Confession of a boss: how to work when traveling, fire half the department in LA and why sponsor MexEtnoExpo 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. This started the history of our company, 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 on “ua-hosting.company” or how to become a hosting provider from scratch and generate more traffic than Belarus On my way, I was lucky to meet wonderful people who had something to learn from, but something I might have taught them. I still remember the words of my technical diving instructor, Andrei Chistyakov , who performed 7 dives to a depth of over 200 meters (one of which is a solo dive to 240 meters, as part of a study of the microbubble decompression model), which significantly changed my mind:
“Larry Green told me that the right approach to business is not“ teach me to dive into caves, ”but“ can I learn from you to dive into caves ”? Students learn from me, and I always learn from students. Wrong attitude leads to death, this is exactly the problem, not in mistakes, but in 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 unusual and interesting dives and tried to show the underwater world to others that they did not see him, mainly due to incorrectly set skills and the wrong attitude. Nevertheless, he refused a successful diving career, bringing hundreds of thousands of euros, without regrets, as soon as he saw how wrong the attitude of society was to diving, including technical, resulting in the death of 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 taking courses responsibly and clearly understanding the physics of the processes (at least the Bulnan algorithm and microbubbles did not cause cognitive dissonance), now the audience has changed. The largest market players have opened access under the water for all in order to earn money. Sometimes instructors have skills worse than students of good diving instructors. And technical diving has become 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 (because it is expensive, one dive can cost 1500 Euro and more) put an additional “tick” in the form of a digit on a computer - 200 meters, to make the so-called “space tourism”, because far less than 200 people visited the depths of 200+ meters than astronauts in space. Or, even worse, check your own limit. And being on the limit - you die! Alina and Andrew published their decision on the school website , explaining the reasons in detail. I was fortunate enough, after closing, to learn how to dive in caves in Florida, perhaps the best place in the world, to master such “pensioner” discipline as cavediving. After all, it is not surprising that many pensioners plunge into the caves in central Florida, sometimes carrying out the most complex research programs. This is a word about how some of the people actively spend their retirement, which is rarely seen in the territories of the former Soviet Union.
But let's not talk about sad things. Today we will talk about travels that have become possible thanks to the prevalence of access to the Internet. And this access was made possible, in particular, thanks to the underwater highways encircling the Earth. I described them in detail in an article that may take you a whole evening, but I highly recommend it to read: Messages in depth: an amazing story of the underwater Internet .
If you have familiarized yourself with our history, then you are aware that our administrators are relatively independent and decide their own management affairs, and we, the vendors and the “developers” of customer solutions, work together. So it is convenient for us, and so it has 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 for diving, not to teach diving, but to change their attitude, because this diving was with the right people who had a lot to learn. Our sales department flew courses to the right diving instructors in Egypt, sometimes we lived for 2 months in Dahab on the seashore.
In the past 15 years, a small town on the coast of Sinai, Dahab, located just 90 km from the bustling Sharm el-Sheikh, which has an unforgettable flavor, has become extremely popular among wintering people from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Some citizens of Great Britain and many Europeans have made Dahab their home, they fly to Dahab to spend the winter with their families and children 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 who have been 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 life until recently was at times cheaper than life in Moscow or Kiev, and rent a decent apartment starts from 200 euros per month. And this is despite the fact that until recently, the Internet was extremely slow and DSL connection without traffic at 2 Mbit / s cost about 400 EGP (LE) per month. Once upon a time, it was $ 80, but with the arrival of 3G and LTE, prices fell 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 so that these locks are not circumvented.
How expensive was it to live and work? Not expensive. 1000 euros per month for a five-room house by the sea. While the food in Dahab restaurants could take 6000 in a month easily (we were 6 people in Dahab and 2 in Kiev at that moment). All this was provided as a bonus, in addition to the charge. boards Including, so it was not boring, sometimes we went to rest in neighboring Israel and Jordan.
I did not spare funds for staff training, for me they were always family for the development of which level I don’t regret anything, although it is possible that sometimes I wasn’t the best leader because I don’t like people in general, but I love personalities and saw the potential each, trying to uncover it to the maximum, and when it did not happen - terribly buzz. In particular, if someone "kosyachil." Not because I made a mistake, only fools and those who do nothing are not mistaken, but because of their unconscious attitude. Then, alas, with me it was not easy.
We were trained in diving in Dahab, the courses were fully paid by ua-hosting.company, and already for experienced divers we organized diving safaris on a yacht with significant discounts. The correct yacht for recreational and technical diving to this day remains the yacht Feisel - Red Sea Explorers , offering safaris not only on wrecks of the Red Sea, the southern reefs of Dedalus and the Brothers islands, but also in Sudan.
The correct instructor of recreational diving was and is Evgenia Peskova , and she flew in specially from Moscow when she no longer lived in Dahab to teach our “fighters” or recommended another instructor in Dahab who, in her opinion, was good for training and which was really something to learn. Unfortunately, at the moment, the industry spat it out of cases, since the price tag for the courses she always had was a couple hundred euros more than the average for the hospital. Just because the days of “open” water were 2 more than commercialized standards require, as the best equipment was used, suitable for technical diving - long hose + wing, instead of uncomfortable BCD. But students, including due to the fact that Egypt was closed to the Russian Federation, came to study in recent years, much less. In addition to this, beginners are far from always clear what is the right instructor and what it should be and why it should pay money without a guarantee of receiving a diving certificate card. Yes, I didn’t give everyone certification after the courses, for example, I didn’t issue a Divemaster card at one time, and was right for a rough mistake, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also how incomprehensible to new customers, why we have a higher price than in Hetzner / OVH, although in fact it turns out to be much lower if we consider the platform for production-solutions and stable work on high-performance high-end hardware :)
Some trips, which meant a complete rest and only a little work in the process of shifts, for example, in Bali and Singapore, were partly accomplished at the expense of those involved, with the financing of MORE part of the costs from ua-hosting.company.
A special feature of diving in Bali is sometimes high waves and currents, when you need to have time to run out and run in the complete set of equipment, before you are killed by the wave. Although sometimes the waves, for example, on White Sand Beach, are more entertaining than deadly, but significantly exceed your height and can be painful.
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore was paid 100%, as I understood that employees could hardly afford a number of $ 700 (at that time it was a lot more money than now) and at the same time wanted to give people the opportunity to see One of the “Wonders of the World” is full-fledged, because people worked for us, not only from Kiev, but also from Shostka, who had never seen anything outside Ukraine, let alone Singapore.
But the Internet allowed us to make such sallies. He was everywhere, in Bali (with the exception of the Agung volcano, more than 3 km high, where communication was not provided, however, the rise was made during off-hours due to the time difference and the work did not suffer) in Egypt, and even in the middle of the Red Sea on the yacht mobile communication with EDGE and 3G "got" us from mobile towers, located on the shore, tens of kilometers from us. If it were not for the prevalence of the Internet - we all should be together in an office in Kiev and no “tours” and “team building”, which our clients noticed only in the form of more effective solutions to their questions, sometimes during off-hours. But we went even further. Our office worked only 3 days a week, when the shifts of all coincided, so that you could learn something together and discuss important issues. In my opinion, daily walking into the office is meaningless; you only need to be there for prompt communication or when there is no working atmosphere at home. On office days, our “work chat” was empty and communication was conducted in the most efficient way, and not through instant messengers. It is this approach to business that I think is right.
How was the work of employees monitored at other times? At first, no way. I trusted. Then I discovered that some of the employees devote half their time to their tasks, and not to their work. Essentially they steal from the company, because the payment from us was hourly, only the rate per hour, of course, that depended on the work efficiency, therefore, in principle, the move is not completely clear, apparently they did not know about it, or it was just done unintentionally. However, after listening to a large flow of indignation when installing a solution from Yaware on computers, especially from the "heroes of the day", the problem was partially solved. Why not solved completely? You can list the whole list:
The problem is that sometimes people just do not perform their tasks. People have problems with the so-called "follow direction". It is very difficult for an adult to follow the path that is given to him. We say: “this is the way, we are following it”. We can give way, open the door, but we can not force a person to enter.
There are bumms for various reasons, but mostly they happen when a person does not have 100% commitment: somehow you want it, but if it did, it would be nice, but if not, you can live like that. Do something? Difficulties begin here ... Failure does not come from the fact that there is no ownership of some subtle points, but from the fact that the principles of fundamental successful behavior are violated. Slavery hack, violation of technology sits in us.
We need people to do simple, elementary things on a regular basis and then there will be a miracle. Because a miracle only happens there, where even though you are 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 the development, encourage employees to learn something new, both during working hours and simply through life.
Have a free minute? Take an interesting topic and write an article on Habr, figure out the topic! For articles, we always had an additional bonus to pay for work in the amount of $ 100 on average, the upper limit was not limited and depended on the success of the article and the complexity of the topic taken. Forgive us, the Habr 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 - for the entire existence of the blog, we paid the authors over $ 100,000 in bonuses to salary. Perhaps this is not much, but we have so far only 1000 articles in our blog, the thousandth was published a few days ago this month.
Logistics, which we give at the end, can be successfully applied everywhere in life. A good motivation, in my opinion, should always serve the following phrase:
Nevertheless, we motivate our employees first of all with interesting travels, the opportunity to see and learn something new, and how they take this opportunity, stay 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 AirShow, which they wonderfully organized.
At the same time visiting the EvoSwitch data center, so that our employees understand what they are working with and what it looks like not in the pictures.
As a rule, these were not just flights by plane, which would be much cheaper, but auto tours organized by us, with visits to European cities along the way and all kinds of amusement parks, such as Holiday Park in Rust, Germany.
By the way, Holiday Park has for many years been the venue for 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 drop in on the way for a long time, to see firsthand the course of engineering, reminiscent of something dirigible.
That is why, when the offer to become a sponsor of HostigCon Global 2017 in Los Angeles came, 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 cost in the region of $ 500 per person, I do not remember exactly).
But as the sales department at the time of applying for sponsorship, we were composed of 8 people, we asked, as an exception, to expand the number of invitations to 8.
It was decided to fly to the United States as a whole, taking with them even the newest members of the team, so that everyone could get some new experience. 6 people were sent to the US Embassy and successfully completed a group interview. Yes, working at ua-hosting.company allowed everyone to get ten-year visas to the United States, even those who had new passports, where there were no stamps other than Egypt. By the way, no one ran away and did not violate the visa regime.
The trip involved a flight en route Kiev-Istanbul-New York. During the flight, the aircraft used satellite Internet, which courtesy of its passengers Turkish Airlines, then night and day in New York, because you can not be in the United States and do not go to 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 it, the work began at about 2 in the morning, and it was done until the morning in shifts, so everyone had the opportunity to sleep, and later there was time for leisure and sightseeing.Then the problem came 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 hardly noticed any deviations, and we practically did not break the SLA per hour, as we even worked from the New York Metro.
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And here, in this “asshole” 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 antenna and a radio channel, communications and even 3G were provided at a good speed, 512 Kbps and even more.
The cost of traffic was 1,000 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 failed, and the only person who understood how the system works was in New Zealand. The local population, alas, is not strong in IT and needs it very much.
This year the “optics” comes to Fakarava, Rangiroa and Tikehau. More precisely, it has already arrived last year, now it is necessary to complete the connection work, the company OTP has invested serious money in the project and finally the underwater main has reached the Tuamotu archipelago. How much will the project pay off? Extremely long, the total population of many atolls that make up 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 remote Cook Islands, the difference with Kiev and MSK is now -13 hours, perhaps in one of the few places in the world where optics has not yet reached (expected this year on Rarotonga Island), it becomes clear how much IT can 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 maintain communication. At the moment, the Internet is more or less accessible via BlueSky hotspots to residents of the islands Rarotonga and Aitutaki, free WiFi can only be found at Rarotonga airport, 30 minutes per device. Everything else - with a megabyte charging, or free, depending on the hotel, in the amount of 100-450 MB per day. By the way, sometimes the billing is late, and you manage to pump a little more than the package provides.
A large telecommunications hub recently appeared on Atiu, providing up to 50 Mbit / s per download, but the local network on the island is so terrible that sometimes you have to go directly to the communications center to access the Internet, which one family did last sunday, instead of visiting the Sunday service. Apparently even for communication with the Lord, you need a good Internet.
A woman with a laptop worked from the trunk of a car, and apparently her husband settled on a hank of telecommunication cable.
At the same time, the prices for Internet access are relatively expensive for the local population, 3 GB of traffic for a month now costs 50 New Zealand dollars (you need to divide by 1.5 to realize how much in USD), and on Wednesdays there are stocks when you can buy a double limit traffic for the same money, which I, of course, took advantage of when I bought 12 GB of traffic for 100 NZ dollars, and then decided that I needed to purchase another voucher. For updates here, at times, consume a lot, and the OS does not allow them to be adequately disabled, the Macbook is not without flaws, and the web today is not very optimized for expensive and limited access to the network ...
Sometimes there were auctions of unheard of 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, they can usually be even worse. This is somewhat strange, because last year, since the arrival of fiber, access to the hotspot at Rangiroa, which in French Polynesia, was provided for free, due to extremely poor quality, despite the rather impressive satellite dish and servers that were installed in one of the hotels that you had to continue to serve.
Here, the high cost continues to persist, and the consumer decides whether to buy for such money and with such quality access or not. For example, on Aitutaki, an hourly access without traffic (and hardly at 50 Mbit / s) is offered, it was not possible to test, because the access simply did not work.
Although, tourists usually come here not for this, but on the contrary, to relax 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 not only to relax, but also to work - the search for access to the network can be a real challenge for you.
So the next time you complain about the Internet, think about the Cook Islands, or even better - fly here before the optics reach this region, to visit these amazing islands and feel the contrast. When Internet access is not possible or the page is loaded from the twentieth time, and the sale of delay in stores is a common thing. So what if 04.06.2019 is normal, less than a month has passed, but May is no longer good. And why? With the fact that cargo happens once a month, there is practically no IT, logistics of procurement management and taking into account their demand over time. Well, the prices of products are high, respectively. Bread, if available, costs about 5 NZD, while many have a salary of about 11,000 NZD per year. Of the entertainment at remote sites, there are ecotours and liquor tours, with the receipt of a real license to drink local alcohol. And this is not a joke! By the way, a very sensible idea, at the bar, they know how much to pour, so that you are in good condition and not be 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 be better, at the moment only 3 of the 15 islands are covered with a network. To visit some of the islands in the region, especially the northern group, you need to charter a private plane, since regular flights do not fly, due to high cost and small population. It is likely that the problem of human communication will be solved by a cloud of low-orbiting satellites, which are planned to be introduced in the coming years and the Loon project, which will cover the entire Earth with Internet and communications. And then the connection even in such remote places will not be a problem, but even now, almost everywhere where you may want to go - there will be access to the Internet. Not always good, sometimes you have to wade through the jungle or sail 70+ km by boat, because the connection failed, but it will.
Travel and the ability to work remotely now provide not only the ability to generate new ideas, but also allow to introduce and improve many existing ones that were not known in other parts of the world before. Do not lose your chance to improve this world - travel and instill this culture in your company.
Speaking of travel. Artemy Lebedev, the owner of the design studio of the same name, who visited almost all countries of the world, has been organizing various EthnoExpos not for the first year to research various regions in order to see and show them as few people have seen them before. As a result, quite interesting articles, reports and videos from trips come out, and sponsoring these trips is partly on the shoulders of sponsors, who, for relatively small fees, have the opportunity not only to support such a useful project, but also free advertising. There have already been a lot of EthnoExpos that you can find on the project website - Pacific Ethno Expo, China Ethno Expo, Indo Ethno Expo, Carib Ethno Expo, Vologda Ethno Expo, Weekend Ethno Expo. This year is planned no less ambitious project - MeksEtnoExps.
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 it, and it is possible that we will increase the number of competitors, as a result, far fewer people will see our advertising, however, the more money we collect with you, the more interesting the trip can become, and, in turn, the more 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 participants of MexEtnoExpa, links in a cozy zhezheshechka, telegram, instagrammer, unearthly respect, eternal glory and laurel wreaths - only $ 6000. This is an extremely low price, for comparison, we threw about as much on advertising for several days, as a result, the article “Hoster spent in AdWords UAH 150,000 on advertising. The exhaust is almost zero ” , of course, the plan was to pay off not by advertising, but by telling about its inefficiency and it was a great success. But now you have a unique opportunity to spend relatively little money on a useful business, and get much more effect than from advertising in Google AdWords or any other advertising. The cost of partnership packages (sponsorship package plus intelligent product placement, thematic partnership and 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 person and you do not need advertising, but there is a desire to allocate funds for sponsoring similar projects in the future - you can support us by placing an order or recommending a friend to use our services. This will help us to become sponsors of many more similar projects in the future. Moreover, now 30% discount is still available for Habr's users for a unique analogue of the entry-level servers that we invented for you: The whole truth about VPS (KVM) E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) 10GB DDR4 240GB SSD 1Gbps from $ 20 or how to share the server? (Options are available with RAID1 and RAID10, up to 24 cores and up to 40GB DDR4).
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“Larry Green told me that the right approach to business is not“ teach me to dive into caves, ”but“ can I learn from you to dive into caves ”? Students learn from me, and I always learn from students. Wrong attitude leads to death, this is exactly the problem, not in mistakes, but in 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 unusual and interesting dives and tried to show the underwater world to others that they did not see him, mainly due to incorrectly set skills and the wrong attitude. Nevertheless, he refused a successful diving career, bringing hundreds of thousands of euros, without regrets, as soon as he saw how wrong the attitude of society was to diving, including technical, resulting in the death of 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 taking courses responsibly and clearly understanding the physics of the processes (at least the Bulnan algorithm and microbubbles did not cause cognitive dissonance), now the audience has changed. The largest market players have opened access under the water for all in order to earn money. Sometimes instructors have skills worse than students of good diving instructors. And technical diving has become 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 (because it is expensive, one dive can cost 1500 Euro and more) put an additional “tick” in the form of a digit on a computer - 200 meters, to make the so-called “space tourism”, because far less than 200 people visited the depths of 200+ meters than astronauts in space. Or, even worse, check your own limit. And being on the limit - you die! Alina and Andrew published their decision on the school website , explaining the reasons in detail. I was fortunate enough, after closing, to learn how to dive in caves in Florida, perhaps the best place in the world, to master such “pensioner” discipline as cavediving. After all, it is not surprising that many pensioners plunge into the caves in central Florida, sometimes carrying out the most complex research programs. This is a word about how some of the people actively spend their retirement, which is rarely seen in the territories of the former Soviet Union.
But let's not talk about sad things. Today we will talk about travels that have become possible thanks to the prevalence of access to the Internet. And this access was made possible, in particular, thanks to the underwater highways encircling the Earth. I described them in detail in an article that may take you a whole evening, but I highly recommend it to read: Messages in depth: an amazing story of the underwater Internet .
If you have familiarized yourself with our history, then you are aware that our administrators are relatively independent and decide their own management affairs, and we, the vendors and the “developers” of customer solutions, work together. So it is convenient for us, and so it has 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 for diving, not to teach diving, but to change their attitude, because this diving was with the right people who had a lot to learn. Our sales department flew courses to the right diving instructors in Egypt, sometimes we lived for 2 months in Dahab on the seashore.
In the past 15 years, a small town on the coast of Sinai, Dahab, located just 90 km from the bustling Sharm el-Sheikh, which has an unforgettable flavor, has become extremely popular among wintering people from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Some citizens of Great Britain and many Europeans have made Dahab their home, they fly to Dahab to spend the winter with their families and children 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 who have been 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 life until recently was at times cheaper than life in Moscow or Kiev, and rent a decent apartment starts from 200 euros per month. And this is despite the fact that until recently, the Internet was extremely slow and DSL connection without traffic at 2 Mbit / s cost about 400 EGP (LE) per month. Once upon a time, it was $ 80, but with the arrival of 3G and LTE, prices fell 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 so that these locks are not circumvented.
How expensive was it to live and work? Not expensive. 1000 euros per month for a five-room house by the sea. While the food in Dahab restaurants could take 6000 in a month easily (we were 6 people in Dahab and 2 in Kiev at that moment). All this was provided as a bonus, in addition to the charge. boards Including, so it was not boring, sometimes we went to rest in neighboring Israel and Jordan.
I did not spare funds for staff training, for me they were always family for the development of which level I don’t regret anything, although it is possible that sometimes I wasn’t the best leader because I don’t like people in general, but I love personalities and saw the potential each, trying to uncover it to the maximum, and when it did not happen - terribly buzz. In particular, if someone "kosyachil." Not because I made a mistake, only fools and those who do nothing are not mistaken, but because of their unconscious attitude. Then, alas, with me it was not easy.
We were trained in diving in Dahab, the courses were fully paid by ua-hosting.company, and already for experienced divers we organized diving safaris on a yacht with significant discounts. The correct yacht for recreational and technical diving to this day remains the yacht Feisel - Red Sea Explorers , offering safaris not only on wrecks of the Red Sea, the southern reefs of Dedalus and the Brothers islands, but also in Sudan.
The correct instructor of recreational diving was and is Evgenia Peskova , and she flew in specially from Moscow when she no longer lived in Dahab to teach our “fighters” or recommended another instructor in Dahab who, in her opinion, was good for training and which was really something to learn. Unfortunately, at the moment, the industry spat it out of cases, since the price tag for the courses she always had was a couple hundred euros more than the average for the hospital. Just because the days of “open” water were 2 more than commercialized standards require, as the best equipment was used, suitable for technical diving - long hose + wing, instead of uncomfortable BCD. But students, including due to the fact that Egypt was closed to the Russian Federation, came to study in recent years, much less. In addition to this, beginners are far from always clear what is the right instructor and what it should be and why it should pay money without a guarantee of receiving a diving certificate card. Yes, I didn’t give everyone certification after the courses, for example, I didn’t issue a Divemaster card at one time, and was right for a rough mistake, thereby changing my attitude to diving at some stage and, possibly, saving my life. This is also how incomprehensible to new customers, why we have a higher price than in Hetzner / OVH, although in fact it turns out to be much lower if we consider the platform for production-solutions and stable work on high-performance high-end hardware :)
Some trips, which meant a complete rest and only a little work in the process of shifts, for example, in Bali and Singapore, were partly accomplished at the expense of those involved, with the financing of MORE part of the costs from ua-hosting.company.
A special feature of diving in Bali is sometimes high waves and currents, when you need to have time to run out and run in the complete set of equipment, before you are killed by the wave. Although sometimes the waves, for example, on White Sand Beach, are more entertaining than deadly, but significantly exceed your height and can be painful.
Marina Bay Sands in Singapore was paid 100%, as I understood that employees could hardly afford a number of $ 700 (at that time it was a lot more money than now) and at the same time wanted to give people the opportunity to see One of the “Wonders of the World” is full-fledged, because people worked for us, not only from Kiev, but also from Shostka, who had never seen anything outside Ukraine, let alone Singapore.
But the Internet allowed us to make such sallies. He was everywhere, in Bali (with the exception of the Agung volcano, more than 3 km high, where communication was not provided, however, the rise was made during off-hours due to the time difference and the work did not suffer) in Egypt, and even in the middle of the Red Sea on the yacht mobile communication with EDGE and 3G "got" us from mobile towers, located on the shore, tens of kilometers from us. If it were not for the prevalence of the Internet - we all should be together in an office in Kiev and no “tours” and “team building”, which our clients noticed only in the form of more effective solutions to their questions, sometimes during off-hours. But we went even further. Our office worked only 3 days a week, when the shifts of all coincided, so that you could learn something together and discuss important issues. In my opinion, daily walking into the office is meaningless; you only need to be there for prompt communication or when there is no working atmosphere at home. On office days, our “work chat” was empty and communication was conducted in the most efficient way, and not through instant messengers. It is this approach to business that I think is right.
How was the work of employees monitored at other times? At first, no way. I trusted. Then I discovered that some of the employees devote half their time to their tasks, and not to their work. Essentially they steal from the company, because the payment from us was hourly, only the rate per hour, of course, that depended on the work efficiency, therefore, in principle, the move is not completely clear, apparently they did not know about it, or it was just done unintentionally. However, after listening to a large flow of indignation when installing a solution from Yaware on computers, especially from the "heroes of the day", the problem was partially solved. Why not solved completely? You can list the whole list:
- You can drive the mouse every 3–5 minutes on the screen so that the program does not go into the waiting mode;
- You can be smarter and even switch between windows and applications, imitating a vigorous activity, because you will kill yourself to check so many screenshots and you still cannot understand by the tracker that an employee imitated the activity, unless you check the amount of work actually done, which is also not always easy estimate;
- You can put a TV, an additional laptop next to you and watch a movie while you work, or write another sisyastoy nyashe in the messenger in the messenger, and that - the tracker will never notice this for sure, but the fact that an employee’s efficiency drops by some amount percent - do not care, because the employer does not see, you can cheat, if you really want.
The problem is that sometimes people just do not perform their tasks. People have problems with the so-called "follow direction". It is very difficult for an adult to follow the path that is given to him. We say: “this is the way, we are following it”. We can give way, open the door, but we can not force a person to enter.
There are bumms for various reasons, but mostly they happen when a person does not have 100% commitment: somehow you want it, but if it did, it would be nice, but if not, you can live like that. Do something? Difficulties begin here ... Failure does not come from the fact that there is no ownership of some subtle points, but from the fact that the principles of fundamental successful behavior are violated. Slavery hack, violation of technology sits in us.
We need people to do simple, elementary things on a regular basis and then there will be a miracle. Because a miracle only happens there, where even though you are 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 the development, encourage employees to learn something new, both during working hours and simply through life.
Have a free minute? Take an interesting topic and write an article on Habr, figure out the topic! For articles, we always had an additional bonus to pay for work in the amount of $ 100 on average, the upper limit was not limited and depended on the success of the article and the complexity of the topic taken. Forgive us, the Habr 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 - for the entire existence of the blog, we paid the authors over $ 100,000 in bonuses to salary. Perhaps this is not much, but we have so far only 1000 articles in our blog, the thousandth was published a few days ago this month.
Logistics, which we give at the end, can be successfully applied everywhere in life. A good motivation, in my opinion, should always serve 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 travels, the opportunity to see and learn something new, and how they take this opportunity, stay 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 AirShow, which they wonderfully organized.
At the same time visiting the EvoSwitch data center, so that our employees understand what they are working with and what it looks like not in the pictures.
As a rule, these were not just flights by plane, which would be much cheaper, but auto tours organized by us, with visits to European cities along the way and all kinds of amusement parks, such as Holiday Park in Rust, Germany.
By the way, Holiday Park has for many years been the venue for 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 drop in on the way for a long time, to see firsthand the course of engineering, reminiscent of something dirigible.
That is why, when the offer to become a sponsor of HostigCon Global 2017 in Los Angeles came, 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 cost in the region of $ 500 per person, I do not remember exactly).
But as the sales department at the time of applying for sponsorship, we were composed of 8 people, we asked, as an exception, to expand the number of invitations to 8.
It was decided to fly to the United States as a whole, taking with them even the newest members of the team, so that everyone could get some new experience. 6 people were sent to the US Embassy and successfully completed a group interview. Yes, working at ua-hosting.company allowed everyone to get ten-year visas to the United States, even those who had new passports, where there were no stamps other than Egypt. By the way, no one ran away and did not violate the visa regime.
The trip involved a flight en route Kiev-Istanbul-New York. During the flight, the aircraft used satellite Internet, which courtesy of its passengers Turkish Airlines, then night and day in New York, because you can not be in the United States and do not go to 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 it, the work began at about 2 in the morning, and it was done until the morning in shifts, so everyone had the opportunity to sleep, and later there was time for leisure and sightseeing.Then the problem came 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 hardly noticed any deviations, and we practically did not break the SLA per hour, as we even worked from the New York Metro.
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And here, in this “asshole” 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 antenna and a radio channel, communications and even 3G were provided at a good speed, 512 Kbps and even more.
The cost of traffic was 1,000 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 failed, and the only person who understood how the system works was in New Zealand. The local population, alas, is not strong in IT and needs it very much.
This year the “optics” comes to Fakarava, Rangiroa and Tikehau. More precisely, it has already arrived last year, now it is necessary to complete the connection work, the company OTP has invested serious money in the project and finally the underwater main has reached the Tuamotu archipelago. How much will the project pay off? Extremely long, the total population of many atolls that make up 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 remote Cook Islands, the difference with Kiev and MSK is now -13 hours, perhaps in one of the few places in the world where optics has not yet reached (expected this year on Rarotonga Island), it becomes clear how much IT can 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 maintain communication. At the moment, the Internet is more or less accessible via BlueSky hotspots to residents of the islands Rarotonga and Aitutaki, free WiFi can only be found at Rarotonga airport, 30 minutes per device. Everything else - with a megabyte charging, or free, depending on the hotel, in the amount of 100-450 MB per day. By the way, sometimes the billing is late, and you manage to pump a little more than the package provides.
A large telecommunications hub recently appeared on Atiu, providing up to 50 Mbit / s per download, but the local network on the island is so terrible that sometimes you have to go directly to the communications center to access the Internet, which one family did last sunday, instead of visiting the Sunday service. Apparently even for communication with the Lord, you need a good Internet.
A woman with a laptop worked from the trunk of a car, and apparently her husband settled on a hank of telecommunication cable.
At the same time, the prices for Internet access are relatively expensive for the local population, 3 GB of traffic for a month now costs 50 New Zealand dollars (you need to divide by 1.5 to realize how much in USD), and on Wednesdays there are stocks when you can buy a double limit traffic for the same money, which I, of course, took advantage of when I bought 12 GB of traffic for 100 NZ dollars, and then decided that I needed to purchase another voucher. For updates here, at times, consume a lot, and the OS does not allow them to be adequately disabled, the Macbook is not without flaws, and the web today is not very optimized for expensive and limited access to the network ...
Sometimes there were auctions of unheard of 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, they can usually be even worse. This is somewhat strange, because last year, since the arrival of fiber, access to the hotspot at Rangiroa, which in French Polynesia, was provided for free, due to extremely poor quality, despite the rather impressive satellite dish and servers that were installed in one of the hotels that you had to continue to serve.
Here, the high cost continues to persist, and the consumer decides whether to buy for such money and with such quality access or not. For example, on Aitutaki, an hourly access without traffic (and hardly at 50 Mbit / s) is offered, it was not possible to test, because the access simply did not work.
Although, tourists usually come here not for this, but on the contrary, to relax 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 not only to relax, but also to work - the search for access to the network can be a real challenge for you.
So the next time you complain about the Internet, think about the Cook Islands, or even better - fly here before the optics reach this region, to visit these amazing islands and feel the contrast. When Internet access is not possible or the page is loaded from the twentieth time, and the sale of delay in stores is a common thing. So what if 04.06.2019 is normal, less than a month has passed, but May is no longer good. And why? With the fact that cargo happens once a month, there is practically no IT, logistics of procurement management and taking into account their demand over time. Well, the prices of products are high, respectively. Bread, if available, costs about 5 NZD, while many have a salary of about 11,000 NZD per year. Of the entertainment at remote sites, there are ecotours and liquor tours, with the receipt of a real license to drink local alcohol. And this is not a joke! By the way, a very sensible idea, at the bar, they know how much to pour, so that you are in good condition and not be 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 be better, at the moment only 3 of the 15 islands are covered with a network. To visit some of the islands in the region, especially the northern group, you need to charter a private plane, since regular flights do not fly, due to high cost and small population. It is likely that the problem of human communication will be solved by a cloud of low-orbiting satellites, which are planned to be introduced in the coming years and the Loon project, which will cover the entire Earth with Internet and communications. And then the connection even in such remote places will not be a problem, but even now, almost everywhere where you may want to go - there will be access to the Internet. Not always good, sometimes you have to wade through the jungle or sail 70+ km by boat, because the connection failed, but it will.
Travel and the ability to work remotely now provide not only the ability to generate new ideas, but also allow to introduce and improve many existing ones that were not known in other parts of the world before. Do not lose your chance to improve this world - travel and instill this culture in your company.
Speaking of travel. Artemy Lebedev, the owner of the design studio of the same name, who visited almost all countries of the world, has been organizing various EthnoExpos not for the first year to research various regions in order to see and show them as few people have seen them before. As a result, quite interesting articles, reports and videos from trips come out, and sponsoring these trips is partly on the shoulders of sponsors, who, for relatively small fees, have the opportunity not only to support such a useful project, but also free advertising. There have already been a lot of EthnoExpos that you can find on the project website - Pacific Ethno Expo, China Ethno Expo, Indo Ethno Expo, Carib Ethno Expo, Vologda Ethno Expo, Weekend Ethno Expo. This year is planned no less ambitious project - MeksEtnoExps.
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 it, and it is possible that we will increase the number of competitors, as a result, far fewer people will see our advertising, however, the more money we collect with you, the more interesting the trip can become, and, in turn, the more 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 participants of MexEtnoExpa, links in a cozy zhezheshechka, telegram, instagrammer, unearthly respect, eternal glory and laurel wreaths - only $ 6000. This is an extremely low price, for comparison, we threw about as much on advertising for several days, as a result, the article “Hoster spent in AdWords UAH 150,000 on advertising. The exhaust is almost zero ” , of course, the plan was to pay off not by advertising, but by telling about its inefficiency and it was a great success. But now you have a unique opportunity to spend relatively little money on a useful business, and get much more effect than from advertising in Google AdWords or any other advertising. The cost of partnership packages (sponsorship package plus intelligent product placement, thematic partnership and 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 person and you do not need advertising, but there is a desire to allocate funds for sponsoring similar projects in the future - you can support us by placing an order or recommending a friend to use our services. This will help us to become sponsors of many more similar projects in the future. Moreover, now 30% discount is still available for Habr's users for a unique analogue of the entry-level servers that we invented for you: The whole truth about VPS (KVM) E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) 10GB DDR4 240GB SSD 1Gbps from $ 20 or how to share the server? (Options are available with RAID1 and RAID10, up to 24 cores and up to 40GB DDR4).
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/457996/
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