Holla
Aidano used to be management's golden boy. Then they pulled his Holla records and their opinions of him... shifted.
Barbara Cardinale, Inventory Manager with Hegemony International
H
olla is the instant messaging, screensharing, email, and video conferencing system used throughout all of
Hegemony International. Employees are expected to conduct all of their electronic messaging via Holla. Those who are caught subverting the system by using other communication channels risk being culled.
Utility
A
ll Hegemony employees have access to Holla. It's available as both a desktop and mobile app. A corporate network login provides access to Holla servers and that access is revoked when an employee's login is removed. The video conferencing feature does allow users who are not on the corporate network, thus allowing employees to conference with people from outside the company.
Holla is also a vital conduit for many of the progeny. Although Hegemony has tried, at times, to purge them from the system, their presence stubbornly remains.
Spotty Reliability
Given that the software is the backbone of nearly all Hegemony communications, it is arguably the single-most critical application in the entire company. This is both a blessing and a curse, because the application is notoriously fickle. At random times of the day or night, the servers that drive Holla frequently become unresponsive - or crash altogether. This can lead to situations where almost all internal work is hobbled until the servers come back up again.
Social Impact
H
olla has a decidedly... mixed reputation within the company. On one hand, it provides for easy realtime messaging and it is the conduit for many millions of communications each day. On the other hand, it can easily become a time drain. Many employees would privately admit that, on their worst days, their "work" consists of little else besides sending and replying to a constant stream of messages on Holla.
Monitored
For unwary employees, Holla can be a near liability. This is because there is no such thing as a "private" message on Holla. Even direct messages between two employees are fastidiously recorded. A handful of daemons fulfill the task of monitoring these messages and reporting anything that bears further scrutiny by Hegemony's legion of auditors. If the offending messages are deemed sufficiently problematic, they can lead to disciplinary action up-to-and-including... culling.
Although there are reams of policies - presumably, accessible via Rabbit Hole - that outline what is-or-is-not allowed on Holla, auditors enjoy wide discretion in determining when employees should be reprimanded for their Holla messages. Most of these cases are self-explanatory - such as, threats or insensitive humor. But employees have also found themselves in hot water for merely criticizing management, or even praising the competition.
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