You’ve not worked in large companies then because people end up having the same first and last names as each other. Collision with names is literally unavoidable in large companies. Also for people who don’t have a single last name, it can get confusing. Do you do First.Last.Last@company or just tell them to pick a favorite last name? (Which is potentially difficult for some people for personal reasons.) Honestly, just give people a chance to tell you what they want to be called, and this all smooths over.
I mean yeah, but it happens even more with the naming scheme in the original post. Most companies just add a number when that happens. Predictable naming schemes, at least as the default, make it a lot easier to find people in large companies.
Predictable naming schemes, at least as the default, make it a lot easier to find people in large companies.
Do they? I feel like most people use Gmail or Exchange and they don’t search by email address but instead by name. Which is a special field that shows the display name of the email address. So you’ll typically see “First Last first.last@somecompany.com” This is how I typically search the contact list since most of the time the C-level team are all like “tom@somecompany.com” instead of a last name included. Even when I was at T-Mobile and Comcast they had C-level people get to choose if they wanted just their first name.
So overall my suggestion would equalize the company and allow for people to feel better about what they get to be called. At least, that’s the intent.
You could alternatively try to enforce the email address format with everyone throughout the company but realistically that never happens. Someone always gets an exception because they are the CEO or pretty much retired but not wanting to learn the new way or whatever. Just letting people be called what they want seems to be the most human-solvable solution.
Sorry, I meant professional company emails. Obviously people can make up whatever private gmail account they want. And people can state their preferred name, but the fact that if I call my coworker “Josh” and their last name is “Jacobson”, the fact that I can type in Josh.Jacobson and find them is extremely helpful, and I don’t get why companies would complicate that by making it “jojacko” .
You’ve not worked in large companies then because people end up having the same first and last names as each other. Collision with names is literally unavoidable in large companies. Also for people who don’t have a single last name, it can get confusing. Do you do First.Last.Last@company or just tell them to pick a favorite last name? (Which is potentially difficult for some people for personal reasons.) Honestly, just give people a chance to tell you what they want to be called, and this all smooths over.
I mean yeah, but it happens even more with the naming scheme in the original post. Most companies just add a number when that happens. Predictable naming schemes, at least as the default, make it a lot easier to find people in large companies.
Do they? I feel like most people use Gmail or Exchange and they don’t search by email address but instead by name. Which is a special field that shows the display name of the email address. So you’ll typically see “First Last first.last@somecompany.com” This is how I typically search the contact list since most of the time the C-level team are all like “tom@somecompany.com” instead of a last name included. Even when I was at T-Mobile and Comcast they had C-level people get to choose if they wanted just their first name.
So overall my suggestion would equalize the company and allow for people to feel better about what they get to be called. At least, that’s the intent.
You could alternatively try to enforce the email address format with everyone throughout the company but realistically that never happens. Someone always gets an exception because they are the CEO or pretty much retired but not wanting to learn the new way or whatever. Just letting people be called what they want seems to be the most human-solvable solution.
Sorry, I meant professional company emails. Obviously people can make up whatever private gmail account they want. And people can state their preferred name, but the fact that if I call my coworker “Josh” and their last name is “Jacobson”, the fact that I can type in Josh.Jacobson and find them is extremely helpful, and I don’t get why companies would complicate that by making it “jojacko” .