# BlueVM and the great labor rights of exploiting labor



## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

So from that other world of IRC....  BlueVM's IRC...


<DanielI> I'm babysitting s12-ca
<newbie55> Daniell: Since this is the 4th outage in a month, I'm about to leave this service anyway 
<newbie55> no offense, just the facts.
<newbie55> you can forward it to management as well, they need to give you a raise
<newbie55> 
<DanielI> I work here for free
<DanielI> I don't consider it secret: P

What do we learn?  BlueVM has "volunteer" free labor.   Very strange staffing practices.

Can I volunteer?


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## serverian (Mar 1, 2014)

What happens on IRC, stays on IRC.


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## sv01 (Mar 1, 2014)

I'm glad, I cancel my service with them this month


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## DomainBop (Mar 1, 2014)

> BlueVM has "volunteer" free labor.   Very strange staffing practices.



The use of inexperienced staff (my idea of "experienced" differs greatly from the typical LEB host who thinks 1-2 years is "experienced"  ) probably partially explains the frequency of "my bluevm server is down" threads on forums over the past 1+ years.



> What happens on IRC, stays on IRC.


_"No IRC is an island"_  -famous quote from English poet John Donne's  Meditation XVII, published in 1624.


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## Mun (Mar 1, 2014)

He isn't staff from the last time I remember, I think he was like me, just a helper who kept things calm.

Mun


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## EMayes1991 (Mar 1, 2014)

These problems occurred because of this, even if they have been resolved, I think its safe to say that I will terminate my services too. It's just wrong to have free and unsupervised labor accessing your servers with access to all the customers private data...

http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/22680/bluevm-s9-il-down
http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/22684/bluevm-offline-all-nodes-offline

https://bluevm.com/about.php shows multiple people, I imagine they are getting free labor from all of them.

GVH and BlueVM seem to be proud to have so many employee even with such poor quality and low pay. Re-occurring theme here.


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## BlueVM (Mar 1, 2014)

@drmike - We have interns and volunteers because it makes it easier to manage some of our hours. Virtually every LEB/LET host has at least one volunteer or has had a volunteer at some point in time.


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 1, 2014)

Mun said:


> He isn't staff from the last time I remember, I think he was like me, just a helper who kept things calm.
> 
> Mun


He's been staff for quite a while. With access to WHMCS and Feathur and the like.


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

serverian said:


> What happens on IRC, stays on IRC.


I didn't get the memo.


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## wlanboy (Mar 1, 2014)

EMayes1991 said:


> ...





drmike said:


> ...


I asked Johnston - his reply:


```
<~Johnston> DanielI has an NDA
<~Johnston> I'd be stupid not to NDA everyone I work with
```


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> The use of inexperienced staff (my idea of "experienced" differs greatly from the typical LEB host who thinks 1-2 years is "experienced"  ) probably partially explains the frequency of "my bluevm server is down" threads on forums over the past 1+ years.


As always, I likely have socks older than the average "employee", "helper", "free labor", et. al. in these companies.

1-2 years is something, short of an associates degree in reality.   Even if a fast learner, I never understand how many of these folks balance their education with such long work hours.... Especially when doing it for ahh, free.

Real companies don't pull these rackets.  Even the interns are paid a stipend.


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

DanielI --- who in the heck is this fellow?






Jan 20 --- <DanielI> colocrossing
Jan 20 --- <DanielI> so glad i kinda "left" there
But the lol one was....








Jan 08 --- <DanielI> worked for ovh
Jan 08 --- <DanielI> kinda stepped down though
Jan 08 --- <DanielI> they just call me on hard cases
So some fellow works for free.  He previously worked for CC, but ahh "kinda" left there?

And, superman is OVH's secret weapon, they only call out when the mere mortals at OVH can't deal with the situation....

Ho hum.... I need popcorn...

Maybe he's not working for free actually... Maybe someone else just  paying him...  Or he's one of those Indians lurking in the CVPS/CC world. Outsourced workforce for the price of a Big Mac.


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## wlanboy (Mar 1, 2014)

drmike said:


> Especially when doing it for ahh, free.


There are always jobs that have a zero price tag .. but in reality there is some form of kick back.

I know a lot of people that work for free during studies at a university and got back with a free MacBook or servers hosted for free.


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

and...

https://bluevm.com/about.php

That doesn't reflect this fellow or reality.  

Ishaq left, ahh how long ago?  He's two jobs removed.

This sounds like our guy:

http://no.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-isaksen/3b/a71/177


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## MannDude (Mar 1, 2014)

drmike said:


> and...
> 
> https://bluevm.com/about.php
> 
> ...


Ishaq was a BlueVM volunteer I believe. When I had services with x4b for a month I noted him responding to my tickets, looks like he's working for Arvixe now. Arvixe, when I worked for them years ago paid pretty darn well and I am sure Ishaq did not enter as L1 drone like I did, so I would expect his compensation with them to be quite decent. I got a dollar an hour raise after like a month too, which was quite nice. They seem to reward you financially frequently. Any amount of time you work beyond 8 hours in a *day* is billed at 1.5X your normal rate so there is great incentive to work more than 8 hours a day, if you wish. It's a good and busy company. I love how they handle overtime as most places only dish out overtime pay for any hours worked beyond 40 in one work week. For example, if you only worked 12 hours a week for them and it was done in one day, 4 of those hours you'd be paid time and a half. To those of you who work in the lowend VPS industry, _Overtime_ is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. This may be a foreign concept to you... 

Just don't miss work like I did... (long story)

Lot of lowend based hosts pay shit or don't pay at all. It's not greed, it's just the only real way to remain sustainable long term. Lot of these companies do *no* planning what so ever so when extra help is _needed_ they can't realistically afford to pay. That's why most have one or two paid employees and then either outsource to India or share teen employees with other companies. (Kind of like how Rallias and others work for several companies under alliases).

The low-end industry, from an employee's point of view, is only good to get enough experience so that you can dump it for a regular M-F 9AM - 5PM type job. Clock in, work, then clock out. You don't have to worry about work until the next day. It's quite nice 

EDIT: Not knocking BlueVM, just knocking the lowend industry as a whole. There may be a few exceptions, but generally speaking, it's not the best industry for fair compensation for the amount of hours worked and as companies grow, their staff does not grow proportionally to accommodate more customers.


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## Francisco (Mar 1, 2014)

Volunteers are an easy way to get to the 100+ years of experience!

The only volunteers we have are on IRC. Anyone with access to anything important is on payroll.

Francisco


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

MannDude being all funny and talking about people getting paid for work.. hahaha next thing he'll want unionization for wage slaves.

Lowend is all about scale and beating the staff with that scale.  

Meh, I expect better out of the big names in the segment.  Call me silly.  If you own something, I expect dedication and never ending hours. Beyond that, other humans / workers need resources for their life.  Unreasonable to think otherwise, unless they live at home with mommy and daddy and have like 16 years of breathing experience.


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## ChrisM (Mar 1, 2014)

MannDude said:


> EDIT: Not knocking BlueVM, just knocking the lowend industry as a whole. There may be a few exceptions, but generally speaking, it's not the best industry for fair compensation for the amount of hours worked and as companies grow, their staff does not grow proportionally to accommodate more customers.


You worked long hours for me when I owned URPad and I am thankful for that. Which I tried my best to compensate with Vegas trips and Tropical vacations.


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## trewq (Mar 1, 2014)

It's sad that people think their time is worth nothing.


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## Francisco (Mar 1, 2014)

Chris Miller said:


> You worked long hours for me when I owned URPad and I am thankful for that. Which I tried my best to compensate with Vegas trips and Tropical vacations.


I don't think he's knocking you on that, but I think we can both agree on what he's saying.

When you're only making $100/month profit per node (many aren't doing that), you're talking about having to have

a lot of nodes to have some bank roll, cover some sort of wages, & cover yourself.

It's the crutch of the budget markets. Burstnet is going through a rough patch right now with having to raise some

prices as well as the whole Dallas crap. I'm sure if they weren't charging pennies for bandwidth that they would

have simply eaten the price hike (assuming the Dallas issue was a billing dispute) and just renegotiated later.

I'm all for giving a good deal to the customer but where is a provider going to have their OHSHIT fund?

Francisco


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## MannDude (Mar 1, 2014)

Chris Miller said:


> You worked long hours for me when I owned URPad and I am thankful for that. Which I tried my best to compensate with Vegas trips and Tropical vacations.


True... but I worked 7 days a week from wake up to lights out. It was rough but I can't say I didn't enjoy getting out of dodge and going to the Bahamas and stuff. But even then, we still buckled down and did about 4-6 hours of work daily and doing tickets.  (okay maybe one or two hours)

Compensation wise... it wasn't that bad. But it's rare in the industry for a company in the lowend market to be able to provide for _many_ people, especially like that. Certainly appreciative of being able to go on work-vacations, one benefit of the industry is you can work remotely anywhere in the world with a stable internet connection.

Then again I supposedly get 3 weeks of vacation time a year from my existing job but I have to pay for the flight myself... Haha.


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## ChrisM (Mar 1, 2014)

Francisco said:


> I don't think he's knocking you on that, but I think we can both agree on what he's saying.
> 
> 
> When you're only making $100/month profit per node (many aren't doing that), you're talking about having to have
> ...


Oh I know he's not knocking me, I was just throwing out some compensation idea's.

As for the "Oh shit fund" as an example of that is I always had 6 month total disaster fund which covered every aspect of the business and grew when we expanded. 



MannDude said:


> True... but I worked 7 days a week from wake up to lights out. It was rough but I can't say I didn't enjoy getting out of dodge and going to the Bahamas and stuff. But even then, we still buckled down and did about 4-6 hours of work daily and doing tickets.  (okay maybe one or two hours)
> 
> Compensation wise... it wasn't that bad. But it's rare in the industry for a company in the lowend market to be able to provide for _many_ people, especially like that. Certainly appreciative of being able to go on work-vacations, one benefit of the industry is you can work remotely anywhere in the world with a stable internet connection.
> 
> Then again I supposedly get 3 weeks of vacation time a year from my existing job but I have to pay for the flight myself... Haha.



Haha yeah. We could have done without the Ddos attacks and hardware failures.


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

Dang man, it's a BlueVM Saturday... not for any good reason...

*May 2012 – January 2014: BlueVM Communications LLC.
Responsible for ensuring availability and security for 30+ servers distributed across 8 distinct locations*

So there we have it..  30+ real servers at BlueVM....


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 1, 2014)

drmike said:


> Dang man, it's a BlueVM Saturday... not for any good reason...
> 
> *May 2012 – January 2014: BlueVM Communications LLC.*
> 
> ...


Hm, that is interesting. @BlueVM had said they had around 90-120 servers/nodes if I recall correctly...

Where did you source this?


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

WebSearchingPro said:


> Hm, that is interesting. @BlueVM had said they had around 90-120 servers/nodes if I recall correctly...
> 
> Where did you source this?


My good friend Rallias.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y0fGEJEsLo708gTflFPrD8TPkX6u1hQUXjlEOxIyGI0/edit?usp=sharing

*Personal Email - Professional Email - Resume - Available for services setup (website, vps node)*

Noticed it via his current thread:

"Slabbing 4 Dummies (really semi-experts, but who's counting?)"


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## MartinD (Mar 1, 2014)

Did he agree to having his personal information being splashed on the forum?


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 1, 2014)

MartinD said:


> Did he agree to having his personal information being splashed on the forum?


I checked out that slabbing link (I thought he was joking when me mentioned it) 

http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/22701/slabbing-4-dummies-really-semi-experts-but-who-s-counting#latest

The resume is in the sig it seems.


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## MannDude (Mar 1, 2014)

MartinD said:


> Did he agree to having his personal information being splashed on the forum?



Was my concern too but Rallias has the link to his resume in his LET signature.


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## Francisco (Mar 1, 2014)

Chris Miller said:


> Oh I know he's not knocking me, I was just throwing out some compensation idea's.
> 
> As for the "Oh shit fund" as an example of that is I always had 6 month total disaster fund which covered every aspect of the business and grew when we expanded.
> 
> Haha yeah. We could have done without the Ddos attacks and hardware failures.


Then you were smart in how you operated.

So few hosts have any sort of exit plan or float incase slow months/issues come up.

Francisco


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## ChrisM (Mar 1, 2014)

Francisco said:


> Then you were smart in how you operated.
> 
> 
> So few hosts have any sort of exit plan or float incase slow months/issues come up.
> ...


Thanks! 

I have to agree on that, almost a couple times of the month you see hosts that have issues such as a hack or their DataCenter shoving them out the door. Dropping off the face of the earth because they have no way to rebuild. Which could have been prevented with the proper planning mainly in the financial department.


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## Francisco (Mar 1, 2014)

Chris Miller said:


> Thanks!
> 
> I have to agree on that, almost a couple times of the month you see hosts that have issues such as a hack or their DataCenter shoving them out the door. Dropping off the face of the earth because they have no way to rebuild. Which could have been prevented with the proper planning mainly in the financial department.


We're going way off topic so if the mods want to split this into something else go for it.


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## DomainBop (Mar 1, 2014)

> I have to agree on that, almost a couple times of the month you see hosts that have issues such as a hack or their DataCenter shoving them out the door. Dropping off the face of the earth because they have no way to rebuild. Which could have been prevented with the proper planning mainly in the financial department.


The average child low end startup host who rents a server from DataShack/ColoCrossing/etc and a copy of Solus/WHMCS is completely lacking in any business experience and has a business plan that consists of little more than "rent cheap server and Solus, post offer on LET/WHT, make money" (which is why one of my favorite links to post on LET was always this one --> http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/starting-business/how-write-business-plan )


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## KuJoe (Mar 1, 2014)

I get offers all of the time for people who want to volunteer at SD for free just to get the experience. Currently all 2 of us at SD are volunteers who put in at least 40 hours a week, but we don't mind because the money we could be getting paid is being used to build the company so we're happy going 3+ years without compensation because we're more concerned with building the company for the future than making money.


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## drmike (Mar 1, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> I get offers all of the time for people who want to volunteer at SD for free just to get the experience. Currently all 2 of us at SD are volunteers who put in at least 40 hours a week, but we don't mind because the money we could be getting paid is being used to build the company so we're happy going 3+ years without compensation because we're more concerned with building the company for the future than making money.


Well I am cool with that, you and other person ideally are partners in the business and that's how it works.

Really unrealistic covering 24/7/365 with 4 people.  With 2 people, meh, impossible for more than fits here and there.

Makes me feel better about SecureDragon, knowing there aren't juvenile delinquents running around pilfering things and shopping in my data.


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## Nick_A (Mar 1, 2014)

Yeah definitely not letting volunteers into WHMCS.


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## SPINIKR-RO (Mar 1, 2014)

Nick_A said:


> Yeah definitely not letting volunteers into WHMCS.


^

Specially seeing the staff priv escalations found in several bill platforms recently thanks to Rack911.


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## DomainBop (Mar 1, 2014)

drmike said:


> Makes me feel better about SecureDragon, knowing there aren't juvenile delinquents running around pilfering things and shopping in my data.


If you're worried about juvenile delinquents then you should avoid buying from any New York State businesses.  Since 2009 NY law has required my company to hire convicted ax murderers (if the job doesn't entail handling axes) because not hiring them would be a violation of their human rights. 

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/COR/23-A/752 "Unfair discrimination against persons previously convicted of one or more criminal offenses prohibited"

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/COR/23-A "Licensure And Employment Of Persons Previously Convicted Of One Or More Criminal Offenses"

edited to add: Thankfully there is a nice brightly colored guide to help employers comply with the law.  

http://www.jobsfirstnyc.org/docs/Article_23A_Hiring_Guide__111711.pdf


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## raindog308 (Mar 2, 2014)

BlueVM said:


> @drmike - We have interns and volunteers because it makes it easier to manage some of our hours. Virtually every LEB/LET host has at least one volunteer or has had a volunteer at some point in time.


I can think of at least three high-quality LEB providers off the top of my head where this is not true.


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## raindog308 (Mar 2, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> I get offers all of the time for people who want to volunteer at SD for free just to get the experience. Currently all 2 of us at SD are volunteers who put in at least 40 hours a week, but we don't mind because the money we could be getting paid is being used to build the company so we're happy going 3+ years without compensation because we're more concerned with building the company for the future than making money.


Yeah, SD, BuyVM, and Hostigation were the three I was thinking of.


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## Coastercraze (Mar 2, 2014)

Chris Miller said:


> Oh I know he's not knocking me, I was just throwing out some compensation idea's.
> 
> As for the "Oh shit fund" as an example of that is I always had 6 month total disaster fund which covered every aspect of the business and grew when we expanded.
> 
> Haha yeah. We could have done without the Ddos attacks and hardware failures.


A must have for any serious host. Always have a backup fund and of course an exit strategy.

As for volunteers, well I currently volunteer in my business mainly because I would rather see it grow. I do pay everyone else, however.


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## Enterprisevpssolutions (Mar 2, 2014)

drmike said:


> As always, I likely have socks older than the average "employee", "helper", "free labor", et. al. in these companies.
> 
> 1-2 years is something, short of an associates degree in reality.   Even if a fast learner, I never understand how many of these folks balance their education with such long work hours.... Especially when doing it for ahh, free.
> 
> Real companies don't pull these rackets.  Even the interns are paid a stipend.


Those are some old socks LOL  opcorn:  I need a good laugh sometimes.


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## Ishaq (Mar 2, 2014)

Aha, another BlueVM thread. Sweet!

Yes, I did leave or 'step down' as manager. However I was never a volunteer and received a 3 figured sum every few weeks.

I'm now on hourly pay at Arvixe.


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 2, 2014)

Ishaq said:


> [..]  However I was never a volunteer and received a 3 figured sum every few weeks.
> 
> I'm now on hourly pay at Arvixe.


For the amount of work you did it should have be a good 4 figures. At least you found a more suitable arrangement


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## TheHackBox (Mar 2, 2014)

Well, time for a little bit of opinion from me. I personally like BlueVM as they provide decent service with a decent price tag. However, I am a bit leery about having a volunteer have access to Feathur or WHMCS. I know that Justin gives everyone a NDA but still I think there is potential for someone to do bad.


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## raindog308 (Mar 2, 2014)

TheHackBox said:


> Well, time for a little bit of opinion from me. I personally like BlueVM as they provide decent service with a decent price tag. However, I am a bit leery about having a volunteer have access to Feathur or WHMCS. I know that Justin gives everyone a NDA but still I think there is potential for someone to do bad.


Now take that unease and multiply it by "some of our staff are teenagers" and you have Green Value Host.


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## yolo (Mar 2, 2014)

Im the owner of a rather large company but I don't pay myself so am I a volunteer?


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 2, 2014)

yolo said:


> Im the owner of a rather large company but I don't pay myself so am I a volunteer?


Yes, be sure you have an NDA with yourself!


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## ChrisM (Mar 2, 2014)

Francisco said:


> We're going way off topic so if the mods want to split this into something else go for it.


Agreed. This is no longer about <Insert VPS company here>


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## HaitiBrother (Mar 2, 2014)

yolo said:


> Im the owner of a rather large company but I don't pay myself so am I a volunteer?


Summerhosts, sums it up in one word.


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## mitsuhashi (Mar 2, 2014)

yolo said:


> Im the owner of a rather large company but I don't pay myself so am I a volunteer?


Nah, but if you're buying groceries with company money, you are asking for problems.


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## MannDude (Mar 2, 2014)

yolo said:


> Im the owner of a rather large company but I don't pay myself so am I a volunteer?


What is 'large'? The only large company I know of in the VPS industry would be, like, Burst.NET.


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## DomainBop (Mar 2, 2014)

MannDude said:


> What is 'large'? The only large company I know of in the VPS industry would be, like, Burst.NET.


Duh! The provider in my signature link controls over 50% of the market! (and they've accomplished it despite having their latest shilled offer pulled from SlickDeals last week and their URL permanently banned from SD a few days ago) 

Puts on serious face: DigitalOcean is in the VPS industry and would definitely qualify as big now.  Even my favorite cloud provider CloudVPS would be considered big next to the average LEB "giant" (they have 22 employees on payroll working in their office...not contractors/volunteers reporting to a kid in his parent's basement)


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## raindog308 (Mar 3, 2014)

Linode has 50+ employees.


Many big players (e.g. Verio) that may sell jillions of VPSes but do many other things.


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## peterw (Mar 3, 2014)

TheHackBox said:


> Well, time for a little bit of opinion from me. I personally like BlueVM as they provide decent service with a decent price tag. However, I am a bit leery about having a volunteer have access to Feathur or WHMCS. I know that Justin gives everyone a NDA but still I think there is potential for someone to do bad.


This can happen with paid people too. Priority ability for a boss is knowledge of human nature.


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## HaitiBrother (Mar 3, 2014)

So, am I just missing something? What is wrong with people volunteering their time to a company? If they want to volunteer, let them.


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## SPINIKR-RO (Mar 3, 2014)

Theres a difference between a nonpay 'intern' and a volunteer/intern who puts in more time that they should.

Lawsuit waiting to happen claiming they were a employee. Plus why the eff would you trust a non employee with your assets.


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## DomainBop (Mar 3, 2014)

SPINIKR-RO said:


> Theres a difference between a nonpay 'intern' and a volunteer/intern who *puts in more time that they should.*
> 
> Lawsuit waiting to happen claiming they were a employee. Plus why the eff would you trust a non employee with your assets.


Lawsuits from unpaid interns/volunteers are a concern, but in the case of individuals who work as paid contractors the IRS is also a concern because the IRS has a fuzzy dividing line between what it considers an independent contractor and an employee.  If a contractor works exclusively for one company and is putting in 30-40 hour work weeks for that company there is a chance the IRS will consider that contractor an employee and nail the company for not withholding payroll taxes.


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## drmike (Mar 3, 2014)

SPINIKR-RO said:


> Theres a difference between a nonpay 'intern' and a volunteer/intern who puts in more time that they should.
> 
> Lawsuit waiting to happen claiming they were a employee. Plus why the eff would you trust a non employee with your assets.


^--- this is spot on.

Listen, internships are basically apprenticeships.   It is someone working under other folks who are experienced.

*Intern:*


n. A student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training

Supervised and training... and student or recent graduate....  Oh yeah and practical...

Calling what folks do in these companies internships is DISHONEST.

Calling these people volunteers, yeah I can see that schtick.  Yeah they can be volunteers I guess....  Normally volunteers do nothing involving data and account details.  That's mucky yucky.


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## BrianHarrison (Mar 3, 2014)

trewq said:


> It's sad that people think their time is worth nothing.


I doubt they think their time is worth nothing. They wouldn't be doing it if they felt like they were getting nothing out of it.

There are plenty of unpaid interns in a wide variety of companies -- not limited to hosting.

The idea is that you gain experience, knowledge and a employment reference for future endeavors.

For the record, we do not use unpaid interns or volunteers.


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## trewq (Mar 3, 2014)

BrianHarrison said:


> There are plenty of unpaid interns in a wide variety of companies -- not limited to hosting.
> 
> 
> The idea is that you gain experience, knowledge and a employment reference for future endeavors.


Except someone is profiting from them. I'm not saying people shouldn't volunteer, I do. The difference is I would only ever volunteer for a non profit organisation.


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## concerto49 (Mar 3, 2014)

trewq said:


> Except someone is profiting from them. I'm not saying people shouldn't volunteer, I do. The difference is I would only ever volunteer for a non profit organisation.


You may or not be aware that a large amount of "non profit" organizations make huge profits with wealthy CEO etc.


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## KuJoe (Mar 3, 2014)

concerto49 said:


> You may or not be aware that a large amount of "non profit" organizations make huge profits with wealthy CEO etc.


Like the NFL, the commissioner earns over $29m a year and since they are a nonprofit, they don't pay income tax.


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## wlanboy (Mar 3, 2014)

Oh I like the innocent view on the job market and how orginizations in the US are working.


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## texteditor (Mar 4, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> I get offers all of the time for people who want to volunteer at SD for free just to get the experience. Currently all 2 of us at SD are volunteers who put in at least 40 hours a week, but we don't mind because the money we could be getting paid is being used to build the company so we're happy going 3+ years without compensation because we're more concerned with building the company for the future than making money.


This is not even close to volunteer work though if you are 'building up a company' without pay


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## KuJoe (Mar 4, 2014)

texteditor said:


> This is not even close to volunteer work though if you are 'building up a company' without pay


I used the term "volunteer" in a sense that I was voluntarily putting in hours that I didn't need to. We learned last year that Secure Dragon could run on autopilot with minimal human intervention but it wouldn't evolve any (we'd still be growing client-wise, but that's it and that's not enough for us).


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## drmike (Mar 4, 2014)

*May 5, 2012*

http://web.archive.org/web/20120505054957/https://www.bluevm.com/about.php

Justin Johnston (Linux Administrator, Owner)

Arsene Toumani (General Administrator, Owner)

*August 16, 2013*

http://web.archive.org/web/20130816193145/https://www.bluevm.com/about.php

Justin Johnston (CEO, Manager)

----> So Justin went from  Linux Administrator and Owner to CEO and Manager....


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## mikho (Mar 5, 2014)

drmike said:


> *May 5, 2012*
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20120505054957/https://www.bluevm.com/about.php
> 
> ...


And back to 100% owner.


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## raindog308 (Mar 5, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> Like the NFL, the commissioner earns over $29m a year and since they are a nonprofit, they don't pay income tax.


The nonprofit might not, but the commish certainly pays full income tax on his $29 mil salary.


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## drmike (Mar 5, 2014)

raindog308 said:


> The nonprofit might not, but the commish certainly pays full income tax on his $29 mil salary.


You think he pays full income tax on that money, hahaha!  No he doesn't.... He doesn't sit in his bracket of pay vs. bracket... He gets to bracketing way after the deductions and structuring, like way way way after.


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## drmike (Mar 5, 2014)

Mun said:


> He isn't staff from the last time I remember, I think he was like me, just a helper who kept things calm.
> 
> Mun



Ahh so you are a volunteer too Mun?  Did you sign the NDA and get to wear the robe?  I ahh, missed / overlooked your comment. 

I swear I've seen you elsewhere claiming you weren't involved in BlueVM.... It was in an IRC chat from BlueVM actually with a disgruntled customer that heavily commented on a BlueVM offer.

This was the log:

http://www.cameronmunroe.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/chatlog.txt

*"<Mun> you do realize I am a custmer <Mun> I run an email server, vpn, and 4 production proxy nodes on them <Mun> no issues"*

Maybe back then you weren't the IRC liaison ninja for BlueVM.  What gives?


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