# Is this the end of ASO/EIG?



## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

Well the below was announced to all employees of ASO/Arvixe. Note that they are keeping the outsourced support, they are just axing all directly hired remote staff.


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Over the past few years, ASO has operated as a location based division as well as a remote employment division of Endurance. It’s sometimes been extremely challenging balancing the different approaches that we have to employment relationships, but we have continued to do so as we always have.


Recently, there have been challenges in the Customer Service Department that have made it more difficult. From a practical standpoint, I’m sure everyone here has been on a shift where the VPN’s fail, and all employees connections to the tools they must have to do their jobs stop working until those VPN’s can be corrected. From a cultural standpoint, it has become more and more challenging to give remote customer service employees the same connection to the vibrant and exciting changes happening in our Austin office.


Due to these and other factors,we have made the decision to start phasing out remote support for the A Small Orange/Arvixe Customer Service Department and are targeting June 1st for the transition.


If you wish to join us here in Austin, please contact myself, Mark, or Amy to discuss potentially joining us down here in the Austin office as soon as possible, as we would like all relocations completed by May 15th. For those of you that don’t wish to join us in Austin, Endurance also has U.S. customer support locations in Orem, Utah, Houston as well as Austin in TX, and Tempe, AZ, if you live closer to another physical location that would work better for you. There may be positions available in any of those locations.


I realize that many of you will be unable to relocate, and we want to make this transition as successful as possible for everyone involved. We will provide everyone with two weeks of severance, and we’ll give you an additional two weeks pay if you stay through the end date we provide you. We’ll also provide $300 additional for resume or interview coaching, and 1 month of benefit coverage. We’ll also do our best to work with you on scheduling flexibility so that you’ll be able to go on interviews when you need to.


I want to express my sincere thanks to all of you for the years you have put into A Small Orange and advanced thanks for your professionalism during this transition. ASO has been very much like a family for many of us, and though this new phase in ASO’s future is very exciting, it is also extremely bittersweet for many of us in Austin. We have built an incredible organization together, and for those you that are considering coming to Austin I can’t wait to work alongside you day to day! For those of you that cannot or choose not to relocate at this time, please know you are going to be greatly missed


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## Francisco (Mar 24, 2016)

Yikes.


I guess the outsourced support is cheap enough to "live with the VPN issues".


Francisco


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## DomainBop (Mar 24, 2016)

> We will provide everyone with two weeks of severance, and we’ll give you an additional two weeks pay if you stay through the end date we provide you.



So the person who started last week gets the same severance as someone who has been there 5 years?


Typical severance is:


 Hourly workers: (Years employed) X (1 Week of Average Pay) = Severance 
Salaried workers: (Years employed) X (2 Weeks of Average Pay) = Severance


That said, since turnover tends to be high among remote workers,  that 4 weeks is better than many of the workers who have worked there less than 2 years  would get at other companies.



> 1 month of benefit coverage.



ask their HR dep't for more, maybe you'll get lucky 



> If you wish to join us here in Austin, please contact myself, Mark, or Amy to discuss potentially joining us down here in the Austin office



Are they covering relocation costs?



> Note that they are keeping the outsourced support,



They could save a LOT of money if they took tips from TCH and made their outsourced help work 12 hour shifts/5 days a week for a month during a training period and then fired the workers without paying them.  Rinse, lather ,repeat for years, free WHT job ads.



> Recently, there have been challenges in the Customer Service Department that have made it more difficult. From a practical standpoint, I’m sure everyone here has been on a shift where the VPN’s fail, and all employees connections to the tools they must have to do their jobs stop working until those VPN’s can be corrected.



Yes VPN's fail but the VPNs of the remote US workers they are firing are less likely to fail then the VPN's of the outsourced Diya workers in Mangalore they are keeping due to the relatively crappy infrastructure (both Internet and power) there.


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## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

DomainBop said:


> So the person who started last week gets the same severance as someone who has been there 5 years?
> 
> 
> Typical severance is:
> ...



Hehe I liked your points. It would be interesting to know if Site5 is also affected by this since they were scheduled for merging with ASO.


From what I understood they are not covering relocation costs, its basically they are forcing staff to either relocate at their own costs or loose their job. This is also another way to say goodbye to all those European Staff members including their Tech support manager who I don't think will even think about relocating to the US just for working with EIG, salaries with EIG are not that high for someone to relocate to a different continent.


And definitely they overwork their staff, they give something like a dollar bonus for each ticket you reply to so the more tickets the fatter your pay check is - but the actual base pay is quite low, even as low as $8/hour for some.


Their VPN's have always been a target of DDOS attacks, but this is just a excuse used as they could fix the issue.


They haven't been hiring new remote employees for months now, basically September was the last time they hired a few remote techs - the leftovers from the mass terminations from Arvixe.


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## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

Oh and one more thing Diya sent an email with this subject to several people aswell - they are looking to hire more staff in India:


"Endurance International Group | Job | We are Looking Hosting Product Specialist Professionals"


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## drmike (Mar 24, 2016)

zafouhar said:


> Oh and one more thing Diya sent an email with this subject to several people aswell - they are looking to hire more staff in India:
> 
> 
> "Endurance International Group | Job | We are Looking Hosting Product Specialist Professionals"



Sure are:


http://www.naukri.com/job-listings-Hosting-Product-Specialist-Endurance-International-Group-Mumbai-1-to-3-years-260216002917?src=jobsearchDesk&sid=14566181787407&xp=1&qp=product%20specialist&srcPage=s


They do however have an office in Mangalore, India.


Probably some interesting data in here:
https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Overview/Working-at-Endurance-International-Group-EI_IE236210.11,40.htm#


Looks like reviews from workers are going downhill consistently.


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## drmike (Mar 24, 2016)

Must say the schtick about VPN is a hoot.  Where is the fail, on their own operated servers or does every worker have shitty internet.



DomainBop said:


> Yes VPN's fail but the VPNs of the remote US workers they are firing are less likely to fail then the VPN's of the outsourced Diya workers in Mangalore they are keeping due to the relatively crappy infrastructure (both Internet and power) there.



I'll wager one Wimpy Burger on:
Vast majority of their remote workers are NOT in the United States.


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## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

drmike said:


> Must say the schtick about VPN is a hoot.  Where is the fail, on their own operated servers or does every worker have shitty internet.
> 
> 
> I'll wager one Wimpy Burger on:
> Vast majority of their remote workers are NOT in the United States.



Not sure how things changed. But in the 2014 the Diya team were in the Monitoring Team only, then there were something like 10 techs out of the US and the rest in the US working remotely with a very small minority working from their Austin and Dallas offices.


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## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

I've got new information. It appears, verified from a few different staff working at different brands, that EIG is discontinuing completely their remote staff by the 1st of June on all of their hundreds of brands. This means several hundreds if not thousands of staff loosing their jobs.


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## DomainBop (Mar 24, 2016)

zafouhar said:


> I've got new information. It appears, verified from a few different staff working at different brands, that EIG is discontinuing completely their remote staff by the 1st of June on all of their hundreds of brands. This means several hundreds if not thousands of staff loosing their jobs.



They listed 1,671 total support and network operations employees on their latest SEC filing last month.



> As of December 31, 2015, we had 2,593 employees, *including 1,671 in support and network operations*, 514 in sales and marketing, 183 in engineering and development and 225 in general and administrative. Most of our employees are based in the United States. None of our employees is represented by a labor union or covered by a collective bargaining agreement. We have never experienced a strike or similar work stoppage, and we consider our relations with our employees to be good.



Also from their latest annual report:



> We currently use India-based third-party service providers to provide certain outsourced services to support our U.S.-based operations, including email- and chat-based customer and technical support, billing support, network monitoring and engineering and development services. As our operations grow, we expect to increase our use of these and other India-based outsourced service providers.


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## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

DomainBop said:


> They listed 1,671 total support and network operations employees on their latest SEC filing last month.



I wonder how many of those are remote but I assume the majority since very few of their staff work from their offices.


Now this here is the most funny thing I have heard for a long time now:



> We have never experienced a strike or similar work stoppage, and we consider our relations with our employees to be good.


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## zafouhar (Mar 24, 2016)

BTW just to clarify the axing does also include supervisors, managers, members from sales and development teams aswell.


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## drmike (Mar 25, 2016)

They have supervisors and managers that were remote workers also?


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## jarland (Mar 25, 2016)

DomainBop said:


> They listed 1,671 total support and network operations employees on their latest SEC filing last month.
> 
> 
> Also from their latest annual report:



That "third party" thing is funny because I'm pretty sure they own Diya through a shell.


Meh, not my problem. I don't know why I even perk up at the discussion. They either work toward better results or they continue to be a point of entry that creates customers (many of which weren't interested in being hosting customers before EIG-brand marketing) and then churns them out for others to grab, which continues to support job creation in the industry. One way or another they provide a service to somebody


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## drmike (Mar 25, 2016)

DomainBop said:


> we expect to increase our use of these and other India-based outsourced service providers.



I missed this earlier....


Same old shit really.  Lets drive work to the cheapest labor possible.


Glowtouch / Diya reminds me of many shops I've told to go jump in a fire in the past when they came offering their services.  Difference with them than most is they are here in the States as foreigners (assumed) and exporting the work and jobs from large corporations back to their homeland.  I haven't seen one firm like this that wasn't a shit factory and full of money laundering and related gimmicks.  These types of firms thoroughly piss me off, always have and probably always will.  


These place works on trickled down economics.   Big company doesn't want to pay salary to a worker in the US (ex: $70k).  So they farm it out to a firm like this, who often contract fills the need with their own people (ex: contract at $50k).  Those people often are back in India and when they are not, gets into work visa fraud usually - no attempt to fill the job with a US worker.  $70k becomes $25-35k to the worker or less.   The firm in the middle eats 50% or more often.  Often they hold the job over the Visa workers head and create a form of involuntary servitude.


Who wins?  Maybe that big corporation since no $70k, no 401(k), no health care, no paid vacation, etc.  Cause $70k salary would be meh, $130k?  maybe more - depends - on total employee cost. Shareholders win too since should be greater profit-per-share realized.


This outsourcing is going on throughout Fortune 500 companies.  It is rampant.   Someone needs to get a firm grasp on just how rampant and the correlated job loss to the larger economy.  It's a war on the working age population.


With firms like this, we should raid their customer list and that should form a boycott list.  Only thing all of the co-conspirators understand is money.  So refusing to spend / buy from them is a good approach.


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## DomainBop (Mar 25, 2016)

jarland said:


> That "third party" thing is funny because I'm pretty sure they own Diya through a shell.



Knew that Diya/Glowtouch name sounded familiar.  Gotham City Research alleged last year that :



> Endurance CEO Hari Ravichandran and/or immediate family were and/or is a director and/or owner of related parties, Glowtouch Technologies and Innovative Business Services (“IBS”).



 



> Glowtouch Technologies = Tregaron India Holdings LLC.
> 
> 
> Diya Systems is a subsidiary of Glowtouch, run by Endurance CEO’s father.
> ...



from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/263388790 (Glowtouch is on page 8 of the report)


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## drmike (Mar 25, 2016)

Let's see if I can help...


Glowtouch is one of those companies indeed... 



> GlowTouch employs 30 people in Louisville and over 900 people in India.



^^ That was in 2012... nice 1-to-30 ratio and shows where their energies and interests are.



> Ms. Vidya Ravichandran serves as the President of GlowTouch, LLC. Ms. Ravichandran has over 12 years of industry experience with an emphasis on Information Technology in all her previous positions. She also has a strong entrepreneurial experience having successfully co-founded Passion4Art and Diya Systems, LLC. She served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Diya Systems, a technical support and custom software development company, providing services for clients through offshore-based resources. Prior to founding Diya Systems, she served as a Director of Business Development at National Processing Company (now, Bank of America Merchant Services), Director of E-Business Initiatives and as E-Commerce Product Manager. She has also served in leadership roles in the Internet division of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a DuPont company. Ms. Ravichandran holds a Masters Degree from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia.



Vidya is about 44 years of age.  A few years older than Hari.


Related?  Yes.



> One reason for her early success was fortuitous timing. Ravichandran’s brother, Hari Ravichandran, founded a tech startup in Boston, Massachusetts.



More human abuse...



> “They had received funding, but had burned through all of their [venture capital] money,” said Ravichandran. “They were looking to get somebody to help them take on the additional work so they could keep costs down and stay alive. That’s when I stepped in. He wanted me to provide tech support to his organization. So I brought on three support people who answered trouble tickets.”
> 
> 
> source: http://www.thelouisvillepaper.com/entrepreneur-spotlight-glowtouch-technologies/



Next up Tregaron India Holdings LLC... Yes it's the father it seems... 


source: http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=33802441


Company Overview of Tregaron India Holdings, LLC



> Tregaron India Holdings, LLC, doing business as GlowTouch Technologies, LLC, provides information technology services to mid-sized businesses in the United States and internationally. The company offers application development services, including Web application development, application integration, and legacy modernization; cloud integration and migration, and application enablement services; and testing services, such as software quality control test automation. It also provides mobility services that comprise mobile development and quality assurance testing; analytics services, which include business intelligence and ETL/data warehousing; and technical support services that include custom..




Dr. V. Ravichandran


Chief Executive Officer
 


> Dr. V. Ravichandran serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Tregaron India Holdings, LLC (Also known as GlowTouch Technologies, LLC). Dr. Ravichandran served as President of International Operations at GlowTouch Technologies, LLC. Dr. Ravichandran is a successful serial entrepreneur and has had over 30 years of industry experience, over 20 of those in the high technology area. His ventures have ranged from Technology training centers to ISPs to custom software development companies and BPO centers among others. He has a very strong ability to attract, manage and retain top talent in all companies he has been involved with. He is a strong operational manager with emphasis on quality and deliverable timelines. Over the course of his career, Dr. Ravi has provided employment to a few thousand employees in Mangalore and surrounding areas. He has been instrumental in getting GlowTouch off the ground and building it into a very successful, and scalable operation. Having lived and worked both in India and the US, he has a very good understanding of cross border business issues. He was a Professor at St. Philomena College for 30 years. Dr. Ravi holds a Master's degree from Karnataka University, M.Phil. from Madras University and a Ph. D. and Fulbright scholarship from Clemson University, SC.
> 
> 
> source: http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=114127123&privcapId=33802441


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## drmike (Mar 25, 2016)

... and Tregaron Indian Holdings is importing workers on H1B Visas.


2012:
http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=tregaron+india+holdings&job=&case_no=&state=&year=2012&case_status=&submit=Search


2013:
http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=tregaron+india+holdings&job=&case_no=&state=&year=2013&case_status=&submit=Search


2014:
http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=tregaron+india+holdings&job=&case_no=&state=&year=2014&case_status=&submit=Search


For some reason I wager that there are unemployed Project Managers in Louisville that would work for 60-70k$ they reported on the H1B application.  Not an issue where they can't find qualified workers.  Even if they had to import workers to Louisville, Kentucky, from some other US city it would not very costly and legal.


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## zafouhar (Mar 25, 2016)

drmike said:


> They have supervisors and managers that were remote workers also?



Yep, all of the supervisors work remotely and a number of managers aswell. And I know a number of these people will loose their jobs as they are located in Europe and its not worth it to move to another continent.


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## MrRapidHost (Mar 29, 2016)

Too bad it went this way, hopefully the ones whos gonna suffer from the transition and lose their jobs are to recover fast and get into  better positions.


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## latic (Apr 28, 2016)

The worst thing about all of this is the way the customers have been treated.


Within the escalation department (Which I created and ran) tickets went from around a 6 hour turn around and 20 tickets open at anyone time, to a 2 week turn around and over 1500 tickets open! 


Long and short is EIG couldn't continue to bleed money, the accusations were to boost revenue figures. When that didn't wash any further with the board (or just before if they caught wind of it) it started being more about maximizing efficiencies, this means getting rid of sources of expenses (Servers = migrations, Staff = sack them, Datacentre space = consolidate resources). I found the staff members they consulted with were the wrong ones, they were people who quickly brown nosed, said what they thought EIG wanted to hear and really needed to keep their jobs more than doing or saying the right thing. The head of support was marked as a troublemaker for sticking to his guns, personally as the head of escalations (a department that they are taking forward into EIG as a whole) I was talked to once and never again.


So you've got a company needing to start showing profits, taking advice from people who care only about themselves, being merged into a larger company that's always in flux and doesn't have a set strategy for the future (or if it does it is nothing to do with happy customers).


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## latic (Apr 28, 2016)

A comment on Diya, half of the Arvixe indian staff were shell staff / multideskers. These are indian companies who setup "people" and then take the money paying the end staff members only $400 - $500 a month (They'd be getting paid around $1700). This type of thing is rampant in the industry as a whole, but with Arvixe it was to the point of where one company actually had 15+ "Staff members" who were being worked by around 6 real people (within server management).


I'm guessing Diya bought out a lot of these companies or their staff and have a few different bases in india now.


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## zafouhar (Apr 29, 2016)

Glad to see you joining here @latic  When you say head of support do you mean the Arvixe head of support? or the ASO head of support?


To be honest the escalations department was really stable before the Arvixe-ASO merge but everything went downhill after that and its going to go even more downhill after June 1st.


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## latic (Apr 29, 2016)

The head of Arvixe Support. He was one of the people EIG/ASO continued to speak to but stood his ground in regards to his opinions and I really wouldn't like to know how much worse and how much sooner things went to shit.


When Arvixe merged into EIG it seemed to be merging into an ASO which was in transition already. The head of ASO support is not someone who I'd personally work under so all I really cared about was trying to get my Escalation guys into other jobs.


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## drmike (Apr 30, 2016)

latic said:


> A comment on Diya, half of the Arvixe indian staff were shell staff / multideskers. These are indian companies who setup "people" and then take the money paying the end staff members only $400 - $500 a month (They'd be getting paid around $1700). This type of thing is rampant in the industry as a whole, but with Arvixe it was to the point of where one company actually had 15+ "Staff members" who were being worked by around 6 real people (within server management).
> 
> 
> I'm guessing Diya bought out a lot of these companies or their staff and have a few different bases in india now.



I don't know why these fools are paying $1700 to a body shop for a worker.


I could provide literate native speaking Americans with relative experience and actual tech interest under those rates. Not that I am a fan of lousy pay, but it's the world we live in.


To me, it sounds like money laundering.  Hire companies you are related to / know owners for support, write this $1700 on the books, write down corporate profits, then back side take $1700-$500 = $1200 and split that with the company owner.  Meaning you pocketing $600~ in corruption racket.


These companies are all cooked books and tax rackets.


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## latic (May 5, 2016)

Rather than laundering the senior management genuinely didn't know about it. Until I stepped into middle management no one knew it was going on (or of they did they kept quiet), was easy to see with people using the same ips and always "renting an office with friends".


At one point 10 or more of the staff were listed on the wiztelsys website and I got access to their rotas, this was showing some different names, people not always working etc. It was a huge minefield and would have taken years go sort.


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