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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 logge

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.

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.