I'm kind of appalled by the mention of looking through the team's emails and IMs. Is this common practice?
Maybe my experience isn't representative, but everywhere I've ever worked, we've operated under the assumption emails and private IMs are, just that, private. We know that ultimately management could look at those things, but the assumption has been that privilege is reserved for extreme situations (e.g. a lawsuit, an HR dispute, etc.).
The author is talking about publicly viewable emails and chats (e.g. mailing lists, IRC, Slack). I think the surrounding context makes that clear:
"When talking about a team that is not producing work fast enough, look at the records. Look at the team chats and emails, look at the tickets, look at the repository code reviews and checkins."
I worked somewhere that had an 'open' policy - you could log into the email account of anybody in the company at any time. Inevitably, people stopped sending emails.
I parsed this as group chat rooms and emails, not the team's members individual mail. As in reading the mails everybody is CCed to, Slack channels (vs direct messages), ...
Above is my understanding where I work as well, and I am in management fwiw. I would never ever want to read my employees' private emails and IMs. The thought alone makes me feel dirty.
Maybe my experience isn't representative, but everywhere I've ever worked, we've operated under the assumption emails and private IMs are, just that, private. We know that ultimately management could look at those things, but the assumption has been that privilege is reserved for extreme situations (e.g. a lawsuit, an HR dispute, etc.).
Would love to know how it works elsewhere.