hotspot available was located in the north of the island, next to a huge satellite dish, which provides the island with a population of several hundred people, with the outside world and the main island of the country - Tahiti.
But it was two hours on a fast boat from us, 70+ km through the lagoon, covering an area of thousands of square kilometers, since the village was in the south of the atoll, where people were practically absent.
But there were sharks, hundreds of reef sharks, which, while preparing breakfast, were fed as usual, like dogs and cats were fed in our villages.
And here, in this "ass" of the world, there was a mobile tower with a radio channel directed to the north of the island, and by transmitting a signal through a satellite dish and a radio channel, communication and even 3G were provided at a good speed, 512 Kbps and even more.
The cost of traffic was 1000 Pacific francs, about $ 10, for 140 MB, but you could buy a 3G package while in Tahiti, with a price of about $ 40 for 2 GB of traffic. True, at one point, the system crashed, and the only person who understood how the system worked was in New Zealand. The local population, alas, is not very much in IT and really needs it.
This year, "optics" comes to Fakarava, Rangiroa and Tikehau. More precisely, it already arrived last year, now it’s time to complete the connection work, OTP invested serious money in the project and finally the underwater trunk reached the Tuamotu archipelago. How much will the project pay off? Extremely long, the total population of many atolls included in the archipelago does not exceed 16 thousand people. Some of the atolls can only be reached by boat, swimming across the open ocean from another, larger atoll. However, everyone understands that access to the Internet is now extremely important.
And today, being on the remote Cook Islands, the difference with Kiev and MSC is now -13 hours, perhaps in one of the few places in the world where optics have not yet reached (expected this year on Rarotonga Island), it becomes clear how much IT can greatly improve people's lives. People who call the islands their home are mostly forced to reside from time to time in New Zealand or Australia and, as a result, have relatives there with whom it is extremely important to keep in touch. At the moment, the Internet is more or less available through BlueSky hotspots to residents of the Rarotonga and Aitutaki islands, free WiFi can be found only at Rarotonga Airport, 30 minutes per device. Everything else - with megabyte tariffing, or free, depending on the hotel, in the amount of 100-450 MB per day. By the way, sometimes billing is late,
Recently, a large telecommunications center also appeared on Atiu, which provides up to 50 Mbps for download, but the local network on the island is so terrible that sometimes you have to go directly to the communication center in order to access the Internet, which was done by one family, last Sunday, instead of attending Sunday service. Apparently, even for communication with the gentleman, good internet is required.
A woman with a laptop worked from the trunk of a car, and apparently her husband settled on a coil of telecommunication cable.
At the same time, prices for Internet access are relatively expensive for the local population, 3 GB of traffic for a month is now costing New Zealand dollars 50 (you need to divide by 1.5 to realize how much is in USD), and there are stocks on Wednesdays when you can buy a double limit traffic for the same money, which I certainly took advantage of, buying 12 GB of traffic for 100 New Zealand dollars, and after that I decided that I needed to buy another voucher. For updates here, sometimes, they consume a lot, and the OS does not allow them to be turned off adequately, the Macbook is not without flaws, and the web today is not very optimized for expensive and limited network access ...
Sometimes there were auctions of unprecedented generosity for local residents, when 15 GB of traffic per month cost only 15 NZD, but now the company does not offer such good conditions, usually they can be even worse. Which is somewhat strange, because last year, since the arrival of optical fiber was expected, access to the hotspot on Rangiroa, in French Polynesia, was provided for free, due to the extremely poor quality, despite the rather impressive satellite dish and servers that were installed in one of the hotels that needed to continue to be served.
Immediately, the high cost continues to persist, and the consumer decides whether to buy with such money and with such quality access or not. For example, on Aitutaki, hourly access without traffic (and unlikely at a speed of 50 Mbit / s) is offered, it was not possible to test, since access simply did not work.
Although, usually tourists do not come here for this, but quite the contrary, take a break from access to the network, relaxing in beautiful lagoons, where even mobile communication is not available. But if you come for a long time and you need to not only relax, but also work - the search for access to the network can be a real challenge for you.
So the next time you complain about the Internet, remember the Cook Islands, or better yet, fly here before the optics reach this region too, to visit these amazing islands and feel the contrast. When Internet access is not possible or the page is downloaded from the twentieth time, and the sale of delay in stores is a common thing. So what, that 04.06.2019 is normal, less than a month has passed, but May is no longer good. And why? Despite the fact that cargo happens once a month, there is practically no IT, logistics, procurement management and accounting for their demand over time. Well, food prices are high, respectively. Bread, if available, costs about NZD 5, despite the fact that many have a salary of about 11,000 NZD per year. Of the entertainment at remote locations, ecotours and alcohol tours remain with a real license to drink local alcohol. And this is not a joke! By the way, it’s a very good idea, the bar knows how much you need to pour so that you are in good condition and are not late for a plane to Rarotonga, which flies three times a week from an airport that looks like a small house, rather than a terminal, with a strip of reef grinding.
I believe that with the advent of fiber, life in such remote places will become better, at the moment of the 15 islands only 3 are covered by a network, to visit part of the islands in the region, especially the northern group, you need to charter a private plane, as regular flights do not fly, in view of high cost and small population. It is likely that the communication problem of mankind will be solved by a cloud of low-orbit satellites, which are planned to be implemented in the coming years, and the Loon project, which will cover the entire Earth with the Internet and communications. And then communication even in such remote places will not be problematic, but even now, almost everywhere you want to go, there will be Internet access. Not always good, sometimes you need to wade through the jungle or sail 70+ km in a boat, as communication has failed, but it will.
Traveling and the possibility of remote work, now provide not only the possibility of generating new ideas, but also allow you to introduce and improve many existing ones, which previously in other parts of the world were simply not known. Do not lose your chance to improve this world - travel and inculcate this culture in your companies.
Speaking of travel. Artemy Lebedev, the owner of the design studio of the same name, who has visited almost all countries of the world, has been organizing various EthnoExpies for several years with the aim of exploring different regions in order to see and show them the way that few people saw them before. As a result, quite interesting articles, reports and videos from trips come out, and sponsoring of these trips is partly on the shoulders of sponsors, who, for a relatively small fee, get the opportunity not only to support such a useful project, but also free advertising. Numerous EthnoExpos have already been held, which you can find on the project website - PacificEthnoExp, ChinaEthnoExp, IndoEtnoExp, CaribEtnoExp, VologodEtnoExp, WeekendEtnoExp. This year, no less grandiose project is planned - MexEtnoExp.
In turn, we decided not only to sponsor the Artemy project, but also to encourage others to do the same. We are not paid for this, and perhaps we will increase the number of competitors, as a result, much fewer people will see our ads, however, the more money we collect together with you, the more interesting the trip can become, and, in turn, the greater the effect of advertising will receive each of the sponsors.
The cost of a sponsorship package, consisting of stickers on cars, suitcases and laptops of MexetnoExpa participants, links in a cozy zhezheshek, telegram, instagramchik, unearthly respect, eternal glory and laurel wreaths - only $ 6000. This is an extremely low price, for comparison, we threw about that much on advertising in a few days, as a result an article appeared“The hoster spent $ 150,000 in advertising on AdWords. The exhaust is almost zero ” , of course, the plan was paid off not by advertising, but by telling about its inefficiency and it went off with a bang. But now you have a unique opportunity to spend relatively little money on a useful business, and get a much greater effect than advertising on Google AdWords or any other advertising. The cost of affiliate packages (sponsorship package plus intelligent product placement, thematic partnership and a place on the ground) is discussed individually.
Write to tema@tema.ru. I am sure you will agree and everyone will be happy with the result.
If you are a private individual and you do not need advertising, but you want to allocate funds to sponsor such projects in the future, you can support us by placing an order or recommending your friends to use our services. This will help us to become sponsors of many more similar projects in the future. Moreover, now a 30% discount for Habr users is still available on a unique analogue of entry-level servers that was invented by us for you: The whole truth about VPS (KVM) E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) 10GB DDR4 240GB SSD 1Gbps from $ 20 or how to divide the server? (options are available with RAID1 and RAID10, up to 24 cores and up to 40GB DDR4).
Dell R730xd 2 times cheaper? Only here2 x Intel TetraDeca-Core Xeon 2x E5-2697v3 2.6GHz 14C 64GB DDR4 4x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100 TV from $ 199 in the Netherlands! Dell R420 - 2x E5-2430 2.2Ghz 6C 128GB DDR3 2x960GB SSD 1Gbps 100TB - from $ 99! Read about How to Build Infrastructure Bldg. class using Dell R730xd E5-2650 v4 servers costing 9,000 euros for a penny?