Jeremy, Rob and all previous Employees of FM

**Sherry** · 1 May 2010, 08:41 AM

I wrote a post in the "Fastmail Acquired by Opera" thread thanking you for you service, help and participation on EMD. I decided you you should have your own thread for this. As cross-posting is against the forum rules I am just putting a link to my post instead of re-posting.

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...&postcount=249

Again, thank you all for having been a part of such a great service as FM.

Sherry

brong · 1 May 2010, 09:36 AM

Thanks Sherry - we're not going away though (except Jeremy, and he was already out of the day-to-day operations work and has been for a while...)

The rest of us have nice enough golden handcuffs that we aren't going anywhere in a hurry

**Sherry** · 1 May 2010, 09:50 AM

That's absolutely great to hear Bron. After all, it's you guys who made FM what it is today and why we love it so much.

Sherry

hadaso · 1 May 2010, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brong

... we aren't going anywhere ...

Perhaps you can share more details with us? I would very much like to know that for the time being things don't change much (and that in the future we can expect lots more!) I guess many others would like to know a bit more. FastMail for us is pretty much the real people who develop and operate it.

brong · 1 May 2010, 10:21 AM

Well, I'm going somewhere - as I think I mentioned in another thread

I'm flying to Norway on the 18th of May to meet people, and I'm pushing reasonably hard to get relocated there for a few years. A great experience for my family, and a chance to be at the center of things - as it were.

Opera is about 700ish people in size, which I think is still small enough to make a difference in how things are run.

My previous job was a 20 person company purchased by a 17,000 person company, and that was a bit of a disaster. I moved to New Jersey to be close to the centre of things, but my chain of reporting went via San Francisco and London, with a separate technical report through Australia and then Japan before it got back to the guy in the corner office down the hall. He and I were both trying to move things in the same direction, but the layers of momentum between us caused things to move far too slowly.

The problem there was your typical impedence mismatch. I came from a company that did projects (clinical data management in fact) with fast turnaround and high numbers of participants, but small quantities of data. We might collect 10 items each from 10,000 people and turn the whole thing around in 3 months. The company that purchased us was used to projects that took 5 years, had maybe 200 participants but collected 300 pages of data on each one over 20 visits. Totally different approaches. By the time we'd finished following their standard operating procedures the project time would already be finished and we'd achieved nothing. Not fun.

Quintiles (that's who they were, http://brong.net/resume.txt) had about 2000 policy documents you were supposed to have read and be following before you did ANYTHING. They had a "University" internally where you could study to know more policy. Not how to actually _do_ things. Just policy. it took over a month for me to get a computer that I could use as a processing server for my data work. A month. The only reason I got it was my laptop came with me from Australia so it wasn't listed in the books next to my name. No employee was allowed multiple computers. How dare they. We had a guy in a wheelchair who couldn't be allowed a larger cubicle because he didn't have the status for it. Thankfully there was an empty cubicle next to him, so the partition was quietly removed - but it was unofficial.

--------

I tell this story, because I don't believe Opera will be like that. They use the same technologies (Perl, Linux, Mysql, Apache, Nginx ...) and they have a similar technical culture of pragmaticly getting stuff done rather than getting bogged down in process. This is a place I want to work

hadaso · 1 May 2010, 11:06 AM

What about the rest of the FastMail people?
Somehow a lot of people here in the forums seem to think (judging by what they write) that You (the FastMail team) just anded the keys over and walked away, which I think is not the case (This is what I understand from Johan Borg's post in the very long thread, and what I partially understand from the blog post, though it's not clear how many of you guys stay with Opera and whether what you will be doing in Opera will necessarily be running and developing FastMail and not other stuff. I mean they can hire you and Neil and let you work on something unrelated to FastMail).

ChinaLamb · 1 May 2010, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherry

I wrote a post in the "Fastmail Acquired by Opera" thread thanking you for you service, help and participation on EMD. I decided you you should have your own thread for this. As cross-posting is against the forum rules I am just putting a link to my post instead of re-posting.

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...&postcount=249

Again, thank you all for having been a part of such a great service as FM.

Sherry

To all at Fastmail that worked under the previous company, thank you so much for your hard work and dedication. Fastmail was and is one of the slickest email systems on the planet. Congrats on your success.

I look forward to many more good years with Fastmail under Opera. Glad to hear you all believe it will be a good match.

Peace!

/cl

jam · 1 May 2010, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

It is quite interesting that (at least to what I can see) a vast majority of the posts are coming from people that have not been extremely active on these forums.

Any big change will have people coming out of the wood work...

In the early days it was really exciting to discover fastmail and watch the rapid development that was being made. It seemed like everyone had ideas, or bugs to report. Faqs were being written (I did one for pine). Style sheets designed. Staff were very responsive and unlike other places they really seemed to *care*. Jeremy replied to so many messages he developed carpal tunnel syndrome. The members were great too, there was even a fund to donate accounts to people from developing countries who couldn't afford one. This is the only web-based service I've ever spent money on and I don't regret it.

At some point things worked well enough for me that I didn't really have alot to say. Especially since I couldn't afford and didn't really need anything beyond a Member account, since I don't believe in storing alot of mail online. I have checked out the forums occasionally whenever there was a big outage or something new announced that I was curious about. Things have been running pretty smoothly for a while though.

Although we don't know what changes will be made, I would like to thank the staff of Fastmail (Rob, Jeremy, Bron, et al.) for their years of service. Edwin for the forums, and Sherry and all the other moderators for making this a friendly place. Let's hope it continues. Back to lurking.

NJSS · 1 May 2010, 01:57 PM

I would like to publically thank everyone at Fastmail for their help and support over the years.

Good luck to you all, and again many thanks.

Nigel

rabarberski · 1 May 2010, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jam

In the early days it was really exciting to discover fastmail and watch the rapid development that was being made..

That's one of the things I regret: not signing up for fastmail earlier (I subscribed for a guest account in 2004, but only really started using it in 2006).

A big thanks to FM for the openness and community created so far...

Tom Gallagher · 1 May 2010, 11:17 PM

I would like to echo everybodies sentiments about a job well done. Thanks for the memories.

beq · 1 May 2010, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jam

Any big change will have people coming out of the wood work...

In the early days it was really exciting to discover fastmail and watch the rapid development that was being made. It seemed like everyone had ideas, or bugs to report. Faqs were being written (I did one for pine). Style sheets designed. Staff were very responsive and unlike other places they really seemed to *care*. Jeremy replied to so many messages he developed carpal tunnel syndrome. The members were great too, there was even a fund to donate accounts to people from developing countries who couldn't afford one. This is the only web-based service I've ever spent money on and I don't regret it.

At some point things worked well enough for me that I didn't really have alot to say. Especially since I couldn't afford and didn't really need anything beyond a Member account, since I don't believe in storing alot of mail online. I have checked out the forums occasionally whenever there was a big outage or something new announced that I was curious about. Things have been running pretty smoothly for a while though.

Although we don't know what changes will be made, I would like to thank the staff of Fastmail (Rob, Jeremy, Bron, et al.) for their years of service. Edwin for the forums, and Sherry and all the other moderators for making this a friendly place. Let's hope it continues. Back to lurking.

Wow excellent summary post (and trip down memory lane)

I echo everyone's sentiments here in wanting to thank the FM and EMD crew (even though this is not goodbye, please Edwin don't let this be goodbye to the forum!)...

DianeB · 1 May 2010, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jam

<snip>
Although we don't know what changes will be made, I would like to thank the staff of Fastmail (Rob, Jeremy, Bron, et al.) for their years of service. Edwin for the forums, and Sherry and all the other moderators for making this a friendly place. Let's hope it continues. Back to lurking.

Yes, well said & my sentiments also. (I'd be lost without the forums even though I rarely post thesedays).

~Diane
*delurking after long absence & now back to lurking again too.

mac'd · 2 May 2010, 01:56 AM

this big announcement has indeed awoke some of us board users from long past. well, ok i posted once last year for the first time in a few years.

you see, fastmail has become so reliable that it performs "like it isn't there." so reliable, that it rarely calls attention to itself. something we all longed for 4 years ago. i test drove countless other services through some bad times, but never canceled my fm acct. i've long since left all those other "wannabes" except for one free service that i never use. why never? because it's my backup to fastmail.

i hope opera doesn't try to fix something that ain't broke.

denverharless · 2 May 2010, 06:37 AM

Indeed, Thanks so much Fastmail team! Best wishes to you all. Good luck on your move, Bron!

1 May 2010, 08:41 AM	#1
Sherry Moderator Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: USA Posts: 8,687	Jeremy, Rob and all previous Employees of FM I wrote a post in the "Fastmail Acquired by Opera" thread thanking you for you service, help and participation on EMD. I decided you you should have your own thread for this. As cross-posting is against the forum rules I am just putting a link to my post instead of re-posting. http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...&postcount=249 Again, thank you all for having been a part of such a great service as FM. Sherry

1 May 2010, 09:36 AM	#2
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	Thanks Sherry - we're not going away though (except Jeremy, and he was already out of the day-to-day operations work and has been for a while...) The rest of us have nice enough golden handcuffs that we aren't going anywhere in a hurry

1 May 2010, 09:50 AM	#3
Sherry Moderator Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: USA Posts: 8,687	That's absolutely great to hear Bron. After all, it's you guys who made FM what it is today and why we love it so much. Sherry

1 May 2010, 10:21 AM	#5
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	Well, I'm going somewhere - as I think I mentioned in another thread I'm flying to Norway on the 18th of May to meet people, and I'm pushing reasonably hard to get relocated there for a few years. A great experience for my family, and a chance to be at the center of things - as it were. Opera is about 700ish people in size, which I think is still small enough to make a difference in how things are run. My previous job was a 20 person company purchased by a 17,000 person company, and that was a bit of a disaster. I moved to New Jersey to be close to the centre of things, but my chain of reporting went via San Francisco and London, with a separate technical report through Australia and then Japan before it got back to the guy in the corner office down the hall. He and I were both trying to move things in the same direction, but the layers of momentum between us caused things to move far too slowly. The problem there was your typical impedence mismatch. I came from a company that did projects (clinical data management in fact) with fast turnaround and high numbers of participants, but small quantities of data. We might collect 10 items each from 10,000 people and turn the whole thing around in 3 months. The company that purchased us was used to projects that took 5 years, had maybe 200 participants but collected 300 pages of data on each one over 20 visits. Totally different approaches. By the time we'd finished following their standard operating procedures the project time would already be finished and we'd achieved nothing. Not fun. Quintiles (that's who they were, http://brong.net/resume.txt) had about 2000 policy documents you were supposed to have read and be following before you did ANYTHING. They had a "University" internally where you could study to know more policy. Not how to actually _do_ things. Just policy. it took over a month for me to get a computer that I could use as a processing server for my data work. A month. The only reason I got it was my laptop came with me from Australia so it wasn't listed in the books next to my name. No employee was allowed multiple computers. How dare they. We had a guy in a wheelchair who couldn't be allowed a larger cubicle because he didn't have the status for it. Thankfully there was an empty cubicle next to him, so the partition was quietly removed - but it was unofficial. -------- I tell this story, because I don't believe Opera will be like that. They use the same technologies (Perl, Linux, Mysql, Apache, Nginx ...) and they have a similar technical culture of pragmaticly getting stuff done rather than getting bogged down in process. This is a place I want to work

1 May 2010, 11:06 AM	#6
hadaso The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Holon, Israel. Posts: 4,853	What about the rest of the FastMail people? Somehow a lot of people here in the forums seem to think (judging by what they write) that You (the FastMail team) just anded the keys over and walked away, which I think is not the case (This is what I understand from Johan Borg's post in the very long thread, and what I partially understand from the blog post, though it's not clear how many of you guys stay with Opera and whether what you will be doing in Opera will necessarily be running and developing FastMail and not other stuff. I mean they can hire you and Neil and let you work on something unrelated to FastMail).

1 May 2010, 01:57 PM	#9
NJSS Master of the @ Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Hampshire, UK Posts: 1,238	I would like to publically thank everyone at Fastmail for their help and support over the years. Good luck to you all, and again many thanks. Nigel

1 May 2010, 11:17 PM	#11
Tom Gallagher Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: South Jersey, USA Posts: 195	I would like to echo everybodies sentiments about a job well done. Thanks for the memories.

2 May 2010, 01:56 AM	#14
mac'd Senior Member Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 116	this big announcement has indeed awoke some of us board users from long past. well, ok i posted once last year for the first time in a few years. you see, fastmail has become so reliable that it performs "like it isn't there." so reliable, that it rarely calls attention to itself. something we all longed for 4 years ago. i test drove countless other services through some bad times, but never canceled my fm acct. i've long since left all those other "wannabes" except for one free service that i never use. why never? because it's my backup to fastmail. i hope opera doesn't try to fix something that ain't broke.

2 May 2010, 06:37 AM	#15
denverharless Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Denver Posts: 505	Indeed, Thanks so much Fastmail team! Best wishes to you all. Good luck on your move, Bron!