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private:ovh.com
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https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=523060
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Jan 15th, 2021 12:00AM
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Open
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Open
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OVHcloud
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Technical Support
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Montreal, QC
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OVH review
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-Diversity of ethnicity and culture in entry position
-Opportunity to work with several different technologies
-Good first job for student fresh out of school
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-Outdated tools
-Draconian practices
-Conflicts between teams
-24hour rotational schedule
-Very few opportunities for advancement, depending on your cultural background
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0.0
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NO_OPINION
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0.0
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2.0
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1.0
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2.0
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2.0
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2.0
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1.0
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523060
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Open
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Introduction
I have been working at OVH Canada for several years, and have decided to share my experience online. This blog comes from my experience with OVH Montreal, and as such must be viewed in that lens. While OVH is an international company, having offices and datacenters on several continents, my experience is mainly with OVH Canada, which manages and supports all North American accounts, as well as accounts that wish to pay in US or Canadian currency which are not part of OVH US. OVH Canada and OVH US are two distinct organizations, with extremely limited contact due to the Patriot Act, and should not be confused with OVH Canada, otherwise known as OVH North America, or OVH World.
I, as well as all OVH Canada employees, have regular contacts with OVH Europe, and OVH India. While both of these division will be addressed in this blog, this post is primarily regarding my experience with OVH Canada, and should be viewed in this context.
My goal is for potential new employees to have a better understanding of the environment at OVH, the benefits of working at OVH, the issues you will be facing, as well as my predicted future for OVH.
What is OVH
Fun fact, OVH stands for "On vous heberge" or "We will host you". It is the brain child of Octave Klaba, a startup company he started in his garage, two decades ago, which he has grown into a multinational global company.
OVH deals with dedicated and cloud products; domains, virtual and dedicated servers, hybrid cloud infrastructure, etc.
While OVH is very big in Europe, in the last decade, it has started to extend to North American markets, in both infrastructure and market share.
Getting hired
Technical support agents, otherwise known as Customer advocates which makes it really hard to put that title on a CV, are the frontline of OVH support. If you are looking for a job at OVH Montreal, this is the most likely position people apply for.
To be hired as a technical support agent you need at a minimum to be able to speak and write both French and English. People who can also communicate in Spanish will have a substantial advantage as well, and will most likely be hired even if they are not the best qualified. That being said there are one of two qualifications a person must have without fail in order to be hired at OVH.
Either be familiar with the basics of IT, such as basic linux commands, able to describe the difference between a virtual private server and a dedicated server, etc. Or be a good communicator, a people person.
These are both important skills at OVH, as agents must be able to communicate with the client to understand and correct, troubleshoot, inform, or manage a client.
If you have both skills, great. If you are good or adequate in one of the two, OVH will try to train you in the other to make you a well rounded agent.
Starting at OVH
The training of new agents is a sore point at OVH. Trainers have been removed from the daily workings of OVH for years and years, as such their training is not adequate to the realities of daily work as an agent.
The training material is also hilariously outdated, it is not uncommon for new recruits to be trained on products that are being phased out, or simply discontinued from OVH. The resources, such as the newest models of servers, or even the last generation of servers before them, are not available for training or testing for either new or existing agents. OVH only provides very old server models for agents to use to troubleshoot issues client may face, often times these old servers are models no longer being sold by OVH, which makes it difficult to properly reproduce client issues or to accurately train on them.
People who pass the training are ill prepared for work as an agent, it is heavily recommended that you ask other agents on the floor working with you, questions on how to handle unknown issues. 90% of what agents will learn will be learned on the floor, which is somewhat to be expected.
Better training is an issue that needs to be addressed. The trainer should spend a few months on the floor with agents, supporting clients, in order that have a better understanding of issues clients and agents are facing. This, combined with proper training material and new resources, would solve many of the issues here.
What to expect in the first year of being a technical support agent / Daily work
The first year at OVH is a great opportunity for new agents just out of school. They will have the opportunity to work and troubleshoot with several technologies, mainly VPS, public cloud, and dedicated servers, as well as being able to dip their toes in Microsoft Exchange technologies and private / hybrid cloud.
That being said, a good proportion of your daily task will be to work on billing issues. There is no way around this. A division of work has been in place for a period, in an attempt to have certain agents work on billing issues, and others on technical issues. That being said, you will need to at a minimum understand all the ways billing issues can affect a server. You will also be expected to work on billing cases if a client reaches out to you, or if the billing team is overloaded with cases, which happens on a bi-monthly basis.
You will have to become adept in the OVH billing system, which is a systems that has been in place since the 1990s, and is woefully outdated. This is also systematic of several tools, processes and backends at OVH, with multiple patches on top of patches applied on top of each. So much so that there is no developer at OVH which will be able to explain all of these patches, much less what they are for.
This creates conflicts in some tools and processes, as these are just band aid solutions. There are 3 wholly separate escalation processes to use depending on which backend team you wish to reach, which is sub optimal and very confusing for agents.
Updating all the tools and processes is much needed.
Advancing in OVH, what to expect / Diversity
The front line support agents at OVH is a truly diverse group of many ethnicity and faiths. While the tech industry is predominately male, a push has happened to encourage the hiring of women. That being said, while in the past there has been severe problems with gender issues, nowadays, OVH Montreal accepts and adequately integrates women on the front line.
*This is written from the perspective of a man
There are realistically only 2 levels of front line agents. First level agents which deals with the majority of issues and requests, and second level agents who deal with Private Cloud infrastructure as well as our biggest clients.
Typically you work as first level and if you have a thirst for knowledge, self improvement and are technically savvy, you may be able to advance to level 2. These spots are extremely limited however.
Also, the more languages you know, the higher the chance you be able to move to level 2.
After which there is no more real advancement possible at OVH.
Those interested in working in the backend at OVH Montreal will quickly find that while the technical support division is diverse, the backend is anything but.
A clear effort was made to hire people who are as "French" as possible. I mean this literally. If you are from France or French is your primary language, you have a chance to be hired. If you are not, you will not join the backend.
The reasoning given is that people in the backend should be able to "gel" together, and as the head of hiring in the backend is French, he will only hire people who he would be able to be "comfortable" with. Which means he will only hire French people from a very specific background.
While I cannot say this is intentional and not a side affect or a subconscious decision on his part, diversity does not exists in the backend team. In a team of several dozen people, there are three whose ethnicity is not caucasian, Women are severely under represented as well, if they even are part of the team.
In my years working at OVH Montreal, I have heard of only two agents from Technical support ever being promoted to a backend agent. And while both were qualified, extremely smart people, they were also both some of the "Frenchiest" people I have known. Not from France, but French Canadian to the extreme.
If after a year and a half to two years, your talents have not been recognized in the form of a promotion or pay increase, there is very little left at OVH for you. Learn all you can and move on to another company.
Technical support at OVH is an entry level position. Once you have the experience, your best recourse is to move on to better things.
Problems at OVH
Outdated tools
As briefly touched upon above, the several tools and processes agents have at their disposal, is an outdated mess that looks and functions very much as they did when they were developed in the 90s.
travaux.ovh.net is a website OVH uses to provide clients who are curious, information about the current and past issues which are being worked on by OVH, which affect several services. This is an example of how dated the tools are at OVH. The main tools and processes you will be working on, will be similarly dated.
Agents do have resources in the form of a couple virtual, dedicated and cloud servers at their disposal to help with troubleshooting, however these servers models are in some cases not even being sold anymore by OVH, and their next generation counterparts, have not been made available to the Technical support staff to be able to adequately use in order to troubleshoot issues client may be facing.
Working with other OVH teams / case escalations
Escalating to the backend, or other teams, issues that cannot be resolved by the front end agents, Technical support agents, is also a tricky proposition.
Because there is no real movement of personnel between the frontend and backend, backend agents typically being hired straight out of school, the backend agents do not have any experience dealing with clients, Technical support agents, or the issues they are facing. This translate to persistent interpersonal issues between frontend and backend agents, which results in brisk, rude or unhelpful replies. It is not uncommon to have agents escalating a case, or a request, to the backend team in Canada or Europe, knowing that they will receive no help depending on which person replies on their request.
Some escalation also go unread or unworked on for months at a time, with several requests dating back to last year. It is an unspoken understanding between agents, that these escalation / cases, are not being looked at because they are too complicated, the team responsible does not know how to help, and as such do not reply in the hope the client will simply close their services with OVH in frustration and disappointment, thus rendering the initial escalation moot.
Preferential treatment
"Nepotism: the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs."
Having a good relation with your boss is important no matter your position or where you work. However at OVH, those with good relations with management do get preferential treatment. I have seem people in power put very little effort in their jobs, be chronically late on attendance, reports, meetings, assignments, ignoring procedure set forth by their own bosses and human resources, for years at a time, with no real consequences.
While these people were smart and talented, their hearts were not in their job and as such those under them suffered from their lack of management, as they rarely received any of their required monthly evaluation meetings to discuss their performance and where they could improve.
Because they were well liked by management and by the staff, they were safe in their position.
Termination without cause
If you do not have a good relation with management, I have seen them terminate people without cause.
A few years ago, a supervisor was terminated under the pretext that they were downsizing, and his position was no longer needed.
This supervisor was very tech savvy and good at his job, however he was socially awkward, and the new management did not like this person.
A few weeks after he left, they promoted someone to have all his responsibilities, work in the same team he worked, under the same people, working the same amount of hours, and even at the same desk, they simply gave this person a different title.
Illegal / Unethical practices at OVH
Commitment servers
Commitment servers are a new option at OVH. This option allows clients to receive a significant renewal discount as well as waiving the setup fees associated with the purchase of a server (VPS or dedicated server). In exchange, the client "commits" to keeping and renewing the server, or outright pay the entirety of the time period, for 12 or 24months.
This on the surface seems to be a great deal. It is however riddled with issues that the client ultimately pays for.
The first issue is that this option is applied by default on new purchases of a server, while a very short explanation is given to new client when they order, clients do not need to select the option, or understand it. It is applied automatically to the order.
This "commitment" means the client is obligated to keep renewing the server, they purchased. If they only need the server for a month, but they purchased the server with the commitment automatically applied to their order, without the client selecting this option, they are stuck renewing the server for a year. The renewal is done automatically from the payment method attached to their account. This is not explained anywhere in the ordering process.
If a client after 3months has finished his project and no longer needs his service, same outcome. Same if the company has gone under and cannot afford to renew the service. The commitment will not be cancelled by OVH Canada.
If you have made an error in your purchase, or ordered multiple server by mistake, OVH Canada can cancel and refund those orders depending on how quickly you informed them of the mistake. Besides this, there is very little leeway afforded to cancel a commitment and agents are encouraged to offer a new commitment to the client in the form of the client purchasing a new server "as an upgrade" to transfer the commitment to.
HOWEVER, you have to keep in mind that all of this is not enforceable by law here in OVH Canada. No contract any typical client has ever signed and / or accepted from OVH Canada, mentions anything about commitments. There is nothing in any OVH contract provided by OVH Canada, OVH World, OVH World Spanish, OVH Australia, OVH Syngapore, OVH India, that mentions commitments. If it is not in the contract, it is not enforceable.
Even if it was in the contract, which at the time of my writing this, it is not, no division beside OVH Europe and possibly OVH US, have the means to pursue clients legally or financially if a client refuses to summit to the commitment.
OVH Canada, will try to bully its clients into paying for the commitment in the form of holding other services that clients are trying to renew hostage, until the client pays for the renewal of their commitment server during the initial 1 year or 2 year commitment period.
Automatic renewal
It is my understanding that for years and years clients of OVH have been requesting automatic renewal. After years of vague promises, OVH finally implemented automatic renewal for their clients.
It was an unmitigated disaster, that took over a year for OVH to recover.
Automatic renewal when it was launched was not an option, it was a constraint applied to all clients. The clients did not have a choice, they were now enrolled in automatic renewal.
Automatic renewal means that at the first of each month, a debt will be generated by each service a client has, to renew it. So when a client renews a service with automatic renewal, they do not renew the service directly, they instead pay off the debt which in turn is used as funds to renew the service.
If a debt has remained unpaid for 10 days, the service that generated the debt will then be suspended and then terminated a few days later. Once the service has been terminated for non payment, the debt IS NOT cancelled. It remains on the account.
If a client purchases a new service with automatic renewal, the old terminated service's debt, will automatically take funds from the payment method on file, regardless if this service has already been terminated or not. If the service has been terminated, the client will not be provided with a replacement server.
That being said, if a client notices this, and informs support, support will refund this debt payment, if it is not a commitment server.
If a client has not noticed this, well OVH has made money easily and without providing a product.
I want to stress out that everything I have been typing in this "Illegal / Unethical practices at OVH" section, is well know at OVH. From the agents that see this happening in real time, to management in OVH Canada, to the head of support who works in France.
Multiple reports, emails, escalations have been done by front line agents explaining this in great detail, as well as possible ways to fix this.
In the more than 2 and a half years automatic renewal has existed, this has not been addressed.
Another issue with automatic renewal is that since you are paying a debt and not the renewal of the server directly, the bill you pay with your credit card or paypal does not show what services you are renewing. It simply shows you a string of letters and numbers that is associated to the debt you are paying.
This is extremely confusing to clients and can become severe issues for companies that are facing audits if they cannot clearly show what services they are paying for.
Orders never delivered
Some orders the clients make are simply never delivered, either because of billing errors, parts being out of stock and never replenished, services being obsolete and discontinued shortly after the order was placed.
These orders are stuck in "limbo" if a client does not contact support or the root issue is not addressed, the orders will remain undelivered. I have seen orders undelivered for years.
In this case, the way the OVH billing system works, OVH DOES NOT receive any money from clients until the order is completed. Because the orders are stuck uncompleted, OVH does not receive the money. However the funds are taken from the bank account of clients by their banks in anticipation of delivery. So clients are in affect "charged" when they create and pay an order. The client are out of real money waiting for these orders to be delivered.
An effort was made by OVH recently to go through these hundreds if not thousands of orders and to cancel the orders, thus releasing the funds held by the client's financial institution. It remains to be seen if that effort will be sustained in the long run.
All of this generates, and still does, a lot of daily issues for clients and for Technical agents. Even if you apply for OVH as a Technical support agent, and are hired, you will be dealing with all of these billing issues and are expected to navigate them.
Known persistent issues
OVH network firewall
The OVH firewall, when properly configured, works pretty well.
However there is a significant security flaw that is hardwired in, that is a point of vulnerability. For ethical reasons, I will not explain this flaw, save to say that it makes it very easy for our clients to be attacked, as the firewall is bypassed completely.
The OVH network team is also ill equipped to spot these attacks, putting the agency on the client to report the issue to the Technical support staff. After several tests to confirm the nature of the attacks, an escalation is then made in the hope of addressing the attack which may or may not work.
These attacks occur daily and can bring a server down for hours or days.
This is not the fault of the Technical support staff, they are aware of the issue, and do their best to provide both the client and the network teams with the information needed to identify the issue and try to mitigate it.
The flaw however as hardwired into the network of OVH, and thus the attacks will keep coming.
Future of OVH Canada
OVH made a significant investment in OVH Canada in the past decade. However as they have recently opened OVH India, they have started outsourcing work from OVH US and OVH Canada to OVH India.
At the time OVH India launched, management in OVH Canada stressed the point that OVH India would not replace OVH Canada, that OVH Canada will stay open.
While I will not go so far as to say this statement was a lie or was broken, as people from OVH Canada were let go or moved on, less and less people were hired to replace them.
Instead, as workload increased for the rest of OVH Canada Technical agents as less staff were on the floor, OVH India was asked to assist and help to work on tickets in OVH Canada, instead of hiring an adequate amount of Canadian staff.
This trend has continued in the recent months, and thus the future of frontend support in Canada in unsure.
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REGULAR
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4.0
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Mar 29th, 2021 04:16PM
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Mar 29th, 2021 04:16PM
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OVH.com
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Technology
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Software & Computer Services
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