After watching so many work chats disintegrate from politics, social commentary, or pedantic arguments I have totally avoided all unstructured channels. Since 2020 I saw two people get fired after discussions got out of hand. There were many more team meetings, code of conduct edicts, and all hands declarations about communication issues. It wasn't until the bans on politics in Slack arrived until things got better. Even now there are people I will screenshot any DMs that have even a hint of conflict. I doubt I will ever participate in any work chats in a social way again.
There's a distinction between random (probably not for work, 'water cooler chat') and 'obviously divisive' topics like politics. Particularly in the US, those are the sort of things you avoid.
Must depend on the company/office. My team (200+ people) has a "offtopic/socialize" chat channel set up for this kind of rando chit chat, and it has never, not once in many years, even had a hint of divisiveness or politics. Yes, you do need to be working with grownups who can behave and leave that shit at home.
Thanks for that link. Wow, what a wild story. I agree with the top commenter: It looks like the company was composed entirely of children or adults with child-like communication skills/habits!
Huh? Thats just not true. We have channels for gamers, pets, golf, home automation, “lounge”, “memes”, etc. I’ve been at this company 4 years and can only thing if 3 times I’ve seen a dispute, and even that was very civil. It’s really not hard to leave politics at home.
Never do casual conversation on the record. It's always going to result in this kind of stuff. If you want to get to know your coworkers, go out to lunch with them or chat face to face. That way you can limit exactly who is listening, gauge the response. And anything you say will be lost to time.
Obviously you can still get in trouble if you say something very inappropriate, but anything middle of the road will be forgotten.
