Today is My Last Day @AOL
My career at AOL started in May of 1997 as a project manager in our 24×7 Operations team. I was hired by Karl Smith and worked for Scott Gries. At first I was working on Tandem Login/Masterfile and some AIM instant messaging projects. But about 6 months into the job, the PjM who worked on AOL Mail quit. When the lead for Host Mail Development, Jay Levitt, sent a mail to the PjM team and asked who was going to run mail projects in operations, I jumped at the opportunity. AOL Mail is so well known and impacts so many people. “You’ve Got Mail” after all!
My first mail project was helping to move the mailbox system from the old Stratus gear onto the Tandem systems. It was a multi-year effort of which I provided management for the last year of the implementation phase. I learned a hell of a lot about what it means to run an Operations team as I had never really been involved in the day-to-day running of a large scale system before. It was a privilege to be paged into a conference call and feel needed and useful. Of course the shine wore off after the first few 2am calls, but none-the-less, I enjoyed running the team and the success our team had running mailboxes.
After the successful transition to Tandem, Doug Steinberg offered me a job as a manager in charge of the Mailbox Operations team as well as the Stratus Operations team. I worked with a number of characters, including Mark Chapman, John Schulz, Jeff Hawkins, Rob Chandley, Jason Watts, Paul Rock, and more. These folks taught me how to manage a team, what they needed to be successful, and I think genuinely enjoyed my easy going, fun attitude towards the daily stress of being in charge of AOL’s Mail and Stratus systems.
As spam became more and more of an issue for our mail system, cost became a serious concern. In 2001, the Mail Operations team, now run by Brian Sullivan, recognized that we needed a dedicated team to fight spam. Not only was the cost an issue, but members were complaining about the level of junk in their inboxes. For some reason, they picked me to create a new team at AOL to fight spam.
Thank god they did as I have never had as much fun and learned so much in my entire career. It really was the best of all worlds for a guy like me. Through a combination of amazing technologies invented by our development team (Lorin Sutton, James Sargent, Mike Bond, JJ Moortgat, Kerry Hilldrup, Tim Paris, John Kelly, Craig Despeaux, Eric East, Liqun Du, and others) to the incredible job our Operations team provided to fight the spammers in day to day combat (Lachlan Maxwell, Mike Adkins, Tiago Stock, Margot Koschier Steve Schweinhart, Christine Murphy, Rudy G, Annalivia, Luis Angarita, Rick G, and many many more) we really set them back. But we also hit them with lawsuits courtesy of our legal experts (Charles Curran, Aimee Palmer, Eric Zeller and Margot too) and landed some big fish! Our postmaster team provided the front facing expertise and handled press and external interfaces led by Charles Stiles and Dan Rittenhouse, and many other dedicated individuals.
About 2.5 years into the spam fight, it was evident that we really were winning. Was it or will it ever be solved? Well no. But we consistently held the spammers to about 1/5th of their normal success volume for months. Our executive management (Matt Korn and John McKinley) were so impressed, that they paid for a trip for the team to go to Disney World! I can honestly answer the question, “So you’ve beaten the spammers, now what?” We had such a great time.
After the spam fight, I had an opportunity to lead the AOL Mail Development team and take a chance at software development. I took it and had a blast being closer to the engineering and product development side of things. I really learned a hell of a lot about Software Development and QA processes. Then we had to build the capability for AOL to become a Domain Registrar and be able to host Mail and IM for any domain. I really learned a lot in the 2 months we had to launch it, both in terms of agile software development, executive attention/management, and contractor management. It was a whirlwind experience. In the end, we got it done and I personally accomplished a goal I had for AOL Mail for >5 years….to be able to host mail for any domain. Yeah! Many thanks to the entire Development team…all 25 of you!…who enabled the technical side of things and worked their tails off to get it done in just a few weeks….especially when the first domain hosting project never launched after 2.5 years of effort!
In the end, I can honestly say that my career at AOL has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I don’t think I will be able to repeat such a wonderful professional experience going forward, but I will try. The amount of experience, learning, and the size of my network of professional acquaintances has grown so much in the last decade, it will be hard to repeat anything similar in the future. I really owe a lot to the people I have worked with over the years and just want to say a big “Thank You”.
Oh, and as far as what is next, I will be pursuing my photography full-time!. Hire me ;-)
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Good luck with the photography, Carl!! Sorry that you hit the layoff lottery.
Dude! Layoffs are lousy, except when they’re opportunities. It was a pleasure to work with and an honor to be succeeded by you.
Good call and good luck with the photography. You’ll never build another AOL, so don’t try – enjoy the challenges that the REST of life has to offer!
Carl,
I am so sad to see that you opted out. We’ve talked over the past months so I guess I can’t claim shock and surprise. It’s been a pleasure working with you in so many ways. My God, the things that were accomplished – it truly has been a wild ride. Thank you for making so much of that ride challenging, entertaining, thought provoking, rewarding and, most importantly FUN. There has been a lot of laughter and friendship shared in the hallways and outside of the office – much of it due to your sense of fun and adventure. At the same time, I knew that I could always count on you to do whatever it took to get things done and done right. Ah … the memories …. the time you shaved your head because the Mailbox time won the bet and made the schedule … you, trying to look manly in airport wheeling your wife’s suitcase, …. Steinywood! …. the time your team bubble wrapped your office … the time they emptied it and hid everything around the entire building (including in the EVP’s office) …. the time they “spammed” your car … you and McIntire in ANY staff meeting together…
Best of luck!
Brian
Best wishes, Carl!
Carl,
Best of luck with the photography… I have seen some of your work it’s great!
Cheers!
MV
Good luck with the photography, Carl. Not that I think you’ll need it – the first time someone (Anna?) showed me some of your photographs I said “These are good! He should do this professionally!”.
Hey Carl,
I know we didn’t work a lot together, but good luck on your photography and other future endeavors. I was given a package yesterday as well and plan to use it to launch the next phase of my career.
BTW concerning photography :), I took some astrophotos recently and I would be interested in what you thought of them. They are on my blog…I wondered if you had ever tried that type of photography.
Take care.
Hi Carl, it was a pleasure meeting you and seeing you on the Spam fighting trail. Good luck in your future endeavours, cheers.
Dave
Okay, when shall we do portraits of Jackson? Guess I have to pay you this time. :)
Thanks, Jay! I plan to enjoy the next phase of my career and life. Truthfully, I may go back into Tech someday…even AOL! But I seem to like to do something new every 2-3 years or so and this is just about 2 years. So onto the next thing.
Brian – we did enjoy some great times and achieved great things along the way. I don’t know if I ever appreciated how good I had it (working for you) until I left and saw the other side…. 3 managers in 1.5 years. A lack of mission and direction. A lack of appreciation. You can draw a paycheck for a while, but eventually you need to feel like you are contributing and that the folks around you appreciate what you are doing. Otherwise you start to doubt yourself or just get ticked off at the whole thing (if you blame the ones around you).
I am not at all bitter about the last couple of years. I learned a heck of a lot about SW Development, QA, and Product engineering. I also paid a lot more attention to things like what our competitors were doing and it was an excellent period in my career. I just wish it could have been more.
Thank you everyone for your nice thoughts and support. I am very much still learning photography, especially the business of photography. But its still great to hear the support.
And yes, Christine, you will have to pay me this time – http://carlhutzler.com/rice/
:-)
I’m not going to say goodbye, but you will be missed however in our daily conversations of email.
It has been a great honor to have meet and worked with you in this industry. Know that you have made a MAJOR impact to me not only in my management career, but also as a person.
Maybe one day I will be in a museum and see something you took… would be really neat to say to the stranger next to me… I know that guy…
I know I speak for all here, if you need anything please don’t ever hesitate to let us know.
Next time the family is with me in DC, I will need to schedule a paid session of us… or maybe when us anti-spammers get together… we can do a nice set of friend pics.
Good luck my friend!
Dennis, Jennifer, Andrew, and Matthew.
Hi Carl – this news is a real surprise .. end of an era at AOL.
Can you email me? Your old aol.com account doesnt seem to be active any longer, I’d like to talk to you a bit.
regards
srs
Sorry to lose the opportunity to work with you, I enjoyed so much the interaction. Best of luck with your photography!
Thank you Dennis! I hope its all been positive impacts :-) Seriously, thanks for the nice words and I look forward to seeing you all when you come to DC. For such nice words, I am sure I can manage a discount (not more than 5% ;-)
My cdhutzler@aol.com account should be back online next week. AOL said they would let me keep it. Otherwise, you can pretty much email me as cdhutzler@ just about any domain….
cdhutzler@gmail.com
cdhutzler@mac.com
cdhutzler@comcast.net
cdhutzler@hotmail.com (although I rarely check it and the account gets canceled)
cdhutzler@yahoo.com (rarely check)
and, of course,
cdh@carlhutzler.com (my photography business account)
Looking forward to chatting with you, Suresh.
Thanks, Daniel. I am sorry it came to an end too. But no all good things go on forever as they say.
It was a pleasure Carl – good luck with the photography; if you bring a quarter the energy you did at AOL, you’ll do fine :)
Thanks, Sree. I am glad that I had a positive impact on you and AOL, especially in the waning days. I hope I went out on a positive note because I know someday I will be working with you and the other folks again. Tech in DC is not that big ya know.
I still read your blog religiously. Not that I understand everything you write about (what the hell is a WPF/E CTP?) but I will be interested to see what you are up to in the future. While photography is my itch right now, who knows what two years of scratching will do :-)
Good luck in all your new endeavors, Carl.
I would suggest that “you will be missed” but in reality I’m sure that many of your impacts in the spamfighting field will in fact be lasting. Socially, though … you would be; so don’t be a stranger!
I am fairly sure there are one or two compliments in there, Bob! ;-) Seriously, thank you for the nice words. I will miss the day-to-day fun and excitement on the Z. Where else can you get so many know-it-alls together on a single topic. What fun. I still remember when you and Mark Herrick had it out on the list a few years back. Was one of the funiest things I have seen in my time.
Hope we see each other again sometime. Here’s to you, Bob!
Much luck, Carl. Very much enjoyed working with you over the years. Thanks for doing all the hard work; keeping the endless conferences fun; and being passionate about email. We’ll miss you!
Thanks, Miles. You and I go way back, well before the antispam days. I remember meeting you when John Schulz and I came out to chat with you and Dave Nakiama (sp?) about our two email systems (geeky stuff).
We have had a lot of fun together since then. You and Mark and J.D. and others have provided a lot of guidance and leadership in the antispam arena and have really contributed on a large scale to making email better for consumers. I tip my hat to you all and will miss you guys a lot. But I hope we can also stay in touch and grab a beer when I am out your way some day….or maybe we will just bump into each other at the airport ;-)