Retail sites should be at the forefront of optimized page load time. There’s been plenty of research about the correlation between fast page load and revenue and I would guess every retail site wants to increase their revenue using established best practices like compressing text and images, combining JavaScript and CSS, using a CDN, and other tools mentioned in Strangeloop’s report.

Strangely, according to the report, most sites failed to implement these.

Strangeloop’s data was gathered on the retail website homepages using WebPageTest’s Dulles, VA, location and IE7. I prefer to run page speed tests using a more modern browser than IE7, but I decided to compare Dyn.com’s results using the same testing methodology (full test results here). I used a graph from Strangeloop’s Key Findings and added Dyn.com’s results:

I’m proud to say that not only do we outperform the average of the top 2000 and top 100 retail sites on Alexa, but we beat the fastest-loading sites in the Alexa Retail Top 100.

(Data from Strangeloop’s report and Dyn.com’s WebPageTest)

It’s interesting that the report focused on home pages instead of checkout pages, but I imagine that collecting home page data is much easier than trying to compare apples to apples across sites’ checkout processes. Homepages should be optimized for page speed, but the checkout process can add extra page load time when the user logs in and there’s more data being transferred. I’m eager for the industry to start moving towards faster, performance-optimized sites so users can have a happier shopping experience.

“I got so many great ideas,” said Donavon Roberson, Director of Service Innovations at OOBE and formerly Culture Evangelist at Zappos.

More than 50 people crowded Dyn’s world headquarters at 150 Dow Street in Manchester’s historic mill district on Tuesday to participate in the event, which also featured a panel of local businesses talking about their own company cultures.

Roberson discussed the importance of creating a workplace that brings out the best in employees. He learned these lessons from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and is fine tuning them at South Carolina-based OOBE.

Donavon Roberson (Photo: Lynda Elliott/Dyn)

During his time at Zappos (also a Dyn client), he advised lots of companies on the value of culture in the workplace. He said some needed to be explained about the incredible benefit of an enviable workspace, but he didn’t feel the same way about those present at Culture-Con.

“What was fascinating for me, and I talked with a couple of people about this, is we didn’t have to convince anybody about why discussion like this matter,” Roberson said. “It was more about sharing ideas.”

Roberson said it was rewarding to see that so many businesses — mostly smaller to mid-size — were working on their culture. While most people present were from the Granite State, representatives from a company in Los Angeles, CA, made the trip and said it was well worth it.

This was Roberson’s first visit to Dyn and he found the Manchester-based company refreshing.

“They’re certainly walking the talk,” Roberson said. “I saw it not just in the decorations and the office space, but by walking around and interacting with employees. I could tell they care about me as a person.”

Roberson wasn’t the only one excited about the day. Dyn’s Director of Culture & Talent Development and event organizer Chris Widner said it was phenomenal.

“The audience was great,” Widner said. “There was a lot of participation and by the end, people were viewing each other as if they were part of a community.”

Adding to that community feel was the exchange of business cards and contact information between attendees. Widner said those who exchanged would be checking in with each other in the near future to see if goals made today were reached.

Widner added one of the attendees told him that in his own business culture, he had always felt like he was missing one thing in creating the optimal environment. He said he found that missing piece at the event.

“To hear that was awesome,” Widner said. “That goes beyond our goals for the day.”

Widner said the event was so successful that it is likely Dyn will host similar ones in the future.

ABOUT DYN

Founded in 1998, Dyn is the worldwide Internet Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) leader, powering Managed DNS and Email Delivery for more than four million enterprise, small business and personal users. With 15 data centers around the world and industry-leading uptime for over 10 years, Dyn’s commitment to customer relationships and engineering excellence shines every day. Uptime is the Bottom Line.

Media Contact: Adam Coughlin | 603.714.5798 | Twitter

I have some great news: moving DNS providers is easy and straightforward and you can accomplish it in just five easy steps, avoiding any downtime. If you have ever thought about switching but just can’t pull the trigger, let’s put those fears to rest forever!

1) Purchase DNS service from a new provider.

I told you these steps were easy! Whether it’s with us or another provider, do the research and make sure you ask plenty of questions if things aren’t clear. Obviously, we hope you choose Dyn and if so, you have several choices from Standard DNS to our enterprise DynECT Managed DNS platform. Scalability is important so the more options to fit your situation, the better.

2) Create a zone for your domain.

Think of a zone as a container that holds all of your DNS records for a particular domain. If your domain is named example.com, the zone name will be example.com. Do not include the www in the zone name, as that will be covered by a DNS record within the zone.

3) Add your DNS records to your newly created zone.

The best way to do this on Dyn Standard DNS is to look at your existing DNS provider’s interface and copy/paste the DNS records right in, ensuring there are no mistakes when you are typing in your records.

For DynECT Managed DNS, you can get a zone file in BIND or TinyDNS format from your current provider and import it directly into your account. The zone file is simply a text file that contains all of your DNS records in a specific format and this method takes just minutes to create your zone.

4) Make sure your assigned nameservers are responding to DNS queries.

For Dyn Standard DNS, go into your preferences and click the “Force Activation” button as this will cause the zone to go into pre-activation mode and will load up onto our nameservers within two hours. For DynECT Managed DNS, simply click the ‘Publish’ link within your zone and this will push the newly created zone with all of its DNS records to our nameservers immediately.

If you’re on a Mac or Linux computer, you can do a dig lookup from the terminal to test our nameservers with the syntax dig domainname @nameserver. For example, if you purchased example.com on our Dyn Standard DNS service, you could test it by typing dig example.com @ns1.mydyndns.org into the terminal on your Mac or Linux computer. If you get a response back with the A record in your zone in the ANSWER section, you know our nameservers are responding to queries.

5) Finally, the fun part!

Your zone will mention which nameservers are assigned to it. What needs to be done next is going to your domain registrar (where you pay your yearly fee to own your domain name) and replace the old nameservers listed with your new nameservers.

Once this change is made, DNS propagation will begin. It will take from 24-to-48 hours for DNS traffic to shift from your previous DNS provider to Dyn. It is usually recommended to keep your zone active on your previous DNS provider for one week just in case any queries happen to reach your old provider. After a week, it is safe to deactivate the account at the previous provider.

If you have any questions during this process, you can reach our excellent Client Services department. Our Implementation and Concierge teams are more than happy to review your zones and make sure everything is setup properly. We specialize in making these changes as easy and painless as possible. If you’re done shopping around and want to come aboard with Dyn, let’s start talking today!

Whether you are an employer or an employee, culture is very important and it impacts individuals as well as the company as a whole. For employers, culture affects morale, communications, productivity, growth, the bottom line and can ultimately make or break the company. For employees, a positive culture can motivate, inspire creativity, loyalty, cooperation and a desire to go above and beyond. On the other hand, it can erode trust, security and connectedness while increasing stress, indifference and job searches.

Dyn is definitely in the minority of companies ahead of the culture curve. Receiving regional recognition from Inc. Magazine as a winner in the 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces competition and being named one of the Top Small Businesses To Work For by Business NH Magazine for four years isn’t by happy accident. Dyn’s overall success and rapid growth is greatly attributed to the following three major culture factors:

Our culture is as truly unique as it is amazing. It’s refreshingly anti-corporate and better experienced than talked about. You can see its first impression reflected on the faces of visitors taking a tour of our office or new employees coming aboard for their first day. You can sense its influence in the positive attitudes, passed down from founders to managers to individual contributors. You can feel it in the air: a laid back but highly energized atmosphere. Sound dreamy and intangible? It is and it isn’t. Here’s a few cultural examples on how we got there.

People Are Priority One

People are Dyn’s most valuable asset and they are treated accordingly.

To quote our CEO Jeremy: “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.”

Dyn focuses on employee strengths — not weaknesses.

New employees take the StrengthsFinder test and are encouraged to specialize in what they’re good at and what they enjoy doing. For our engineering team, “Offroading Days” take place twice a month, where employees come up with their own ideas for projects and bring them to life.

These opportunities inspire creativity and exploration which can result in new company technologies or the discovery of new strengths and interests for the individual. It’s not uncommon for a Dyner to wind up in a completely different department than where they started.

Caring about the safety and well being of employees is the Dyn way.

This translates to stay home sick when you’re sick, work from home when it’s unsafe to travel in bad weather, get a lesson before jumping on a Segway, keep fit with a free membership to Gold’s Gym and de-stress with a nice game of foosball or drag racing.

Being valued as a human being is a breath of fresh air if you’ve ever experienced the “macho management mentality” where employers expect employees to come to work ill, injured or during a state of emergency. Sadly, this attitude still exists in some of today’s work places.

Practices: Transparency, Trust, Team Building, Timely Reviews

There are a lot more practices that make Dyn culture great, but I wanted to focus on a select few:

Transparency

Dyn practices honest transparency with its employees, competitors and customers.

Kept in The Loop

There are weekly one-on-one meetings between managers and team members to discuss projects, ask questions, receive feedback or express concerns. Monthly company meetings bring employees up to date with the latest company news and future plans. Quarterly open book financial meetings are held to share detailed financial reports and projections.

Communication Between Competitors

Dyn was proud to host and facilitate our first Email Deliverability Summit last December, bringing together some of the biggest names in email delivery and the deliverability experts that fuel their success.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Dyn believes that transparency is critical in keeping customers informed, even when it’s not popular or pretty.

Trust

Transparency leads to trust and trust is a must for good culture. It’s an absolute pleasure to work in an environment where employees are trusted to do what they specialize in instead of being micromanaged. Dyn has pride in its people and isn’t afraid to relinquish control to let them get the job done. Another example of trust is allowing employees to work from home on occasion and trusting they will put in an honest day’s work. Imagine that!

Team Building

Team building activities at Dyn happen often, from Geek Week to company outings to company events with live performers and bands.

Dyn fosters a team environment where people become so connected at work they often choose to hang out or do activities together after work. Different departments work closely together, maintaining mutual respect and communication because one department can greatly impact another despite having different perspectives and goals.

There’s no room for an “Us vs. Them” attitude. Sales and techies living in harmony? Yep, it happens here!

Timely Reviews

Dyn makes the time for regularly scheduled employee reviews. There’s nothing worse than working hard for a company and going years without a review. It can leave a person feeling unappreciated, unnoticed, unimportant and maybe asking the question: “Why do I work here?”

Not to mention these reviews eliminate missed opportunities for employers to provide valuable feedback that can help the individual and the company on many different levels. Dyn also offers employees the rare opportunity to review their managers anonymously. It’s a valuable tool that provides a more accurate inventory, builds trust, earns respect and puts everyone on a more even and fair playing field.

Perkier Perks

Why do people want to work, play and stay at Dyn? It’s a combination of the nontraditional management style, the relaxed, upbeat atmosphere, the unparalled traditional and fringe benefits and the awe-inspiring physical surroundings. Dyn does not skimp on culture or make it a vague, last place priority. It puts culture at the forefront, spares no expense and reaps the rewards of being defined best of the best and a power of example to the rest.

Just a few of Dyn’s perkier perks:

• Have you ever stood in line for breakfast at work while the CEO cooks your omelette made to order?
• Can you imagine working from a comfy couch, beanbag or sunny deck?
• Are you able to step away from your desk and play ping pong, skee ball or video games? (By the way, this relieves stress, enhances problem solving skills and increases productivity!)

Want to know more about why culture matters to your business and learn strategies on how to improve it? Dyn is hosting our first-ever Culture-Con on January 31st at our Manchester, NH headquarters. Find out about signing up your company culture representative today!

Outline

Dyn Yearbook's front cover.

We knew that we wanted each employee to have their own page in the book, so from the outset, we were looking at a 100 page book. Since we weren’t planning on making the book a part of the fitness program, we kept the additional content down to a minimum.

Remember to consider your bindery here. If going with a perfect bound book as we did, you’ll need to keep the page count divisible by 4.

Here’s how our outline looked:

1. Acknowledgements + Closing/back page – 1 spread
2. Intros – 1 spread
3. Year in Review – section start is 1 spread
4. Infographic – 1 spread
5. Where We’ve been map – 1 spread
6. Superlatives – 1 spread
7. Departments – 5 spreads
8. Employee pages – 49 spreads

Total = 120 pages

Dimensions

Choose your dimensions wisely and make sure everyone is aware of them. We could have simplified this project if we had gone with an 8.5 x 11” page, but we liked the allure of the unique square book too much to keep it simple. Then there was that issue of saying, “Just make a page for the yearbook” and people assuming “a page” was 8.5 x 11”…oops.

Thank goodness for vectorized pdfs, which allowed me to open the majority of the incorrectly sized pages in Illustrator and move the parts and pieces around so that they fit in the 7 x 7” dimensions.

Templates

Templates help guide people on the dimensions and give them the start for their page. InDesign, Illustrator and PhotoShop templates are all logical, but not all employees have access to or knowledge of this software, so I also provided Open Office and Word document templates with a 7 x 7” box area delineated. Throughout the process, we found that many people were comfortable in PowerPoint so when we begin next year’s yearbook, I’ll be sure to provide a template for that application as well.

Make sure your templates outline the safe zone for printing (usually .25” in from the edge on all sides) and instruct people to keep critical material inside of this area. Other than that, the actual trim (edges of the page) are noted and the bleed area as well (usually .125” beyond trim on all sides).

Timeline/Deadlines

Basics of print in action here: work backwards from when you actually need the book and make sure to communicate with your printer right at the start so you’re aware of their timeline. Since the yearbook wasn’t anyone’s sole job, we left plenty of cushion in the timeline to accommodate for other priorities.

We started planning in August, rolled out an email to employees after Labor Day and gave them a month to complete their pages. That left eight weeks for tracking down stray content, compiling, layout and proofing with the final unveiling at our holiday party. Now knowing what to expect, we might be able to shave the eight weeks to six but I couldn’t imagine any less than that.

Content

Keep it fun, keep it true to yourselves and repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. Repurposing content that has been used elsewhere for the company makes great fodder for the yearbook. Not only does it save on content creation time, but it also gives employees a chance to see an ad or graphic they might not have ever laid eyes on.

With minor layout & content tweaks, our office holiday card became the Year in Review infographic. Our department pages were also repurposed content with some gaps filled in and there are a few fun stray graphics in the book that many employees might have not seen if not for the yearbook. We created an online poll for the superlatives so that everyone could give their thoughts.

Hope that helps your office’s yearbook creation process and feel free to ask any questions in the comments below. I’m happy to answer whatever I can!

It is about a company who had very humble beginnings, nearly closing its doors on a regular basis in its early years and then expanded beyond even the belief of its owner and board members. It is a business that is particularly good at driving a brand through every one of its employees, 133,000 and growing.

Here’s the story that you’ve also likely experienced.A long time ago, in a land far away, a young visitor to Walt Disney World left her favorite stuffed animal behind. The family called the resort and the “Mousekeeper” found the toy in the room. Rather than simply returning the lost animal, the cast member took the stuffed animal on a tour of the Magic Kingdom, snapping pictures at the attractions.

The little girl not only got a favorite companion back, but a disk full of pictures of its adventures at Disney.

I am sure that is just one customer experience retold over and over in the life of Disney. Many visitors to the park often walk away with a similar story of being treated like royalty and as a customer of this brand, I can validate these efforts as well.

“Experience” is a key word in Disney culture. According to their web site, the company is “committed to producing unparalleled entertainment experiences.” The company encourages every employee to not just think of ways to enhance the Disney experience, but to act on those ideas. It makes a difference, not just in the experience of the visitor but also of the employee.

When your employees knows what your mission is and when they know what your objectives are, it is easy to reinforce those ideas through their actions.

This leads me back to my thought on our culture here at Dyn. Expecting your people to enjoy the work day, giving them a voice, expecting them to have ideas and solutions for the entire company, both internal and external, can improve the way you operate and present the image of your company. Whether we realize it or not, every employee is an ambassador and reflection to our brand.

The Dyn culture will always be a reflection of the leadership and its contributors. In this day in age, having a remarkable work environment is, well, remarkable!

Be at the first Culture-Con on Tuesday, January 31 — an event that not only asks the question about what makes a great corporate culture, but facilitates discussion on how to implement these best practices into your own unique work environment. It will feature a keynote address from Donavon Roberson, Director of Service Innovations at OOBE and formerly Culture Evangelist at Zappos, in addition to other speakers, breakout sessions and more. Get more information and reserve your spot now.

Sender reputation is a combination of many elements. That reputation is critical to getting your messages into the inbox. So how do I get a bad or good reputation? Here’s a slew of suggestions on email content, volume, bounces, complaints and more that will give you some insight in improving your reputation or keeping it strong.

We’ll call it “The Joan Jett Law Of Email Delivery”.

Email content

There are many systematic ways for computers to determine reputation, but being relevant to the customer is hard for them to measure. Sure, Internet Service Providers (ISP) know if your recipients have read a message but do they know if they liked it? Probably not. Providing subject lines that captures the reader’s eye and content that engages the user is critical to your email campaign and your reputation.

Continually providing content that is relevant to those customers keeps them opening which only improves your reputation. Providing a conspicuous unsubscribe link and company information also helps and is a CAN-SPAM requirement.

Also be sure the message is constructed in a way that systems like. Using HTML in email messages is now a common practice, so be sure it is properly formatted and meets w3c standards. The message and envelope construction should meet IETF standards. As your messages flow through the internet, spam filters look at construction to ensure it’s correct. If it isn’t, these filters think you are trying to exploit mail reader vulnerabilities and will block the message or disable links.

Volume

ISPs closely watch where mail comes from on the Internet and how fast it they get it.  If it comes in too fast from one internet address, they may block it. If it comes in too slowly from many Internet addresses, they may block it. Volume, coupled with the architectural decisions of dedicated or shared sending IPs, can really impact your reputation.

Erratic volume can also lead to a poor reputation.  Consistency is key to a good reputation. If you have campaigns that lead to inconsistent sending, think about splitting your transactional mail away from your bulk or marketing mail.

Bounces

Bounces are caused by a number of things. Invalid email addresses cause hard bounces. Full mailboxes, out of office replies and senders marked as spam cause soft bounces.  Senders should stop sending to any hard bounced address and remove any soft bounced address from lists in a timely fashion.  Proper list hygiene is critical to prevent these bounces from ruining a senders reputation.

Complaints

Most ISP’s provide the option to mark a message as spam as sender reputation will decline as the ISP gets more complaints about a sender. It’s important for the sender to make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe, but it’s also important that they only send to recipients that asked to be sent to. A purchased list or 3rd party opt-in is the fastest way to get complaints.

Spam traps and blacklists

Companies that monitor reputation use many tools to do so. A common tool is a spam trap which can monitor senders’ habits by ensuring they are only sending to customers that have asked for these messages. Spam trap operators publish email addresses and monitor their inboxes. A hit on a spam trap means that sender used a list or email addresses that were not lawfully obtained. This can ruin a reputation quickly.

Once these monitoring companies detect bad behavior, they publish the sender’s IP address on a blacklist.  ISPs subscribe to these blacklists to more quickly identify bad senders. Keeping off a blacklist is critical to a good reputation.

Infrastructure

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Key Identified Mail (DKIM) records are critical for ISP mail servers to trust the sending servers and your complete organization’s reputation. Have they been set up and configured correctly? For more on this, check out Steve Wheeler’s recent post.

Other questions to ask:

• Are your mail servers properly secured?
• Are there forward and reverse DNS records for public facing IP addresses?
• Is there monitoring of blacklists and reputation reporting sites?
• Are other departments sending via the same infrastructure?
• Is there someone responsible for monitoring all of the above?

All of these are questions that should be asked regularly and even audited.  A failure to address any one of these infrastructure items could lead to poor reputation. If your IT staff is already overburdened, using an email delivery solution like DynECT Email Delivery can relieve you of these tasks. Dyn monitors the sending infrastructure and all of the above common pitfalls to sender reputation.  If there is a problem with infrastructure, our global support team resolves it before it affects you.

If the problem is within the senders control, our application will alert you or you’ll be contacted by our specially trained concierge team. Following these recommendations will improve your sending reputation, improve your campaign performance and keep you from violating the Joan Jett law.

We get it and when it comes to DNS & Email Delivery, we often hear the question, “How easy is it to move to Dyn?” That’s why Chris Gonyea and I are going to bring you separate posts on how it’s easy as Boston Cream Pie to move to DynECT Managed DNS and Email Delivery services.

We begin with DynECT Email Delivery and with these five steps, you’ll be sending and experiencing improved deliverability before you know it.

How do I choose a sending protocol?

DynECT Email Delivery offers various methods of integration for sending mail. The easiest for most already sending mail either internally or through another ESP is through our SMTP servers.  All you need to do is to update SMTP relay host address to smtp.dynect.com and add your DynECT username and password.

You can also use our sending API if you don’t have / choose not to send through an outgoing SMTP server.  The use of the send API makes it easier than ever to integrate transactional email into your website while maintaining bulk marketing emails through a separate system.  We have a step-by-step guide for both of these methods in our help and support documentation to make integration a breeze.

How can I determine a metrics strategy?

DynECT accounts can be customized in order to separate metrics into logical segments for your business operations.  Determine how you would like to segment your email sending and create sub-accounts and approved senders to match this strategy.  This can always be changed later once you get going, but it’s good to have a game plan going in.  A simple strategy that works for most might be:

• Sub Account – Marketing Emails
  • Sender – newsletter@domain.com
• Sub Account – Business Operations
  • Sender – transactional@domain.com
  • Sender – passwordreset@domain.com

Check out this recent post on getting the most out of email metrics for some ideas.

How do I integrate for future list management?

DynECT Email Delivery has integration options that enable the sender to integrate their business information systems with their DynECT Email Delivery accounts.

• Postback URLs — When activated, any time an email is bounced or spam complaint is received, these URLs are activated to execute any custom script on your servers you would like.  We’re still waiting for someone to integrate a Spam Complaint to a USB rocket launcher, so please let us know!
• Custom X-Headers – After established in your DynECT Email Delivery account, you can add customized x-headers to your email messages in order to better track data in opens, clicks, complaints and more!  This data can help with better list segmentation and customizing email content for your end recipients.

Beyond these integration methods, all the information in the portal including email sent, delivered, bounced, complaints, opens and clicks are available through the REST API.  This will enable you to integrate all data available into your current infrastructure with ease.

How do I setup authentication?

There are two types of authentication that are available and suggested for use with DynECT Email Delivery: SPF and DomainKeys.  An interesting thing to note here is that we suggest utilizing DomainKeys, not to be misunderstood as DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). There actually is a difference, but it’s one less thing you’ll have to worry about now once you become a DynECT Email Delivery client.

• SPF — This is a method of eliminating forged mail. ISPs check this to make sure the Dyn IP addresses sending your mail are authorized to send mail on behalf of your domain. To establish an SPF record, there is an SPF wizard that will show you the record which needs to be added to your domain’s DNS (Domain Name System) setup.

• Domain Key — Use of the domain key authentication validates the message back to the domain through the use of comparing encrypted public and private keys. To establish the domain key, there is a domain key wizard that will show you the record which needs to be added to your domain’s DNS setup.

Depending on your DNS setup, you may need to wait some time for your modified DNS records to propagate before sending.

Verify and get sending!

Now that you’ve followed these setup instructions and waited for your DNS records to propagate, you’re ready to send some test emails and verify your metrics.  Send an email, to an email account which you have access, to ensure you have the proper account setup, approved sender and authentication setup.  If there’s an issue with your message, it will appear in your DynECT account under the issues report.

Be sure to test an open and click (if you have this enabled) and if you see any issues, be sure to check your open and closing HTML and BODY tags of your email.  We also have postback test options within the DynECT account to test bounces and complaints without having to truly bounce or mark your own email as spam. Be sure to try these as well!  After verifying, you’re set to begin sending!

Next week, Chris Gonyea will bring us his five common questions about moving to DynECT Managed DNS. If you have other questions about moving your email delivery services to Dyn, please ask!

If you’ve made it through our phenomenal screening / interview process and got to me for a sit down, you’re in damn good shape but don’t drool on yourself when we actually meet up.

I’m literally just looking for two things from those sitting across of me: fit and hustle. Will you match the brand and culture and will you work your a$$ off to achieve big things? (Yes, those dollar signs are on purpose.)

When it comes to building yourself up and living the life here every day as an accessible human and real brand that people can relate to, it’s imperative that you carefully recruit and hire people who 100% buy in to the ideals and vision of the company and its fabric, another word for roots.

When it comes to sales and client services especially, you simply can’t miss or waver for a second on your core straightforward, no BS relationship-driven principles when it comes to interacting with customers and potential ones.

The Dyn Difference

Just yesterday, I saw some tweets where a DNS competitor apologized to its customers but not for the downtime caused by a tough DDoS they experienced two weeks back. Rather, they said they were sorry for the fact their downtime may have caused other companies’ representatives to reach out and offer support for a better commitment to uptime.

A hardcore sales and brand leader from any other company might have freaked out and lashed out on the team, but not here at Dyn. We don’t take any provider’s online battle against attacks lightly and we hate that DDoS attacks are becoming more prevalent, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t offer out a hand and work diligently to intro new clients to our services.

So why am I not upset? Because I personally meet and interview every single hire we make who reps our brand. I know the people we bring aboard are filled with honesty, passion, persistence and overall integrity. I know that because these representatives care and believe so much in what we do and what Dyn is all about, they are simply spreading the love and looking to grow the Dyn family. It’s not a knock on the competition at all. They shouldn’t even be discussed by our team. They are faceless opponents.

To further our commitment, we aren’t just competitive; we actively seek to collaborate with all players, larger and smaller. As many of you know, we coordinate DNS & Email industry insider events with last year’s DNS event Inside Baseball hosted at Infoblox. Typically, the folks who have any issue with these so called “ambulance chasing” activities are the people who never truly engage in the collaboration anyway. It’s ironic and a shame.

So at the end of the day, what am I supposed to do? Get mad at a little “fit and hustle?” Nah, that would make me a bad leader, a hypocrite and our company a disconnected one when it comes to our number one responsibility: Uptime is the Bottom Line.

Here is what we’re looking for across the pond. Be the next person to jump aboard the Dyn freight train (or the Tube!)

Senior System Administrator

You’re a big part of the group responsible for keeping our global IP Anycast network available and performing to our high standards. How’s that for a task? You’re going to take lead in running system deployment activities, provide consultation to engineering staff and other teams on network and system architecture, train and mentor Junior System Administrators and provide support for escalated issues.

Some of the required skills are a B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and/or a related field or with alternatively suitable prior experience, a deep understanding of networks and how the Internet works, the ability to support, troubleshoot, repair, and build distributed, fault tolerant systems and more. This position has a direct report to our Manchester, NH, headquarters.

Junior System Administrator

This person will also be responsible for helping to keep our network up and fast with key responsibilities including deploying new systems to production, upgrading existing deployments to handle additional load and addressing potential security issues. You’ll also manage vendor maintenance events and debug complex network and system troubles.

We want someone that has a B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and/or a related field or with alternatively suitable prior experience, a deep understanding of networks and the Internet works and the ability to support, troubleshoot, repair and build distributed, fault tolerant systems. This position has a direct report to our Manchester, NH, headquarters.

Inside and Outside Sales Representatives

These roles are big-time customer advocates that are responsible for incoming and outgoing sales activities. You get to help the most interesting web properties on the Internet navigate how to stay up, get email delivered and how to scale. You’ll help with marketing efforts, traveling to visit customers and representing Dyn at trade shows — all in a fast-paced and competitive environment.

We look for those who have a business degree and between two-to-five years of sales experience. If you have a tech/Internet background, previous experience at a telco or ISP and like to do some traveling, even better. Keep in mind that your interview will be your sales pitch and these positions report to a UK-based director.

Implementation Specialist

Being a part of this group means you’re on the front lines of helping some of our biggest and best clients: our primary technical resource for our expanding global sales team. As the key technical advisers and product advocates, Implementation Specialists are in charge of actively driving and managing the technology evaluation stage of the sales process.

You should be able to articulate technology/product capabilities to either existing clients or prospects that come from a variety of backgrounds (in other words, patience and communication are key!). You’ll identify, track and resolve all technical requirements/issues to assure complete customer satisfaction throughout the sales process. You’ll also help develop and deliver product demos to prospects and rep the Dyn brand at conferences, seminars and more.

To get more details on any of these positions or to submit a resume with a little extra info about you, email us now and be sure to reference ‘UK position’ in the subject line. In the past year, Dyn doubled in size and more positions are on the way in 2012. If you’re talented, qualified and sick of your current situation, can you afford to not send in your resume to us and reinvigorate your life and career?