is it a red flag if a team has a group text?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

Do you think it’s a red flag when a team in a smaller company immediately drops you into a group text on your personal phone upon hiring?

The context is that I’m very happy in my mid-level position at my very not-toxic Fortune 100 company. I like the work and the people and while I wouldn’t hang out with a few of these folks for recreational coffee, we’re Work Friends. I’ve worked for smaller companies and have found them to always be cliquey and toxic and in each other’s business. Like high-stakes high school, where instead of losing head cheerleader, you lose your job.

For me the common denominator red flag was that my toxic jobs had group chats. “We all get along” and “lols” and morning affirmation texts and more.

My mother came from big time corporate America and is now working for small time companies. The last one she was at was so toxic and went so far south I legally can’t say what happened. She told me that from day one at her current job, she’s been in group texts with the “team.” More “morning guys!” etc. I’m not going to diss my mom’s new job because she’s so happy to be out of the other place, but I’m seeing signs already and I’m curious if you and/or the readers think group chats/texts are a red flag!

I don’t think teams with group chats are inherently a red flag.

I do think that when a team is dysfunctional, a group chat can often be something that reinforces that — because it’s used in ways that trample people’s boundaries (like unwelcome work texts during your off hours, or an expectation that you’ll participate in endless socializing that doesn’t interest you or actively distracts you, or a team that expects everyone to be “like family” in problematic ways). But that’s generally a reflection of other problematic norms on the team, not something fundamental to the group texts themselves.

There are healthy, functional teams that have group chats! In those cases, I might theorize that they’re more likely to pop up in specific use cases, like when the work is emotionally difficult and the group chat is a place to blow off steam, or if all of the team is in a younger (read: going out) stage of life, or similar. But that’s not exclusively the case either.