Microsoft going lights-out?

[vontresc]

Hah I almost forgot about compuserve. Funny thing is that I work for Compuware, and when I tell folks who I work for, I still get the "Oh you work for that BBS company" Question

 

[mikea]

My old Compuserve address was 76713,1410 ....I can't believe I remember that.

Anywho, this is a really dumb argument....if you want to hire AOL users to work in your IT department, just be prepared to have tickets with "me too" entered as the comment.

If you want to hire hotmail users, be prepared to have "lulz! epic winz, !!11! ftw" in your tickets.

The AOL users will tell you they reported the USENET user for violating TOS and the AOL admin will respond they need to talk to the internet people to fix that.

 

[gprellwitz]

No, you know you're dealing with a geek when they give out email addresses with bang notation giving the path from a well known server like ucbvax!

 

[jesse]

You guys crack me up...

 

[Ghery]

You are confusing the issue....yahoo, gmail, etc, are fine.

Hotmail is the late 2000s version of AOL. It means "I'm a newb, and I can't separate social networking with email."

mac.com means "I am a newb, and this computer is pretty."

Your email address says a lot about you....almost as much as a proper cover letter (or lack thereof).

I'll stick with my @ieee.org alias. Then you don't need to know who I'm actually using (although when I reply you'll find out).

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Nah. It is a pretty powerful service bundle. It just means that the owner of the email address hasn't yet realized they can receive pretty much all of the same services for free elsewhere, or chooses not to.

I choose to use mac.com/me.com because:

a) it pushes to my iPhone and my computer. So does Yahoo, but... Well, I use this for other features too, so I don't bother with Yahoo. I do have a Yahoo account but I've never used it for email.

b) It works well with the apps on my computer. For example, I could host pictures with photobucket, but that means that I have to export from iPhoto to a smaller sized file, go to my web browser, navigate to Photobucket, navigate to the particular album I want to add photos to, click "Upload", navigate again to where I saved the files from iPhoto, click OK, and wait. Using mac.com, I just drag and drop the pictures I want online onto the particular online album I want them in on the left-hand side of the screen, and they're uploaded exactly where I want them automatically.

Same goes for address book and calendar syncing, etc. I just set up my .mac account info in System Preferences once, clicked which apps I wanted to sync with .mac, and I didn't have to set up anything else. It's worth spending a few bucks to save time, for me.

FWIW, I don't use my mac.com address on my resume, but that's mainly because flyingcheesehead@ doesn't look professional.

 

[jesse]

I'll stick with my @ieee.org alias. Then you don't need to know who I'm actually using (although when I reply you'll find out).

IEEE is using SendMail. I suppose that is geeky enough.

 

[ScottM]

You are confusing the issue....yahoo, gmail, etc, are fine.

Hotmail is the late 2000s version of AOL. It means "I'm a newb, and I can't separate social networking with email."

mac.com means "I am a newb, and this computer is pretty."

Your email address says a lot about you....almost as much as a proper cover letter (or lack thereof).

i wonder what my @amsat.org and my @ieee.org say about me.


BTW they both forward mail to my @hotmail.com account that I have had since hotmail first came on line.

 

[ReverendSlappy]

i wonder what my @amsat.org and my @ieee.org say about me.


BTW they both forward mail to my @hotmail.com account that I have had since hotmail first came on line.

You actually use Hotmail? Guess you better quit your job because you mustn't be very good at it.


</sarcasm>

 

[ScottM]

You actually use Hotmail? Guess you better quit your job because you mustn't be very good at it.


</sarcasm>

I guess huh?

I see no reason to change just to get a cooler domain name. Hotmail is what it is, and it works well for what I need it for.

 

[jesse]

I think you guys are really taking this out of hand.

You're going to have to look at the type of position. I deal in the highly technical side of web/email. Would I discount someones ability if they were applying for a position that included managing a bunch of e-mail systems and claimed to be an e-mail expert while using hotmail? Yes.

Would I discount someone applying for a database or development position? No.

Also look at the username in your e-mail. Plenty of folks, HR included, drop resumes on the spot for those that have unprofessional or senseless usernames on their e-mail address...like sexyjohn@hotmail.com. You'd be surprised how many folks use those addressees in professional circumstances.

What I consider a technical position isn't what other people consider technical positions. Removing hotmail from your e-mail address may or may not make the difference. I can tell you that there are folks out there who would discount a hotmail user. Would you want to work for someone that did? Depends.

 

[SkyHog]

I think you guys are really taking this out of hand.

You're going to have to look at the type of position. I deal in the highly technical side of web/email. Would I discount someones ability if they were applying for a position that included managing a bunch of e-mail systems and claimed to be an e-mail expert while using hotmail? Yes.

Would I discount someone applying for a database or development position? No.

Also look at the username in your e-mail. Plenty of folks, HR included, drop resumes on the spot for those that have unprofessional or senseless usernames on their e-mail address...like sexyjohn@hotmail.com. You'd be surprised how many folks use those addressees in professional circumstances.

What I consider a technical position isn't what other people consider technical positions. Removing hotmail from your e-mail address may or may not make the difference. I can tell you that there are folks out there who would discount a hotmail user. Would you want to work for someone that did? Depends.

The way I see it is this: almost everyone has enough tech saavy to bs their way into a job these days. What separates the wheat from the chaff are the little intangibles....choice of email, choice of OS, etc.

I would hold a Linux guy above a windows guy above a mac guy, simply because i know what can be learned by simply using each. Can a Mac person know more about development than a Linux person? Sure, but I havent met one in person that can yet.

Why would someone CHOOSE AOL? My guess is because they need the internet presented to them, they lack the ability to find things. Always true? No, but often enough to be true.

Hotmail is the new AOL. I have a hotmail account simply because Microsoft used to require it for a liveid, but I don't use it. I have Facebook for social networking, I dont need my email to do it too

 

[dmccormack]

The way I see it is this: almost everyone has enough tech saavy to bs their way into a job these days. What separates the wheat from the chaff are the little intangibles....choice of email, choice of OS, etc.

I would hold a Linux guy above a windows guy above a mac guy, simply because i know what can be learned by simply using each. Can a Mac person know more about development than a Linux person? Sure, but I havent met one in person that can yet.

Why would someone CHOOSE AOL? My guess is because they need the internet presented to them, they lack the ability to find things. Always true? No, but often enough to be true.

Hotmail is the new AOL. I have a hotmail account simply because Microsoft used to require it for a liveid, but I don't use it. I have Facebook for social networking, I dont need my email to do it too

If you can't winnow out the wheat from the chaff in an interview, you have no business participating in the hiring process.

 

[SkyHog]

If you can't winnow out the wheat from the chaff in an interview, you have no business participating in the hiring process.

I'll remember that next time I'm involved in interview way more people than there are actually qualified for the job.

You give everyone that applies an interview? If you answer yes, than I know you're full of it.

 

[mantakos]

Can a Mac person know more about development than a Linux person? Sure, but I havent met one in person that can yet.

Particularly since the advent of OS X, which hides an honest to goodness unix-based core underneath its lingerie, Apple has quietly gained a following among technoscenti leaving their previous favorite desktop unix, often due to the faded love for the time-consuming hobbyist aspects of maintaining a home Linux or *BSD box. So you do see apple aficionados at a variety of points in the clue curve, including at the high end.
-harry

 

[mikea]

Particularly since the advent of OS X, which hides an honest to goodness unix-based core underneath its lingerie, Apple has quietly gained a following among technoscenti leaving their previous favorite desktop unix, often due to the faded love for the time-consuming hobbyist aspects of maintaining a home Linux or *BSD box. So you do see apple aficionados at a variety of points in the clue curve, including at the high end.
-harry

Me 'frinstance. I only got a Mac Mini because if all else failed and I hated it, I can speak in my native shell, and I figured I could run Yellow Dog Linux on it.

BTW, Nick there are some of us who were running Unix and Unix on Intel before Linus wrote his first line of code.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Particularly since the advent of OS X, which hides an honest to goodness unix-based core underneath its lingerie, Apple has quietly gained a following among technoscenti leaving their previous favorite desktop unix, often due to the faded love for the time-consuming hobbyist aspects of maintaining a home Linux or *BSD box. So you do see apple aficionados at a variety of points in the clue curve, including at the high end.
-harry

Yep.

And Nick, while I'm proficient at all of the above, I choose to use a Mac as my personal machine simply because when all is said and done, it takes less time to administer than other OS's. If I'm gonna be spending all day on computer administration, it's the last thing I want to do when I get home - Just like how when I was driving, I rarely drove outside the county. I flew instead. Otherwise it was too much like work!

 

[alaskaflyer]

I think you guys are really taking this out of hand.

You're going to have to look at the type of position. I deal in the highly technical side of web/email. Would I discount someones ability if they were applying for a position that included managing a bunch of e-mail systems and claimed to be an e-mail expert while using hotmail? Yes.

Would I discount someone applying for a database or development position? No.

Also look at the username in your e-mail. Plenty of folks, HR included, drop resumes on the spot for those that have unprofessional or senseless usernames on their e-mail address...like sexyjohn@hotmail.com. You'd be surprised how many folks use those addressees in professional circumstances.

What I consider a technical position isn't what other people consider technical positions. Removing hotmail from your e-mail address may or may not make the difference. I can tell you that there are folks out there who would discount a hotmail user. Would you want to work for someone that did? Depends.

By coincidence I am on a hiring panel for a IT specialist position here doing everything from level 2 help desk support to scripting new user apps to new machine configurations to database management to server administration.

I looked at the email domains on the top five candidate's resumes:

juno.com
hotmail.com
gmail.com
a personal domain
a present employer's domain
an email address with their ISP "crestviewcable.net"

 

[jesse]

By coincidence I am on a hiring panel for a IT specialist position here doing everything from level 2 help desk support to scripting new user apps to new machine configurations to database management to server administration.

I looked at the email domains on the top five candidate's resumes:

juno.com
hotmail.com
gmail.com
a personal domain
a present employer's domain
an email address with their ISP "crestviewcable.net"

Like I said..It completely depends.

Hotmail for a developer wouldn't bother me..hotmail for a guy claiming to be an e-mail expert looking for an e-mail related position would stand out.

Like I said..this conversation totally has gotten out of hand. There are tons of things you can do to make a resume look better...having hotmail on a tech resume IS NOT one of them. Something else will look better..it just will.

Discounting the person entirely because of the e-mail--would be silly.

 

[ScottM]

Hmm I wonder what you guys think about a hiring manager who would discount applicants that did not have a BS in Comp Sci as not being qualified for the position. Seems more applicable than which email domain they would be using for their home email account.

If you respond with the hiring manager would be a fool for not looking at their experience level and qualifications based on deliverable and goals at previous jobs, then you have your answer as to why discounting someone based on their email domain is also foolish.

 

[mikea]

Hmm I wonder what you guys think about a hiring manager who would discount applicants that did not have a BS in Comp Sci as not being qualified for the position. Seems more applicable than which email domain they would be using for their home email account.

If you respond with the hiring manager would be a fool for not looking at their experience level and qualifications based on deliverable and goals at previous jobs, then you have your answer as to why discounting someone based on their email domain is also foolish.

Like the company that cut the interview short when I didn't have the B.S? Not that I said I did.

 

[Everskyward]

a present employer's domain

Now that's pretty stupid when you are inquiring about another job.

 

[ScottM]

Like the company that cut the interview short when I didn't have the B.S? Not that I said I did.

A long time ago at a company far away I and two other people were interviewing candidates for an engineering position. We looked at three candidates one had a MS EE and the other two had BS EE's. The MS EE's thesis was to determine the resistance of a resistive ladder, something I and the two other candidates had done in our 2nd year of undergrad work. The position called for a very good knowledge of HPIB, aka IEEE488 instrument control language, a good understanding of RF test environments, plus basic RF knowledge. The MS guy ranked last, he could not even program in basic. How he got any degree was beyond me. But our manager wanted him because he had a MS. So he was hired. Eventually we had to get him a couple of interns for the summer to fix his work. It took a couple of years but he finally transferred to the marketing department.

 

[alaskaflyer]

Hmm I wonder what you guys think about a hiring manager who would discount applicants that did not have a BS in Comp Sci as not being qualified for the position. Seems more applicable than which email domain they would be using for their home email account.

Out of six well qualified applicants, three have bachelors degrees (but one is an unrelated field), one has an associates degree, and two have no degree at all. So far I cannot correlate their education to their technical expertise, technical answers in the interview or experience, however the three with bachelors communicated noticeably better overall in the interview (IOW they can talk a good game, much more so than the other three.) Coincidence? Maybe. Pertinent to the job at hand? Arguable. One must effectively communicate information and concepts to your users, and your managers, as part of the job. Does a bachelors degree give you tools to do that? Yes. Can you get those tools elsewhere? Yes.

 

[dmccormack]

I'll remember that next time I'm involved in interview way more people than there are actually qualified for the job.

You give everyone that applies an interview? If you answer yes, than I know you're full of it.

You said:

What separates the wheat from the chaff are the little intangibles....choice of email, choice of OS, etc."

When I review resumes, the applicant's email address only "counts" if it's sexydude@whatever.

Otherwise, I say again (for clarity): @aol, @gmail, @hotmail, @gopuppies simply does not matter. The person using one of these free services is probably using it as a filter as is 85% the techie population.

I would hold a Linux guy above a windows guy above a mac guy, simply because i know what can be learned by simply using each. Can a Mac person know more about development than a Linux person? Sure, but I havent met one in person that can yet.

Once again, you're holding forth broad, rather narrow critieria which may or may not fit, depending on the position, the expected competency level, and the current and projected projects.

Anyway, your "linux guy's" first question for you will be: Which linux distribution? SUSE? RedHat? Puppy? rPath? What?

(Here's a site dedicated to tracking all the current linux distributions:http://distrowatch.com/)

 

[jesse]

Hmm I wonder what you guys think about a hiring manager who would discount applicants that did not have a BS in Comp Sci as not being qualified for the position. Seems more applicable than which email domain they would be using for their home email account.

Sigh.

Just because I said something you could improve on your resume--that will only help--and is looked down upon by some (I proved some do look down upon it) does not mean that a degree is worthless.

A BS in Comp Sci has a hell of a lot of value...as does many years of experience in the areas required.

A hotmail isn't a deal breaker--it sure the hell isn't a positive--and does carry some negative value DEPENDING ON THE POSITION.

 

[ScottM]

Sigh.

Just because I said something you could improve on your resume--that will only help--and is looked down upon by some (I proved some do look down upon it) does not mean that a degree is worthless.

A BS in Comp Sci has a hell of a lot of value...as does many years of experience in the areas required.

A hotmail isn't a deal breaker--it sure the hell isn't a positive--and does carry some negative value DEPENDING ON THE POSITION.

And I said that same thing as it pertains to education. Grabbing a free email domain says nothing about a person at all. Worrying about what your domain is seems as petty as what brand sneakers you wear to the playground. It says absolutely nothing about the person.

 

[SkyHog]

Meh, I give in.

Hotmail is what all the uber geeks use. AOL is actually the cream of the crop of the internet. And Macs are used by geeks too.

Next time I am helping review 100s of candidates, I better give them all interviews, since I might miss out on the next great programmer that uses AOL on his Microsoft Bob computer. It may take months, but hey, I got the right guy.

 

[dmccormack]

Meh, I give in.

Hotmail is what all the uber geeks use. AOL is actually the cream of the crop of the internet. And Macs are used by geeks too.

Next time I am helping review 100s of candidates, I better give them all interviews, since I might miss out on the next great programmer that uses AOL on his Microsoft Bob computer. It may take months, but hey, I got the right guy.

I'm with Slappy -- please continue to use your criteria.

The duds need a job somewhere, too.

 

[SkyHog]

I'm with Slappy -- please continue to use your criteria.

The duds need a job somewhere, too.

With the rate you're snatching up the hotmail users, I may not have any duds left to look at!

 

[dmccormack]

With the rate you're snatching up the hotmail users, I may not have any duds left to look at!

If you hadn't noticed...

I don't really care if they are "hotmail users."

I'm more concerned with their demonstrated knowledge, skills, attitudes, and overall competency for the position.

Call me crazy....

 

[SkyHog]

If you hadn't noticed...

I don't really care if they are "hotmail users."

I'm more concerned with their demonstrated knowledge, skills, attitudes, and overall competency for the position.

Call me crazy....

Its not crazy, its a waste of time. Using the small intangibles to qualify/disqualify candidates makes interview day easier.

Why would I interview someone that I know I'm not going to hire?

To Scott's point, i was hired without a degree, and i lost money because of it. When i look at non degreed candidates, I look at them for what they are: a bargain

 

[ReverendSlappy]

Its not crazy, its a waste of time.

Being "concerned with [a candidate's] demonstrated knowledge, skills, attitudes, and overall competency for the position" is "a waste of time" in your opinion?

Your boss doesn't read this, does he?

Using the small intangibles to qualify/disqualify candidates makes interview day easier.

Why would I interview someone that I know I'm not going to hire?

If looking at a candidate's resume and making an interview/no-interview decision on the basis of their skill set and experience takes you more than about 90 seconds, there's something wrong with what you're doing or with the resume you're looking at. Either way, the email address screening thing is still fundamentally ridiculous.

To Scott's point, i was hired without a degree, and i lost money because of it. When i look at non degreed candidates, I look at them for what they are: a bargain

Some more than others.

 

[dmccormack]

Its not crazy, its a waste of time. Using the small intangibles to qualify/disqualify candidates makes interview day easier.

Why would I interview someone that I know I'm not going to hire?

To Scott's point, i was hired without a degree, and i lost money because of it. When i look at non degreed candidates, I look at them for what they are: a bargain

I'll ignore the degree/non-degree smokescreen because its not germane.

Including a hotmail email address as "small intangibles to qualify/disqualify candidates" is absurd, EXCEPT in the very narrow case that Jesse mentioned -- if you were hiring someone to setup and maintain a mailserver, for example.

Even then it would be a small factor, quickly outweighed by more significant information contained in the actual resume.

You're grasping at straws.

 

[ReverendSlappy]

EXCEPT in the very narrow case that Jesse mentioned -- if you were hiring someone to setup and maintain a mailserver, for example.

I can get on board with that too... One of the more informative questions I could imagine asking such a candidate in a potential interview is, "What messaging system do you run for your personal email?" But then seeing Hotmail on the resume would be as equally negative as GMail as Yahoo as their ISP as... whatever.

 

[mantakos]

I've done a lot of hiring of software developers, and I can't say I've ever applied much significance to their email addresses.

This is often a question of taste, and if you filter based on it, you're really just selecting candidates based on similarities to yourself, and that's a mistake.

Engineers vary in the extent to which they ply their craft as a hobby at home. It's really not useful to try to evaluate them on that basis. There are plenty of 24hr geeks with just enough ability to get their Linux machine and vanity domain up and running, but it took everything they had. And there are plenty who are "geek at work, Daddy at home", for whom things like outside email accounts are not something on which they hang their identity, and work is something you do on the clock, when somebody is paying you.
-harry

 

[ReverendSlappy]

I've done a lot of hiring of software developers, and I can't say I've ever applied much significance to their email addresses.

This is often a question of taste, and if you filter based on it, you're really just selecting candidates based on similarities to yourself, and that's a mistake.

Engineers vary in the extent to which they ply their craft as a hobby at home. It's really not useful to try to evaluate them on that basis. There are plenty of 24hr geeks with just enough ability to get their Linux machine and vanity domain up and running, but it took everything they had. And there are plenty who are "geek at work, Daddy at home", for whom things like outside email accounts are not something on which they hang their identity, and work is something you do on the clock, when somebody is paying you.
-harry

Very good points, all. Which is why it's a pretty bad idea to broadly apply hard-and-fast rules.

 

[dmccormack]

Engineers vary in the extent to which they ply their craft as a hobby at home. It's really not useful to try to evaluate them on that basis. There are plenty of 24hr geeks with just enough ability to get their Linux machine and vanity domain up and running, but it took everything they had. And there are plenty who are "geek at work, Daddy at home", for whom things like outside email accounts are not something on which they hang their identity, and work is something you do on the clock, when somebody is paying you.
-harry

Excellent point!

uber-geek does not necessarily translate to "good fit."

Some have no idea how to actually finish a project.

But his geekness will be happy to tell you how he was up all night re-writing the linux kernel.

These types you break the glass in case of emergency, let them fix the problem, then let them go back to "playing."

 

[SkyHog]

What I'm not getting is why anyone here is arguing this point....no one is ENTITLED to an interview, and I can deny the request for almost any reason I want.

For example, I reviewed a resume the other day was printed in a cursive font. Should I look beyond that irritation too, since they might actually know what they're doing, they just don't understand that certain things are not done?

How about the guy that listed his MySpace credentials on his resume? Should I look past the boneheaded move on his part of actually thinking that his "awesome CSS work on MySpace" is applicable to a web development job?

Maybe, maybe not. I'll thank each of you to not tell me how to do my job, and in Slap's case, to not use the veiled threat of "Does your boss know?" on me, it doesn't scare me, because I know what we're looking for in candidates, and its not intellectually dumb hipster internet folk that can't find a real email provider.

 

[ReverendSlappy]

What I'm not getting is why anyone here is arguing this point....no one is ENTITLED to an interview, and I can deny the request for almost any reason I want.

Of course you can use any reason you want. But that doesn't mean that it's a good reason.

For example, I reviewed a resume the other day was printed in a cursive font. Should I look beyond that irritation too, since they might actually know what they're doing, they just don't understand that certain things are not done?

How about the guy that listed his MySpace credentials on his resume? Should I look past the boneheaded move on his part of actually thinking that his "awesome CSS work on MySpace" is applicable to a web development job?

Both cosmically different than what somebody decides to use for their email, something which to any professional is about as commoditized as electricity.

Maybe, maybe not. I'll thank each of you to not tell me how to do my job, and in Slap's case, to not use the veiled threat of "Does your boss know?" on me, it doesn't scare me, because I know what we're looking for in candidates, and its not intellectually dumb hipster internet folk that can't find a real email provider.

Uh, that wasn't a threat. I was just pointing out that you might not want to publicly pronounce those things to be "wastes of time" -- especially considering that there are apparently people out there who'd find much more arbitrary things than that sentiment to use to judge your qualifications.