Goal
To get people to think critically about the format of our email addresses.
Discussion
I was working as at a start-up. One of the “perks” was “a custom email address with your first name.” So my email address was something like david@example.com.
I didn’t have any customer contact. So it was mostly for getting into internal systems.
A year later, the company acquired another company. One of the founders of the new company was also named David. But since I already had the email address, he received something like david.smith@example.com.
He was the only founder with his last name in the email address; everyone else had unique names. So sometimes, I would get emails or calendar invites from external people that intended it for him. They assumed his email address would follow the same format as the other founders.
I didn’t feel like volunteering to change my email address. And no one asked me to. So for some time, I enjoyed getting an occasional peek into things. Nothing crazy, though.
Eventually, I wanted to change jobs, so before I left I signed up for some funny mailing lists because I assumed they would eventually transfer the email address over to him it; and they did. 😂
Lessons
- The email name format for customer-facing employees should be predictable.
- Through mergers, more founders may join the company after the initial founding, so plan for a way that allows them to fit in.