
The End of an Era for EasyDNS - StuntPope
https://easydns.com/blog/2019/05/23/the-end-of-an-era-for-easydns/
======
MR4D
If more companies (tech as well as others) made decisions like this, we’d all
be better off.

This should be a textbook case of good management and taught all over the
place.

~~~
petercooper
We floated this idea at our company and people were against it. A lot of
people seem to like the predictability of coming to the same place every day
and hanging out with the same people every day ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Instead, we now allow working from home whenever anyone wants to - some people
do it frequently, some don't. So maybe asking the question is good, but I'm
not sure everyone would like it if such a move were mandated.

~~~
JohnFen
I greatly prefer working in an office over working from home, personally. If I
were job-hunting, a company being remote-only would count as a tick in the
minus column for me.

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theshrike79
tl;dr: EasyDNS is going full remote only and doesn't have an office any more.

~~~
stock_toaster
> A couple days later the landlord came back, standing firm on 5-year
> extension, plus an across the board rental increase of about 8%, plus a
> baked-in annual increase of 6%, plus an additional levy for a new HVAC
> system on the roof.

Yikes. Sounds like great timing too.

~~~
jt2190
This was the most interesting data point to me, and was an interesting
counterpoint to easyDNS's realization that they were essentially a remote-
employee only company. It also made me realize that "the cloud" isn't just a
place where software goes, but where _organizations_ can now go. (This is
probably glaringly obvious to many others, but I'd never really thought of the
cloud this way.)

~~~
sixdimensional
Virtual organizations [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_organization)

------
burtonator
This happened to my company in SF.. we got kicked out because of eminent
domain for the new Transbay Terminal ...

We never ended up going back to offices after that.

------
wallflower
> plus a baked-in annual increase of 6%

Raising the rent annually on a multi-year lease. That is one lasting way that
an investor can make money in a low or zero-interest rate (ZIR) economic
environment.

~~~
raverbashing
Except, as several landlords are learning right now, there's no money without
a tenant, and not every tenant fits in every place, and not every empty space
gets a tenant who's willing to pay the rent being asked. And in residential
places: a good tenant that pays less might be more lucrative than a bad tenant
that "pays more"

------
miles
Mark and easyDNS are such a breath of fresh air in the registrar business. If
you’re not a customer already, you owe it to yourself to become one.

------
foliovision
If you're not on Mark's newsletter, Weekly Axis Of Easy, you owe it to
yourself to subscribe. It's funny, to the point, covers most of the really
important tech news with a focus on infrastructure and privacy and is pretty
much a commercial-free zone. Microsoft Certified and NSA coneheads might not
like it much (but hey Edward S. was an NSA conehead for a long time so there's
some smart and good people even there).

Home office: I like it for myself but many of our staff would hate it. I also
like to have in person meetings at least a couple of times/week with major
collaborators where we can site together and look at a screen together and
have eye contact and read more subtle signals.

------
Causality1
>In other words, we have to do business the old fashioned way — at a profit.

It's a little sad how refreshing that is to hear.

------
lifeisstillgood
>>> The next recession will be global and it is going to be brutal.

not scared at all ...

but he does have a point ...

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shay_ker
Hm. It didn't occur to me until I saw the mailing address posted, but how do
fully remote companies handle incoming mail?

~~~
darrin
UPS Store or a Fedex equivalent. Looks like their address is a FedEx location.

~~~
shay_ker
Who receives & handles all the mail though? FedEx does?

~~~
ghshephard
Yup. And as a bonus, they'll throw out all the junk mail. Also, if you travel
a lot, or often relocate overseas, for a very reasonable rate they'll bulk
mail you everything on whatever frequency you would like.

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larrydag
I find it ironic that this is an article about someone who works remotely is
surprised that everyone else works remotely.

~~~
awinder
I don't think the author is working remotely, he talks about reclaiming 2
hours of his day currently spent commuting.

~~~
rconti
I don't know, he kept saying he talks daily with someone who lives an hour
away, and was constantly assuming that person was in the office.

~~~
larkost
I just assume that he meant something like "text-chatted over Slack" when he
wrote that. It is a perennial surprise to me that many developers will send an
electronic message of some sort even to people that they literally sit next
to.

~~~
ClassyJacket
I do that. The point isn't to avoid speaking, it's to avoid interrupting them.

~~~
JohnFen
This. I send chat messages to the engineers right next to me except when
something's really urgent. It's bad to interrupt another engineer's flow
unnecessarily.

------
gtirloni
I'm more interested in the comment about the next financial crisis. When is it
due?

~~~
paradox1234
According to Zerohedge, since about 2014

~~~
__jal
And their accuracy remains.. let's say "unchallenged".

~~~
raverbashing
It's easy being "accurate" when everybody else is a "liberal snowflake"

------
tenaz
I don't stop listening to the advantages of remote work. But it also has its
problem, how everything... Why is nobody talking about it?

------
cfarm
I wonder how their customers reacted to this, especially as a b2b company.

~~~
ShakataGaNai
I'd wager few customer companies care. They're a leader in DNS features, which
if this is something you care about as a company (customer) then you're
probably up on the high-tech trends. A lot of those same companies are also
embracing remote work in some way/shape/form. Also customers appreciate when
their vendors DON'T go out of business - saving money on rent helps keep
things going.

For many tech jobs, a remote workforce is a benefit. Technical Operations
staff distributed? Great, it means someone is more likely to be awake and
monitoring things - heck of a lot faster response time then the ol "It's 3am
and the pager just went off, I'm groggy, where's my laptop, what's going on?".

~~~
cfarm
Totally get the logic, just wondering if customers would feel weird if a
company they worked with didn't have an "office".

~~~
viraptor
The only case I can think of that matters is support/sales calls. If their
phone staff does not have dedicated office space at home, it's a bit hard to
organise. You can have at least small dividers in the office so that the
background noise you hear over the phone is other calls, mostly quiet. I think
it would be a different experience if I was handling incoming calls - even
with a dedicated office room, I'd get anything like a bus passing by,
lawnmowers, cats screaming to go out, rain on metal roof, etc.

------
unexpected
man the headline made me nervous - thought this was going to be another "we're
shutting down" post!

~~~
c5karl
I had a similar but even worse thought: I assumed they were selling out to
GoDaddy.

~~~
monkeywork
Pretty sure if they were ever going to sell it would likely be to tucows

~~~
indolering
Mark would _never_ sell to GoDaddy!

