I'm coming around to the idea that permanent chat history is not a good thing, but that's because the company I work at recently changed our workspace retention period to 365 days. You quickly realize how much you depended on searching for 2+ year old slack threads for the context behind why a feature works the way it does when it gets yanked away from you and all you're left with is an underused/disorganized Notion and the code itself.
Legal would probably tell you to purge anything older than 180 days, unless there is active discovery for a lawsuit, in which case retain until end of law suit. Retention is a legal policy issue, which may vary from company to company, and change when a new GC onboards. That should be driving the technical requirements.
I have seen slacks for "former employees of $Company" where the house rules are that what is said should be taken as seriously and recorded as much as any remark said in a bar meetup. (i.e. not that seriously, not recorded). For these, not keeping old messages is a feature.
I try to treat slack/teams/irc like the office water cooler. Sure, we can discuss work, make decisions or come up with solutions to problems, but it has to be recorded elsewhere, in an email or internal documentation or whatever for it to matter and for it to be official.
Nothing sucks as much as trawling through old chats to find some decision that was made ages ago.
I'm coming around to the idea that permanent chat history is not a good thing, but that's because the company I work at recently changed our workspace retention period to 365 days. You quickly realize how much you depended on searching for 2+ year old slack threads for the context behind why a feature works the way it does when it gets yanked away from you and all you're left with is an underused/disorganized Notion and the code itself.
Legal would probably tell you to purge anything older than 180 days, unless there is active discovery for a lawsuit, in which case retain until end of law suit. Retention is a legal policy issue, which may vary from company to company, and change when a new GC onboards. That should be driving the technical requirements.
(Not a lawyer, and thankfully, never deposed.)
Sure, in some cases.
I have seen slacks for "former employees of $Company" where the house rules are that what is said should be taken as seriously and recorded as much as any remark said in a bar meetup. (i.e. not that seriously, not recorded). For these, not keeping old messages is a feature.
I try to treat slack/teams/irc like the office water cooler. Sure, we can discuss work, make decisions or come up with solutions to problems, but it has to be recorded elsewhere, in an email or internal documentation or whatever for it to matter and for it to be official.
Nothing sucks as much as trawling through old chats to find some decision that was made ages ago.