101–110 of 155 posts
If these were clearly defined, people could reference this information when they identify it, and people's behavior would become more policed. Without a strong definition, people can inflict harm from safe gray areas.
A lot of these issues seem to come down to: 1. Just fire the shitty people. I don't know why companies don't do this more in the US - it's at-will, just fire them. 2. Why are you trying to stop your employees from organizing???? > “The onus is on the CEO,” Flory said. “Our focus has been on the values,” Agreed on this last statement. Ultimately if Slack is becoming a toxic environment there are obviously other issues…
> 1. Just fire the shitty people. I don't know why companies don't do this more in the US - it's at-will, just fire them. I've asked this question of managers many times. The answer is usually some variation on "The shitty ones are the ones who know how to work the system to their advantage the best. They're the most likely to sue for wrongful termination and otherwise make my life hell if I fire them."
The outcome you want is the shittiness to stop and you have an objective transcript of everything that happened in slack, so assuming the shittiness is real this isn't even remotely hard.
Option 1: If the behaviour isn't that bad or is in some sense borderline or open to interpretation, you speak to them in person, say the thing that happened that needs to stop, state clearly why it isn't in line with your values, is damaging to the team/whatever the problem is, and state your expectation that it will stop and if it doesn't immediately stop it will affect their future with the firm. You follow up with an email recapping all of the conversation (in particular the statement that if it happens again they're out) and copy HR. You need to do option 1 if you have been allowing this behaviour to slide in the past. It's important to do this with all parties who have been indulging in this behaviour and don't show any kind of favouritism.
Option 2: If it's not the first time (ie you've already done some version of option 1 and it hasn't stopped) or the behaviour is really egregious you book a 1:1 with the person and when they show up HR is there with you. You show them the thing on slack that is happening that isn't ok and any previous "option 1" recap emails. You ask them to explain any extenuating circumstances. You terminate them there and then unless they have a really compelling story. You send an email to the HR person thanking them for handling the situation (especially since the reason you got here is that you have made mistakes as a manager), summarising the conversation and your thought process that meant option 1 was not appropriate. If they've done this before you have the email track from when you did option 1 before to add to their evidence trail.
For at-will employees there's no way any kind of wrongful termination will stick if you follow this kind of fair and rigorous process, you document conversations you have had and your rationale for dismissal is reasonable. For employees in a European or UK employment context, you need to be more aware of the surrounding context and make sure they have actually breached your policies and then follow your disciplinary process appropriately. If you work with your HR colleagues this isn't hard.
[edit] There is also an "Option 0" above which is less heavy-handed. Part of being a good manager is knowing when to take the person out for a coffee, put a hand on their shoulder and just give them the "Come on you know this isn't ok" conversation. Then you follow up with an email (but don't copy HR) and make sure you save it in case you need to escalate further. Just make sure you don't option 0 your buddies and escalate everyone else because that is seriously bad.
Just other day, The Economist also said that Google must "grow up": https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/07/30/googles-proble...
It looks like, big media point of view is that it is a childish behavior to do anything against the company bottom line. Combat racial discrimination, government surveillance or any corporation misdeed are insignificant compared to the shareholders profits.
Google employees walkout was an alert for the Big Money. The backslash is coming. Big Brother is watching you.
Ah, I should have known. My reasons, in no particular order:
First, it was Yet Another Communications Channel to Check. You know, email, phone, voicemail, meetings, standups, calendar appointments, and so on. It was one more place I had to scan through on an event loop. I would pay more attention to Slack only to miss something somewhere else. Where was communication happening? Anywhere. And Slack made it worse because we had a skillion channels proliferate, so it wasn't as if Slack were one email inbox, it was dozens.
Second, Agile Cosplayer #1 was busy posting random things like his Spotify playlist for the day (I don't have Spotify) and other stuff. You can't even /ignore like in IRC.
It seemed especially silly when all of us were within ten feet of each other.
Partially my fault: I was late to the smartphone game and have no idea what roughly half the emojis meant, and so I was missing whatever emotional tenor of a lot of messages.
Probably the worst part was that the expectation was that always had one eye on Slack instead of, you know, focusing on programming. There was no "getting back to" someone on it. It was expected I would have it on my smartphone (newly purchased) and have it just running all the freakin' time.
Most of this comes down to local implementation, hence I can point the finger quite a bit at Agile Cosplay, but boy oh boy, does Slack enable and encourage some lousy local implementations.
My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.
Really though, having the ability to ignore _bots_ would be quite useful, a lot of noise comes from bots that might be useful to some of my coworkers, but not others, even in the same channel.
And also ignoring highlights from particular people too
Sorry people, this isn't about about "high school" behavior. This is about preventing workers organization. They are just building the narrative for whats comes next. Just other day, The Economist also said that Google must "grow up": https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/07/30/googles-proble... It looks like, big media point of view is that it is a childish behavior to do anything against the company bottom line.…
Interestingly, it has been shown that more diverse groups of employees are less likely to organize and form unions or demand collective bargaining.
As someone who moderates a several hundred person mailing list, the arguments they listed are neither new nor unique to Slack. If anything, Slack is much easier to moderate than e-mail or other mediums of communication.
Bingo. Having a user tied to an actual person, and not just a dog with an internet connection and email address must make it orders of magnitude simpler to address offenders.
My experience with Slack was it is a litmus test for your company culture. If you have people prone to histrionics and complaining, it's going to encourage that. If you have cliquish attrition-game players, they're going to create their own parallel channel scheme. If you have grandstanding drama queens who work an audience, it's the weapon of choice for the sort of people who send emails with long cc' lists. If you…
My current company is full of "histrionics and complaining". It is almost entirely (but not completely) kids who would have been too young to be in software 7 years ago. The cause of this, in my experience, is a generational culture shift that seems to have done away with the common etiquette of keeping politics and agitation away from work.