tail -f development.log

Late last night I was *lucky* enough to be included in a mass mailing from a *recruiter* who was looking to fill some Ruby on Rails positions.

From: Pradipta Archiputra

I have a couple of Ruby on Rails position, wanted to know if you are interested?

Max Archie
Technical Recruiter
Prodigus Source
Cell: 219-669-9216
Phone: 312-235-2365
Max@prodigussource.com

In and of itself, this email is not unfamiliar to most of us, but the interesting (annoying) thing is that the email was sent to about 500 people all in the TO: field of the email, not via the BCC: fields.

Personally, I clicked the REPLY button and told Max (Pradipta) that I wasn’t interested in working with someone who couldn’t use his email client properly and to remove me from his list. I didn’t think much else about it and went to bed for the night

Naturally though, it was only a matter of time before some noob person clicked REPLY TO ALL and sent the following message to all 500 recipients.

From: Zach C***** <****@******.com>

What are the positions?

That simple REPLY TO ALL set off one of the best spontaneous email threads I have read in a long time and when I woke up this morning I had about 50 replies to read and laugh at.

The list started off bashing the Bangalore HR scene for creating an Epic FAIL and then morphed into a very friendly and humorous discussion where people started introducing themselves like we all had been including in some kind of special Rails developer club for a reason.

Next a suggestion was raised to start a Google Group and the call when out for appropriate names. At about 1:30 AM EST, the Pradipta’s Rolodex group was launched complete with fancy logo.

Fittingly, the last email on the original thread was the following:

From: Matt S****** <********@gmail.com>

Hi Max,

I am a recruiter who has an opening for a top-tier recruiter such as yourself. I need someone who can unwittingly set off the fury of *at least* 400 people, while ignoring all basic email etiquette. Would you be interested? If not, do you know anyone else who is currently looking for such an opportunity?

Sincerely,
Thanks for the mile long email thread out of freakin nowhere