I was wondering,

How do hosts find their staff? Most of them start out small I figure and then, hopefully, they grow a little.

Does anyone know? I would imagine a lot of staff is getting employed by contacts, some guy knows this other guy and then gets them hooked up.

Really big hosts would have a greater demand and post adds and such on jobs sites. I am really just guessing here. What do you hosts have to say? Is it hard to find ppl to hire?

Jes



[This message has been edited by Taxibear (edited 07-10-2000).]

In my experience, finding staff is not difficult. However, finding *qualified*, *knowledgable* staff is next to impossible.

Technical staff is fairly easy, though expensive, to acquire - SysAdmin-types usually can be found through various online job search sites (like Monster.com or HotJobs.com) without too much trouble. The hard staff to find, IMO, is sales people - because most people who know the internet are not trained in sales, and most people who have experience in sales know almost nothing about the internet.

The best way to find staff is to find another web host that already has qualified staff and buy that web host. But since most of us (myself included) don't have the available money to go around buying web hosts all the time, staffing is very difficult.

Add to that the fact that the unemployment rate is so low right now (around 5% nationally, but some areas, like here in Massachusetts, we're at 2%!) that even if you find a qualified applicant you probably can't afford to hire them.

And that's why owners of small web hosting companies put in 70 to 80 hour weeks :-)

Good luck,

Jason

------------------
Jason Ellis, CEO
Hosting Solutions, Inc.
www.windowswebhost.com (http://www.windowswebhost.com)
Now offering Fully Managed Servers!

Jason,

Out of curiosity, what's the going rate for tech staff over there? I'm half way around the world, so don't even ask if I want to join up (I'd love to, but I'm studying)

BC,

The going rate varies a bit. It depends on if your a part timer or a full timer , first level support, sysadmin and so forth.

The pay ranges for full time starting @ a low end tech @ about LOWEST 20-30,000 a year and highest is well as high as a company wants to pay.

I've seen some sysadmins take lower paying jobs with contracts stating when the company grows to be able to pay them more they get raises and so forth :).

Of course Jason is right, I love these 18 hour work days LOL.



------------------
Sincerely~
Daniel Pearson
UltraSpeed USA
http://www.ultraspeedusa.com
AIM: UltraSpeedUSA
ICQ: 7021831
Email: dpearson@ultraspeedusa.com
Phone: 1-205-785-1872

I've found it more difficult to find technical support actually.

In my experience, if they are *qualified* to answer the more technical questions, they would rather be programming than answering emails all day. Most people with enough knowledge to answer the questions want the pay of a programmer. And those content with answering emails usually do not have enough knowledge. It's a real catch22 situation :(

The end result is often times hosts with "incompetent" technical support as it is tough to pay a programmer's wage to someone who will answer 50 "how do I FTP" questions just so they can be there when the real technical question arises. The other kicker is that the tech support team is just as much the sales team as the sales team is. Someone who is truly qualified to handle the tech support box is a very special person!!

When you find the "Fountain of Technical Support" let me know :)

Deb

well Deb, You can allways do as I do.

Don't have a sales department, the UltraSpeed techs and myself do it all. Were not necessarly one thing. One day were a tech, another day were programming something and the next were answering emails and then re-compiling a kernel heh.

I think tech's make excellent sales people because to sell something you *MUST* understand the product you sell. :) :)



------------------
Sincerely~
Daniel Pearson
UltraSpeed USA
http://www.ultraspeedusa.com
AIM: UltraSpeedUSA
ICQ: 7021831
Email: dpearson@ultraspeedusa.com
Phone: 1-205-785-1872

Deb and Daniel,

Thanks for the responses. It was exactly as I thought and I guess the situation over there in the US is the same as over here (in Australia), just on a more exaggerated scale.

What Deb says about tech support ppl wanting to program is quite true. I used to do tech support for my current company (before I upgraded) and I got so sick of dealing with customers' unending lists of questions, trying to plug my company (when I'm not even a salesman - I'm too honest! :D), while remaining responsible for maintaining most of the comps in the workplace (all on a low salary) that I was *demanding* to be upgraded. I deem myself pretty competent in handling tech enquiries et. al., but I'd really rather be doing the frontend/backend programming or doing pure network/sysadmin stuff that I love doing for three times the salary as compared to tech support.

Oh well.......

Don't have a sales department, That's how we survived for the first two years :) Recently the *best* thing I ever did was streamline "Sales@" and "Support@" together into one simple "Sevice@" box. It's simple for the site owners to have one place of contact and for the entire FQ team to take on any/all they can from one location....

Deb

Thanks guys!

Interesting stuff this. Over here in Sweden hosts are still very small and few in numbers. There are still lots that are run on a freelance basis, someone doing hosting on a dedicated US server in their spare time. This of course effects the quality of service (not QoS ;)) and support, which is why I host from companies actually situated in the US.

You all talk about finding the right people to reply to support mails. What are asked of these then? I understand there are different levels, depending on the persons skill.

Jes

[This message has been edited by Taxibear (edited 07-11-2000).]

I agree with Deb that tech support staff is difficult to find. My point was that tech people (i.e. SysAdmins and programmers) are easy to get - but SysAdmins and programmers do *not* want to sit and answer e-mail for 8 hours a day. And I think when I said "sales" staff, I really meant "customer service" staff (if you look at our web site, you'll see we don't list any sales people - just customer service), which would include tech support. I guess I should have been more clear.

BC, as far as the going rate, that varies. I can get part-time workers out of local schools (high school and 2-year colleges) for $6 to $7 an hour, but the hours they can work are very limited. Their knowledge is pretty good, though, since they are working with computers constantly in school.

But to get a full-time staffmember with enough knowledge and experience, Dan is right - $20K to $30K is about the absolute minimum.

As for SysAdmins and programmers - $50K and up is where they generally run (though you can sometimes luck out, as Dan indicated).

Thanks,

Jason

------------------
Jason Ellis, CEO
Hosting Solutions, Inc.
www.windowswebhost.com (http://www.windowswebhost.com)
Now offering Fully Managed Servers!