Tech companies have replaced the suit with the hoodie, and now they’re coming after another business custom: The basic truth that we organize humans in order of last name.
They aspire not to be a future Zuckerberg, Sandberg or Mayer, but tomorrow’s Mark, Sheryl or Marissa.
They’re where Twitter is with Jack.
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Parking app startup SpotHero organizes its online staff directory with a special section for the founders up high, followed by the rest of the team — including interns. Becca Rabinowitz, a marketing strategist, said the human resources team suggested switching to organizing by first name to reflect the staff’s friendliness with each other.
“We want to address people that way online because that’s how we want people to address each other in the workspace,” Rabinowitz said.
She said the design gives SpotHero customers a way to know who they’re speaking to on support calls, when customer-service representatives introduce themselves by first name only, and also helps integrate new employees who may only remember co-worker’s first name.
“We’re adding people to the team left and right so the way to help the team internally get to know everyone and get on that ‘first-name basis’,” Rabinowitz said. “It’s easier for everyone to remember.”
Richie Frieman, who covers manners and business etiquette as the host of the Modern Manners Guy podcast, called the trend of organizing by first name a “generational shift” that reflects growing casualness in business.
“I think that’s actually beneficial” in reflecting a company’s team-oriented culture, he said.”That casualness is becoming, ‘We’re all in this together.'”
However, Frieman said it is important to keep usability in mind and include full names and titles. If an investor, partner or customer can’t find the right person to contact, the beauty of the design or its reflection of company culture matter little.
“I don’t get it,” said Mark Meadows of Propllr PR. “I would lean more toward a functional contact page than one that just made someone feel warm and fuzzy.”
Alissa Ampezzan, a senior designer at data science firm Civis Analytics, redesigned the company’s site in summer 2014 to include every employee’s picture and bio, alphabetized by first name.
But in order to make it easier for outsiders to find what they were looking for, she added filters such as Data Science R&D, Engineering and Operations. She said she’s considering fun filters, too, such as one for the company’s volleyball team.
Ampezzan said the design helps remove the intimidation factor of working with a data science company.
“At the end of the day, we’re all still people and we’re just trying to solve problems,” Ampezzan said. “I hope when (visitors) come to the site and they can just find us and they can read a bio… then we give a human face to who we are.”
The team page reflects the company’s effort to minimize the appearance of hierarchy. Ampezzan pointed out that Civis’ CEO and founder, Dan Wagner, is tucked into the rows of dozens of employees on the site. (Of course, that means a user trying to find the CEO has a lot of browsing to do.)
“Look at yourselves and your own company culture and try to match the experience of the site … with who you are as an organization,” Ampezzan suggested.
A potential hot spot: different treatment for men and women, since some may be more likely to refer to men by their last name and women by their first.
When Google co-founder Larry Page announced the creation of holding company Alphabet in an August blog post, some raised eyebrows at his using new CEO Sundar Pichai’s full name, while referring to the YouTube CEO as simply “Susan.”
Others use first names but say the reason is simply practical.
Tech hub 1871 names its board of directors starting with chairman, treasurer and secretary, then lists the rest of its 41 members in order of first name. When it announced the first cohort of its WiSTEM program and new board members, both lists were arranged by first name: Alex, Amanda, Annie…
In neither case was it either for aesthetics or attitude. It was just because 1871 organizes lists in spreadsheets that include first and last name in the same field, a spokeswoman said.
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* Twitter: @aminamania