Slack Price Increase beginning Sep 2022(slack.com)
slack.com
Slack Price Increase beginning Sep 2022
https://slack.com/blog/news/pricing-and-plan-updates
141 comments
Agreed - this is an outrageous change for low-traffic groups. In an instant, tremendous amounts of history and early documentation for small projects will be wiped out. Families will lose their vacation planning that they started 4 months ago. Small open-source projects and ramen-stage startups will lose core operational pins. And for every one of these communities that ponies up for Pro, ten will move to Discord. Tools like https://github.com/thomasloupe/Slackord2 already exist.
If anyone from Slack is reading this - I desperately want Slack to be the thing people reach for everything in their professional sphere. I want people to be exposed to it when they're working on that side project in college, or when putting something together for a family project. Because Slack's search is far better designed for documentation-style posts... but more importantly, the world needs a tool that feels native to colleagues and collaborators from all different generations. If younger collaborators never experience free Slack and their entire view of professionalism is Discord communities, they'll demand Discord. And Discord, with gaming culture still writ throughout its design system, is a big ask for a non-gamer business professional to take in - Slack is quite correctly designed to be the level of approachable it needs to be. So communities will splinter on age boundaries, and opportunities for collaboration will be lost. Some of them might have even made bridges that would have accomplished tremendous social good. All wiped out in the blink of a little rotating gamepad icon.
It's not too late. You could change the update to say "90 days of history, or the most recent 10k messages, whichever is higher." You could even do this silently so you don't need to walk back your posts. Doing so is at least a first step to preserving Slack as a cultural keystone into the far future in an evolving messaging environment. Please make the right choice.
If anyone from Slack is reading this - I desperately want Slack to be the thing people reach for everything in their professional sphere. I want people to be exposed to it when they're working on that side project in college, or when putting something together for a family project. Because Slack's search is far better designed for documentation-style posts... but more importantly, the world needs a tool that feels native to colleagues and collaborators from all different generations. If younger collaborators never experience free Slack and their entire view of professionalism is Discord communities, they'll demand Discord. And Discord, with gaming culture still writ throughout its design system, is a big ask for a non-gamer business professional to take in - Slack is quite correctly designed to be the level of approachable it needs to be. So communities will splinter on age boundaries, and opportunities for collaboration will be lost. Some of them might have even made bridges that would have accomplished tremendous social good. All wiped out in the blink of a little rotating gamepad icon.
It's not too late. You could change the update to say "90 days of history, or the most recent 10k messages, whichever is higher." You could even do this silently so you don't need to walk back your posts. Doing so is at least a first step to preserving Slack as a cultural keystone into the far future in an evolving messaging environment. Please make the right choice.
>>Families will lose their vacation planning that they started 4 months ago.
Excuse my ignorance, but do people really do this? I use Slack for work, and have no desire to use it for personal reasons or with family. Especially when there are free messaging services that have fewer limitations.
Excuse my ignorance, but do people really do this? I use Slack for work, and have no desire to use it for personal reasons or with family. Especially when there are free messaging services that have fewer limitations.
Yeah, my wife and I are both members of various slack workspaces (work, volunteer groups, social/industry groups, etc) so it was beneficial to use the same tool (with a free, private workspace) for us to not only chat but also keep track of things in different channels (#wanderlust, #whatdowedo, #whatdoweeat, etc).
I was about to say that due to the new 90-day policy, we stand to lose pretty much allof the content in those channels but as it turns out, except for one message from July 2020, we already have. I suppose it doesn’t matter to me now if it’s 10k messages or 3 months of history but the former amounted to 24 months.
I was about to say that due to the new 90-day policy, we stand to lose pretty much allof the content in those channels but as it turns out, except for one message from July 2020, we already have. I suppose it doesn’t matter to me now if it’s 10k messages or 3 months of history but the former amounted to 24 months.
I can only speak anecdotally, but I'm on a social slack channel with a group of about a couple dozen or so IRL friends; it's mainly for shooting the shit, but we'll typically plan both small get-togethers and larger many-months-in-advance events through it (although, with our current usage, messages expire much faster than 90 days already, so we'll actually be benefiting from the retention change). I can't really remember why we ended up on slack vs. discord vs. something else (we moved to it from a big group SMS thread ~5 years ago I think), but it's been pretty nice overall, and I certainly prefer it to the friends group which uses facebook events and group chats to stay in touch and organize. At the end of the day, the free tier works well for what it is (IRC with threaded messages, emojis, and a nice mobile app), and if you really care about message retention, you can always write a TOS-violating bot which just scrapes&archives all the messages and host them in like an S3 bucket or something.
Yeah, my friends and I have used a low-traffic Slack channel for about four years. The era of the “free lunch” is over. Time to move on.
Yes, people do.
I've used it as a chat app with friends for > 5 years.
I've used it as a chat app with friends for > 5 years.
Nothing important should be singularly stored in a chat app. If it matters, store it somewhere more permanent.
Chat needs to be ephemeral.
Chat needs to be ephemeral.
Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes.
If you need the distinction, label it "discussion" instead of "chat", and assume that important discussions need to be kept around for reference.
We have tons of one liner tickets with only a title and a link to a Slack thread, and it saves crazy amount of time and effort.
If you need the distinction, label it "discussion" instead of "chat", and assume that important discussions need to be kept around for reference.
We have tons of one liner tickets with only a title and a link to a Slack thread, and it saves crazy amount of time and effort.
This is a poorly designed process because, as this pricing change underscores, Slack is not permanent unless you pay them in perpetuity. Why would you place so much power over your internal processes in the hands of a third party? It may save a crazy amount of time and effort (it does not) but it will cost a crazy amount of money through lock in subscriptions or eventually being forced out of the ecosystem because your chats are 90 days old.
You could accomplish the exact same thing you’ve done by pasting the Slack discussion into the ticket or a text file with a link. Except you’d now control your future. So you’ve saved less than five seconds by copy pasting a Slack link instead of highlighting a bunch of Slack messages to copy paste.
You could accomplish the exact same thing you’ve done by pasting the Slack discussion into the ticket or a text file with a link. Except you’d now control your future. So you’ve saved less than five seconds by copy pasting a Slack link instead of highlighting a bunch of Slack messages to copy paste.
Or you could use a libre and self-hostable chat platform (like Element on Matrix), and get rich discussion that costs little or nothing to keep around permanently.
I see it rarely discussed, but self-hosting has a maintenance cost beyond server time: you need people with knowledge and competences to keep it alive. If the rest of your stack is not self-hosted the same way, you'll be keeping these people around just for your chat platform and some other perhaps non critical tools, which might not make business sense depending on your company...
I don't know for your work environment, the last few companies I've worked for had a decent portion of their budget allocated to SaaS, from our ticketing system, customer support platform, marketing tools, BI, up to the hosting of our prod environment (and yes, they were also paying for Slack, and will probably continue doing so)
I see this as the same philosophy as leasing computers or company cars, relying on third party delivery companies to ship your goods etc. It's a business choice, and solving some of your problems with money is usually a valid strategy. When it stops making sense you reevaluate your options, check competitors etc.
PS: on pasting Slack text into tickets...it's really not optimal. If you really want the info in the ticket, spend the time to write a clear summary and still link to the original discussion. Formatting gets lost, or you're sticking screenshots of whole threads which is still horrible.
To note, our ticketing system is basically a fancy reminder/todo list and we're not SCRUM, if that gives more perspective into why time spent writing detailed tickets hasn't a stellar ROI.
I see this as the same philosophy as leasing computers or company cars, relying on third party delivery companies to ship your goods etc. It's a business choice, and solving some of your problems with money is usually a valid strategy. When it stops making sense you reevaluate your options, check competitors etc.
PS: on pasting Slack text into tickets...it's really not optimal. If you really want the info in the ticket, spend the time to write a clear summary and still link to the original discussion. Formatting gets lost, or you're sticking screenshots of whole threads which is still horrible.
To note, our ticketing system is basically a fancy reminder/todo list and we're not SCRUM, if that gives more perspective into why time spent writing detailed tickets hasn't a stellar ROI.
> Slack is permanent for all matters and purposes.
Surely, you meant to say "Slack used to be permanent...".
It's a valuable lesson that, it seems, each generation of engineers gets to learn anew. If it's not under your control (direct or contractual), you will lose it at some point.
Surely, you meant to say "Slack used to be permanent...".
It's a valuable lesson that, it seems, each generation of engineers gets to learn anew. If it's not under your control (direct or contractual), you will lose it at some point.
This is a lesson, but I think we've come to this point because it practically doesn't matter that much.
For instance I can't think of any document or design discussion I wrote in the past 10 years that would still matter today. Either the system is still somewhat live and running, and it's probably too far away from the original design for these docs to matter, or it's dead and buried, the company potentially not existing anymore.
In a way, actual permanentness is overrated for many many applications.
Now, people would be more sensible to disruptions of the current business, but arguably services like Slack or JIRA have a better track record than home made internally managed systems.
For instance I can't think of any document or design discussion I wrote in the past 10 years that would still matter today. Either the system is still somewhat live and running, and it's probably too far away from the original design for these docs to matter, or it's dead and buried, the company potentially not existing anymore.
In a way, actual permanentness is overrated for many many applications.
Now, people would be more sensible to disruptions of the current business, but arguably services like Slack or JIRA have a better track record than home made internally managed systems.
slack is a horrific place to store valuable things. search sucks, threads suck, and information literally floats away up off the screen over time.
Disagree. The history is not just "chat". It's a valuable stream of questions and answers, problem solving, code snippets, bug reports, and user stories. It serves the purpose that a FLOSS project's mailing list archive did a decade ago.
Did you know that SLACK was originally an acronym?
Did you know that SLACK was originally an acronym?
Except with a mailing list, every conversation is grouped under a subject and all the replies are somewhere in the thread.
On Slack, there's no such thing as a discussion-level subject, and people frequently end up replying outside the thread, or at a minimum there's other context outside the thread that people don't bother linking to because they think of chat as ephemeral, not that they are constantly building up an internal wiki.
On Slack, there's no such thing as a discussion-level subject, and people frequently end up replying outside the thread, or at a minimum there's other context outside the thread that people don't bother linking to because they think of chat as ephemeral, not that they are constantly building up an internal wiki.
Then again, for all of the Slack communities I'm part of, the chat history is valuable because that's where the people prefer to hang out, thus that's where the valuable discussions emerge without anyone even planning it that way.
There are often more durable options like a forum within the community, but that doesn't stop the Slack companion community from having high value discussions.
You often don't know you're having a conversation worth having until it's done. Kind of like when you see really good discussion in Stack Overflow comments that you wish were upgraded into a community wiki question, but that's not how it emerged.
There are often more durable options like a forum within the community, but that doesn't stop the Slack companion community from having high value discussions.
You often don't know you're having a conversation worth having until it's done. Kind of like when you see really good discussion in Stack Overflow comments that you wish were upgraded into a community wiki question, but that's not how it emerged.
When people bother to make them, channels provide discussion grouping at the subject level. Threads are an even finer-grained grouping that, granted, some people don't use. In my experience, all the problems you mention are also present (in some form) on mailing lists.
Why?
We quite successfully use Discord for business purposes. Both for team communications and the user community. Discord is not perfect, but there was something with Slack that made it even less perfect. Hard to explain, I think it has to do with their product thinking.
Ha, I knew I had seen your name before. Had a great time in your Discord community!
FWIW I also quite enjoyed using Discord when I used it for a project (even though I generally dislike it for many reasons).
FWIW I also quite enjoyed using Discord when I used it for a project (even though I generally dislike it for many reasons).
> In an instant, tremendous amounts of history and early documentation for small projects will be wiped out.
Self-hosted or it's not yours.
Self-hosted or it's not yours.
I remember Hotmail would delete account if user didn't login for over a certain number of days. I lost a TON of stuff because of that and have never used Microsoft since.
I fail to see how any change can be outrageous when you’re literally getting a product for free and there are endless alternatives.
> Families will lose their vacation planning that they started 4 months ago.
if you rely on slack to plan your family vacation you have other problems
if you rely on slack to plan your family vacation you have other problems
This is horrible for me and a few small communities I run. We’ll have to stop using slack (discord I guess) as we don’t have much traffic. We never got near the 10k limit and would use search quite a bit to find old items.
I guess Slack doesn’t mind losing these users. Of course we are free communities, but had also bought some seats for other projects.
But this means I won’t be able to use them any more.
I guess Slack doesn’t mind losing these users. Of course we are free communities, but had also bought some seats for other projects.
But this means I won’t be able to use them any more.
I have nothing but praise for Matrix, via element.io or any other client of your choice. It's user-friendly, mature, history is not restricted, and the public matrix.org homeserver works great. You can use Element in your browser or as an Electron app. We've been using Matrix for a couple of years for the project I work on (Exosphere). It's a much better fit for open, public communities than Slack is (or Discord for that matter). Matrix lets you have both public, non-encrypted rooms, and end-to-end-encrypted DMs (and private rooms) where the server doesn't see the content of messages. You can organize a collection of rooms in a "space" for your community.
To ease the migration for your existing Slack users, you can even bridge Matrix channels to Slack channels, so people in either place still see all the messages.
To ease the migration for your existing Slack users, you can even bridge Matrix channels to Slack channels, so people in either place still see all the messages.
I conceptually like Matrix, but in practice it has been a lot of pain. A project I participate in bridges Matrix and Discord, which arguably combines the advantages (I can go onto Discord to share an Image when Element freezes yet again, for instance ...).
Can recommend Rocket Chat if your looking for an open source alternative to Slack.
https://rocket.chat/
https://rocket.chat/
Rocket Chat is also migrating to Matrix on the backend!
https://matrix.org/blog/2022/05/30/welcoming-rocket-chat-to-...
https://matrix.org/blog/2022/05/30/welcoming-rocket-chat-to-...
It's possible to host a web app letting you view old Slack messages from an export, e.g. https://github.com/hfaran/slack-export-viewer or https://github.com/srid/Taut . I wonder if that can help in these use cases.
Discord is great for voice and gaming but not a good tool for anything vaguely professional. Maybe Element/Matrix?
Voice is the killer feature. Channels, not calls! Matrix doesn't have that yet and I'm not confident the new feature will actually be good.
As silly as Discord is in some places with all its ads and artificial limits, Element is glitchier, even slower and has even weirder UX choices, which I tend to find more impairing. As far as I know Discord also has better integration with other tools (bots for Github and Jira).
That makes it more suitable for professional use in my book - as long as you don't mind compromising on privacy and availability, but it's the same deal as with any other SaaS.
From an idealistic perspective I like Matrix and dislike Discord, of course, but the usability differences are hard to ignore.
As silly as Discord is in some places with all its ads and artificial limits, Element is glitchier, even slower and has even weirder UX choices, which I tend to find more impairing. As far as I know Discord also has better integration with other tools (bots for Github and Jira).
That makes it more suitable for professional use in my book - as long as you don't mind compromising on privacy and availability, but it's the same deal as with any other SaaS.
From an idealistic perspective I like Matrix and dislike Discord, of course, but the usability differences are hard to ignore.
fwiw Element added video rooms (and shortly voice rooms) the other week: https://element.io/blog/drop-in-drop-out-chats-with-video-ro...
We’re improving glitchiness & perf.
We’re improving glitchiness & perf.
Just because it looks unprofessional? Because the only negative (aside from lock in) that I can think of would be the lack of SSO.
>but not a good tool for anything vaguely professional
Why? Discord servers can definitely be serious.
Why? Discord servers can definitely be serious.
agreed. also, for several small groups I participate in that use Slack for coordination, this is a real downgrade, since we take years to generate 10000 messages.
Yeah, though I think filesizes are the main thing my private groups hit. I haven't measured, but I'm guessing someone uploading a few images or a video causes weeks of messages to drop off the tail end.
In some way "90 days" is a more humanly understandable limit than 10k messages or 5GB - as long as everyone knows it's an ephemeral channel they can work with it.
ooo that's nice of them. I'll immediately be using free slacks to ingest millions of log messages a day as soon as this lands :) my development logs searchable and organized by channel is gonna be great
They still store the message history, don't they? If you upgrade you will be able to go back further and see those messages.
Are they actually lost or just not searchable?
I just left Salesforce, and on the way out I talked to some folks who saw Slack as the last decent corner of the company to work in (while that lasts).
As someone who worked at a company Salesforce acquired, I can say from experience that tinkering with pricing and packages is how it starts. Next will be tight integration with Salesforce's nightmare monolith, and then a mountain of compliance bureaucracy burden as salespeople try to convince government agencies that they need something they don't and that making compliance burdens more and more insane is good for them (when in reality it's just a transparent attempt at giving Salesforce more of a "most" around their business to keep out any upstart competitors who might otherwise enter the market with the same or better product for cheaper).
If the current pattern holds, this will culminate in mass exodus from engineering and a promotion for some execs for "strengthening Salesforce's position in the marketplace" while "cutting costs" in the form of reducing the number of salaries they pay out)
As someone who worked at a company Salesforce acquired, I can say from experience that tinkering with pricing and packages is how it starts. Next will be tight integration with Salesforce's nightmare monolith, and then a mountain of compliance bureaucracy burden as salespeople try to convince government agencies that they need something they don't and that making compliance burdens more and more insane is good for them (when in reality it's just a transparent attempt at giving Salesforce more of a "most" around their business to keep out any upstart competitors who might otherwise enter the market with the same or better product for cheaper).
If the current pattern holds, this will culminate in mass exodus from engineering and a promotion for some execs for "strengthening Salesforce's position in the marketplace" while "cutting costs" in the form of reducing the number of salaries they pay out)
Uhhh, if you have LinkedIn Navigator, check ex-Slack engineers. Everyone who was pre-IPO without many RSU's has already left.
Management has already left, in true Salesforce and Oracle fashion they'll be pushing Salesforce VP's into senior leadership roles at Slack - starting with regions.
1 year acquisition anniversary is next week, so you'll see an influx of more, and then the final exodus will be 1 year later when KPI's for 2-year employee retention bonuses runs out.
Management has already left, in true Salesforce and Oracle fashion they'll be pushing Salesforce VP's into senior leadership roles at Slack - starting with regions.
1 year acquisition anniversary is next week, so you'll see an influx of more, and then the final exodus will be 1 year later when KPI's for 2-year employee retention bonuses runs out.
Will be interesting to see how they handle Shrems iii, if the software have to be able to run without influence by American companies (aka OnPrem) to operate in Europe
Huddles, Clips, probably some kind of TikTok-like stories next... for me Slack has never become anything more than a good and reliable, but still a simple chat app (one of ~10 I have installed on my phone) dedicated for work.
> "In a true digital HQ, you can move all communications—even those with external partners and customers—from siloed email inboxes to channels and direct messages in Slack." Siloed email inboxes? Slack's solution is precisely putting everyone into THEIR silo/walled garden.
I'm still waiting for the EU to enforce at least some degree of inter-compatibility between chat apps. I'm tired of switching between FB Messenger, Instagram, Discord, Slack, Signal, Whatsapp, Matrix and whatnot.
> "In a true digital HQ, you can move all communications—even those with external partners and customers—from siloed email inboxes to channels and direct messages in Slack." Siloed email inboxes? Slack's solution is precisely putting everyone into THEIR silo/walled garden.
I'm still waiting for the EU to enforce at least some degree of inter-compatibility between chat apps. I'm tired of switching between FB Messenger, Instagram, Discord, Slack, Signal, Whatsapp, Matrix and whatnot.
> I'm still waiting for the EU to enforce at least some degree of inter-compatibility between chat apps. I'm tired of switching between FB Messenger, Instagram, Discord, Slack, Signal, Whatsapp, Matrix and whatnot.
Well, it's happening. The final phase of the legislation passed today: https://twitter.com/SamuelStolton/status/1548955978166575104
Well, it's happening. The final phase of the legislation passed today: https://twitter.com/SamuelStolton/status/1548955978166575104
We have an internet standard for interoperable instant messaging since 2004.
Companies really don't like you can escaping their walled gardens and users/customers never made compliance with internet standards a requirement for the services they use.
Companies really don't like you can escaping their walled gardens and users/customers never made compliance with internet standards a requirement for the services they use.
If slack polled all their paying customers if inter-compatibility was important, do you think any of them would agree it was? As a slack customer I never had any need to have cross app support for my internal chat tool. That would be a headache for my IT team supporting multiple apps.
> If slack polled all their paying customers if inter-compatibility was important, do you think any of them would agree it was?
Being able to use slack to talk with their clients / suppliers who don't use slack (and who often have their own preferred chat system) would definitely be important/valuable to many of them. Hell, I've worked at more than one place where you couldn't use slack to talk to a different department and this was an issue recognised by management.
Being able to use slack to talk with their clients / suppliers who don't use slack (and who often have their own preferred chat system) would definitely be important/valuable to many of them. Hell, I've worked at more than one place where you couldn't use slack to talk to a different department and this was an issue recognised by management.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not sure if there's a name for it but I would consider Slack a productivity hack that actually hurts productivity in the long run. Chat apps are like a quick fix for poor management, which leads to everyone interrupting everyone else due to lack of documentation or escalation paths. The P2P model works but it is wildly inefficient and no one ends up being held accountable.
If Slack didn't exist, leaders would have to come up with documentation, rules and processes to shuffle work around, probably much more efficiently.
If Slack didn't exist, leaders would have to come up with documentation, rules and processes to shuffle work around, probably much more efficiently.
To be fair huddles are really useful, simple and low impact to have a quick verbal chat and maybe screen share without having a formal meeting.
RIP, XMPP + federation
(fb messenger, slack, whatsapp, hangouts/gchat, and more used to be accessible through a single client. That said, I recall federation was mostly unsupported by the various hosts, so you still needed to be logged in to each service.)
(fb messenger, slack, whatsapp, hangouts/gchat, and more used to be accessible through a single client. That said, I recall federation was mostly unsupported by the various hosts, so you still needed to be logged in to each service.)
I'm still waiting for the EU to enforce a ban on chat apps.
Facebook uses a variant of Facebook to have employees promote their work internally. I think it makes sense for larger organizations - person to person chat and all hands are missing an element in the middle where teams may want to promote the outcome of a particular project to their larger org, but not to everyone. Right now I've seen Slack channels used for that purpose, so it makes sense to help augment that with some additional features. Medium bandwidth, medium reach.
You might argue this sort of communication is unnecessary but it's very hard to get big orgs consistently on the same page. An all-hands is just not the right tool for that.
You might argue this sort of communication is unnecessary but it's very hard to get big orgs consistently on the same page. An all-hands is just not the right tool for that.
Matrix supports bridges to most of these apps: https://matrix.org/bridges/
See https://www.beeper.com/ or https://element.io/element-one for a hosted product, or use https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy to self host.
See https://www.beeper.com/ or https://element.io/element-one for a hosted product, or use https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy to self host.
Silo as in only-for-the-email-recipients
I'm always terrified that corporate will eventually decide to cut slack from the budget and stick with Teams.
If I had to use either of these things as part of running my team of 12 engineers, I'd resign immediately.
I feel so sorry for those who continue operating in such soulless, life-sucking work environments that they're down to choosing which horrible attention-grabbing SaaS product they'd rather use.
Have you not considered simply using neither? What is wrong with email? Hell, what's wrong with a phone call?
I feel so sorry for those who continue operating in such soulless, life-sucking work environments that they're down to choosing which horrible attention-grabbing SaaS product they'd rather use.
Have you not considered simply using neither? What is wrong with email? Hell, what's wrong with a phone call?
> Hell, what's wrong with a phone call?
You have to remember to take notes.
I hate going to find something in Slack history and seeing a phone call right around where I think important information may have been conveyed. At best, I have to go look other places to find it. At worst, there's nothing. And since I may not have been on the call, it may not even be possible for me to have notes, short of bugging the people who participated and hoping they took notes.
This even goes for personal stuff. I much prefer when my wife sends me important info via chat (not Slack, in this case) rather than calling, unless it's super time-sensitive, for basically the same reason.
Email evades the objection to calls, sure, but I've yet to see an email client that doesn't suck for low-friction multiparty chat. Yes, including gmail. I'm pretty sure this could be solved by a client, but I've not seen it, and I think part of the problem is having to accommodate other clients' default quoting behavior and threading and such, so it may be something that could technically be solved by a good client, but couldn't in fact be solved by a client.
You have to remember to take notes.
I hate going to find something in Slack history and seeing a phone call right around where I think important information may have been conveyed. At best, I have to go look other places to find it. At worst, there's nothing. And since I may not have been on the call, it may not even be possible for me to have notes, short of bugging the people who participated and hoping they took notes.
This even goes for personal stuff. I much prefer when my wife sends me important info via chat (not Slack, in this case) rather than calling, unless it's super time-sensitive, for basically the same reason.
Email evades the objection to calls, sure, but I've yet to see an email client that doesn't suck for low-friction multiparty chat. Yes, including gmail. I'm pretty sure this could be solved by a client, but I've not seen it, and I think part of the problem is having to accommodate other clients' default quoting behavior and threading and such, so it may be something that could technically be solved by a good client, but couldn't in fact be solved by a client.
>Hell, what's wrong with a phone call?
>attention-grabbing
>attention-grabbing
Please, if you are going to reply to people here, please do so thoughtfully. Phones have had ring mute features on them since they went cordless back in the 1980s.
Playing phone tag stopped being fun decades ago once SMS came about which you probably don't approve of either.
There are annoying things about all aspects to life.
Your solution is to add more and more annoying things unnecessarily in an effort to side-step the problem.
I think there should be an examination of the root causes and more post-mortems to actually understand what went wrong and why the solution didn't work either.
You want to keep piling on in a rather psychopathic manner:
Phone tag --> SMS --> Email --> AIM --> MySpace --> Facebook --> Twitter --> Instagram --> Snapchat --> TikTok --> ???????
You even do this in other posts, defending the idea of the suicide prevention hotline before even discussing wtf might be causing people to be suicidal. [0] People like you are why we are rapidly shedding any semblance of progress in the Western world.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121231
Your solution is to add more and more annoying things unnecessarily in an effort to side-step the problem.
I think there should be an examination of the root causes and more post-mortems to actually understand what went wrong and why the solution didn't work either.
You want to keep piling on in a rather psychopathic manner:
Phone tag --> SMS --> Email --> AIM --> MySpace --> Facebook --> Twitter --> Instagram --> Snapchat --> TikTok --> ???????
You even do this in other posts, defending the idea of the suicide prevention hotline before even discussing wtf might be causing people to be suicidal. [0] People like you are why we are rapidly shedding any semblance of progress in the Western world.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121231
It's fascinating how whenever I bring up how actually terrible for the world this SaaS shit is, people get very defensive about it and end up resorting to personal attacks.
It's as if people had never before considered that what they are doing is actually very toxic for the world and our planet. It's as if you hate being reminded that people that support Slack and Microsoft are basically the devil incarnate.
It's as if people had never before considered that what they are doing is actually very toxic for the world and our planet. It's as if you hate being reminded that people that support Slack and Microsoft are basically the devil incarnate.
> If I had to use either of these things as part of running my team of 12 engineers, I'd resign immediately.
Better for you and better for the team! Cause I wouldn't want to work with someone who would do that.
Better for you and better for the team! Cause I wouldn't want to work with someone who would do that.
One of the few silver linings I can look forward to when my company forcibly drops Office 365 for Google workspace. But it may be my luck that they chop out Slack to make us use Google Chat etc, we shall find out... (nods gravely)
Teams is bad but it isn’t nearly as bad as needing to use Google Docs over Office in the workplace.
[deleted]
Why? In my experience Teams has generally been better than Slack. People complain about Team's speed but I can't even count how often Slack used to get hung on me.
I can't believe anyone would say that Teams is better than Slack.
Almost everything about Slack is better. It's easier to manage conversations/channels. It's easier to read. It's easier to write. It's easier to customize.
The only thing I've heard is that Slack is unstable for some people. I haven't experienced any stability issues in 3+ years using the MacOS app. I've heard that the Slack web interface may be the cause of stability issues.
We have Slack in my organization, but corporate has started using Teams for the past year. I think the writing is on the wall, and I'm dreading it.
Almost everything about Slack is better. It's easier to manage conversations/channels. It's easier to read. It's easier to write. It's easier to customize.
The only thing I've heard is that Slack is unstable for some people. I haven't experienced any stability issues in 3+ years using the MacOS app. I've heard that the Slack web interface may be the cause of stability issues.
We have Slack in my organization, but corporate has started using Teams for the past year. I think the writing is on the wall, and I'm dreading it.
Now do a cost benefit analysis. I'm willing to bet teams is free if you're buying other MSFT products. Personally, I'm not a fan of either and I'd take discord over either.
Just the lost goodwill among your less drony drones is probably worth the Slack subscription.
It may sound silly, but “we use Slack instead of Teams” would not be insignificant in the consideration of whether to accept a new job.
It may sound silly, but “we use Slack instead of Teams” would not be insignificant in the consideration of whether to accept a new job.
For Teams, I'm shocked when it works the first time I click it. Usually because I was signed into another group's Teams and happened to go back to that one.
My bigger problem with teams is their multi-Team model. In between my current and last job, I (part time) contracted with a handful of groups and every single one added me to their Slack or Teams group. With Slack, they popped up as separate orgs and I could move between them as I needed. With Teams, I had to log out of one to open the other.
I will never know how many questions I missed (aka billable hours) and people I annoyed by "ignoring" them when I had simply had to join some other group's Teams to take a call and forgot to come back to their Teams.
My bigger problem with teams is their multi-Team model. In between my current and last job, I (part time) contracted with a handful of groups and every single one added me to their Slack or Teams group. With Slack, they popped up as separate orgs and I could move between them as I needed. With Teams, I had to log out of one to open the other.
I will never know how many questions I missed (aka billable hours) and people I annoyed by "ignoring" them when I had simply had to join some other group's Teams to take a call and forgot to come back to their Teams.
Seems like you got the good end of the stick wrt authentication. At least twice over the past year and a half my account got stuck in a login -> redirect -> logout loop for days. If I had to regularly log out of Teams I suspect this would manifest itself more often.
Welp, I guess I have to say it for the 6th time (wonder when I'll stop counting). Teams on Linux is a complete nightmare, with the most egregious aspect being that it continues recording audio after you leave a meeting (which is easily proven by just joining a meeting, leaving and opening Pavucontrol). Someone recently mentioned to me in HN that disabling spacial meeting recognition or some crap like that fixes it, but I haven't been at my computer since to try it out.
It's been like this for at least a year and a half, and I've submitted it through the "feedback form" countless times.
Ps.: Interestingly enough, in Pavucontrol the application shows up as "Skype", with the icon and all.
It's been like this for at least a year and a half, and I've submitted it through the "feedback form" countless times.
Ps.: Interestingly enough, in Pavucontrol the application shows up as "Skype", with the icon and all.
For me it's information retrieval. For some reason searching in teams will return my search text "Hey, where is the Controller located?", but I can't actually navigate to the message right after it, which is the answer.
I can't wrap my head around the decision. There is a "go to message" button, which brings you to the exact message you were already looking at in the search results but still completely isolated from context.
Yeah, have to look at the date and then manually scroll back to that point in the conversation.
I can’t imagine why someone would build that and then think “This is it. This is good enough.”
I can’t imagine why someone would build that and then think “This is it. This is good enough.”
Exactly! It's strictly there to mock you. The only way you can find the message with the answer you're looking for is if you already have the answer.
It seems that it would be impossible to be signed in in multiple Teams of different customers https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/d256e0f6-...
Hopefully my customers will keep using Slack.
Hopefully my customers will keep using Slack.
The idea is you can be invited to a team in another tenant from your own account.
... and? In reality that's probably not how some not insignificant minority of Teams users access the service.
I have clients that create external accounts for me under their domain. Once signed in, I can no longer sign into a different account, so my meeting with other clients have Company A in my email... kind of odd.
Of course, I can't actually create a personal Teams account, because my company does not use Teams.
So, I decided to burn everything MS Teams related out of my home directory, and start fresh. I am now a guest user for every company that needs calls done via Teams.
Arguably a worse off solution, no?
I have clients that create external accounts for me under their domain. Once signed in, I can no longer sign into a different account, so my meeting with other clients have Company A in my email... kind of odd.
Of course, I can't actually create a personal Teams account, because my company does not use Teams.
So, I decided to burn everything MS Teams related out of my home directory, and start fresh. I am now a guest user for every company that needs calls done via Teams.
Arguably a worse off solution, no?
I've witnessed firsthand that the main problem of Teams is that Slack is now so deeply wired into our daily working life that people cplain about Teams just because it differs from Slack.
It doesn't even matter if the choices and ergonomics are better or worse... Since it's just not-Slack, it gets rejected by a certain (IMO quite large) share of the population.
It doesn't even matter if the choices and ergonomics are better or worse... Since it's just not-Slack, it gets rejected by a certain (IMO quite large) share of the population.
I used Teams for several years before ever using slack. And honestly, Teams is hands down one of the absolute worst pieces of software I have ever used. Its slow, it has a terrible UI, it's clunky, it drops calls, uses tons of memory. Its absolute garbage. I've only used Slack for a few months and I think its lightyears better.
For me I’m not even concerned with the specifics. The idea of using Teams fills me with dread. Slack does not. I do not want to spend any amount of time in my day thinking about the specifics of my chat app.
Teams legitimately crashes every single time I open it. The stability is just.... not up to professional working standards.
My company tried to switch to Teams and there was practically an employee uprising... it now sticks to Teams for all non-eng while eng does Slack.
My company tried to switch to Teams and there was practically an employee uprising... it now sticks to Teams for all non-eng while eng does Slack.
> it now sticks to Teams for all non-eng while eng does Slack.
Why did the other depts stick to Teams?
Your comment seems to precisely prove my point, when reading it from my seat :D
Why did the other depts stick to Teams?
Your comment seems to precisely prove my point, when reading it from my seat :D
Other departments do what IT tell them, for the most part.
eng usually knows about tech tools better than other departments.
For programs: Ask the finance department about Sage and excel and they will have opinions.
eng usually knows about tech tools better than other departments.
For programs: Ask the finance department about Sage and excel and they will have opinions.
> Why did the other depts stick to Teams?
You misunderstand. They didn't have a say.
You misunderstand. They didn't have a say.
Lots of pressure from the top to use Teams for what one might call political reasons.
Default-open nature of channels combined with infinite retention and good search means that I can find the information from a conversation 3 years ago that's relevant to my current issue. The Ergo, for chat, is better than all the competitors.
Main thing though is the default-open. If you don't get that, well that's ok, many people don't.
Main thing though is the default-open. If you don't get that, well that's ok, many people don't.
Been there (still am). Slack was not integrated with SSO, so the logical solution (instead of integrating it) was of course to drop it entirely.
that's interesting : Teams has worked far better for us
I still think Slack are missing a huge revenue stream from open source/personal orgs. I would happily pay Slack $8.75 per month to get all the Enterprise features on all the random non-work slacks I’m a member of. I’m not willing to pay individually for each open source project or coworking space but I think there would be a lot of users who want this if you got even say 6 open source non-work orgs for that…
Looks like they would rather have you migrate to Discord
Okay not as bad as I expected.
With all that money, maybe they'll finally be able to create an app where ctrl+k does not have between one and ten seconds of delay before showing the menu? Surely that's possible.
With all that money, maybe they'll finally be able to create an app where ctrl+k does not have between one and ten seconds of delay before showing the menu? Surely that's possible.
Every once in awhile Slack dedicates a bunch of developer time to fix UI lag. Loading the emoji autocompletion used to be very fast, and slowed down over time (we only have about 50 custom emoji.)
At some point they refactored some things, made stuff faster, and wrote a nice blog post about it, and the emoji autocomplete was lightning fast again.
Then of course, it slowed down incrementally over the next couple months until it is now unbearably slow again.
At some point they refactored some things, made stuff faster, and wrote a nice blog post about it, and the emoji autocomplete was lightning fast again.
Then of course, it slowed down incrementally over the next couple months until it is now unbearably slow again.
I wish Slack Android app never miss messages.
Finding myself liking Slack these days.
I was really big into Deep Work's hyperactive hivemind and saw Slack as a negative until I took a full remote job and found it to be a critical tool for async communication.
The solution ended up being really simple: cmd + q when I want to focus.
I was really big into Deep Work's hyperactive hivemind and saw Slack as a negative until I took a full remote job and found it to be a critical tool for async communication.
The solution ended up being really simple: cmd + q when I want to focus.
Having seen so many SAAS turn the screws on their customers over the years with absurd price hikes it's refreshing to see such a reasonable one.
ZenDesk's 300% hike still stings over a decade later.
ZenDesk's 300% hike still stings over a decade later.
zendesk sure cost a lot of money for an app that if I submit a support ticket (using zendesk of course) it takes 3-4 days to be told to restart my computer. (Nope, not it, guess again).
Has anyone had success with Google chat? Looks like a competitor and many companies already pay for Google Workspace. https://workspace.google.com/products/chat/
I believe, their history of messaging apps, makes it very difficult to rely on Google in this area. Organizations that are already in Google's ecosystem will probably use it, but I doubt it will have any significance otherwise. As long as you don't have a need to use it towards other organizations it should work (but don't ever expect Google to implement a feature that is requested by their customers).
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/so-nice-they-killed-...
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/so-nice-they-killed-...
We use it for our family chat, and so far it's been a total pain. Google changes things so regularly, but with little awareness of the impact those changes make. At one point they deprecated hangouts for chat, but required hangouts still for viewing video on mobile, while also enabling partially supported chat on gmail. What ended up happening was there was a period where I had to have all 3 apps on my phone to use it, and I'd get a notification from all 3 for every message: https://twitter.com/pwnies/status/1404895098194644994
The one thing I will say that's great about it is their search functionality is top tier.
The one thing I will say that's great about it is their search functionality is top tier.
I work at a data/dev consulting firm. We use Google Chat internally because its security guarantees are HIPAA compliant. We want that due to how often we are exposed to and need to share PII (for clients in healthcare).
However, many of our other clients use Slack internally and I use it to communicate with them... And I much prefer Slack. There's nothing really wrong with Google Chat, it just doesn't have the same polish or some of the really nice features that you might take for granted, like sane threading, custom emojis, or the ability to collapse a GIF so you can't see the animation out of the corner of your eye.
However, many of our other clients use Slack internally and I use it to communicate with them... And I much prefer Slack. There's nothing really wrong with Google Chat, it just doesn't have the same polish or some of the really nice features that you might take for granted, like sane threading, custom emojis, or the ability to collapse a GIF so you can't see the animation out of the corner of your eye.
If I were starting over, I would probably push for Google Chat. It was such a chore getting my workmates to switch to Slack from email, that I don't want to disturb the delicate balance. That said, Google Chat has less integrations and I don't trust Google to keep products around.
Besides the price, Google Meet is miles better than Slack video chat. I know most people just pay for Zoom, but for those of us that are stuck in Slack calls, Meet is a huge improvement.
I wonder if there is a tool to migrate all public messages from Slack to Google Chat?
Besides the price, Google Meet is miles better than Slack video chat. I know most people just pay for Zoom, but for those of us that are stuck in Slack calls, Meet is a huge improvement.
I wonder if there is a tool to migrate all public messages from Slack to Google Chat?
Is this really the time to be increasing prices when they are in an (anti-competitive) fight with Teams that is practically being given away?
I really don't understand this mindset. Devs are paid handsomely, most in the low 6 figures, good benefits, etc etc.
So why switch to an inferior product just to save a few comparative pennies? I'd gladly ask my company to just remove the cost from my salary to not have to use teams.
So why switch to an inferior product just to save a few comparative pennies? I'd gladly ask my company to just remove the cost from my salary to not have to use teams.
Probably it's easier to argue this on a small company, where the developers have a bigger impact. But I think in most companies, nobody asks the developers about these things. If the company is already invested in Office, then it's a no brainer to use Teams. It's free and supposedly does everything Slack does. It's well integrated with Outlook/Calendar, etc. When you already have a free solution it's very difficult to ask for a paid service with similar functionality. I don't like using Teams, but that's not a hill I'm willing to die on.
To be honest, the only complain I have about Teams is how resource hungry and unresponsive the application is. But I think it does (or should I say "attempts to do") some things better than Slack. I like the way Teams displays the chat threads as conversations instead of a long, narrow and claustrophobic column on the right, for example. But, again, nobody asks me :)
To be honest, the only complain I have about Teams is how resource hungry and unresponsive the application is. But I think it does (or should I say "attempts to do") some things better than Slack. I like the way Teams displays the chat threads as conversations instead of a long, narrow and claustrophobic column on the right, for example. But, again, nobody asks me :)
Now it's not only for devs.
Synergy!
Maybe the don't do it "because they can" but "because they have to"?
I would think they would be lowering their price to compete against Microsoft Teams. Teams is eating their business because it comes bundled with Microsoft365 subscription.
[deleted]
I’ve long puzzled why Discord hasn’t spun off a new brand and used it’s existing infrastructure and tech to make a business-targeted product. What’s stopping them?
>`<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=">`
Blocking javascript causes every page on slack.com to continuously refresh. Why?
Blocking javascript causes every page on slack.com to continuously refresh. Why?
"What are you doing with your weird broken browser, you weirdo?"
(I am also a weirdo)
Fun fact, Slack also started blocking Fierfox 78 ESR last winter, which was the default browser in Debian stable until just a couple of weeks ago. They don't merely show an unsupported browser message, but actively prevent the app from loading. It still worked fine if you spoofed the user agent string to report a later Firefox version. It felt like unnecessary hostility to users for no actual security benefit.
(I am also a weirdo)
Fun fact, Slack also started blocking Fierfox 78 ESR last winter, which was the default browser in Debian stable until just a couple of weeks ago. They don't merely show an unsupported browser message, but actively prevent the app from loading. It still worked fine if you spoofed the user agent string to report a later Firefox version. It felt like unnecessary hostility to users for no actual security benefit.
Realistically, because if you are blocking Javascript in 2022, you probably aren't in their core demographic.
Slack, either the web version or the desktop version, will not work without Javascript. So its reasonable to expect that their customers will have javascript enabled (or more aptly, not-disabled) - allowing them to use more dynamic features to showcase their tool.
Probably easier to expect that the users browser hasn't loaded the Javascript and cause a page refresh to show them the site, than expect a non-Javascript user.
Slack, either the web version or the desktop version, will not work without Javascript. So its reasonable to expect that their customers will have javascript enabled (or more aptly, not-disabled) - allowing them to use more dynamic features to showcase their tool.
Probably easier to expect that the users browser hasn't loaded the Javascript and cause a page refresh to show them the site, than expect a non-Javascript user.
TL:DR: On the Pro Plan, they are increasing the Price beginning Sep 1, 2022. Got this email below:
"Switch to a yearly plan to keep our current rate for a year Your team’s current rate for the monthly Slack Pro plan is $8 USD/user/month.
Our current rate for the yearly Slack Pro plan is $6.67 USD/user/month, and we are offering monthly subscribers the opportunity to lock in that rate for 12 months by committing to a yearly Pro plan. To take advantage of this offer, switch to the yearly Pro plan before September 1.
If you take no action, your monthly Pro price will adjust to $8.75 USD/user/month and will be reflected in your account on September 9th, 2022."
"Switch to a yearly plan to keep our current rate for a year Your team’s current rate for the monthly Slack Pro plan is $8 USD/user/month.
Our current rate for the yearly Slack Pro plan is $6.67 USD/user/month, and we are offering monthly subscribers the opportunity to lock in that rate for 12 months by committing to a yearly Pro plan. To take advantage of this offer, switch to the yearly Pro plan before September 1.
If you take no action, your monthly Pro price will adjust to $8.75 USD/user/month and will be reflected in your account on September 9th, 2022."
I always thought $5+ per user (per month) is a really high fee for a not all that great service and pretty clunky client. There should be a text-only budget version that costs less for leaner organizations that can use other services for sharing large files, video or audio calls, etc.
One feature I wish you could do is add people to a group chat and keep history. Or prompt if you’re adding to a chat to convert to a channel and keep history.
I probably once a month start a group chat and need to add somebody to it and all context is gone
I probably once a month start a group chat and need to add somebody to it and all context is gone
Do you mean it should automatically ask if you want to convert it to a private channel? You can manually convert to a private channel and keep message history.
https://slack.com/help/articles/217555437-Convert-a-group-di...
https://slack.com/help/articles/217555437-Convert-a-group-di...
Oh shit. Thanks!
Ctrl + F: "salesforce"
Interesting.. In both this thread and the linked article.
Interesting.. In both this thread and the linked article.
Party's over! Back to IRC!
all you folks crying, what did you expect?
This seems, if anything, more of a noticeable change.