04.27.2012 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Why The Traditional Work/Life Balance Is A Lie
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I say something about work/life balance many times a month. It’s said during interviews, company meetings and also as a cautionary tale to people who are stretching themselves too thin.
The secret: it’s all a lie.
Read More03.20.2012 By Jeremy Hitchcock
On Ecosystems, New Hampshire, Startups & Geography
Geography is a topic that the startup community loves to overtalk. The virtues of warmer climates, access to capital or talent is debated. The Boston community went ballistic when it was mused that Facebook would have stayed in Boston if it was started today. It is too parochial.
So I live and work in Manchester, New Hampshire. No, we don’t go cow tipping on the weekends. It’s a 50 mile trip (almost all highway driving) to Boston.
When people ask what it’s like in Manchester versus the next town over, I think it’s a soup question – irrelevant.
We’re so myopic on the geography question. I love where we operate and so do many other entrepreneurs who run companies in their respective areas. Does that mean that one is right and the other is wrong? No.
No geography has a monopoly on startups.
Why I’m excited about Manchester, southern New Hampshire and even metro Boston is that we have lots of smart people here. There is a perseverance, Yankee ingenuity, capital if we need it and great airports (MHT and BOS).
The work/life balance is great to keep me sane.
What I worry about is that our average age is going up faster than our aging, meaning that we’re not replacing ourselves or net migration is skewing. Unchecked, it’s a trend that will impact the amount of good, working talent. But I’m optimistic that it will change and get better as we figure out as organizations like Stay Work Play push on the general demographic trends going on.
Either way, there are many good places to start or run a company but I’d prefer less debate about where and more debate on how to use the environment around you to your benefit.
Read More01.17.2012 By Jeremy Hitchcock
From Individuals To Systems…And To Individuals Again
As was hinted at in earlier posts, our 2012 theme at Dyn is Better, Faster, Stronger. 2011 saw a number of changes here: a new office, many new clients, the concept of functions and lots of new faces. We spent the last year putting a lot of new stuff together, making the year ahead about fine tuning.
Since reliability is core to our services, the reliability of our staff is also core. We think about it as a bus theory: how many people can get hit by a bus before operations suffer (yeah, a little morbid)? As a result, we try to have people cross trained and share responsibilities.
2011 meant that almost every function became part of a system, mostly because of scale. We had to figure out how to break things up so that multiple people could share the load. We went to systems instead of individuals.
For 2012, we’re going to go back to people.
People are the ones that make differences and ensure that things don’t fall through the cracks. People are also the ones that challenge how things are done and replace broken systems with better systems. In the end, people make the difference in anything and everything a company does.
The only difference is that there are a lot more of us now that help make a difference at Dyn everyday.
Read More11.18.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
SOPA: What You Should Know & Why Dyn Opposes It
Are you familiar with the Great Firewall Of China? Sometimes referred to as the Golden Shield project, it’s a Chinese government censorship and Internet surveillance project kicked off in 1998 and put into action in 2003. Simply put, it enables the government to restrict what content its citizens can read and view via IP blocking and DNS filtering. If they don’t like a site request a user makes, it won’t get viewed.
Many dismiss what’s happening in China and chalk to up to their communist political system. That could never happen in a free speech-driven, rights for all society like we have in the United States, right?
If the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) introduced this week gets enacted into law, things could change negatively for Americans which is why Dyn opposes the bill.
Read More11.18.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Raising Expectations In DNS, Email And Data Availability
In thinking through some blog topics recently amidst some 2012 planning, the word ‘expectations’ came to mind. What do we expect to be next year? What do we expect of ourselves and most importantly, what do the clients and customers of Dyn expect out of us?
We are an Internet Infrastructure company that focuses on website uptime and best-in-class email delivery for those that want to meet the expectations of the masses. When people visit Netflix to organize their queue, they expect to be able to do that without pain. When a Tumblr user wants to blog about their kids, the expectation is the CMS Is available to do that. When Carrier Pigeon sells email services to clients, their expectation is that clients will be able to send large volumes of email without running into problems.
As we have continued to evolve on the Internet, expectations have been raised across the board. This is how we try and suggest that they are met.
Read More10.04.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Defining Rules Vs. Guidelines, Errors and Empowerment
Cheat To Win (an excellent book) had one lesson that I think growing companies should pay strict attention to — something that is the true difference between a rule and an guideline.
The difference is whether you allow thought in a decision. In loosely coherent systems, flexibility will usually perform better than rigid systems.
Read More09.16.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Create And Don’t Copy Your Technology-Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
Silicon-whatever is the craze. Whether it’s a city hall or community, everyone wants to be Silicon Valley-style. They want to have a top notch STEM college, lots of cool companies and trendy restaurants around – just like the Bay Area.
Some advice for the local Chamber of Commerces: I would not copy that model. Instead, create your own ecosystem.
Read More08.26.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Job Of A CEO: Living The Dream
I get a kick out of people when they ask, “How are you?” It’s a question that we all ask and I get the intent: to start up a casual conversation.
Still, it seems silly all the same.
Ask someone running a company (at least me) and they’ll say, “Living the dream.” I think it’s a perfect metaphor for what’s actually happening — a surreal, pinch yourself experience that is largely uncontrolled. How am I running a company, directing people while also putting the dirty dishes away?
Read More08.15.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Choices and Decisions With Employee Benefits
We do things a bit differently being a New Hampshire-based company that is also an Internet company.
Inspired by Zappos, Dyn is an employer of choice and we strive to be a cool place to work that celebrates the mantra “work hard, play hard.”
We’ve won the “Best Company to Work For in New Hampshire” recognition from BusinessNH Magazine for the last four years and will be entering their Hall Of Fame this fall. It’s truly an honor to be acknowledged for building a community and a workforce that is supportive, productive and just a lot of fun to be a part of.
Read More06.24.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Keeping Focus And Learning To Say No
As they grow, companies face the challenge of what is the core mission. Additional products and services represent more revenue but they also come at the cost of focus and lower margins.
Dyn has added things (and removed things) over the years and hopefully, this gives you a flavor of what we’ve done and why we have done it.
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