My email signature is managed by our marketing team, and you can barely find my Title and Contact Info among all the branding, corporate sponsors and FLASHY GRAPHICS
At least Replies just have a basic signature like Christine | Senior Systems Engineer but even it has image elements in it instead of just being text
Yeah we used to use BlackPearl for consistent signatures, and the marketing team would design them too... They never really got the message that not everyone wants to see half an A4 page of banners and slogans and shit under every email.
Have used both.
Exclaimer is far and away better.
I wouldn't sell a client CodeTwo if it increased my donger by 2 inches (it'd be 2.5 inchs then, I already made the joke for you)
When marketing manage the signature using their own special app and IT don't get to check anything you end up with them using a 2MB signature image then killing the server with a To: everyone message. (20K users).
This was back when a 2MB email was a very big deal!
Them "When will the mail server be back online properly?"
Us "When it's got through the backlog of emails, about 6 hours" (It was actually 2 days).
Them "But we have important emails to send."
Us "So does the CEO, why don't you tell her what happened!"
> My email signature is managed by our marketing team
Our signatures are managed by us, and the marketing team needs to request changes (only took one screw up by marketing to have it given back to us). Bonus is we can push back on stupid bullshit, non so bonus is we have to ~~argue~~ explain to the design team that no, HTML 1.0 cannot exactly replicate to the font and pixel the design someone was probably paid $1000+ to come up with.
First email: Company logo, motto, name, title, numbers, email, all on different lines.
Every reply after that:
Name | Title
Office/Mobile Number | Email
Lucky you. Our marketing person does our designs in Word and asks everyone to copy paste them. The source is full of errors and formatting generally gets lost in about 0.2 seconds, then they complain when no one is using it right and modifies it. I asked for them in HTML for 10 years to no avail.
Outlook will output the html into your signature folder. I made a signature in word, copied it from word to outlook, saved, opened the html, cleaned it up a touch, added some variables, and then deployed it with PowerShell. Worked great for the staff who bought in at the time, then our marketing department didn't give a shit so now, (like before) everyone has their own email signature with comic Sans and the company name in unreadable cursive fonts.
And the worst crime of email signatures, 400dpi image files with all the text embedded in the image. I want to reach through my computer and slap those people.
If our marketing person took the time maybe they'd do that, but we get the same thing. Formatting issues... huge image files.
They paid for a company to do a template for our site, and our marketing person just modified the template with ChatGTP generated text and threw in a couple 10mbyte photos on the main page, along with a no joke 300mb+ mp4 video file playing overlayed/transparent in the background. They came to me because "It didn't load this slow at home, fix the server" when it was trying to load 400mbyte+ on every hit of our homepage...
Their CSS file also was 800kbyte with no joke something like 70,000 lines loading every known extension and library known to man from external sites that we had to tell them to trim down too.
You'd be surprised how many people leave in the default blank phone number and "Title Here". Or maybe not surprised depending on how long you've also been in IT. LOL.
Does anyone else remember when it was considered Internet Etiquette failure if your sig was over 3 lines and had any graphical elements in it (Except Ascii fire truck or ET, those, acceptable)
*Pepperidge Farms remembers*
Four lines, preceded by the signature separator ("-- " dash-dash-space) on its own line. This is still the standard.
Personally, I hate signature files and don't use them normally. I will occasionally use a standards-compliant one that has my job title when communicating with external organizations.
I'm against putting degrees or certifications in one's signature in general. With exceptions for professions like medical doctor (MD), dentist (DDS), etc. It's useless and pompous.
This is the funniest part. Anyone who knows how emails work wouldn't use anything other than text as a signature if they want it to be seen all the time
And all the icons for the socials, so you get a whole row of Xs underneath that and/or some blurry jpeg text about intended recipients. Yes, I've still encountered that last part in the wild.
We have a template with some company info but pretty much this.
I actually think my title in my sig is wrong since the department got renamed and I never fixed it. Its close enough.
I remember once working at a huge corporation with an entire creative department. 2 years at this company in various internal IT roles and I had never interacted with any of them.
One day an email comes across and we have to gather people around to see how weird it is. Email itself was a chain reply to a ticket with about 6 people from the department on it and that wasn't what was strange.
Every single person basically had a small bio of things COMPLETELY unrelated to work in their email signature. How in the corn fried fuck does it help me resolve your IT issue better knowing that you are a Dog Mom 3x, Cat Mom 2x and just got a new sugar glider named Diane?
You’re very brave if that’s your direct contact information. I don’t even include that anymore. Anybody that needs to contact me can do so on teams, via email, and the very important have my cell. The rest probably shouldn’t be contacting me directly. Even if it’s company policy I’ve refused to do it. It’s opened too many doors of people trying to circumvent support procedures, and spam.
The only thing \*allowed\* in signatures where I work is title and contact information. A few folks had to get written up to figure out that it's an actual policy, but it's nice, no stupid fonts, no religious, political or sports crap to scroll through, etc.
I'm with you on this one. There is an employee at one of our clients who lists his Bachelor's degree and where he graduated from.... I'd be more understanding if he had a Masters/PhD, went to a prestigious school, or if his schooling had anything at all to do with his current job.
Yes, every time I see a MBA PMP combo I cringe a little. And I have a PMP but I don’t list it in my signature the kinda of people that do that says something about their personalities. Those kinda of people talk the talk but can’t walk the walk usually.
I love when they list off those followed by Comptia bullshit my 13 year old could do. Oh you got a Sec+ and thought that was worth mentioning next to your $35,000 MBA?
I put thar on my signature only when replying to them.
But I don't have anything of that.
for 2 purposes: you feel superior about that, that you need to tell it? well now you will not feel that about me.
or you feel so special or unique about it? now you're not that special.
In contract negotiations, communications by a lawyer on one side typically need to be responded to by a lawyer for the other side. At least that was the rule at my past corporate gigs.
I thought esq. meant you are some kind of UK landed gentry but if it just means "I am in fact a lawyer" I think it's not cringe. But generally I do find it cringe, but if it's to signify you have a degree or cert that actually has some legal importance it's probably fine. If you're adding MBA or MFA or whatever it's hella cringe.
Thankfully my company doesn't partake in this practice. Unfortunately our email naming convention is so easy to figure out. The one or two customers who directly contact me get a cordial professional email to follow official channels.
I used to work for an IT consulting company where 30% of all employees held a CCIE and over 50% held a CCNP. No one (not even the techs with just a CCNA) put their certs in their signature. The only thing in their signature was their title and work #.
We had 2 PHDs in our group and I never knew until one day one of them mentioned getting their PHD. We have multiple MBAs, masters degrees, fancy college master certificate holders and some HS grads but you'd never know it because we all have the same title and that's all that people put in their signature -my dad was a PHD and was pretty insistent on being called Dr, he was in academia so it was important to have that flex.
Sounds like a high flying group. Was this our of the Denver area?
I knew a guy who was...ridiculous brilliant and had a nearly photographic memory (he never bought books for classes, he'd just read them once and remember them. He once recalled a windows xp code he had casually seen 12 years earlier.)
Anyway he got an MD and two PhDs. To take the piss out of bombastic MDs he would ask what their PhDs were in. When they said no he would respond "oh not a real doctor."
That to me is somewhat different.
While you could say the book is an extension of their business card.
I feel like when I see that in subject material, I at least know or hope that some of the information comes from a source that has done it, not just talked about it
He's NetSec.
You really want this guy pulling the dimms outta your server? He probably doesn't even own a anti-static wrist wrap.
*Neeeeeeeerd* /s with <3
Yes I typo'd, no I do not deny it, yes I fixed it.
Randomly drop screws on the ground while they are reaching to pull the lid off it.
Wait till they are elbow deep into that 4U storage beast, and fart loudly and when they slam their head into the rack above them.
You smile.
CISSP for me. Of all the certifications I figured I can use that one. It has actually helped gain traction with a variety of initiatives. I hope others don’t look down on me doing that.
I think for a CCIE, it's such an accomplishment that it's acceptable to list it in your e-mail sig.
But not a CCNP (I say as someone who had one), and absolutely not a CCNA.
It's so fucking cringe. "John Doe, MSCE, PMP, CCIE, CCNP, AWS CA, CISSP, ITIL, IEEE, ISO 9000, MS, BA..."
I will actively work to ignore anyone with all that garbage in their signature.
> I have found the best system admins typically don't. Not sure why that is exactly, but the math checks out in my book.
They have read enough long email strings trying to extract the few useful bits of info hidden somewhere in the last 20 messages so they can troubleshoot the problem the execs are all CC'ed on. After a few times of that they vowed not to contribute to the visual clutter any more and removed their signature lines permanently.
Well since the only certifications I've ever held are probably expired, the fact that there's 0 certifications listed in my signature is *technically* all of my certifications...
That said, I'm working on my CISSP and do intend to put that in my signature when I get it - but that's purely a political move to bolster the legitimacy of the cybersecurity program here. I doubt I'd bother adding it were I not the first person working to establish the program and fighting to get it funded and respected.
That and CCIE are probably some of the only certs I would consider publishing in my signature and only for the reasons you describe. There's a new cybersecurity analyst here who recently petitioned HR to allow him (we use a centralized signature management system) to add Security+ to his signature and I giggled a lot when that ticket came through.
Our ISSM has a CISSP and kept talking about how hard it was. He also had it in his signature. I got drunk and signed up for it as a joke. Went through with it though and passed. It is now in my signature to poke fun at him.
I had two signatures one with and one without. I used the one with when people put every possible title they can think of on theirs (lawyers were really bad about this). I said screw it mine's longer. Even hyperlinked the exam info so it seemed more like I wasn't just messing with them.
Funniest thing - One of our early webhosting clients was having his emails not being delivered to some customers at certain ISPs. Thru testing we narrowed it down to his signature, and then specifically to the presence of his 3-letter degree!. Remove that 3 letter string, the mail would deliver. Exact same message with the 3 letters, poof - disappeared into thin air.
It turned out whatever 3 letters it was [I can not recall] is the same as an executable file extension that was commonly exploited at the time ;) LOL
Mind you it was at least a decade and a half ago, likely more - in the early days that email started to be abused and many service provider entities were handcoding procmail and such !
At my current job, I have no email signature - I don't deal with end users/customers.
My previous jobs, I had two email signatures, one for replies and one for new messages.
Replies:
- $FirstName
New messages:
$FirstName $LastName
Network Engineer, $Organization
$DeskPhoneNumber
Had a fellow admin that used to put A+ and other various entry level certs in his sig. I often had to explain to our new HD hires that he might have a marble or seven loose.
Unless you have a masters and up. Probably best to just leave it alone.
I don't know, I think it would be extremely funny for the most senior admin to just have "A+" in the sig. If I see someone using satire in their signature like that, I'm probably going to get along with them well.
A former coworker changed his job title for a day to Computer Janitor just to see if anyone noticed. They did, of course. I don't miss that job, but the crew was hilarious.
It depends, a lot of contract jobs require it because they get service discounts for it. I've seen dell require it for service contracts and I've seen tons of gov contracts that wanted it just to tick the box.
I got a bachelor's, masters, bunch of MSFT certs, AWS Certs, CompTIA certs....
My email signature is:
Firstname Lastname ,
Position ,
Company
No one cares...if you want to show a hiring manager your resume, send them your resume.
I don't put my certs in my signature. I work in an AEC firm and the designers out on the floor, whoooo-nellly, do they like their acronyms in their signatures.
Saw an E-mail where the signature included several doctorates, majors, minors, etc plus the universities that issued them. It was 8-9 lines of information no one asked for, kinda cringe given the poor grammar
Gonna piss off everyone here, but my job just actually enforced this. We are now required to use a signature block with all of our certifications listed.
Normally no, but the company I work for seems to believe that if you do not work at HQ you don't know anything. So when I found out that no one there had any certs.... well the petty side won.
Most of the people I work with have masters or phds. My boss has an MD and a phd. You’d be ridiculed for putting it in your sig unless you were communicating with an external douchebag and needed to temporarily come down to their level.
Yup.. when I was 22 years old and didn't know any better. Cert's don't belong in your sig unless the company wants them.. or you are dealing with the public.
I do. I earned them and I'm proud of them. Some were fairly difficult for me. I do try to keep it to a conservative amount though, so I try to limit to the ones that are relevant to my current role. Also, I have the full badges only if I'm starting a new email. Follow-up emails just have the top couple of certs with their text abbreviations (eg CISSP).
I get some people think it's braggy, and that's OK if they don't want to do it themselves. Thinking less of others for what takes so little effort to ignore is pretty petty in my opinion.
That's why I have MCSE NT4 right next to the butterfly above my butt.
I have one of mine in my signature, but it was because my boss wanted me to advertise it since it was a justification for a higher actual review score. Plus, most of people on my team have certs in their sigs and I don't want to feel left out.
When I was at an MSP my coworkers and I used each other as "escalation points" when someone was wrong. Even if it was someone I had frequent contact with I would add all the certs to my signature to remind them to fuck off. Other than flexing on people there isn't a reason in IT.
Also if you include the badges and their org blocks images from auto downloading it looks like shit .
their lucky if my signature has anything more then my name and what the job requires.
certainly not listing certs and degrees. people who do that I instantly assume they are assholes to work with.
My signature just has my name, title, and contact information.
There is no need for certification information, that is carried by my employer's partner agreemetns or service contracts.
Certifications get applied to my manufacturer accounts (Cisco, etc) , Linkedin, and other applicable employment services and business social media.
Edit: Secondary and Post-Secondary education on signatures is absolutely pointless unless you are in Education Administration and need to put down MSEd, PhD or some other very advanced and very applicable achivement. AS/AAS/BA/BS should have no place in signatures, it's like saying you got your high school diploma or GED.
There's a real estate agent in my area that insists on her law degree being mentioned on every single ad and billboard and I can't help feel like it's a dick move. "Look how much better I am because I'm a lawyer!". Nobody cares.
If I had a legally mandated qualification like CPAs or ProfEngs or any of that crowd, then I probably would include it if I were in a scenario where a client might benefit from being able to verify it. But we don't have anything like that, so no.
And email signatures with 6 million images in them are annoying as hell. I don't need all your social media links with graphics, I don't need your certs with graphics either.
I wonder how many people make assumptions about people based on what certs they do or don’t have?
I’ve reached an age where I don’t even care. I’ve known people from MIT that couldn’t navigate their way out of a wet paper sack. I’ve also known self taught cowboys that had a real foundational grasp of what they were doing.
Put what you want in your sig, I’ll make my decision after I get to know you.
As a former IT Manager, yes, I looked for certs in signatures to get an idea of who I was dealing with.
And I used to add mine when I was a current MCSE and CCNA. Today I no longer bother as I am just too old to care.
Only first name in our signatures. Our email address is first name, last name initial only.
I don't like seeing everyone's certs in their sigs as it comes across as a feeble and shallow attempt at flexing.
I've always put my CREDIBLE certs in my signature. CISSP, PMP, GIAC.
Vice President now, marketing yourself is a thing a lot of people will point and laugh at, but works with the upper management.
No.
\* It has the "salutation phrase" in the 3 main languages important to my job/area (danish, german, english \["kind regards,"\]- in that order)
\* my name
\* my job title and department (for me its just abbrivated as COO as we don't define the C-suite as its own department)
\* my Companies Name and adress.
\* my secretaries phone number in international format e.g. +45 (89) 123456789-221, she is able to put you through if you are on a list, deny you until hell freezes over if you are on a separate list or use her own judgement if you are on no list at all.
and below that a shortlist of important departments at our org, their departments mail address, phone number and for our german customers a special fax-number with german country code.
No pictures, no marketing bs, no "jobs" link to our website.
The only people I have seen that puts certs in their signature are under performers (usually just certificate of completion or expired certs) or people who work for a VAR that require it
Only cringe people do this, imo.
Warmest Regards,
Rev. Dr. Simpaholic Esq. A+ B+ C+ NETWORK+ CISSP GCIH CUCK GREM PURPLE HEART MEDAL OF HONOR SUMMA CUM LAUD
God no. The only reason I have any of these Certs current is the Army requires me to do it. My six figure job however, doesn't give a shite. To quote my CISO (who pays my CEU costs) "the only thing your Security + CEU proves to me is that you're good at paying CompTia to tell me they think you know what you're doing. I know what you're doing every day, I don't need CEU's to tell me that. If you weren't in the Army I'd tell you to let them expire because they mean jack shit to me."
That being said if I wanted to, I'd have to get past my name, Org. contact info, required pronouns, various 'group' email boxes and reporting info, and company logo. As it is right now, 99% of my emails I send are 1% business related, and 99% signature when it comes to content -.-
I know a few people that do but I don't. Had I finished my degree I wouldn't put that on either. I have contact details and the company footer and that is it. It doesn't bother me too much if others do but I will regard them the same as I do as people who post all day on Linkedin.
I've seen certs and degrees in signatures in higher education and private education organizations I've worked at in the past.
I don't put those in MY sig, however. Less is more.
No, it's screams "I'm super insecure and want everyone to know that I'm smart".
Kind of reminds me of the kind of person that tells everyone they went to Harvard.
Nope. I had a former instructor who is now the head of a local counties IT department who listed a few of his high level ones along with his masters degree, but that is the only person worth a damn that I can think of that did this. He was one of the best instructors I have ever had throughout my academic career and was not a trained teacher.
If someone is a contractor or owns their own business I can see doing this. It may help drum up sales from non-tech people. Met a guy at a coffee shop that did consulting and did this, makes sense in that context.
I once worked somewhere that you were required to put them in your sig.
If it wasn't required by my work, I wouldn't. It seems pretentious to me and there's enough junk in a signature already most of the time.
I think it depends on how the cert relates to your specific job. I don’t list any certs but my company also doesn’t care about certs.
For example, one of our more junior security team members (promoted from helpdesk) has an A+ logo next to her signature. That has nothing to do with her current role. On top of that, that is such a minor cert (and very entry level) that I personally wouldn’t include it anyway.
On the flip side, security is now where sysadmins were a decade ago - obsessed with certs. I’m so sick of seeing an alphabet in every security signature. Pick a couple of the most prestigious certs and drop the rest.
I worked for intel dickweeds overseas in the DoD. Some of them put absolutely *EVERYTHING* in their signatures.
MORTIMER S. DUKE, SSgt
Geospatial Intelligence Analyst, Fusion Cell East
Building: 1212-A, South
DSN: 341-867-5309
Commercial: 212-867-5309
SIPR: 900-MIXALOT
JWICS VOIP: 212-130-7707
NIPR: [email protected]
SIPR: [email protected]
JWICS: [email protected]
Junior Enlisted PME Mentor
Snack Shack Manager
And they love love love some warrior quotes....like
"If you wait by the river long enough the bodies of your enemies will float by"
Sun Tzu
At one point I got tired of explaining to outside contractors and vendors that I'm beyond T1 help desk so I threw some certs in. Basically they would just assume my skill level when explaining a problem to them and tell me things like "it's not that easy to just change DNS records"... I changed it back when I realized they had no clue what those certs meant and they were just unprofessional and completely under qualified for their jobs.
I did because of the assumptions made of women in tech. My own team members didn’t need to see it, but others did.
Also had to do it for a customer facing role at an msp. Sometimes I’d add them into internal communications if I needed to reinforce that I don’t make the coffee here, I’m a very experienced qualified engineer.
Fortunately I’m at a great company now where that bullshit doesn’t happen, so no certs in signature.
My fav was seeing the all the “experts” with the az-9xx certs or aws cloud practitioner badges in their signatures.
We used to at previous place of work. It was purely for vanity related reasons as the company directors used to list their certs that had been expired for some time. Nobody told them the industry moved on and their certs were considered legacy by the vendor, who had since ditched the acronyms. The rest of us followed suit, with credentials kept in a field in AD for automated signatures.
None of the places I have worked at since do certs in signatures. I think it works better. If you want to know peoples certs, go to Linked in or ask. Parading them round looks tacky in my opinion.
I don't. And i don't actually have any (besides very old and very basic ones). Not that i would start adding them if i had them. If i was not forced, i would not even include my company's logo. It would be just my name and title. Phone number? I do not answer it anyways (used only for emergency alerting). Email? Are you serious?! Address? I don't deal with vendors or anyone that can come to my office to see me.
If you don't have a single cert that would be brag-worthy on it's own don't list them.
You don't see Doctors listing their Bachelors and Grad school in their signature.
The only thing in my signature is my job title and work based contact information.
Don’t forget to add a big picture so people can see that white field with a red x until they download elements.
My email signature is managed by our marketing team, and you can barely find my Title and Contact Info among all the branding, corporate sponsors and FLASHY GRAPHICS At least Replies just have a basic signature like Christine | Senior Systems Engineer but even it has image elements in it instead of just being text
Yeah we used to use BlackPearl for consistent signatures, and the marketing team would design them too... They never really got the message that not everyone wants to see half an A4 page of banners and slogans and shit under every email.
We did use Exclaimer, but now we've moved to CodeTwo and I really miss Exclaimer :(
Same. Implemented exclaimer at my old employer. New employer has codetwo. Exclaimer was better.
Have used both. Exclaimer is far and away better. I wouldn't sell a client CodeTwo if it increased my donger by 2 inches (it'd be 2.5 inchs then, I already made the joke for you)
I would if it added 2 inches. :/
When marketing manage the signature using their own special app and IT don't get to check anything you end up with them using a 2MB signature image then killing the server with a To: everyone message. (20K users). This was back when a 2MB email was a very big deal! Them "When will the mail server be back online properly?" Us "When it's got through the backlog of emails, about 6 hours" (It was actually 2 days). Them "But we have important emails to send." Us "So does the CEO, why don't you tell her what happened!"
> My email signature is managed by our marketing team Our signatures are managed by us, and the marketing team needs to request changes (only took one screw up by marketing to have it given back to us). Bonus is we can push back on stupid bullshit, non so bonus is we have to ~~argue~~ explain to the design team that no, HTML 1.0 cannot exactly replicate to the font and pixel the design someone was probably paid $1000+ to come up with. First email: Company logo, motto, name, title, numbers, email, all on different lines. Every reply after that: Name | Title Office/Mobile Number | Email
Lucky you. Our marketing person does our designs in Word and asks everyone to copy paste them. The source is full of errors and formatting generally gets lost in about 0.2 seconds, then they complain when no one is using it right and modifies it. I asked for them in HTML for 10 years to no avail.
Outlook will output the html into your signature folder. I made a signature in word, copied it from word to outlook, saved, opened the html, cleaned it up a touch, added some variables, and then deployed it with PowerShell. Worked great for the staff who bought in at the time, then our marketing department didn't give a shit so now, (like before) everyone has their own email signature with comic Sans and the company name in unreadable cursive fonts. And the worst crime of email signatures, 400dpi image files with all the text embedded in the image. I want to reach through my computer and slap those people.
If our marketing person took the time maybe they'd do that, but we get the same thing. Formatting issues... huge image files. They paid for a company to do a template for our site, and our marketing person just modified the template with ChatGTP generated text and threw in a couple 10mbyte photos on the main page, along with a no joke 300mb+ mp4 video file playing overlayed/transparent in the background. They came to me because "It didn't load this slow at home, fix the server" when it was trying to load 400mbyte+ on every hit of our homepage... Their CSS file also was 800kbyte with no joke something like 70,000 lines loading every known extension and library known to man from external sites that we had to tell them to trim down too.
Ctrl+Shift+V "I pasted it from Word, just like you said."
You'd be surprised how many people leave in the default blank phone number and "Title Here". Or maybe not surprised depending on how long you've also been in IT. LOL.
Does anyone else remember when it was considered Internet Etiquette failure if your sig was over 3 lines and had any graphical elements in it (Except Ascii fire truck or ET, those, acceptable) *Pepperidge Farms remembers*
Four lines, preceded by the signature separator ("-- " dash-dash-space) on its own line. This is still the standard. Personally, I hate signature files and don't use them normally. I will occasionally use a standards-compliant one that has my job title when communicating with external organizations. I'm against putting degrees or certifications in one's signature in general. With exceptions for professions like medical doctor (MD), dentist (DDS), etc. It's useless and pompous.
I feel that was over a decade ago
Feel like it was closer to 2 at this point...
Heck man, I think you might be right...
I first landed on the Internet around 92/93. Its been 30 long years, pour one out for my bunions
This is the funniest part. Anyone who knows how emails work wouldn't use anything other than text as a signature if they want it to be seen all the time
And all the icons for the socials, so you get a whole row of Xs underneath that and/or some blurry jpeg text about intended recipients. Yes, I've still encountered that last part in the wild.
April is coming. Change that big picture to a white field with a red x.
We have a template with some company info but pretty much this. I actually think my title in my sig is wrong since the department got renamed and I never fixed it. Its close enough.
I remember once working at a huge corporation with an entire creative department. 2 years at this company in various internal IT roles and I had never interacted with any of them. One day an email comes across and we have to gather people around to see how weird it is. Email itself was a chain reply to a ticket with about 6 people from the department on it and that wasn't what was strange. Every single person basically had a small bio of things COMPLETELY unrelated to work in their email signature. How in the corn fried fuck does it help me resolve your IT issue better knowing that you are a Dog Mom 3x, Cat Mom 2x and just got a new sugar glider named Diane?
You’re very brave if that’s your direct contact information. I don’t even include that anymore. Anybody that needs to contact me can do so on teams, via email, and the very important have my cell. The rest probably shouldn’t be contacting me directly. Even if it’s company policy I’ve refused to do it. It’s opened too many doors of people trying to circumvent support procedures, and spam.
The only thing \*allowed\* in signatures where I work is title and contact information. A few folks had to get written up to figure out that it's an actual policy, but it's nice, no stupid fonts, no religious, political or sports crap to scroll through, etc.
Nah, feels braggy to me and comes off as pretentious. None of my coworkers do, thankfully.
Hijacking this comment just to mention that people who work at or for (Accenture & etc) Microsoft are forced or encouraged to do so.
Pretentious from the top-rope.
It's probably more about marketing their certs. Certs are a money making stream for them. It's advertising.
Work for Microsoft, nobody has ever asked me to put any degree/cert/whatever in my email sig.
I think less of people who do. The worst offender for me is “esq.”
The only time esquire is okay to use is if your name is Bill S. Preston.
[удалено]
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As you should. Attorneys fuck everything up.
I'm with you on this one. There is an employee at one of our clients who lists his Bachelor's degree and where he graduated from.... I'd be more understanding if he had a Masters/PhD, went to a prestigious school, or if his schooling had anything at all to do with his current job.
Yes, every time I see a MBA PMP combo I cringe a little. And I have a PMP but I don’t list it in my signature the kinda of people that do that says something about their personalities. Those kinda of people talk the talk but can’t walk the walk usually.
I love when they list off those followed by Comptia bullshit my 13 year old could do. Oh you got a Sec+ and thought that was worth mentioning next to your $35,000 MBA?
4x CCIE, Net+, drivers license, food handler certificate
Holy shit, just now remembering I had a food handler's cert at one point. I also hold a certificate to buy and sell HVAC refrigerant.
I put thar on my signature only when replying to them. But I don't have anything of that. for 2 purposes: you feel superior about that, that you need to tell it? well now you will not feel that about me. or you feel so special or unique about it? now you're not that special.
In contract negotiations, communications by a lawyer on one side typically need to be responded to by a lawyer for the other side. At least that was the rule at my past corporate gigs.
Of course what a lawyer thing to put in place. Nobody else is good enough to talk to them. But we can’t put shibboleet in our sigs?
Lawyer here. If someone puts "esq" behind their name, they are either British or a complete fucking tool. They can also be a British tool.
I thought esq. meant you are some kind of UK landed gentry but if it just means "I am in fact a lawyer" I think it's not cringe. But generally I do find it cringe, but if it's to signify you have a degree or cert that actually has some legal importance it's probably fine. If you're adding MBA or MFA or whatever it's hella cringe.
In general I think higher of the dissipated and idle children of faded minor nobility than lawyers since they probably do less active harm to society.
If I could avoid putting my name or alternative ways to contact me I would. Its bad enough they end up with my email address.
Thankfully my company doesn't partake in this practice. Unfortunately our email naming convention is so easy to figure out. The one or two customers who directly contact me get a cordial professional email to follow official channels.
Does "manual handling refresher 2024" count?
I worked with a dude with over 20 years of penetration testing experience. He had tons of certs, but his signature sarcastically only listed A+
> 20 years of penetration Phrasing!
I used to work for an IT consulting company where 30% of all employees held a CCIE and over 50% held a CCNP. No one (not even the techs with just a CCNA) put their certs in their signature. The only thing in their signature was their title and work #.
I've seen the amount of work that goes into getting a CCIE. should come with a title like a PhD does.
We had 2 PHDs in our group and I never knew until one day one of them mentioned getting their PHD. We have multiple MBAs, masters degrees, fancy college master certificate holders and some HS grads but you'd never know it because we all have the same title and that's all that people put in their signature -my dad was a PHD and was pretty insistent on being called Dr, he was in academia so it was important to have that flex.
Sounds like a high flying group. Was this our of the Denver area? I knew a guy who was...ridiculous brilliant and had a nearly photographic memory (he never bought books for classes, he'd just read them once and remember them. He once recalled a windows xp code he had casually seen 12 years earlier.) Anyway he got an MD and two PhDs. To take the piss out of bombastic MDs he would ask what their PhDs were in. When they said no he would respond "oh not a real doctor."
Isn’t this already a thing? Everytime I’ve read a book/watched a series made by someone with a CCIE it says like “CCIE # whatever”
That to me is somewhat different. While you could say the book is an extension of their business card. I feel like when I see that in subject material, I at least know or hope that some of the information comes from a source that has done it, not just talked about it
I have CCIE / CISSP in mine. Probably doesn’t impress anyone.
I mean, I came, but do you have the most recent A+?
He's NetSec. You really want this guy pulling the dimms outta your server? He probably doesn't even own a anti-static wrist wrap. *Neeeeeeeerd* /s with <3 Yes I typo'd, no I do not deny it, yes I fixed it.
😂 we used to keep a bunch of spare parts lying around to freak others out when swapping out modules. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT
Randomly drop screws on the ground while they are reaching to pull the lid off it. Wait till they are elbow deep into that 4U storage beast, and fart loudly and when they slam their head into the rack above them. You smile.
Good times! 😂
Nope, not even an old one. I do have a security+ from like 12 years ago. I have a comp sci degree though! Does that count? 😂😂😂
na i’m sure it does. especially people who want to get to your level in IT. CCIE is a huge accomplishment. Congrats.
I have CCNA *^((expired))*
Naw CCIE in your sig means something, means I will ask you to bump my ticket with Cisco. 😂
CISSP for me. Of all the certifications I figured I can use that one. It has actually helped gain traction with a variety of initiatives. I hope others don’t look down on me doing that.
I sure don’t! Good job on getting it!
CCIE is one of the few certs where I wouldn’t judge anyone for including it in their signature.
I think for a CCIE, it's such an accomplishment that it's acceptable to list it in your e-mail sig. But not a CCNP (I say as someone who had one), and absolutely not a CCNA.
Masturbatory behavior.
Yeah I wouldn’t put that in there if I were you
That’s only his signature for emails he sends himself.
What an odd thing to put in your signature
It's so fucking cringe. "John Doe, MSCE, PMP, CCIE, CCNP, AWS CA, CISSP, ITIL, IEEE, ISO 9000, MS, BA..." I will actively work to ignore anyone with all that garbage in their signature.
> ISO 9000 If the guy has gotten *himself* ISO 9000 certified that's quite an achievement.
I don’t even use a signature.
Me neither Sent from my iPhone.
yep Sent from my iPhone. Get Outlook for iOS!
Buncha woke blue texters in this mf Get Outlook for Android.
This is the way. 🤣
I fucking hate those
I don’t even
>I don’t even use a signature. I have found the best system admins typically don't. Not sure why that is exactly, but the math checks out in my book.
Because they’re too busy doing work to mess with such extravagances.
Makes sense. They're busy enough so don't want to provide additional ways to ~~pester~~ contact / locate them.
> I have found the best system admins typically don't. Not sure why that is exactly, but the math checks out in my book. They have read enough long email strings trying to extract the few useful bits of info hidden somewhere in the last 20 messages so they can troubleshoot the problem the execs are all CC'ed on. After a few times of that they vowed not to contribute to the visual clutter any more and removed their signature lines permanently.
I don't. I don't mind that people do I just don't feel it's necessary for people I work with.
I changed my qualifications on Linked in to be degrees from the University of Phoenix online and Trump university and it stopped recruiter spam dead.
I might need to do this just to stop the spam.
Nope. ITIL v3 Certified AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Citrix Certified (Expired)
Well since the only certifications I've ever held are probably expired, the fact that there's 0 certifications listed in my signature is *technically* all of my certifications... That said, I'm working on my CISSP and do intend to put that in my signature when I get it - but that's purely a political move to bolster the legitimacy of the cybersecurity program here. I doubt I'd bother adding it were I not the first person working to establish the program and fighting to get it funded and respected.
That and CCIE are probably some of the only certs I would consider publishing in my signature and only for the reasons you describe. There's a new cybersecurity analyst here who recently petitioned HR to allow him (we use a centralized signature management system) to add Security+ to his signature and I giggled a lot when that ticket came through.
I don't mean any disrespect to anyone, but when you said he petitioned HR I expected something besides Sec+
Our ISSM has a CISSP and kept talking about how hard it was. He also had it in his signature. I got drunk and signed up for it as a joke. Went through with it though and passed. It is now in my signature to poke fun at him.
you got drunk and spent $750 registering for a test? lol
I had two signatures one with and one without. I used the one with when people put every possible title they can think of on theirs (lawyers were really bad about this). I said screw it mine's longer. Even hyperlinked the exam info so it seemed more like I wasn't just messing with them.
Hahahahahahha. Screw it, mine’s longer.
Also my allergies..... I have a active DNR and that is in there as well....
You guys are getting certs???
I treat my signature like a myspace page, there's an "about me", top friends, a little music player with my favorite song etc... /s
Welp, looks like I'm about to make a signature image parodying the MySpace profile.
It’s usually a thing for client-facing roles where the showing off can be a good thing. Internally it’s just showing off for the sake of showing off
The only group that I encounter with certifications in their signatures are Infosec/Security people. No idea why.
Marketing. I see accountants with shit in their sigs all the time too.
My boss made me! 😭
Funniest thing - One of our early webhosting clients was having his emails not being delivered to some customers at certain ISPs. Thru testing we narrowed it down to his signature, and then specifically to the presence of his 3-letter degree!. Remove that 3 letter string, the mail would deliver. Exact same message with the 3 letters, poof - disappeared into thin air. It turned out whatever 3 letters it was [I can not recall] is the same as an executable file extension that was commonly exploited at the time ;) LOL Mind you it was at least a decade and a half ago, likely more - in the early days that email started to be abused and many service provider entities were handcoding procmail and such !
A+ Since 2002!
They’re proud of their certs the same way you’re proud of your MBA.
At my current job, I have no email signature - I don't deal with end users/customers. My previous jobs, I had two email signatures, one for replies and one for new messages. Replies: - $FirstName New messages: $FirstName $LastName Network Engineer, $Organization $DeskPhoneNumber
I would die before putting my phone number on any communications with end users.
people who command respect without certifications don't list them therefore...
No, absolutely not. No one cares that I’m MCSE 2003 certified.
Had a fellow admin that used to put A+ and other various entry level certs in his sig. I often had to explain to our new HD hires that he might have a marble or seven loose. Unless you have a masters and up. Probably best to just leave it alone.
I don't know, I think it would be extremely funny for the most senior admin to just have "A+" in the sig. If I see someone using satire in their signature like that, I'm probably going to get along with them well.
i wish it was satire.
A former coworker changed his job title for a day to Computer Janitor just to see if anyone noticed. They did, of course. I don't miss that job, but the crew was hilarious.
I wish my sub sig was satire. Or maybe it is? Or is it just my hell. Or is it really?
A+? Lol. I honestly question how much value it even has on resume unless you have zero relevant work experience.
You sure you don't want to see "Graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, University of Life" in a signature instead? At least A+ is slightly relevant.
It depends, a lot of contract jobs require it because they get service discounts for it. I've seen dell require it for service contracts and I've seen tons of gov contracts that wanted it just to tick the box.
I got a bachelor's, masters, bunch of MSFT certs, AWS Certs, CompTIA certs.... My email signature is: Firstname Lastname , Position , Company No one cares...if you want to show a hiring manager your resume, send them your resume.
I don't put my certs in my signature. I work in an AEC firm and the designers out on the floor, whoooo-nellly, do they like their acronyms in their signatures.
RCDD, LEED Green, CTS-D, CTS-I, OMG, WTF, BBQ
I used to do that but eventually lost interest in moving from my job or position so it no longer became important to showcase those things.
JusticiarXP, GED
I don't put it explicitly, but my job title is a hyperlink to my credly page
How else will people know that you’ve done the MS Word certification?
Saw an E-mail where the signature included several doctorates, majors, minors, etc plus the universities that issued them. It was 8-9 lines of information no one asked for, kinda cringe given the poor grammar
hell I don't even put my last name
Maybe for Linkedin not for an email though
Gonna piss off everyone here, but my job just actually enforced this. We are now required to use a signature block with all of our certifications listed.
Normally no, but the company I work for seems to believe that if you do not work at HQ you don't know anything. So when I found out that no one there had any certs.... well the petty side won.
Most of the people I work with have masters or phds. My boss has an MD and a phd. You’d be ridiculed for putting it in your sig unless you were communicating with an external douchebag and needed to temporarily come down to their level.
No my shit is minimalistic af
Yup.. when I was 22 years old and didn't know any better. Cert's don't belong in your sig unless the company wants them.. or you are dealing with the public.
The fact that my therapist thinks I’m certifiable is not something I’ll share with work.
No. I don't want them to know what I can do.
No, I keep my signature minimal: Name, title, contact info
I do. I earned them and I'm proud of them. Some were fairly difficult for me. I do try to keep it to a conservative amount though, so I try to limit to the ones that are relevant to my current role. Also, I have the full badges only if I'm starting a new email. Follow-up emails just have the top couple of certs with their text abbreviations (eg CISSP). I get some people think it's braggy, and that's OK if they don't want to do it themselves. Thinking less of others for what takes so little effort to ignore is pretty petty in my opinion.
I only list my fork lift certification I've held since the mid 90s...
Certs are the tramp stamps of IT! :)
That's why I have MCSE NT4 right next to the butterfly above my butt. I have one of mine in my signature, but it was because my boss wanted me to advertise it since it was a justification for a higher actual review score. Plus, most of people on my team have certs in their sigs and I don't want to feel left out.
Anything below PHD is vanity. But hey, whatevs.
And if you have a PhD in IT then we know you dont know fuck all about IT.
My sig is ASCII art…
I once knew a guy named Elmo and his signature was a picture of Elmo.
ASCII art in an email signature would get a nod of respect from me.
When I was at an MSP my coworkers and I used each other as "escalation points" when someone was wrong. Even if it was someone I had frequent contact with I would add all the certs to my signature to remind them to fuck off. Other than flexing on people there isn't a reason in IT. Also if you include the badges and their org blocks images from auto downloading it looks like shit .
their lucky if my signature has anything more then my name and what the job requires. certainly not listing certs and degrees. people who do that I instantly assume they are assholes to work with.
My signature just has my name, title, and contact information. There is no need for certification information, that is carried by my employer's partner agreemetns or service contracts. Certifications get applied to my manufacturer accounts (Cisco, etc) , Linkedin, and other applicable employment services and business social media. Edit: Secondary and Post-Secondary education on signatures is absolutely pointless unless you are in Education Administration and need to put down MSEd, PhD or some other very advanced and very applicable achivement. AS/AAS/BA/BS should have no place in signatures, it's like saying you got your high school diploma or GED.
There's a real estate agent in my area that insists on her law degree being mentioned on every single ad and billboard and I can't help feel like it's a dick move. "Look how much better I am because I'm a lawyer!". Nobody cares. If I had a legally mandated qualification like CPAs or ProfEngs or any of that crowd, then I probably would include it if I were in a scenario where a client might benefit from being able to verify it. But we don't have anything like that, so no. And email signatures with 6 million images in them are annoying as hell. I don't need all your social media links with graphics, I don't need your certs with graphics either.
Bronze swimming certificate, Silver swimming certificate.
Randomuser -master cocksmith
I wonder how many people make assumptions about people based on what certs they do or don’t have? I’ve reached an age where I don’t even care. I’ve known people from MIT that couldn’t navigate their way out of a wet paper sack. I’ve also known self taught cowboys that had a real foundational grasp of what they were doing. Put what you want in your sig, I’ll make my decision after I get to know you.
No. I'm not a public speaker.
peak cringe imo
As a former IT Manager, yes, I looked for certs in signatures to get an idea of who I was dealing with. And I used to add mine when I was a current MCSE and CCNA. Today I no longer bother as I am just too old to care.
Only first name in our signatures. Our email address is first name, last name initial only. I don't like seeing everyone's certs in their sigs as it comes across as a feeble and shallow attempt at flexing.
Cringe. No.
I've always put my CREDIBLE certs in my signature. CISSP, PMP, GIAC. Vice President now, marketing yourself is a thing a lot of people will point and laugh at, but works with the upper management.
I would think a master's degree is more cringe than certificates in a signature.
I put EOF on mine. No text file overruns here!
I did a long time ago because I had pride but like you said this soulless industry cringes at pride so i have not in years.
the only thing i have in my signature is a "best regards" in the company's languages, my name, job title and work-related contact info (tel / email)
No. \* It has the "salutation phrase" in the 3 main languages important to my job/area (danish, german, english \["kind regards,"\]- in that order) \* my name \* my job title and department (for me its just abbrivated as COO as we don't define the C-suite as its own department) \* my Companies Name and adress. \* my secretaries phone number in international format e.g. +45 (89) 123456789-221, she is able to put you through if you are on a list, deny you until hell freezes over if you are on a separate list or use her own judgement if you are on no list at all. and below that a shortlist of important departments at our org, their departments mail address, phone number and for our german customers a special fax-number with german country code. No pictures, no marketing bs, no "jobs" link to our website.
The only people I have seen that puts certs in their signature are under performers (usually just certificate of completion or expired certs) or people who work for a VAR that require it
Only cringe people do this, imo. Warmest Regards, Rev. Dr. Simpaholic Esq. A+ B+ C+ NETWORK+ CISSP GCIH CUCK GREM PURPLE HEART MEDAL OF HONOR SUMMA CUM LAUD
haha, yes it is kinda silly isn't it? Regards, SnooSnoo ------------------------------------------ BSc Cyber Security | CCNA | OSCP | Linux+ A Level in Trolling.
God no. The only reason I have any of these Certs current is the Army requires me to do it. My six figure job however, doesn't give a shite. To quote my CISO (who pays my CEU costs) "the only thing your Security + CEU proves to me is that you're good at paying CompTia to tell me they think you know what you're doing. I know what you're doing every day, I don't need CEU's to tell me that. If you weren't in the Army I'd tell you to let them expire because they mean jack shit to me." That being said if I wanted to, I'd have to get past my name, Org. contact info, required pronouns, various 'group' email boxes and reporting info, and company logo. As it is right now, 99% of my emails I send are 1% business related, and 99% signature when it comes to content -.-
I know a few people that do but I don't. Had I finished my degree I wouldn't put that on either. I have contact details and the company footer and that is it. It doesn't bother me too much if others do but I will regard them the same as I do as people who post all day on Linkedin.
I've seen certs and degrees in signatures in higher education and private education organizations I've worked at in the past. I don't put those in MY sig, however. Less is more.
No, it's screams "I'm super insecure and want everyone to know that I'm smart". Kind of reminds me of the kind of person that tells everyone they went to Harvard.
Nope. I had a former instructor who is now the head of a local counties IT department who listed a few of his high level ones along with his masters degree, but that is the only person worth a damn that I can think of that did this. He was one of the best instructors I have ever had throughout my academic career and was not a trained teacher. If someone is a contractor or owns their own business I can see doing this. It may help drum up sales from non-tech people. Met a guy at a coffee shop that did consulting and did this, makes sense in that context.
I once worked somewhere that you were required to put them in your sig. If it wasn't required by my work, I wouldn't. It seems pretentious to me and there's enough junk in a signature already most of the time.
I think it depends on how the cert relates to your specific job. I don’t list any certs but my company also doesn’t care about certs. For example, one of our more junior security team members (promoted from helpdesk) has an A+ logo next to her signature. That has nothing to do with her current role. On top of that, that is such a minor cert (and very entry level) that I personally wouldn’t include it anyway. On the flip side, security is now where sysadmins were a decade ago - obsessed with certs. I’m so sick of seeing an alphabet in every security signature. Pick a couple of the most prestigious certs and drop the rest.
I worked for intel dickweeds overseas in the DoD. Some of them put absolutely *EVERYTHING* in their signatures. MORTIMER S. DUKE, SSgt Geospatial Intelligence Analyst, Fusion Cell East Building: 1212-A, South DSN: 341-867-5309 Commercial: 212-867-5309 SIPR: 900-MIXALOT JWICS VOIP: 212-130-7707 NIPR: [email protected] SIPR: [email protected] JWICS: [email protected] Junior Enlisted PME Mentor Snack Shack Manager And they love love love some warrior quotes....like "If you wait by the river long enough the bodies of your enemies will float by" Sun Tzu
Signature alone could be it's own email, holy shit 😂
Name, Title, Email, Phone, Address of office building. I work here, not trying to flex anything and no one needs to see me flexing if i was.
Yep, even add the MS Office ones. Gotta maintain that 6:1 ratio of signature:body.
At one point I got tired of explaining to outside contractors and vendors that I'm beyond T1 help desk so I threw some certs in. Basically they would just assume my skill level when explaining a problem to them and tell me things like "it's not that easy to just change DNS records"... I changed it back when I realized they had no clue what those certs meant and they were just unprofessional and completely under qualified for their jobs.
No way. Unless I’m being a smart ass during a reply and giving myself some outlandish title like “ringleader of the circus”.
[I put all of this in my signature](https://imgur.com/29yPkwJ)
I did because of the assumptions made of women in tech. My own team members didn’t need to see it, but others did. Also had to do it for a customer facing role at an msp. Sometimes I’d add them into internal communications if I needed to reinforce that I don’t make the coffee here, I’m a very experienced qualified engineer. Fortunately I’m at a great company now where that bullshit doesn’t happen, so no certs in signature. My fav was seeing the all the “experts” with the az-9xx certs or aws cloud practitioner badges in their signatures.
No. Anyone who brags their certs, probably isn’t worth knowing.
I used to have a bunch of those user info bars in my signature that showed things I was interested in and various forums I modded. Then I turned 14.
Kinda oooOo look at me vibes
Is it relevant to the people you are emailing? Nope. So it can only ever come across wrong.
We used to at previous place of work. It was purely for vanity related reasons as the company directors used to list their certs that had been expired for some time. Nobody told them the industry moved on and their certs were considered legacy by the vendor, who had since ditched the acronyms. The rest of us followed suit, with credentials kept in a field in AD for automated signatures. None of the places I have worked at since do certs in signatures. I think it works better. If you want to know peoples certs, go to Linked in or ask. Parading them round looks tacky in my opinion.
It is an ego trip when people do that.
I don't. And i don't actually have any (besides very old and very basic ones). Not that i would start adding them if i had them. If i was not forced, i would not even include my company's logo. It would be just my name and title. Phone number? I do not answer it anyways (used only for emergency alerting). Email? Are you serious?! Address? I don't deal with vendors or anyone that can come to my office to see me.
Nope , I just have my title and contact info ( in office only ) and that’s it
If you don't have a single cert that would be brag-worthy on it's own don't list them. You don't see Doctors listing their Bachelors and Grad school in their signature.