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Seeing all of those "first name" usernames (eric, matt, greg, justin, ...) reminds me of when my first email address at my university was "matt" because it was
by mprovost 5y ago
Seeing all of those "first name" usernames (eric, matt, greg, justin, ...) reminds me of when my first email address at my university was "matt" because it was on a VAX and almost nobody had accounts. It would be interesting to measure the maturity (half-life?) of a site by the complexity of usernames as all the obvious ones are snatched up. I joined HN pretty early but unfortunately used my standard username instead of grabbing a short one.
- krallja 5y agoOne of the sure-fire signals of a startup getting old and successful is when the IT department declares a standardized account name template for new hires like firstinitial.lastname(.optional_number). So far I’ve only worked at places where I could get firstname@company.tld, which says something about my preferences, I think.
- wyclif 5y agoYep, and you could often tell who was a real old timer (or maybe who had institutional clout in the company) by who got to keep their firstname@company.tld instead of being forced to change to the standard naming template, which could create a lot of problems with longstanding workflows (in my case it has always been (mylastname@company.tld).