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Email transparency

stripe.com

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11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Email transparency

#11

Post by andrenotgiant »

greggman wrote: post #3

I've known companies that had pretty good email policies....until they got sued and every email debate was turned into the evidence that they knew X or considered Y or thought about Z and were therefore guilty. :-(

I would imagine that this open email policy actually reduces the amount of lawsuit-relevant emails in one sense:

If you want to talk about something sensitive or private you would probably pick up the phone or walk over to the person, knowing an email is shared with the entire company.

Re: Email transparency

#12

Post by quasque »

greggman wrote: post #3

I've known companies that had pretty good email policies....until they got sued and every email debate was turned into the evidence that they knew X or considered Y or thought about Z and were therefore guilty. :-(

This is a real risk. One company I worked for had me modify already sent and archived emails and Yahoo Messenger logs to remove incriminating evidence in preparation for an expected unfair dismissal trial. And also conveniently 'lose' the backup tapes for the period where the original data existed. Thankfully it was settled out of court.

Mind you, the dishonesty was rife there. The boss had me scan in his cellphone bills and edit to remove all records of calls to his mistress, so he could print them out (as 'photocopies') and prove to his wife that he wasn't cheating on her.

Kind of regret all that now, but payment alleviates conscience.

Re: Email transparency

#13

Post by toomuchtodo »

pc wrote: post #5
shykes wrote: post #4

Very cool experiment. How do you deal with less technical people in the team who don't find it fun to tweak email filters all day long? Is your tooling to the point of polish where that's no longer an issue? Or are you simply at a stage where you don't (yet) need to hire non technical people? We've found this to be the main obstacle in getting full adoption for things like this.

We help them create their filters when they join. We'll hopefully make this part more streamlined over time.

Do you create filter "roles", so certain roles have default filter sets upon creation?

Re: Email transparency

#15

Post by gdb »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13
pc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We help them create their filters when they join. We'll hopefully make this part more streamlined over time.

Do you create filter "roles", so certain roles have default filter sets upon creation?

We don't. People end up choosing the various lists they want to be on, so it wouldn't make much sense to do so.

Re: Email transparency

#16

Post by jzieger2 »

greggman wrote: post #3

I've known companies that had pretty good email policies....until they got sued and every email debate was turned into the evidence that they knew X or considered Y or thought about Z and were therefore guilty. :-(

Hi (I'm Stripe's lawyer). Litigation discovery is something that any company needs to think about when crafting its email policy. But whether an email goes to a few individual recipients or to a broader list won't impact whether it needs to be disclosed in discovery. The seemingly private email between two or three co-workers will almost always persist in someone's inbox for a very long time, and ultimately be discovered.

In most cases, the kinds of emails you are talking about -- where someone says something that can be mischaracterized or otherwise damaging to the company in the future -- are a result of poor judgment. And that's where I think Stripe's policy has a distinct advantage. When people know they're sending things to a broader group of recipients they tend to be more thoughtful in how they communicate and just avoid saying many of the imprudent things that would be troublesome in future discovery.

Re: Email transparency

#17

Post by pc86 »

quasque wrote: post #12
greggman wrote: post #3

I've known companies that had pretty good email policies....until they got sued and every email debate was turned into the evidence that they knew X or considered Y or thought about Z and were therefore guilty. :-(

This is a real risk. One company I worked for had me modify already sent and archived emails and Yahoo Messenger logs to remove incriminating evidence in preparation for an expected unfair dismissal trial. And also conveniently 'lose' the backup tapes for the period where the original data existed. Thankfully it was settled out of court. Mind you, the dishonesty was rife there. The boss had me scan in his cellphone b…

> but payment alleviates conscience.

That's disgusting.

Re: Email transparency

#18

Post by alan_cx »

redmattred wrote: post #14

That sounds like a lot of email to keep up with.

And then, too often, you need to speak to the sender to find out what the email actually meant in the first place, only to find out that it had no relevance to you.

I like the info sharing and should lead to increased efficiency, but its something that IMHO needs very careful scrutiny.

Re: Email transparency

#19

Post by jsaxton86 »

"We use Gmail for email and Google Groups for lists."

"What we have today works pretty well for our current size—around 45 people."

So if I can manage to get the Google authentication credentials for just one of Stripe's 45 employees, I can get access to the vast majority of Stripe's email? I hope they require two factor authentication.

Re: Email transparency

#20

Post by eli »

quasque wrote: post #12
greggman wrote: post #3

I've known companies that had pretty good email policies....until they got sued and every email debate was turned into the evidence that they knew X or considered Y or thought about Z and were therefore guilty. :-(

This is a real risk. One company I worked for had me modify already sent and archived emails and Yahoo Messenger logs to remove incriminating evidence in preparation for an expected unfair dismissal trial. And also conveniently 'lose' the backup tapes for the period where the original data existed. Thankfully it was settled out of court. Mind you, the dishonesty was rife there. The boss had me scan in his cellphone b…

Err, IANAL, but you may have committed a crime by tampering with evidence even though it was a civil case.
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