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The One-Name Email, a Silicon Valley Status Symbol, Is Wreaking Havoc (wsj.com)
In Silicon Valley, first-name-only email addresses have long been the ultimate status symbol, indicating a techie was an early hire at a new company. Now that startups are growing, the one-namers are wreaking havoc -- and the competition to snag them is fierce. From a report on WSJ: When Peter Szabo heard he and his co-workers would receive new email addresses after his tech company was launched from an incubator, he ran to his boss and confirmed he would get the "Peter" first-name email address. After years of failing to arrive at companies early enough to bag the prized address, Mr. Szabo negotiated getting the single-name email at the earliest opportunity. "As companies get bigger, if you can be the original Peter, absolutely that's bragging rights," said Mr. Szabo, who is chief revenue officer of mobile-entertainment network startup Mammoth Media. "It's huge."
[...] Startups are growing faster than at any time since the dot-com boom thanks to a flood of venture capital. The system of using first names is leading to more email misfires at tech companies the more successful, and larger, they get. {...] Even techies are having a hard time figuring out how to disrupt the naming convention of corporate email. The growing pains usually set in when startups reach 25 to 50 employees, as names begin to overlap, according to Josh Walter, who has designed email services for companies for the past eight years. "That's when companies say, 'Oh no, what do we do now?'" Mr. Walter says. He is currently IT engineer at Second Measure, a Silicon Valley startup that analyzes consumer spending.
[...] Startups are growing faster than at any time since the dot-com boom thanks to a flood of venture capital. The system of using first names is leading to more email misfires at tech companies the more successful, and larger, they get. {...] Even techies are having a hard time figuring out how to disrupt the naming convention of corporate email. The growing pains usually set in when startups reach 25 to 50 employees, as names begin to overlap, according to Josh Walter, who has designed email services for companies for the past eight years. "That's when companies say, 'Oh no, what do we do now?'" Mr. Walter says. He is currently IT engineer at Second Measure, a Silicon Valley startup that analyzes consumer spending.
i just can't even.....
You can always request "dumbass" @yourstartup.com. While many may qualify, few will have the honesty to request it.
I had a "first name" email address with a common first name. I changed it pretty quickly as I got deluged with spam.
Single-handedly, and single-namedly, the dumbest ever post I have encountered on /.
Probably better to sell shovels in a gold rush. Unless you're using the axes to murder miners and take their gold. But then you'll also need a shovel anyway...
My question is, why is /. reporting on this irrelevant idiocy?
This is msmash's MO, post about first world millennial issues, SJWism, UBB, feminism, etc., things that have no or minimal relation to tech with little to no quality assurance. Typically when you see a vacuous Slashdot post, msmash is responsible.
Having been in a position of having a common first-name email at a company, I will never accept that in the future, even if offered. It results in getting all the emails for all the people with the same first name, plus a bunch of emails from external people who can't get ahold of anyone so they just start randomly spamming likely addresses. In any case, autocomplete supersedes any time-saving advantage it would offer.
As far as being a "status symbol", that's even worse. If your company is successful, you'll end up spending all of your time trying to avoid projecting status, trying to fade into the background and just be a regular employee to the extent possible. Unless, of course, you're an asshat, in which case you'll glory in your status projection (and hopefully, for the sake of your co-workers, be let go).
News for nerds. Not tech news, news for nerds.
It's a slow Sunday, don't get your knickers in a twist.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
... ... when you hire immature people.
New rule on my interview list, anyone that shows any serious interest in one-name email address results in the interview being terminated at that point with a "thank you, but you just won't work out".
And this is why it's important for companies, from day one, to set a sane standard for server names, email addresses, and any other naming convention so they are practical and not 'cute'. And to hire lead people that have actually worked for a living instead of fresh out of a University so they know more things than Universities teach.
And no, in my 40-year career, I have never named a server after a Star Wars character.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Look, not every article's going to be a winner, especially on a slow Sunday in June. But this is just nuts. What value is there in this article? Worse yet, the source article is behind a WSJ paywall.
It's not news. It helps nobody. C'mon Slashdot, do better, and pick editors who know the difference between news and not news.
Software Shouldn't Suck
E-mail: frank at jacquette dot spamless com (remove the spamless!)
This isn't even news for nerds. It's news for IT guys that AREN'T nerds.
Starting a company? Getting your own email server?
firstname.lastname@companyname.tld
Possibly add in aliases such as ceo@, cfo@, customerservice@ etc.
STOP allowing for bullshit epeen addresses, period. Do it from day one.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Related question is why Slashdot regularly links to paywalled articles. Maybe Slashdot is chasing referral revenue?...
Don't know, but another reason this site is a joke. If it wasn't for the comments (sure, many, including this one are trash), there would be no reason to visit here ever again. It was very telling when Slashdot, along with SourceForge, experienced web problems for many days several months ago, few seemed to care.
Slashdot needs a reboot. Not talking Beta, but rather enhancing the site with more in-depth content (ie. like what ARS has been doing for years) along with staff who take some pride in their work would go a long way.
And yet that still has nothing to do with this article. This is about the naming scheme of a company's email directory.
If you're flush with VC money, you obviously get your own domain name for your e-mail.
Anyone can afford the domain fee ($9/year) and the fancy Google or Office365 email service ($5/month).
VC money should be used for something more useful, like the lawyers at Boies that allowed Theranos to burn through $900 million on 10 years of vaporware without being publicly challenged (it's the same law firm that negotiated Harvey Weinstein's severance, that was hired by Oracle to sue Google over Android/Java, that was representing SCO in their UNIX lawsuits, that defended the Enron CFO, and that represented Big Tobacco when they appealed cancer lawsuits).
Other good uses of VC money is sexual harassment lawsuits (Uber), "company" houses in the Hamptons and LA (Mode media), worthless music streaming platform acquisition (Guvera) or decommissioned Soviet fighter jets (Terralliance).
lucm, indeed.
Linux from 2018 is way worse than Linux from 2008.
Just say it: systemd
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Sincerely,
Zz!zyx Smith
Oh no! These first name only email addresses confuse me. I'm new at this and I've only been using email for 25 years. I can't understand how to type in a name or use an address book. derp!
If silicon valley can't figure out how to email, we're in a lot worse trouble than I thought.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So who gives a shit what their work e-mail address is? Seriously?