5 ms·

I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most c

by madrox 5y ago

I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most corporate concerns were raised through HR or the management chain, and power ultimately rested with the executive. Now, Slack means it's much easier to put anyone on blast, and it's much harder to control the narrative. Combined with the pandemic, where all socialization happens through these tools, and old corporate cultures are disappearing. Apple is probably one of those that relied on in-person culture more than most. However, I think what's happening here is happening everywhere that has company-wide chat.

Flatcircle 5y ago
Bingo
majormajor 5y ago
I don't see it. The most disgruntled people I worked with in the past kept most of their griping off of slack or IM or email because they suspected it was logged. Is constant complaining over lunch really less effective than constant complaining in DMs? Or, if it's large channels with lots of participants - what stopped those channels from happening before? Is the idea that people who would've whined over lunch to a small group are now recruiting many others to channels?
- exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
  Prior to Slack, constant complaining would happen at the Caffè Macs, after hours, in the halls, between people in the same or adjacent teams. Now teams are less siloed.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    Is that an Apple-specific Covid response? Teams have been more, not less, siloed at the job I've had since Covid started. People bold enough to complain in big mega-channels hasn't happened (similar to how few people would complain in all hands the same way they'd complain at lunch).
    - exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
      Prior to Slack, intra-company communications at Apple have been historically limited. Just being able to ping anyone at an instant is a cultural sea change.
      - majormajor 5y ago
        Oh, did Apple not have any global IM at all before Covid? This is startling to me. I haven't had a job without Slack or an essentially-equivalent predecessor (Hipchat) in over eight years.
        saagarjha 5y ago
        Not really. If you wanted to contact many people usually you'd need to send an email to a list.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure it is logged. Perhaps someone can confirm but can a sufficiently privileged user (not a Slack employee) read contents of private channels? DMs?
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Enterprise Slack allows full logging of even 1:1 DMs. DMs are not E2E encrypted.
  - cvak 5y ago
    Private channels yes, DMs are not readable by privileged via standard UI, there probably is some way to read them though.
  - bengale 5y ago
    Yes, for the upgraded plans you can export data from all private channels and direct messages. It also doesn't notify users when this happens. You can't watch the chats in real time or anything. People should assume communication on company services are all logged.
    - samhwr 5y ago
      Not only logged, but potentially subpoenable in lawsuits. Any reasonably large company usually ends up with the occasional lawsuit from some mentally ill querulant who feels wronged for whatever reason, and in one of those cases, at a past employer, we ended up blowing off steam by joking about the letters from their ‘lawyer’ (i.e. almost certainly themselves). We were fed up after having to gather vast amounts of data, which they demanded just to make things difficult for us. And then, as I should have foreseen, they demanded all communications within the company relating to their lawsuit. I’m not a lawyer, but, for whatever reason, our lawyers considered it to be within their rights; I’m sure it wouldn’t have applied to privileged legal discussions, but we were just code monkeys so I suppose our chat logs were fair game. I’m never doing that again. I don’t think their lawsuit went anywhere, but it was mortifying all the same, especially considering our brand was quite a friendly and liberal one.
jimsimmons 5y ago
This is why all tech companies are against WFH. They realise that their game is weak without posturing, optics, name-dropping, overt extroversion and all else they've mastered to rise up. Kinda reminiscent of what social media did to mainstream media --- everyone realised they were being fed a narrative and regimes changed throughout the world in an anti-establishment wave
- majormajor 5y ago
  > Kinda reminiscent of what social media did to mainstream media --- everyone realised they were being fed a narrative and regimes changed throughout the world in an anti-establishment wave In the US, at least, this doesn't seem to be the case. Mainstream media news - Fox, MSNBC, CNN, in order of popularity; ESPN, etc, for more niche news and events - still exists in the same form it did 20 years ago. Today's hot-button issues are what they were 20 years ago (abortion! guns! sexuality! activist judges! immigration! race!) with some new Covid-ones that are largely remixes of previously-simmering ones too like vaccines. Some Fox viewers also have shifted more to further-right internet content, and some MSNBC/CNN viewers to further-left stuff... but neither of those changes are "rejecting a narrative," more "going where they can get even more of the one they like." I haven't seen a lot of talk of social media shifting Fox viewers to left-wingers, or the reverse!
insulanus 5y ago
I think the feelings have been there for a long time. What changed is that it is harder to exert corporate culture (eg. fear or information control) while out of office.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I think you bring up a very good point. I think Slack is now becoming a company-wide water cooler where any grievance, no matter how distant from your own team, can get a spotlight on it. It's easy to live in a sort of vacuum if your small team is not witness to discrimination/harassment. In a large enough org it is entirely likely that there is an asshole somewhere that you have never encountered, never worked with that is making someone's life miserable. I am glad these things are being exposed but saddened that it could be happening in the larger company I work at.
freewilly1040 5y ago
At my company of thousands there used to me one right wing troll and one left wing troll. The right wing troll would piss everyone off in the #diversity channel, the left wing troll would insult the company and leadership along social justice lines. The amount of oxygen these two took up on Slack was incredible. There would be threads hundreds of messages long arguing about politics, and every all hands had some sour, insulting question. Both were eventually let go. But Slack really scales up rabble rousing, for good and ill.

by madrox 5y ago

Flatcircle 5y ago

Bingo

majormajor 5y ago

I don't see it. The most disgruntled people I worked with in the past kept most of their griping off of slack or IM or email because they suspected it was logged. Is constant complaining over lunch really less effective than constant complaining in DMs? Or, if it's large channels with lots of participants - what stopped those channels from happening before? Is the idea that people who would've whined over lunch to a small group are now recruiting many others to channels?

exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
Prior to Slack, constant complaining would happen at the Caffè Macs, after hours, in the halls, between people in the same or adjacent teams. Now teams are less siloed.
- majormajor 5y ago
  Is that an Apple-specific Covid response? Teams have been more, not less, siloed at the job I've had since Covid started. People bold enough to complain in big mega-channels hasn't happened (similar to how few people would complain in all hands the same way they'd complain at lunch).
  - exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
    Prior to Slack, intra-company communications at Apple have been historically limited. Just being able to ping anyone at an instant is a cultural sea change.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      Oh, did Apple not have any global IM at all before Covid? This is startling to me. I haven't had a job without Slack or an essentially-equivalent predecessor (Hipchat) in over eight years.
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        Not really. If you wanted to contact many people usually you'd need to send an email to a list.
Waterluvian 5y ago
I’m pretty sure it is logged. Perhaps someone can confirm but can a sufficiently privileged user (not a Slack employee) read contents of private channels? DMs?
- r00fus 5y ago
  Enterprise Slack allows full logging of even 1:1 DMs. DMs are not E2E encrypted.
- cvak 5y ago
  Private channels yes, DMs are not readable by privileged via standard UI, there probably is some way to read them though.
- bengale 5y ago
  Yes, for the upgraded plans you can export data from all private channels and direct messages. It also doesn't notify users when this happens. You can't watch the chats in real time or anything. People should assume communication on company services are all logged.
  - samhwr 5y ago
    Not only logged, but potentially subpoenable in lawsuits. Any reasonably large company usually ends up with the occasional lawsuit from some mentally ill querulant who feels wronged for whatever reason, and in one of those cases, at a past employer, we ended up blowing off steam by joking about the letters from their ‘lawyer’ (i.e. almost certainly themselves). We were fed up after having to gather vast amounts of data, which they demanded just to make things difficult for us. And then, as I should have foreseen, they demanded all communications within the company relating to their lawsuit. I’m not a lawyer, but, for whatever reason, our lawyers considered it to be within their rights; I’m sure it wouldn’t have applied to privileged legal discussions, but we were just code monkeys so I suppose our chat logs were fair game. I’m never doing that again. I don’t think their lawsuit went anywhere, but it was mortifying all the same, especially considering our brand was quite a friendly and liberal one.

jimsimmons 5y ago

This is why all tech companies are against WFH. They realise that their game is weak without posturing, optics, name-dropping, overt extroversion and all else they've mastered to rise up. Kinda reminiscent of what social media did to mainstream media --- everyone realised they were being fed a narrative and regimes changed throughout the world in an anti-establishment wave

majormajor 5y ago
> Kinda reminiscent of what social media did to mainstream media --- everyone realised they were being fed a narrative and regimes changed throughout the world in an anti-establishment wave In the US, at least, this doesn't seem to be the case. Mainstream media news - Fox, MSNBC, CNN, in order of popularity; ESPN, etc, for more niche news and events - still exists in the same form it did 20 years ago. Today's hot-button issues are what they were 20 years ago (abortion! guns! sexuality! activist judges! immigration! race!) with some new Covid-ones that are largely remixes of previously-simmering ones too like vaccines. Some Fox viewers also have shifted more to further-right internet content, and some MSNBC/CNN viewers to further-left stuff... but neither of those changes are "rejecting a narrative," more "going where they can get even more of the one they like." I haven't seen a lot of talk of social media shifting Fox viewers to left-wingers, or the reverse!

insulanus 5y ago

I think the feelings have been there for a long time. What changed is that it is harder to exert corporate culture (eg. fear or information control) while out of office.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

I think you bring up a very good point. I think Slack is now becoming a company-wide water cooler where any grievance, no matter how distant from your own team, can get a spotlight on it. It's easy to live in a sort of vacuum if your small team is not witness to discrimination/harassment. In a large enough org it is entirely likely that there is an asshole somewhere that you have never encountered, never worked with that is making someone's life miserable. I am glad these things are being exposed but saddened that it could be happening in the larger company I work at.

freewilly1040 5y ago

At my company of thousands there used to me one right wing troll and one left wing troll. The right wing troll would piss everyone off in the #diversity channel, the left wing troll would insult the company and leadership along social justice lines. The amount of oxygen these two took up on Slack was incredible. There would be threads hundreds of messages long arguing about politics, and every all hands had some sour, insulting question. Both were eventually let go. But Slack really scales up rabble rousing, for good and ill.