It is kind of odd to have the title say - "I worked for a domain registrar. AMA (Ask Me Anything)", then say you worked for Epik, then link to 4 posts promoting them, and then say no questions related to that.
What should the questions be related to, as working for a registrar seems like the focal point of the post?
Brad
I cannot answer questions directly related to teamwork in a company. I do not think it is ethical, because working in a company and a team is always an individual and special issue. I'd rather talk about the main lessons I've learnt from working for the company without elaborating on the details.
America is a country of trusting people. Not in the sense that they believe everything and everyone, but in the sense that they always have a credit of trust in a person. By default, for example in the CIS, you have zero credit of trust to any stranger, if we take the scale from 0 to 100 as an example. And you are obliged to increase this credit by communication, actions, your results and work. In the US, you will never have zero, it will be at the level of 50, provided that with a person you are as open as possible and do not hide anything. That really surprised me.
The problem is the lack of specialists. Most problems or solutions have to be literally learnt on your own. The problem is that most registrar companies do not have clear instructions on what to do in a wide variety of situations. For example: registering the domain "ggee.com". Technically it is free, but nobody knows how to register it. A person is not trained to solve the problem on his own, he has a list of scripts that prevent him from developing normally. There is no inertia to figure things out on his own, there is a task to do everything according to the script, and in extreme case to hand everything over to the technical staff. This is a big problem.
You're not a separate entity. An obvious subparagraph, but it is working for Americans that you realise it most palpably. A step to the left is a warning, a step to the right is dismissal. I had a moment when I wanted to contact a client who owned a domain in which an acquaintance of mine was interested. I wrote the usual email asking "How much is the domain worth?", then a couple of hours later the director of V.I.P client relations writes to me and literally made demands that I dare not touch his client without his personal permission. It is impossible to find out that the person you wrote to is a V.I.P-customer, because it is not stated anywhere, and it is unrealistically long to write to all colleagues and clarify it. You, as an employee, are obliged to fulfil only your list of work tasks and not to go beyond it. This case was a one-off and the last time I contacted clients outside my CIS region.
Making a lot of products is the norm. Even if they are not of high quality. Almost all companies in the USA make as many products (projects) as they can pull off EXCLUSIVELY for the sake of estimated value when selling later. They don't want to capture new markets, they want to sell illiquid assets along with their main product. Imagine your company sells, let's say, home renovation tools. An equally notional potential buyer came to you and valued your company at $10 million dollars. Now imagine that your company not only makes tools, but also furniture, assuming that your furniture subsidiary produces minimal or no furniture. Now your company is worth $20 million. Simply because instead of 1 business, you have 2 for the price of 1. And this is the case in absolutely every business.
All of the above is not just related to Epik, it's like that everywhere.
Ukrainian startup. Domainer for 8 years.
