This is the convention in mathematics.

From the AMS statement on The Culture of Research and Scholarship in Mathematics: "For this reason, mathematicians traditionally list authors on joint papers in alphabetical order. An analysis of journal articles with at least one U.S. based author shows that nearly half were jointly authored. Of these, more than 75% listed the authors in alphabetical order. In pure mathematics, nearly all joint papers (over 90%) list authors alphabetically."

http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStateme...

Why is alphabetical order great? It just only means that people with last names starting with z will get penalized every single time because of choosing wrong parents! I would think randomized order would be chosen - especially if you were mathematician.

Why "penalized"? If there's no significance attached to author ordering, why should it matter who's listed first?

(I can actually answer my own question to some degree: the "alphabetical authors" convention is also the norm in my own field of high energy physics. Only after I finally landed a tenure-track job and served on another search committee did I realize that folks from other fields of physics would see my lack of first-author publications as a black mark. But in principle, among those who know the convention, order ought to be unimportant, shouldn't it?)

"Choose" parents with a surname starting with A then.

You can also legally change your last name to anything you want at any point in time. If you care enough.

Or use a pseudonym.

Meet Mr. Aaberg.

Interestingly, with this sounding like a somewhat realistic Norwegian/Danish name, it should actually show up at the bottom by the sorting rules of those two languages.

The digraph "aa" is an archaic representation of the modern character "å", the last letter of the Norwegian and Danish alphabets, and should be sorted accordingly.

Mr. Aaberg has nuthin' on Mr. Aaaron

If only it were so simple. It really depends on the field, but in the biological sciences it really matters where you are in the authorship list. If you are first it is assumed you did most of the work and if you are last you were the head honcho of the group. When you apply for scholarships and grants the committees will only consider the first and last authors as important and everyone else is just filler. It really important to be last when you are trying to get grants as so much emphasis is placed on track record.

I think that is usual for any large project. Take for instance the papers published by CERN.

Also consider that a single "order" might not make any sense. How do you determine if somebody "contributed" more than anybody else?

I realize the jostling going on, but I personally appreciate that I can tell from the order of names who to contact with inquiries.

That isn't that simple, as there is a cultural component in the order authors are listed (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_authorship#Order_of...)

Also, at CERN, with papers with 1000+ authors, any chance of picking the 'right' name from the list approaches zero, anyways. Such papers typically list a "corresponding author" to whom to send inquiries.

Alphabetic order also gave us the fun Google search phrase "Does G. Aad exist?" (Gives a link to https://jeffollerton.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/does-gaad-exis..., but Google also suggests a correction to your "typo")