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Comment by xmprt | Hacker News Reader

A piece of advice I've taken to heart is whenever I'm sending something in writing, to think about how I would feel if I needed to repeat the same things in court or if I found those messages in the news. Not that I've ever said anything near that egregious but it still helps.

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Whenever I'm discussing something in person I think about how I would feel if it turned out my employer was breaking the law and me not putting it in writing stopped the injured parties from obtaining just compensation.

So send a follow up email post meeting recapitulating the key points.

It sounds like you have a soul and/or morals. The people writing the emails in TFA clearly have neither.

Sorry, you’re not FAANG material.

When putting down something in writing, you should also remember cardinal Richelieu's quote: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

"Dance like no one is watching; email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition." - Olivia Nuzzi

https://web.archive.org/web/20141214193908/https://twitter.c...

The way I heard it from a corporate counsel is "The E in E-mail stands for Evidence."

More importantly these days, have the same thought every time you write a comment on Slack or Teams.

elaborate? was there some specific case?

Trouble at many orgs regarding the Israel vs Palestine conflict. No matter on which side of that clusterfuck you are - unless you are in a lobbyist group for either side, someone at your org will be offended and raise a stink.

No, just that there's no reason that your instant messages can't be used against you, and in some organisations, regulations mean that the chat history has to be logged and kept.

And this is exactly why so many of the larger companies are embracing either more ephemeral messaging modes or outright deleting history.

https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2024/01/26/feds-warn-compani...

This is excellent advice. Another thing I will add is if something is not ethical, misleading, or dishonest, just do not do it. The world will be a better place if people behave ethically. Also, I strongly suspect that long term success in business requires ethical conduct.

"Did you see Brian's hat? He's still fucking wearing it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2k-BNySLI

Don't do the voice

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