I agree, and was originally going to downvote the parent comment for the same reason, but then realized I think they were replying to this more general point in the GP's post:
> "Do this only orally" is always to hide evidence from a future court discovery.
That is, I've followed enough court cases and news reports to have seen things taken egregiously out of context to agree there could be valid reasons to limit discoverable communications (though not in Tesla's specific case), especially because so few people seem to argue in good faith anymore. For example, lots of times in long email or slack threads people throw out ideas, even if they're not particularly well thought out, because that's part of what being in an open, healthy organization entails. And then I've seen these communications presented as some sort of official corporate position instead of brainstorming.
What you're describing is still fine because a solid defense is to look at someone taking something out of context and going, "would you mind continuing reading?" where someone else follows up shooting down $controversial_thing because liability etc.
The only reason not to create that record in the first place is because you weren't interested in compliance from the get go, and you were banking on the "naive first violation" defense.
Been there, seen it in action, left because of it. Ethical abandonment, no matter how it is gussied up, is ethical abandonment. There is always time for doing what you should to keep your nose clean.
> "Do this only orally" is always to hide evidence from a future court discovery.
That is, I've followed enough court cases and news reports to have seen things taken egregiously out of context to agree there could be valid reasons to limit discoverable communications (though not in Tesla's specific case), especially because so few people seem to argue in good faith anymore. For example, lots of times in long email or slack threads people throw out ideas, even if they're not particularly well thought out, because that's part of what being in an open, healthy organization entails. And then I've seen these communications presented as some sort of official corporate position instead of brainstorming.