The way this was communicated to me in the past was "don't say/write anything using company resources that you don't want to see on the front of <insert major news publisher>". All communications on employer-operated platforms are subject to discovery.

Senior leaders tend to skirt this by using the telephone or video calls predominantly. However the infiltration of machine learning and AI means transcripts of calls, etc are now possible too.

In addition, the growing use of "disappearing" messages despite litigation holds has come up in more legal cases recently.

A video call on a company account isn't ironclad but, unless you're discussing something actually illegal, it's probably good enough for most purposes. Maybe not as good as personal cell phones or in-person, but a lot better than anything written--especially on company systems.

That seems like it would be a much larger constraint than you're making it out to be.

> anything you say in Slack can and will be viewed by the whole company. If not literally, then that’s how you should treat it.

Anyone thought otherwise?

Most large companies will tell you two contradictory things:

First of all, they'll tell you that even the most junior helpdesk workers can remote onto your machine, reset your password, disable your 2FA, and monitor all your web browsing and chat history.

Second of all, that this unannounced product, this not-yet-filed patent, this big planned layoff, this prospective hire background check result, these upcoming financial results, this employee's reason for needing medical leave, this pentest result document, and this forthcoming change to pricing are Strictly Confidential. You shouldn't discuss them even with your own boss, unless you've first confirmed they're on the need-to-know list, and that certainly doesn't include level 1 helpdesk workers.

Most large companies, to address this contradiction, will say access is possible but rarely used, tightly controlled and carefully audited.

It is still strange to me that:

1) people think that anything sent on an employer system isn’t visible to the employer

2) people send private DMs from work accounts

In private DMs?

In company Slack?

Private != personal. At least I never ever imagined one could even assume DMs on work IM are personal private conversations. They're organizationally grouped as chat between to accounts, as opposed to group chat, but they're at work, for work, using work-provided tools...

Or put another way: why would anyone consider work Slack to be different in this regard than company e-mail? Much like with e-mails, the difference between DMs and group chats is whether the number of participants is > 2.

I guess the cognitive dissonance is that I used to be able to say things to a coworker in-person which wasn’t recorded and tracked, using my voice. This was always a normal part of work, and I didn’t give it a second thought until it was gone. Nowadays it feels like someone is constantly standing over your shoulder whenever you’re at work, and there’s never a private moment. This is especially strange during holidays, since personal conversations tend to spontaneously happen around those times.

You’re right of course. I just wish we had something to fill the void that was left by in-person interactions vanishing. I think I’ll be doing WFH pretty much the rest of my life, and I absolutely hate going into an office in general, but there are definitely some aspects I miss. Being able to chat off the record with a coworker is one of them.

That's funny, because as someone who has worked mostly remotely, I consider the recording of every chat a feature. For example, I have been able to use this to figure out why code I wrote a decade ago is the way it is.

Call! Yes, most communication can be done with chats in slack or teams, but take the excuse to call and chit chat a bit before getting down to business.

Unless all calls are transcribed and recorded, it’s pretty “watercoolerish”.

At that point, the bigger risk is that someone repeats something to someone that you wish they hadn't. But I've had that happen with an in-person conversation.