The Spy Who Slacked Me: Slack Honeypots, Turf Wars, and the HR Tech Hunger Games

Episode notes

Send us Fan Mail Special Edition – Oh Shit, What’s Happened Now? This is one of those moments when we pause our scheduled programming because something in the news is just too wild to ignore. In this special edition of The Elephant in the Org , we dive headfirst into the explosive lawsuit between HR tech giants Rippling and Deel — featuring Slack honeypots, alleged corporate spying, stolen sales data, and actual RICO charges (yes, the kind usually reserved for organized crime). Rippling says Deel recruited a mole who conducted thousands of unauthorized internal searches to steal client data — all caught via a fake Slack channel set up as a digital trap. Deel says the whole thing is overblown. Meanwhile, the HR tech community is left wondering… who do we trust now? We unpack: What this means for psychological safety in high-growth tech Whether surveillance culture is becoming the new norm How this could shake employee trust, not just in vendors — but in work itself And of course, we reflect on what this kind of chaos means for managers, employees, and all of us caught somewhere between hustle culture and HR values. Is this just startup life?