[dragonwriter]

> The message all new hires were told was, very clearly: "Never put anything into writing you wouldn't be happy to be see published on the front page of the Washington Post"

> And this was for an org that was doing nothing sneaky or underhanded in the slightest

I disagree. That culture is one of routinely doing sneaky and underhanded things.

If it wasn’t, the rule would be “don’t do anything you wouldn't be happy to be see published on the front page of the Washington Post.”

(Outside of things that are legally cobfidential, but those are generally protected from FOIA even if in writing.)

If you are actively preventing evidence of your actions from being created, that is itself evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing.

[refurb]

Disagree.

Plenty of examples of companies that did nothing wrong, but some written comment, by some employee is enough to convince a jury that "something probably happened".

I remember one pharmaceutical company was on trial for a drug that was suspected to have a bad side effect (later analysis show it didn't). They had done nothing wrong, all data was provided to the FDA, they diligently collected post-marking data, shared with the FDA, etc.

A civil suit was brought and during discovery they found a comment that said "maybe our dose was too high?". The person who made the comment had nothing to do with the trials, didn't have the skills to interpret the data, didn't even have a medical background.

Once that was found? Boom, the company settled because that was enough to convince a jury that "they probably knew it was wrong".

It's very easy to put something in writing now that has no impact, but in a few years time is a smoking gun. It doesn't matter if you testify that around the circumstances when you wrote it ("oh, I didn't mean that"), the jury won't believe you, the prosecution will just flash that one sentence up and say "see, it obvious the company was hiding the problem".

[idopmstuff]

There are plenty of cases where you wouldn't want something perfectly reasonable to be published in the Post. The key is context - some things are complicated and require background and relevant information; if taken without that context, they'll seem bad.

Seeing as we live in a world in which people in the other political party are highly motivated to take whatever they can of their opponents (and their opponents' appointees, etc.) and make them sound bad, it's understandable that folks would be cautious of what they write down. If someone emails you a question whose answer is potentially politically sensitive, you might not want to provide a brief answer to that email that you know could be misconstrued. That isn't "evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing" - it's just understanding the reality of politics.

[legaljeopardy]

> There are plenty of cases where you wouldn't want something perfectly reasonable to be published in the Post. The key is context - some things are complicated and require background and relevant information; if taken without that context, they'll seem bad.

I agree with GP. It is a shadowy culture. The Washington Post bit is the clue when you walk in. You are working for the United States government. It is not the Washington Post you should care about, it is the Justice Department and the legal system.

If you say that politics trumps laws then you are implying extra-legal forces dominate legal forces in our system. One way such hidden power centers are created is via shadowy bureaucracies. For example, FBI should write down everything they discuss and decide. We should be able to shine a light into any government institution in our land. If everything is legally done, there is nothing to be worried about, Washington Post be damned.

[emodendroket]

> If you say that politics trumps laws then you are implying extra-legal forces dominate legal forces in our system.

OK. I guess they do because it’s common for people to get fired or programs to be killed for completely political reasons.

[Rebelgecko]

Hard disagree- the appearance of wrongdoing can be nearly as harmful for the accused and cause as much trouble as actual wrongdoing. Both should be avoided.

[wombatpm]

Another Hard Disagree. I put everything thing in writing. If it’s not written down it didn’t happen.

Want access to prod? Sure give me a ticket. I don’t trust any place that doesn’t want things written down.

And the example of a drug trial comment being taken out of context? If it looks bad in a few years maybe it should also look bad now? And maybe steps should be taken to make it better now.

Writing things down, keeping copies of emails is the only way to hold management accountable.

[tsimionescu]

In my country, there were some major anti-government protests a few years ago that pro-government media claimed were paid for by Sorosz and other such figures. My colleagues and I attended these protests and often talked about them. We also often joked about these claims by asking each other if the checks had arrived, how much they had made last night etc.

Of course, if our internal chats were subject to [the local equivalent of] FOIA requests, this would have been incredibly risky, since without the context of how much we laughed about them, the texts themselves would have looked like smoking guns. Government media would have had a field day.

This is the benign sort of thing you want to avoid putting in writing if your writing can be audited by motivated outside parties.

[nl]

> Want access to prod? Sure give me a ticket. I don’t trust any place that doesn’t want things written down.

And this is a great example of the difference between an operational role that runs on tickets and management responsibilities.

Management is all about trade-offs and compromises. By their very nature trade-offs can almost always be presented as a bad thing.

[speakfreely]

> Want access to prod? Sure give me a ticket. I don’t trust any place that doesn’t want things written down.

Being a sysadmin is very different than being part of the executive team that develops strategy.

[emodendroket]

Might there be a difference between an access request and an extemporaneous conversation?

[dragonwriter]

You seem to be providing a reason (CYA) for being sneaky and underhanded, not arguing against it being sneaky and underhanded.

[emodendroket]

This is basically the “if you have nothing to hide, what’s the problem if the police can read all your correspondence?” argument applied to an organization.

[dragonwriter]

Sure, if you view government agencies as equivalent to individual citizens and the public as equivalent to the police.

But some people view that the government is properly subordinate to the citizenry and not vice versa, such that inverting the government and public roles materially changes the scenario.

[emodendroket]

I think that no matter how scrupulous any government organization is, there are many motivated actors who would, given an unfiltered record of everyone single person's correspondence and conversations, be able to spin a misleading negative story out of it. This is essentially some people's full-time job and they're good at it.

[genmud]

> If you are actively preventing evidence of your actions from being created, that is itself evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing.

Government people are humans too, not just nameless bureaucrats. Imagine working somewhere that you would never be able to make a joke, speculate on a topic, ask a question, because it could be taken out of context due to everything being documented/written down.

It is fine to desire that, but realize that there needs to be a significant pay increase and/or a significant realignment of expectations, since nobody would want to independently take responsibility or action on anything. I have worked in a culture like that and let me tell you, it was extremely difficult to have every move under a microscope 24/7 and I would never do it again.

[dragonwriter]

> Government people are humans too

Yeah, I’ve worked in government for more than twenty years.

> Imagine working somewhere that you would never be able to make a joke, speculate on a topic, ask a question, because it could be taken out of context due to everything being documented/written down.

Everything being written down makes things being taken out of contexr less of a risk. People with the attitude “don’t write things down if you don’t want to see it in the Washington Post” are, in my experience, without exception concerned primarily about things that would be problematic taken in context.

> It is fine to desire that, but realize that there needs to be a significant pay increase and/or a significant realignment of expectations, since nobody would want to independently take responsibility or action on anything

The attitude at issue is one of avoiding, not taking responsibility. People with it are the people who refuse to take responsibility even if they enjoy exercising authority.

But, yes, you need to pay people in government significantly more, no argument there.

[emodendroket]

Seems like naive reasoning in a world where such messages can easily be taken out of context. Imagine a lawsuit about a car malfunction leading to death and someone digs up some source code with a kill_child_process method. What does it matter whether that was relevant at all to the case at hand? It looks bad anyway. Anyway, such policies are similarly common in the corporate world.