06.17.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
The Job Of A Dyn CEO: Being Open to Internal Feedback As Well As Criticism
Everyone wants to be loved, but it doesn’t happen all the time. When you work together so much, you think that you might hear the inside dialog of what’s wrong and what can be improved. You have to go out of your way to be open to feedback (and ultimately, criticism) and be willing to act on those changes.
When we reached 25-30 employees and started to have people that didn’t report to the top, that was the first step. No longer was the core team in direct oversight of everyone and that meant it took effort to get real feedback.
Read More05.10.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
The Job Of A Dyn CEO: Workplace Evolution Through Influence
I recently read articles about the job of a CEO being mostly mental and because of that, sucking. I’m not sure if I agree with those philosophies, but I know that what it takes to be a CEO is different than what a lot of people think.
There is a lot of unique stresses about the job and after just finishing a small series on what being in the CEO role at Dyn means to me, I thought it was important to talk about how the job is about building an organization that best serves customers. If you get joy from that (which you should), then the role is very rewarding.
Read More04.27.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
The Job Of A Dyn CEO: Make Sure There Is Money In The Bank
The longest serving Governor of New Hampshire and former head of Knoll Furniture John Lynch said it best: revenues must be greater than expenses. It takes money to make money is also true.
It seems so simple, so how do you do it?
In the latest of a series on the day-to-day of being CEO of Dyn, we’ll try to figure that out.
Read More04.06.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
The Job Of A Dyn CEO: Hire And Retain The Best Talent
People are a company’s best asset. A company might have a great idea, customers or product, but it’s still the team in place that’s responsible for executing. Without them, you have nothing.
The responsibility for that team starts at the top, ensuring there is the right mix of people to get the job done. In the beginning, that means a team focused on a single mission but that is still able to do everything. As the company grows, it means a team with more individual tasks that does everything while still focused.
I’ve read about sales-centric CEOs who are finding new customers and getting them to buy. Another type is to sell a job, a role, or an opportunity. The act of convincing someone to work for you has gotten easier as we have become more established (paying people helps) but it’s not always easy. Regardless of the economy, the best talent is always in high demand.
Since staff is probably the biggest expenditure, who works and what they work on is vital to coordinate to get the best return on staff dollars. I don’t think there are silver bullets to deal with hiring and retaining talent, but there is a universe of tips.
Read More03.24.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
The Job Of A Dyn CEO: Set The Course, Email, Staying Current
It was only in the last 18 months that I finally figured out what I’m supposed to do as Dyn CEO (took long enough!). I’m completely drafting off other people but here’s the description I adopted: set and communicate the strategic direction of the company, hire and retain the best talent and make sure there is money in the bank.
Each year, my job has evolved and certain aspects of these three roles has become more important. In previous years, I was more admin/financial (making sure there was money in the bank), some years I was more technology/product (setting the direction), and some years sales/marketing/hiring (talent).
Perhaps the most exciting part of the job is that you are always measured on a moving and growing target. In this first post, I’ll talk about what they mean to me.
Read More03.15.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Taking It To The Streets: Catchpoint
The Taking It To The Streets campaign is all about developing face-to-face relationships with our clients to learn how these web superstars operate, to see what problems they are facing, how to overcome them and most importantly, how we can all learn from each other to create a best of breed company, culture and overall successful business.
Today, we hit the pavement to learn about Catchpoint.
Read More03.04.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Dyn's Taking It To The Streets: Pontiflex
The Taking It To The Streets campaign is all about developing face-to-face relationships with our clients to learn how these web superstars operate, to see what problems they are facing, how to overcome them and most importantly, how we can all learn from each other to create a best of breed company, culture and overall successful business.
Today, we hit the pavement to learn about Pontiflex.
Read More03.01.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Thoughts On Free Internet Infrastructure And The Vendetta Against DDNS
We have millions of users who are on our free dynamic DNS service to connect to their home computers or other IT assets. This is something we have provided since 1998 and it was originally an alternative to standard domain registration but is now used more for names that have dynamic endpoints, i.e. IP addresses that change a lot.
Today, however, we see a growing vendetta against this functionality.
Read More02.22.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
Dyn's Taking It To The Streets: OMGPOP
The Taking It To The Streets campaign is all about developing face-to-face relationships with our clients to learn how these web superstars operate, to see what problems they are facing, how to overcome them and most importantly, how we can all learn from each other to create a best of breed company, culture and overall successful business.
Today, we hit the pavement to learn about OMGPOP.
Read More02.16.2011 By Jeremy Hitchcock
What’s My IP Address?: Learn About Our Free Check IP Service
One of the services we have run for a long time (more than 10 years) is CheckIP. Running a dynamic DNS service, this has been a critical part of the service that many people don’t actually see.
If you are behind a router, NAT or are otherwise not directly connected to the Internet and are trying to determine your real Internet address, you need a check IP service.
What does it look like now?
- It currently runs from three different places in the Unites States.
- CheckIP is about 50 Mbps of traffic.
- It’s an in-house small C-based HTTP server that runs on FreeBSD.
- We receive over 4 billion CheckIP requests per day.
This is also a common interview question for us as we usually have it as a homework assignment and ask people to spend an hour or two on it. Developers or operations people are asked to implement a couple different check IP services that has the most throughput possible. Authors of implementations we like get job offers.
If you are a commercial entity looking to use a check IP service, please contact us before hard coding it. It’s free to use, but we want to keep you up to date on any changes we make.
So, what is your IP address? Find out now.
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