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I've worked for various companies in the engineering and manufacturing industries, and zipping and sending files over email is as far from dead as you can imagi

I've worked for various companies in the engineering and manufacturing industries, and zipping and sending files over email is as far from dead as you can imagine, and has a very bright future ahead of it. Frankly, today's high school students have wildly deficient computer skills. We're talking about teenagers whose usage of a computer usually consists of browsing Facebook and listening to music on Spotify, not actually doing productive work; informing workflows based on input from such users is like asking a painter how a fireman's tools should work.

saghm 7y ago
Honest question: what do you do when the files you want to send are larger than the max attachment size for the email provider? If you send it through another medium, why not do that by default instead of email?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Because it is significantly more cumbersome. With email you get the file literally attached to the message talking about it, and you store that away and can always find the file and the context for it in the same place.
- seabird 7y ago
  SMB shares or the like are pretty much universal in such a situation. I generally tend toward making something available on a file share and emailing a link, but because of permissions and access controls, email is generally easier, especially for transient files that really don't need to be permanently saved. Never once have I used Dropbox or Google Drive in such a situation, even with very small companies.
  - anderspitman 7y ago
    What hiccups do you run into in terms of permissions with sending an "anyone with link can view" link over email? Asking because I'm working on a competing technology and want to get the UX right.
    - seabird 7y ago
      What I'm doing is not "anyone with link can view", it's uploading the file in question to an SMB (or equivalent) share and sending the location of that. If the user in question doesn't have permissions for my department's share, they can't access it.
      - anderspitman 7y ago
        Sorry I was on mobile and wasn't very clear. I meant in terms of services like Google Drive or Dropbox, what about the sharing functionality doesn't work for you?
        seabird 7y ago
        From a legal standpoint, there is way more to cover with those services. All sorts of hoops (NDA, compliance, etc.) would have to be jumped through. At my current employer, those services not being on our property under our complete control makes our lawyers nervous; counterfeits of our product are an existential threat to us, and keeping tight control over the software and electrical implementation details is paramount. Any idea involving a third-party service hosting sensitive engineering data goes straight into the shitcan. If you managed to address the legal and security concerns, you'd have to fight against decades of momentum and user entrenchment. Drive and Dropbox are rare; any customers or vendors that you're working with will probably have the headache of figuring out how to interface with these services instead of just applying their ~25 years of experience administering massively powerful Windows services. Power users have assimilated those 25 years of workflow into their very being, and all the added complexity of SMB/Windows shares and other related services are extremely powerful tools that help them ensure that the right people have access to what they need and no access to what they don't. In-house tools are written to integrate with the existing infrastructure, and nobody has enough knowledge or balls to attempt replacing them. Internal data sharing services are generally based on software which has been continuously improving for decades, and has best-in-class feature sets and support. The points above are themes that I've encountered pretty much universally in every engineering firm that I've worked for or interfaced with.

saghm 7y ago

Honest question: what do you do when the files you want to send are larger than the max attachment size for the email provider? If you send it through another medium, why not do that by default instead of email?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Because it is significantly more cumbersome. With email you get the file literally attached to the message talking about it, and you store that away and can always find the file and the context for it in the same place.
seabird 7y ago
SMB shares or the like are pretty much universal in such a situation. I generally tend toward making something available on a file share and emailing a link, but because of permissions and access controls, email is generally easier, especially for transient files that really don't need to be permanently saved. Never once have I used Dropbox or Google Drive in such a situation, even with very small companies.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  What hiccups do you run into in terms of permissions with sending an "anyone with link can view" link over email? Asking because I'm working on a competing technology and want to get the UX right.
  - seabird 7y ago
    What I'm doing is not "anyone with link can view", it's uploading the file in question to an SMB (or equivalent) share and sending the location of that. If the user in question doesn't have permissions for my department's share, they can't access it.
    - anderspitman 7y ago
      Sorry I was on mobile and wasn't very clear. I meant in terms of services like Google Drive or Dropbox, what about the sharing functionality doesn't work for you?
      - seabird 7y ago
        From a legal standpoint, there is way more to cover with those services. All sorts of hoops (NDA, compliance, etc.) would have to be jumped through. At my current employer, those services not being on our property under our complete control makes our lawyers nervous; counterfeits of our product are an existential threat to us, and keeping tight control over the software and electrical implementation details is paramount. Any idea involving a third-party service hosting sensitive engineering data goes straight into the shitcan. If you managed to address the legal and security concerns, you'd have to fight against decades of momentum and user entrenchment. Drive and Dropbox are rare; any customers or vendors that you're working with will probably have the headache of figuring out how to interface with these services instead of just applying their ~25 years of experience administering massively powerful Windows services. Power users have assimilated those 25 years of workflow into their very being, and all the added complexity of SMB/Windows shares and other related services are extremely powerful tools that help them ensure that the right people have access to what they need and no access to what they don't. In-house tools are written to integrate with the existing infrastructure, and nobody has enough knowledge or balls to attempt replacing them. Internal data sharing services are generally based on software which has been continuously improving for decades, and has best-in-class feature sets and support. The points above are themes that I've encountered pretty much universally in every engineering firm that I've worked for or interfaced with.