I loved this complaint from Boeing against the whistleblower employee:
“John still needs to learn the art of F2F (‘face to face’) engagement to address and follow up on issues instead of using e-mail to express process violations.”
Working in the same industry[1], this[2] is almost always a red flag.
To the point where someone specifically asking for face to face - during a review of a flight critical system - will get eyebrows raised halfway to the outermost of Saturn's rings. Hell, if eyebrows aren't raised you should get serious gut trembles, aka what in the hell is going on here.
The fact someone put this in an official record . . a record that presumably other people looked at, and approved . . is . . honestly, I'm not sure what's going on here. The generous interpretation is that leadership doesn't have a good grip on what a flight critical system is, how it's classified, for whatever reason, so they feel like engineers are constantly overreacting. "They're always whining 'flight critical'! Wah wah wah flight critical this, flight critical that". The bad interpretation is that they know what it is, and they don't care. That might be where the specific adjective "criminal" comes into play.
[1] And I would assume in any other safety-critical industry
[2] I.e. refusal to enter durable record, i.e., signature, email, a ticketing system, a microphone you hid in your tie, etc. This is all specc'd to the wazoo, by the way . . for the suppliers, anyway. Here's the fun thing about Boeing and ISO: Boeing never certs to AS9100. Boeing (BCA specifically) never needs to pass a formal audit, because as far as the ISO/SAE steering is concerned, Boeing is AS9100. Boeing’s Alan Daniels headed both ISO9001 and AS9100 committees without ever working under a cert AS9100 system his entire life, or ever certifying Boeing in either. But they can fine their suppliers umptillion million dollars for using the wrong font on their AS9100-certified quality documents. Isn't that grand? Bonus: Boeing's prime seats at ISO and AS9100 lets them lean hard on the up and comers too cough SpaceX cough, to boot.
“XYZ still needs to learn the art of async (‘asynchronous’) communication to address and follow up on issues instead of using emphemeral F2F ('face to face') engagement to express process violations.”
It’s also absolutely wrong. All communications are discoverable even communications using private devices and services if it’s at all related to what’s being investigated. I know a lot of people use personal devices for corporate work that might involve litigation or investigation thinking it shields them. In fact it implicates them further and taints all their private communications as potentially relevant and discoverable, as well as those they communicate with. It’s a dumb as a stump thing to do.
At many places phone and videos are absolutely recorded, it depends on the industry. But generally when one says “communications” in the context of discoverability the implication is “humanly possibly to discover communications.”
At many places phone and videos are absolutely recorded
do you have an example where this is the case? We're talking about internal company communications, right? Not customer facing quality assurance type recording.
Enron energy traders called power plants and asked them to shut down during high load times. They encouraged the plant personnel to fabricate the reason for shut down. This created an electricity shortage, which forced rolling blackouts. Energy prices shot up, making for massive profits for Enron. There were also headline stories about elderly people suffering without air conditioning. The Enron traders joked about this in their phone calls to one another.
Of course, we only know about this because their phone calls were recorded. If I recall correctly, none of the traders indicated that they were aware their calls were recorded.
The Indian startup I work for (mentioning Indian because the higher-ups are Indian and it may be related to their culture - I don't know as we're based in the UK and the higher-ups are nice people I think) used to do this. Was asked to record Zoom meetings I had with a junior colleague for some reason (we were discussing implementation work). I think it's a more relaxed/trusted environment for them now.
That is still more or less voluntary manual recording, sprinkled with micro management vibes.
What's at stake here is systematic and transparent recording of all video and audio conversation.
Does it exist? Does ms teams for example has an enterprise feature available to record and archive everything without the meeting organizer activating the recording explicitly?
Comments
I loved this complaint from Boeing against the whistleblower employee:
“John still needs to learn the art of F2F (‘face to face’) engagement to address and follow up on issues instead of using e-mail to express process violations.”
Working in the same industry[1], this[2] is almost always a red flag.
To the point where someone specifically asking for face to face - during a review of a flight critical system - will get eyebrows raised halfway to the outermost of Saturn's rings. Hell, if eyebrows aren't raised you should get serious gut trembles, aka what in the hell is going on here.
The fact someone put this in an official record . . a record that presumably other people looked at, and approved . . is . . honestly, I'm not sure what's going on here. The generous interpretation is that leadership doesn't have a good grip on what a flight critical system is, how it's classified, for whatever reason, so they feel like engineers are constantly overreacting. "They're always whining 'flight critical'! Wah wah wah flight critical this, flight critical that". The bad interpretation is that they know what it is, and they don't care. That might be where the specific adjective "criminal" comes into play.
[1] And I would assume in any other safety-critical industry
[2] I.e. refusal to enter durable record, i.e., signature, email, a ticketing system, a microphone you hid in your tie, etc. This is all specc'd to the wazoo, by the way . . for the suppliers, anyway. Here's the fun thing about Boeing and ISO: Boeing never certs to AS9100. Boeing (BCA specifically) never needs to pass a formal audit, because as far as the ISO/SAE steering is concerned, Boeing is AS9100. Boeing’s Alan Daniels headed both ISO9001 and AS9100 committees without ever working under a cert AS9100 system his entire life, or ever certifying Boeing in either. But they can fine their suppliers umptillion million dollars for using the wrong font on their AS9100-certified quality documents. Isn't that grand? Bonus: Boeing's prime seats at ISO and AS9100 lets them lean hard on the up and comers too cough SpaceX cough, to boot.
John was one of us!
“XYZ still needs to learn the art of async (‘asynchronous’) communication to address and follow up on issues instead of using emphemeral F2F ('face to face') engagement to express process violations.”
A former abusive supervisor insisted on MS Teams instead of email because she thought Teams was immune to discovery. That is common conduct.
It’s also absolutely wrong. All communications are discoverable even communications using private devices and services if it’s at all related to what’s being investigated. I know a lot of people use personal devices for corporate work that might involve litigation or investigation thinking it shields them. In fact it implicates them further and taints all their private communications as potentially relevant and discoverable, as well as those they communicate with. It’s a dumb as a stump thing to do.
> All communications are discoverable
Face to face, phone call, and video call are all not recorded, and so not discoverable.
At many places phone and videos are absolutely recorded, it depends on the industry. But generally when one says “communications” in the context of discoverability the implication is “humanly possibly to discover communications.”
do you have an example where this is the case? We're talking about internal company communications, right? Not customer facing quality assurance type recording.
Enron energy traders called power plants and asked them to shut down during high load times. They encouraged the plant personnel to fabricate the reason for shut down. This created an electricity shortage, which forced rolling blackouts. Energy prices shot up, making for massive profits for Enron. There were also headline stories about elderly people suffering without air conditioning. The Enron traders joked about this in their phone calls to one another.
Of course, we only know about this because their phone calls were recorded. If I recall correctly, none of the traders indicated that they were aware their calls were recorded.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-feb-04-fi-enron...
https://www.npr.org/2006/01/31/5180594/enron-trader-tapes-av...
In the finance industry this is required by regulation for many types of phone/video calls.
The Indian startup I work for (mentioning Indian because the higher-ups are Indian and it may be related to their culture - I don't know as we're based in the UK and the higher-ups are nice people I think) used to do this. Was asked to record Zoom meetings I had with a junior colleague for some reason (we were discussing implementation work). I think it's a more relaxed/trusted environment for them now.
That is still more or less voluntary manual recording, sprinkled with micro management vibes.
What's at stake here is systematic and transparent recording of all video and audio conversation.
Does it exist? Does ms teams for example has an enterprise feature available to record and archive everything without the meeting organizer activating the recording explicitly?
Many major banks will record all communications of people involved in trading (traders, sales, etc) whether internal or external.
E in e-mail stands for evidence ;)