On employee turnover at Uniregistry — My thoughts

Here are some probable reasons you’re seeing visible turnover at Uniregistry.

On Friday, Konstantinos Zournas at OnlineDomain wrote regarding something people have been mumbling regarding on message boards for a couple months now: turnover at Frank Schilling’s firm Uniregistry.

Konstantinos is correct. There has been quite a bit of visible turnover at the firm. A lot happened over the summer, but there has certainly been turnover for a while. I have explained DNW to a couple marketing people at Uniregistry, only to have them leave a week or two later. (I hope that’s not correlated!)

I think there are many reasons for this.

First, I ought to state that I know for a fact that not everyone leaving Uniregistry has been let go. Some have left on their own volition. Others have been fired.

I also know that headcount at the firm is at or near its peak. So the firm isn’t laying off people as a cut-your-way-to-profitability plan.

That stated, here are some reasons I think Uniregistry has had visible turnover lately:

1. Grand Cayman. Not everyone who works at the firm lives in Cayman. But for those that relocate there, I imagine it takes a special circumstance to really embrace it. It’s a modest place and certainly not for everyone. I could never talk my family into moving there. If I did, I think they’d constantly nag me to return to the States. Some people love it, but it would be hard for others.

2. Frank is a demanding guy. Frank Schilling didn’t get rich just by being lucky. Read any profile of the man and you’ll know he worked like crazy to snap up domains in the early 2000s. He’s going to expect his employees to work extremely hard, too. His extreme expectations might not mix with the balance some employees seek.

3. It’s a sales organization. While there are a lot of tech employees at Uniregistry, a sizable number of employees are salespeople. Sales departments have lots of turnover. It’s a numbers game. (I imagine sales head Jeffrey Gabriel is also a demanding, numbers-driven boss. Otherwise, he’d no longer be with the firm.)

4. Fresh TLDs. Fresh top level domains aren’t doing well. Uniregistry’s TLDs aren’t hitting the numbers the firm hoped for and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I’m not sure if some layoffs were directly related to fresh TLD sales, but when sales are going gangbusters at a firm they often don’t bother to cut the dead weight. A revenue miss will lead any firm owner to take a hard look at his or her team and make some difficult decisions.

That’s my four cents.