Is Slack Destroying American Companies? Q&A With Antonio Garcia-Martinez

Bounced from Apple over complaints about his book Chaos Monkeys, the author questions the wisdom of conflating your entire "political, moral, and religious being with your professional persona."

Late last week, amid a Slack-driven furor over his confessional memoir Chaos Monkeys, Apple fired ads engineer Antonio Garcia-Martinez. I wrote Friday about the specific hypocrisy of Apple’s move — the company has the author of Bitches Ain’t Shit on its payroll but claimed it fired Garcia-Martinez as a statement of its devotion to “inclusivity” — but over the weekend spoke to Antonio about the larger issue of his case, which extends past his own predicament.

“This business of Slack at work,” he said.

After George Floyd’s death last summer, corporate leaders found themselves in an unusual position. With water-cooler conversations turbo-charged by chat programs like Slack, many firms saw an outpouring of anger. Employees demanded their employers do something, or at least be seen doing something, to “confront racism.”

In some shops, employers were asked to recognize Juneteenth as a paid holiday. In others, there was a demand for more diverse hiring procedures. Significant donations to poli…