[likeabbas]

GoDaddy was the first software engineering job I worked for. I had interned there too. It's understandable that the external perception of the company is bad (and even sexist), but internally GoDaddy was a great place to work.

They're always a major sponsor of Grace Hopper. They were adamant about hiring women. They made my internship so much fun, and I am still friends with many of my co-interns from that summer. Of the places I worked for, GoDaddy was the only one I would say had a "family" like quality.

[scandox]

I'd say the family metaphor is very apt. As a customer I always felt they were family run. Possibly a very large, ethnically homogeneous family with interests in funeral homes, car parks, casinos and hospitality. That kind of family.

[likeabbas]

> ethnically homogeneous family

My tech lead (later manager) was a black lesbian woman. I'm sorry if that's not ethnically homogeneous enough for you.

[kerpotgh]

Not even Asians/Indians?

[01ce8c91872dd6d]

>ethnically homogeneous family

I'm foaming at the mouth from picturing that

[TOMDM]

I've literally never heard about sexism directed their way, but given you worked there I'm sure you know better the story of treatment they get. What was the sexism, who was it directed against and why do you reckon they recieved it?

The only experience I have with GoDaddy is their awful support, and predatory practices. Ditching them has been the biggest single improvement to our IT practice.

[phphphphp]

GoDaddy's entire brand presence was based on objectification of women for their early life. After GoDaddy's founder Bob left, it got better. Bob was a character and arguably the entire reason for the insane brand -- strange, strange man.

[likeabbas]

Yes this is what I'm referring to - the Danica Patrick bikini ads in the mid 2000s.

The first day of our internship they briefed us on that history. Bob had thought that the market for small-businesses in need of a domain name were men aged 35-55. Once bob was gone, actual market research was done and it turned out that over half of their clients were women, so he had completely mis-identified the market.

But, because of the commercials, the brand recognition was over 90% in the US so they couldn't change the name.

[noduerme]

Look, "Go Daddy" itself is pretty weird and creepy as a name. The thing that really soured me on it and pulled my clients who were there was the fact that the "daddy" in question was out shooting elephants. Family environment is great and all, and I suppose some villagers got to eat an elephant, but I'll be damned if I'll let anyone I know pay that guy for domain registration.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/daddy-ceo-bob-parsons-africa...

[osigurdson]

Go Daddy is proof that a fractured market can be consolidated with extreme marketing exposure. Wix, Monday.com, Asana, etc. are using the same playbook imo.

[noduerme]

This is a really good point. No doubt, they took a relatively small operation in the crowded hosting market and made it a household name. How it became a household name wasn't just over the top marketing, though... it involved scandal and negative press. I do handle design and marketing for one regional corporate client (a holdover from my design days)... and even though I'm not afraid of pushing edgy campaigns, I'd personally be pretty gun-shy about employing the sort of scorched earth stuff GoDaddy did. I'd also just be concerned about the sanity of my client.

[dopeboy]

Fantastic insight. Carl's Jr is another example, atleast in the early 2000s.

[enoch_r]

Paying people to raise social, intelligent animals in horrific environments and then slaughter them seems more morally questionable than quickly ending the life of a wild elephant. Do you ensure that the CEOs of companies you do work with are vegan?

[noduerme]

No, but it would be valid if I did. As it is, I avoid transacting with people who go out of their way to shoot endangered wild animals for pleasure.

[enoch_r]

African elephants are not endangered, especially in Zimbabwe (where he apparently shot the elephant): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63597223

Of course it's totally valid to make whatever decisions you like, but there is something disconcerting to me about how we judge our hands clean as long as we pay someone else to do horrific things to animals. Personally I think I probably do worse moral harm than killing an elephant every time I buy a dozen eggs or a Costco rotisserie chicken.

[mc32]

It's in their name itself. Who names a thing Go daddy?!

[vrc]

It was Barbara Rechter (I think that’s her name) who was CMO that changed the name from Jomax Technologies to GoDaddy and spearheaded the logo and ad campaigns. But Bob threw the best corporate holiday parties. All employees and their +1s flow out for 2 nights to Phoenix. One year they rented out Diamondbacks Stadium, had Daddy Yankee and Pitbull perform, and gave away 10+ cars. Fun times

[coredog64]

Externally, GoDaddy ran a very questionable Super Bowl ad in which Danica Patrick unzips her jumpsuit to reveal a stuffed beaver.

Internally, a previous employer was colonized by a group of ex-GoDaddy execs. They were half-witted folks who displayed every negative -ism that creates a toxic workplace.

[bluedino]

They had controversial commercials (not all of them involving women)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTvYVxO_9N8

[kevin_thibedeau]

They also pulled domains that didn't align with their fundie agenda mich made the commercials even more bizarre.

[nsxwolf]

These seem pretty tame.

[anononaut]

They are.

[bena]

The sexism was directed towards the public. They had quite a few commercials that were more appropriate advertising for Hooters than for web hosting.

[sybercecurity]

It was their early ad campaigns that featured Danica Patrick. They even showed some ads during the Super Bowl. You can still find them on YouTube.

It was the high (low?) point of techbro culture in ads (mid 2010's). They got a lot of bad press and pressure campaigns and started to change their culture after that.

[mc32]

What always rubbed me the wrong way were two things. They have the impression of being spammy [even their UI felt/feels spammy] And then their UX really sucked. They almost felt like a parked domain itself.

[garganzol]

This is an external perception, but internally they tried to upsell some web and email hosting stuff by including those options by default when purchasing a new domain. Those options were literally invisible to the unsuspecting customer like me, thanks to dark UI patterns and small fonts. And of course, the purchase wasn't refundable after the fact it was made! The only thing that saved me from being ripped off was a spending limit on my PayPal account. Mind you, that was the last time I've ever purchased a new domain from GoDaddy. They lost me forever.

At the same time, their domain broker service was excellent and allowed me to acquire a few already registered domains I desperately needed without spending too much.

[standardUser]

In their heyday they set high water mark for aggressive/annoying marketing techniques. I think I was one of many, many developers who bought a domain through them precisely one time before realizing I'd made a huge mistake.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

The thing that angers me about GoDaddy is the sniping of customer searched domains. Maybe “everyone does it”, but still scummy.

[tuerie666]

This is the biggest fake rumor that keeps on spreading. They don't even have the internal infra setup to support this.

[rizach8]

I think a lot of us have a good feeling about early/first employer. But I am not sure we would feel the same if we started that job today. "It was better back in the days" mentality.

[rubyist5eva]

> It's understandable that the external perception of the company is bad (and even sexist)

> They were adamant about hiring women.

So it seems like the perception is justified then.

[ipunchghosts]

If it's so good, why arent you still working there?