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Technology

Is Your Email Address Holding You Back? (wsj.com) 354

Posted by msmash from the keep-in-mind dept.
Whether you're freelancing or on the job hunt, don't let a poorly conceived online handle limit your career prospects A quick glance at any group email confirms what recruiters and hiring managers know too well: Not everyone sheds their adolescent email addresses when they enter adulthood, instead maintaining allegiance to digital monikers based on the music, videogames and contraband they once held dear. From a report: Though rebranding yourself online can be a pain (as those who've been through the ordeal of changing their contact info know), the practice is often better for your career trajectory, said Chris Swanson, a career and college counselor at Bremerton High School in Washington state. "It's just like the idea that a handshake and eye contact makes a good impression. That's the first thing that comes across someone's desk." Even so, many Americans still use curious handles for professional exchanges, either by virtue of inertia or nostalgia or because they've never had an employer-issued handle and don't know any better -- they only know Dave Matthews rules.

[...] It might be ironic to send missives from @aol.com, but it doesn't suggest an exceedingly tech-savvy candidate. Actually, "It weirds me out," said Ms. Moore. "Why are you still using AOL? Gmail is definitely the winner." Don't even get her started on Hotmail. When updating a resume it's a good time to evaluate if an email address seems dated, especially if applying for a tech gig.
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Is Your Email Address Holding You Back? More

Is Your Email Address Holding You Back?

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  • LPT: If you're enrolled in grad school part-time.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @05:36PM (#57213650)
    If you're (say) enrolled in grad school part-time, use your university address. This provides automagic proof that you're in fact enrolled -- one less thing on their resume for them to need to check.
    • lol I used my grad school email for 4 years after graduation and only let it lapse out of disuse. I guess it implies you were probably once enrolled, but because of how i was employed it showed the wrong department.
      • Recruiters, being whom and what they are, are less likely to think about time lapses, more likely to see a .edu addy.

        • Re:LPT: If you're enrolled in grad school part-tim (Score:5, Insightful)

          by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @05:57PM (#57213758) Homepage Journal

          Recruiters, being whom and what they are, are less likely to think

          I deleted the extra words you put at the end for you.

          • Re:LPT: If you're enrolled in grad school part-tim (Score:5, Insightful)

            by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @11:38PM (#57215154)
            Recruiter = Person who still applies to work in a job that was replaced by computers 25 years ago and they didn't actually notice

            I have a simple response to recruiters when they say :

            Them : I have a great customer...
            Me : No, you don't. They left it up to a relative stranger to track down leads instead of searching LinkedIn or Monster or whatever else. You have a customer who doesn't actually care enough to use Google.

            Them : I have a great opportunity for you...
            Me : No you don't. Companies don't use recruiters when they want serious candidates, they use recruiters when they are looking for meat. They get their serious candidates through personal networking and personal recommendations. You would never hire a candidate for a "Great opportunity" through something as anonymous as a recruiter.

            Them : We're hiring 17 great people for a project...
            Me : Good luck! You're attempting to build a team without any real knowledge of how they will work together as a team. You're actually throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some will stick. If you're hiring 17 more or less random people for a project, most of those people are basically just desperate and if I were there, I'd have to do all their jobs for them. You'd be better off hiring two or three known assets and have them bring their own people in. In reality, if you're hiring 17 people at once, you should actually be outsourcing the project.

            There are many things to say to recruiters... my dad was a recruiter back before the Internet. Back then, to look at jobs outside of your local area, it was the only way to go. Once the web came around, recruiters were basically people who couldn't find a real job for themselves and now are trying to do it for someone else.

            • Re:LPT: If you're enrolled in grad school part-tim (Score:5, Interesting)

              by hawguy ( 1600213 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @02:07AM (#57215494)

              Them : I have a great customer...
              Me : No, you don't. They left it up to a relative stranger to track down leads instead of searching LinkedIn or Monster or whatever else. You have a customer who doesn't actually care enough to use Google.

              When I wanted to relocate (family reasons), I didn't have any contacts in the area I wanted to relocate to -- I worked with a great recruiter and had an interview scheduled for my current job before the job was even posted on the job boards.

              Them : I have a great opportunity for you...
              Me : No you don't. Companies don't use recruiters when they want serious candidates, they use recruiters when they are looking for meat. They get their serious candidates through personal networking and personal recommendations. You would never hire a candidate for a "Great opportunity" through something as anonymous as a recruiter.

              When my company needed to grow, we quickly ran out of personal recommendations and though we posted to the usual places, sifting through the hundreds of unqualified resumes got to be a chore. The company had worked with a recruiter off and on for over 10 years, and she sourced us some great candidates (including me).

              Recruiters are kind of like travel agents -- you don't always need one, but when you do, a good one is worth their weight in gold.

            • Re:LPT: If you're enrolled in grad school part-tim (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Azaril ( 1046456 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @05:26AM (#57215962) Homepage

              Them : I have a great customer... Me : No, you don't. They left it up to a relative stranger to track down leads instead of searching LinkedIn or Monster or whatever else. You have a customer who doesn't actually care enough to use Google.

              Alternatively, I have a team of 4 developers (including me) and our hr person is basically just a part time employee that processes payroll. I have neither the time or the aptitude to spend days trawling through LinkedIn or whatever you think I should be doing with my time instead of building my product. However I have a reasonable amount of cash and I'm willing to pay someone else to do the web trawling.

              Them : I have a great opportunity for you... Me : No you don't. Companies don't use recruiters when they want serious candidates, they use recruiters when they are looking for meat. They get their serious candidates through personal networking and personal recommendations. You would never hire a candidate for a "Great opportunity" through something as anonymous as a recruiter.

              In an ideal world, absolutely. Certainly, most of the best candidates I've interviewed were people I've interviewed from hackernews. However, the worst CVs were also from there. In my experience, you want to give yourself the best openings to get the right candidate and that means recommendations, meet ups, hackernews and recruiters.

              Them : We're hiring 17 great people for a project... Me : Good luck! You're attempting to build a team without any real knowledge of how they will work together as a team. You're actually throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some will stick. If you're hiring 17 more or less random people for a project, most of those people are basically just desperate and if I were there, I'd have to do all their jobs for them. You'd be better off hiring two or three known assets and have them bring their own people in. In reality, if you're hiring 17 people at once, you should actually be outsourcing the project.

              Any project that starts with hiring 17 people will probably never get delivered. A lot of these kind of postings, at least where I live (London), are for contract bodies at banks, which is generally well-paid but incredibly boring maintenance work, so take that or leave it

              One of the problems with your theory that you should be able to build a large team from recommendations is this though. I have a team of 3 other people. They are the best people I have worked with over the last 3 or 4 years - that is why I brought them in. Who are they going to have worked with in that period that is outside of the same group? You need a way of bringing in new blood

        • They'll probably think you're younger as well, which probably helps your prospects quite a bit.

  • I quit using gmail for anything important about a year ago. They had gotten strident and shrill about wanting a phone number for 'recovery' if they ever choose to lock the account for whatever reason. For a few dollars a month I got a paid account. I chose Fastmail, there are other companies as well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
      Or just host your own domain and use the IMAP service of your choice (or your own server) to store email. It's cheap nowadays.

      • Re:Fastmail (Score:5, Interesting)

        by youngone ( 975102 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @06:25PM (#57213936)
        I have been keen to do this for a while now, but have always assumed it would be a total hassle with the whole whitelist/blacklist thing.
        Does it in fact wind up being a lot of work, or should I jump right in?

        • I registered a personal domain and hooked it to mail.com. I use Thunderbird with imap. For spam control, collected and personal addresses go to inbox, the rest to triage. Brilliant.

          • Thanks. That does sound good, but I think I would like to run my own server. Unless it winds up being a lot of work. In which case I don't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        If I was assessing CVs for a tech job, I'd pay closer attention to those with their own domains. I might even visit that domain and run a quick WHOIS across it.

        AOL/Hotmail/gmail? not so much. It's not a deal-breaker, but I'd pay less attention to those.

      • Like brewing your own beer, it can be fun as a hobby or to learn about how things really work. But if I may say, I've learned enough about SMTP and IMAP servers in largescale and small scale environments to say that I am exhausted with having to run my own, and have more important things to do.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Same, but I went the whole DIY route and set up my own mail server on a digitalocean VPS. I'd always wanted to do it, but was a bit intimidated.

      It ended up being a challenging but fun/interesting weekend using the excellent guide from Kapitein Vorkbaard [vorkbaard.nl]. It literally was the only guide I found that worked. I now have a Debian 9/PHP7 mail server, with virus/spam protection (and geolocation-based blocking until maxmind changed their TOS). I've extended it to use nextcloud for a whole bunch of functionality I

  • So what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @05:43PM (#57213684)

    If someone is still using an AOL email address, so what? I know of several successful business which use AOL addresses.

    People like Ms. Moore who are "weirded out" by what email domain people use are the problem, not the people applying for positions. Thinking the latest and greatest is the only thing which matters has brought us the abomination which is Windows 10 or the nearly walled and welded garden of Apple.

    If these people are more worried about what email address someone uses rather than their qualifications, that explains the sorry state of affairs in the tech industry today. Flash over substance.

  • DYI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Checkered Daemon ( 20214 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @05:43PM (#57213690)

    Run your own mailserver. DNS registration is cheap these days, and you can have as many different email addresses as you want.

    • It's simple and easy for anyone to do, even without much technical skill at all, but will probably impress recruiters. That is unless they think you will be working on the side, so make sure it looks professional.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        The "its simple and easy to do" is a problem in and of itself...
        It might be simple to get a server barely functioning, but configuring it properly and keeping it secure is somewhat harder. This is why there are so many insecure boxes out there getting hacked and pumping out spam.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Actually not that simple, although a default postfix installation on Linux is already pretty secure. The thing that took me the longest to get to work well was spam-filtering though.

      • No it's really not simple. I've run a small linux network at home for almost 20 years, but mail servers are a totally different proposition.

        Only the instructions I found here [vorkbaard.nl] actually helped me. No relation/link, they are just the best and clearest instructions I have yet found.

    • Easier just to go to someplace like Zoho.com and host your mail there for free if you don't have much mail. Then use FreeDNS at afraid.org https://freedns.afraid.org/ [afraid.org] to manage the domain for free. All it costs is the domain.

      Running your own mail server isn't as easy as that and you have to worry about protecting it from the Internet.

    • This is what I do, but interestingly, my data center (or some service down the line) has decided to blacklist hosts like AOL, Hotmail, etc. I can't send messages to these addresses and I can't receive from them, and no bouncing occurs, either. It's very frustrating, as many people simply cannot send me e-mails at all, and they end up thinking that I'm just ignoring them.

      Having your own mailserver is good for your identity, but it's not always reliable. With Net Neutrality breaking down, I suspect this pr

  • My main email address is ou81269me@hotmail.com

    and my password is Hunter2

    I'm not bothering with the /s

  • Having Hired a Ton of People (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tungstencoil ( 1016227 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @05:57PM (#57213766)
    ...over the years, I've seen:
    • Bradalicious2001@yahoo.com
    • enemafreak87@msn.com
    • myflutterbi@yahoo.com note: in her interview, she self-described as "up for anything." That kinda stuck.

    I've seen fairly innocuous ones that are nonetheless unique, and a quick Google search shows these people are {furries, swingers, potheads, anarchists, involved in political groups who actively oppose our line of work, survivalists, conspiracy theorists}. In general, we try to evaluate talent. If you're applying for a niche or high-end position, we'll likely look at your ... hobby ... as a novelty.

    However, if you're applying for something more entry level, at the very least we will question your judgement. At worst, we might think you're a little too weird.

    Ever not hired someone because of their email? Nope. Several on the above list I remember because I was all 'I can't believe I hired Bradalicious!'. It is hard, though, when forming a culture fit assessment to exclude such impressions, for good or bad.

    Also, it's fun to state sometimes the background company contacts via email, is 'analrapelover1972@yahoo.com' still a good email?

    • Ever not hired someone because of their email?

      Ah, yup. Not solely because of the email address, but because it was a red flag that lead to unearthing other red flags.

    • I'm sure they appreciate you posting their email addresses in a public forum. /s

  • "Gmail is definitely the winner"... I don't know, versus what? For a tech candidate, nothing says "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing" quite like writing from a webmail address

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      That's one of the reasons that you look at the headers. Amongst others, I have a gmail address that I use for some stuff, but I've almost never used the webmail to send something. The headers may tell you other things like that the person is using an ancient email program on Win95.

      • And the headers may tell you that the applicant runs their own email server, most probably indicating a hire.

    • "Gmail is definitely the winner"... I don't know, versus what? For a tech candidate, nothing says "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing" quite like writing from a webmail address

      My only takeaway from that quote is that Ms. Moore is most definitely not someone to go to for tech advice.

  • On the other hand, recruiter may want to set an interview with a candidate applying from root@cia.gov

  • You'd be surprised at who uses AOL... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @06:08PM (#57213838)

    I work and have worked with some well known and / or high net worth individuals, and more often then not they have an AOL address, as they started using it in the 90s and just just kept using it as they were comfortable with it, and no one ever gave them a good enough reason to switch. (these are obviously not tech industry people)

    For myself I did go by a childhood nickname for many many years and it actually stuck in the workplace because I have a very common first name and we had to deconflict.

    Now that I work for myself I have dropped it, and I use my personal domain with POP/IMAP on a hosting server with my website, keeping only two weeks of email on the server. Like some people here I'm not interested in having all my email exposed to the Google apparatus.

    It'd be interesting to see in what light personal domains are seen in now, not that it matters or affects me at this point. (firstnamelastname.com type format) Before it was a must have piece of real estate, now many people just use a free email service such as Gmail and few people have personal websites anymore.

    • I was actually laughing at a very wealthy friend using an aol.com address a few weeks ago. Most of my email is hosted via Gmail, kind of wish I still had my shitgoddamngetoffyourassandjam@usa.net or my @compuserve.com email address too... but hey, need to let go some time...

  • Firstname.Lastname.Turnipface@Gmail.com
    No resume should ever be without one of these beauties.

    You're welcome.

  • I've got about six email addresses I use currently, all for different purposes, I can't see why anyone would limit themselves to only one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )
      people should get a new email address every 2 to 4 years like this. a few sites like linkedin get a unique email address. then i have a better idea who leaks out to spam. but don't change what email a site gets to see unless you a dropping that one (and you better hold on to it for another year just in case). and you should have email addresses from many providers. i have 21 addresses from 5 providers (AOL is not one of them). there are a variety of categories like family and recruiters.

      • Run your own mail server or use a mail service that supports some extended addressing character - the default is typically + but I've seen a lot of "address validation" scripts that choke on that, so I use a hyphen -

        This means I can be me@mydomain and give addresses out like me-radiocontest@. Mail comes to my regular inbox, tagged with the extra part of the address used, the address can be filtered on, everyone you do business with gets their own address. When you get spam you know who leaked your addy, a

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I only use 2 plus the one from my employer. It is simply a matter to keep track of them that keeps the number low. As I have my own DNS and mailserver and several domains, I could have as many as I want...

    • Only six? I have hundreds. Every site I sign up at gets a unique email address. If I start getting spam at that site then I know they either sold it or got hacked. It's an advantage of having your own domain.

  • @aol (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @06:21PM (#57213910) Journal

    My wife still uses an AOL email address... and why the hell not?

    It still works just fine; nobody has a problem reaching her - she hasn't had to make anyone change an address book in 20+ years.

    She connects to it via IMAP with a real mail client, and has been doing so for at least the last 15 years, and POP3 before that.

    Having an @aol.com address has zero reflection on function, form, appearance or anything else of her email... it's, after all, "just" an IMAP server. No reason to change whatsoever. What's the benefit? Believe it or not, the AOL IMAP servers are pretty stable - no more or less so than any other service. So, no technical or feature upside to doing so.... Why go through the hassle of changing?

    • It still works just fine; nobody has a problem reaching her - she hasn't had to make anyone change an address book in 20+ years.

      I use an alumni email address for this very reason. I've changed my actual email provider a number of times over the years... and all I generally need to do is update the forward on the university's server.

      Of course, some providers try to make it difficult for people who don't want to send from their provider-based email address. God only knows why Apple will let you use a third-party email address as your iCloud login, but does its level best to prevent you sending email using that as your "From" address.

    • Well, let me tell you about my experience with AOL. My cable company is Verizon, and around 6 months ago they stopped providing email service. It was moved to AOL (which Verizon purchased) - still with the verizon.net email address, but serviced by AOL, with an AOL webmail page if you wanted it. Since then it has been very unreliable, mainly the SMTP login would fail for hours at a time. At the beginning AOL had a support email, but no more: their support email page said "this email address is no longer

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ftobin ( 48814 )

      On your phone, having to poll for email via IMAP is pretty wasteful battery-wise.

  • excerpt (Score:2, Funny)

    by Orrin Bloquy ( 898571 )

    "Also, try to have a white-sounding name," Ms. Moore added before stuffing her face with an assortment of Hostess Snack Cakes, inexpensive chocolate smearing her face as the air filled with crumbs dutifully removed by her three french toy poodles.

  • The best practice is to have a separate email for (Score:5, Insightful)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @06:31PM (#57213968)
    job hunting purposes and never use it elsewhere. If you do, you'll find that your professional email will land on a zillion of spam lists and you'll be bothered by recruiters even years after securing a job. By keeping it separate, recruiters also won't be able to find your profiles on the Internet and possibly jeopardise your application efforts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )
      even better, make a positive tech profile with the identity you give out for a tech job search. they can get suspicious if they see no profile at all.
      • I do not exist on social media. You'll not find me on any "professional" sites (i.e. LinkedIn) too. In fact, you'll not see my name or personal information anywhere on the Internet at all (at least not because I put it there lol). Why would I share such critical information with anyone publicly? Because everyone else does so? Because hardly anyone cares about their privacy? Following the herd is simply dumb. Develop some common sense, people.

        I've never had a problem with "not having a profile" when lookin

  • utter bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gravewax ( 4772409 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @06:33PM (#57213978)
    The reality is that is pure ignorance on the interviewers part, having ancient email addresses connected to those domains often means a long history of involvement with internet, I literally only just ditched an ISP account I had used for nearly 30 years. I do many interviews and not once have I ever given a shit about their email address. However nowadays the ignorance of some interviewers probably does need to be catered for, doesn't mean you have to change anything though, just register a new domain/email address just for those situations. If you are reliant on your domain name and email address to obtain an interview you have other serious problems anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is probably more "HR" people that have so little skills to actually evaluate candidates that they look at email addresses. Stupid as it is, I see circumstances where this could actually matter, but more in the lower candidate qualification levels.

  • If you have half a clue, get a raspberry-pi, get a domain name, set it up as an email and Wordpress server.
    Now you can project yourself as professional or personable as you want.
    You can be a household or expand to a company, show family or products,
    broadcast opinions, connect with others
    you own it, you control it, you secure it

    • Sure... and instead of using a domain name, go for your IPv6 address! Make sure to do it as a .gif though so you don't get too much spam...

      Another fun option is to host all this on a sheva plug at the company's hq.

  • I am a recruiter (don't hate me) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @06:39PM (#57214006)

    And I couldn't give less of a toss what the email address is.

    My job is to match skillsets and personality to a role. Before sending a CV on to a company I strip contact details anyway. So the hiring company doesn't have that as a baseline. And if there is an email that I think will cost the person I advise them to create another one.

    But the recommendation to change it never comes on the 2nd half of the email address. It's always the first. @aol, @hotmail, @rediffmail, who cares? Bigknockersgg@gmail.com got advised to use a different one because she was going for an HR role and the company would have to send the offer letter there.

    Seriously who knows what setup people have behind the scenes anyway. An @aol might be in use simply because it is the email address that they have been giving people for the last 20 years. It could potentially all being forwards to a Gmail account anyway.

  • I have my own domain name (since 1995), which is mylastname.org. I send job-seeking info from job@mylastname.org.

    I send more serious job-seeking communications (ones that seems like they might actually result in employment) from myfirstname@mylastname.org.

    If that's not good enough for "them" then fuck 'em, I don't want to work for them anyway.

  • ...people were hired by their qualifications, not just the perceived propriety of their email address to the trendy.

  • So you're saying the reason I don't get any interviews is my "Locke2005@hotmale.com" email address?
  • Try going back that far.

  • Personally, using someone's email address as some sort of metric of what kind of person owns it.. pretty stupid really. It shouldn't matter.

    And if it does, or did, or will, it's not like getting a new email address is some difficult thing. They're pretty easy to come by these days. Which makes it even more worthless as a metric of what sort of person lies beyond the address.

    I think this is about as useful as associating someone's street name with what sort of person they might be. It doesn't matter. At

  • It's definitely a factor when deciding whom to vote for in various local elections. I'm more likely to vote for bob@bob4dogcatcher2018.com or bob@gmail.com than I am for bob@aol.com or doghumper420@hotmail.com.

  • That way, you can still be "whateverurweirdonameyouchoose"@"whateverservicewasavailable" and still be a very professional givenname.lastname@ieeeorg

    Just remeber to make a google (or some other address) to match, since the ieee email is a redirector.

    this will not impress anyone for or against you, but at least transmits a modicum of "seriousnes".

    If you want to transtmit your funny side, that's what the personal interests part of the CV is for, mine lists scuba diving, cycling and reading.

  • Management pathologies abound in Hi Tek (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @07:59PM (#57214322) Journal

    A thing to remember about High Tech is that there is enormous value added.

    As a result, company management can be off-the-wall-fruitcakes, following or instituting management fads and perpetrating many horrible management pathologies, yet still have enough profit left that the company can go on for years before dying, or even thrive.

    Then, even if they take it down (or better yet, bail out just before their house of cards collapses), or a competitor with less pathology eats their lunch, failure in High Tech is so often not the fault of the failing that it's not a black mark. Unless how they screwed up is SO visible that it becomes a scandal (or sometimes even if it is) they can then use their experience as a qualification credit when going for their next job, beat out less pathological but more junior applicants, apply the same or even bigger and better pathologies to another, larger, company, and take it down, too. Iterate for a while and you have a successful career, are rich from cashed-in stock options, and leave a trail of devastation as a legacy.

    What's true for upper management goes double for middle management and functionaries. They get to inherit both the pathologies of those above them and create more or follow fads of their own. As lower-ranking they're expected to be less competent and their foul-ups are not the subject of major business-press scandal.

    Minsky divided the first three decades of computer science education into three periods of about a decade each:
      1) Computer science was too new. Colleges had no idea what to teach, so they taught the wrong stuff. (Like everybody was taught how to WRITE a compiler.) A four-year degree was actually a handicap for getting a job in industry: It meant you had more that you had to UN-learn before you could learn the stuff you actually needed to know to be useful. The trick was to go ALMOST to a degree (to get access to the tools to learn and the useful skills), then get a job and drop out.
      2) Colleges figured out enough about what was really needed that going all the way to a four-year degree actually made you more useful than not.
      3) Colleges got into teaching a bunch of computer-science methodology fads and the degree became a slight handicap again.

    There have been a few more decades since then, and a lot more fads, both in computer science and in management. About a decade back, for instance, a degree was a mandatory check-box, and no matter how experienced you were, how many patents you had, who you knew, or how hard the people running the actual department were crying for you to be hired, you couldn't get HR to process your paper without having the sheepskin, checking the box, and filling in the adjacent slot with the name of one of a handful of big-name schools.

    On one hand some big-name companies are again hiring by some measure of skill and not requiring degrees, a practice that might spread. (Especially if H1Bs get restricted.) On the other, we've got the "email provider is A SIGN" fad in H.R. circles. So here we go again.

  • After years of using name@comcast.net among others, I'm thinking of buying a domain although the one ending in my last name is taken

    Poll: What sounds better name@1lastname.com or name@lastname1.com ?

    Is it even worth it I wonder since it's $ for the account renewals....

  • This isn't hypothetical. At a prior gig I was discussed resume screening with a coworker. He indicated that he'd round-filed my resume because of my @aol.com email address. I only got an interview because of a persistent person in HR.

    I'd had that email address since AOL came on CDs in magazines, but that conversation caused me to switch to gmail.

    (Thanks for being honest Dave. That conversation has helped me advance my career. I am in your debt.)

  • Who uses only one e-mail address these days? Stupid article.
  • I don't think so. Been using "retired-hit-man@IKnowWhereYouLive.com" for years and never had anyone say anything bad about it.

  • I've been online since some of you were barely in kindergarden, and I have two email addresses: a personal one, and a "professional" one, and never the twain shall meet.

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Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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