How Shopify monitors its employees on Slack

Where was this article 7 years ago? Pandora has been doing this and laid people off as a result of what was said (know from someone I was close with and in a senior management position). This shit was also done by an old employer/boss who used it to manipulate and play politics (not only with slack, but monitored emails, by remote desktop, webcam, and even found a keylogger).

Workplace surveillance in the US is widespread, nearly unrestricted, and toxic/dangerous for workers and trust.

Not sure how to feel about this story. On the one hand it sounds like some well intentioned ways to keep people focused and avoid echo chambers. On the other it’s easy to see how this could be abused.

If you we look at Slack as an analogy for the water cooler (when it’s used to discuss company related things but not necessarily work related). It makes sense that sometimes threads will need to be capped to stop unproductive rehashing of arguments over and over.

Maybe there is something I’m missing from this article but it seems like it’s looking for a scandalous angle where there isn’t quite one. Lots of companies are trying to figure out how to moderate an always on, always available communication tool when it’s used by everyone in the business.

The only thing this achieves is that your high performing teams will use a communication tool outside of your reach and premise with all that this implies.