I moved from an HFT firm to Google. The attitude difference with respect to document holds was hilarious.
At the HFT firm, the attitude was, "we're constantly being sued (by the SEC and others), so we treat all of our records like they're under litigation holds, just in case the SEC claims they wanted them, even the off-topic slack channels."
At Google, the attitude was, "we're constantly getting sued, so we treat all of our records as being as ephemeral as possible so we can avoid having a record of what we're doing."
At the HFT firm, the attitude was, "we're constantly being sued (by the SEC and others), so we treat all of our records like they're under litigation holds, just in case the SEC claims they wanted them, even the off-topic slack channels."
At Google, the attitude was, "we're constantly getting sued, so we treat all of our records as being as ephemeral as possible so we can avoid having a record of what we're doing."