(单词翻译:单击)
In 2014, the executives at a brand-new start-up called Andela made a decision whose consequences they would only understand much later.
2014年，一家名为Andela的新创业公司的主管们做出了一个决定，他们要过很久才会明白这个决定的后果。
Andela’s model was to recruit and train promising African engineers, then place them at Western tech firms, which meant its employees and clients were scattered across time zones;
Andela的模式是招募和培训有前途的非洲工程师，然后把他们安置在西方国家的科技公司，这意味着其员工和客户分散在不同的时区;
it desperately needed a way for its distributed workforce to share information and make decisions easily and asynchronously, ideally without subjecting anyone to a deluge of emails.
它迫切需要一种方法，让其分散的员工能够轻松、异步地共享信息和做出决策，理想情况下不会让任何人受到电子邮件泛滥的影响。
So the company started using Slack.
于是公司开始使用Slack。
The maker of the chat software had recently become one of San Francisco’s trendiest new companies, based on a promise to make work communication more transparent and fluid. And at Andela, it did.
这家聊天软件的制造商最近已成为旧金山最时髦的新公司之一，该公司基于让工作沟通更加透明和流畅的承诺。在Andela，它做到了。
As the company grew, Slack became its central nervous system, the place where business was conducted and where the company’s culture was formed.
随着公司的成长，Slack成为了公司的中枢神经系统，是公司开展业务的地方，也是公司文化形成的地方。
Over time, it also became the site of a workplace revolt, as the company’s fellows—engineers in training—began to agree that they were being mistreated.
随着时间的推移，它也成为了职场反抗的地点，因为该公司的研究员—正在接受培训的工程师-开始就他们受到了不公平对待达成一致意见。
The complaints started in private messaging groups, where they’d discuss priorities before big meetings, in order to act as a sort of bloc in front of senior leadership.
抱怨始于私人信息群，在那里，他们会在大型会议之前讨论优先事项，以便在高级领导层面前扮演某种集团的角色。
But when the fellows stopped being invited to those meetings, they created a private Slack channel where they’d air their grievances, especially about pay.
但当这些研究员不再被邀请参加这些会议时，他们创建了一个私人的Slack channel ，在那里他们可以表达自己的不满，尤其是对薪酬的不满。
In the summer of 2019, a glowing BBC article misrepresented how much the fellows were paid, saying they made a third of what clients paid Andela, when in fact the amount varied and was sometimes lower.
2019年夏天，英国广播公司(BBC)一篇热炒的文章错误地描述了这些研究员的薪酬，称他们的薪酬是客户付给Andela的三分之一，而实际上，他们的薪酬存在差异，有时甚至更低。
First, the general Slack channel lit up with complaints, mostly from employees who had been talking among themselves about the issue for months.
首先，普通的Slack channel充斥着抱怨，其中大部分来自几个月来一直在相互谈论这个问题的员工。
“I would like to know, did Andela at any point in time tell any news source we get 1/3” wrote one. “This info has been flying around for a long time and it does not seem to bother Andela.”
“我想知道，Andela有没有在任何时候告诉任何消息来源-我们得到了三分之一的薪酬。”一人写到。“这一消息已经流传了很长时间，但似乎并没有影响到Andela。”
In a private employee-only Slack, they took to calling Andela “The Plantation.”
在仅限员工使用的私人Slack上，他们开始称Andela为“种植园”。
Eventually, the fellows circulated a petition asking for higher pay—an effort organized over Slack.
最终，研究员们传阅了一份要求加薪的请愿书——这是通过Slack组织起来的。
But by late 2019, the issue was moot: The company—citing “market demands for more senior engineering talent”—had laid off 400 people and shut down its fellowship program.
但到2019年底，这个问题变得毫无意义:该公司以“市场对更多高级工程人才的需求”为由，解雇了400人，并关闭了研究员项目。
What became clear was that Slack was never just another piece of software at Andela.
显而易见的是，Slack绝不仅仅是Andela的另一款软件。
Instead, it was a whole new way for workers to talk to one another, and to demand answers from their bosses.
相反，这是一种全新的方式，让员工彼此交谈，并要求老板给出答案。
Thanks in large part to the coronavirus pandemic, Slack has now seeped out of start-up land and into all corners of corporate America, with more than 169,000 organizations—including 65 of the Fortune 100—paying for its services.
在很大程度上由于冠状病毒疫情，Slack现在已经从初创企业领域渗透到美国企业的各个角落，有超过16.9万家组织机构——包括《财富》100强中的65家——为其服务付费。
Lyft, Airbnb, Venmo, Tumblr, and a raft of companies with names like Splunk and Deliveroo all use Slack—but so do Target, The New York Times, 1800 Flowers, Harvard, AstraZeneca, and The Atlantic.
来福车、爱彼迎、Venmo、汤博乐以及Splunk和Deliveroo等众多公司都在使用Slack，但塔吉特、纽约时报、1800 Flowers、哈佛、阿斯利康和大西洋月刊也在使用。
So do Liberty Mutual, IBM, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and countless local businesses and nonprofits.
利宝互助保险集团、万国商业机器公司、美国宇航局喷气推进实验室以及无数当地企业和非营利组织也是如此。
Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, and Pete Buttigieg all paid for Slack during their 2020 presidential campaigns.
唐纳德·特朗普、伊丽莎白·沃伦、安德鲁·杨、科里·布克和皮特·布蒂吉格都在2020年总统竞选期间为Slack买单。
The Taylor Creek Church, in rural Washington State, uses it to coordinate prayer requests.
位于华盛顿州郊区的泰勒克里克教堂用它来协调祈祷请求。
Arizona State University has more than 140,000 individual Slack accounts in its system;
亚利桑那州立大学系统中有超过14万个Slack个人账户;
the IT department considers it a tool that students should become acquainted with in school, like Excel or PowerPoint, because they will likely be using it for their entire professional lives.
信息技术部门认为它是学生在学校应该熟悉的工具，就像Excel或PowerPoint，因为他们可能会在整个职业生涯中使用它。
It’s a safe bet: Last year, it was announced that Salesforce would acquire Slack for nearly $28 billion, in an ostensible bid to edge out Microsoft as the working world’s digital center of gravity.
这是一个稳妥的赌注：去年，Salesforce宣布将以近280亿美元的价格收购Slake，表面上是为了排挤微软成为职场世界的数字重心。
For millions of people, Slack is a verb, a utility, and a way of life.
对数百万人来说，Slack是一个动词，一种实用工具，一种生活方式。
It has spawned competitors from Facebook, Microsoft, and Google;
它催生了来自脸书、微软和谷歌的竞争对手;
all told, chat is now the second-most-common computer activity, after email, according to RescueTime, productivity software that tracks users’ screen time.
根据追踪用户屏幕时间的办公软件RescueTime的数据，总的来说，聊天现在是仅次于电子邮件的第二大最常见的电脑活动。
