Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/slack-is-the-right-tool-for-the-wrong-way-to-work
130 comments
This ignores the fact that defaults matter, and defaults shape the usage of the tool. I want to reply in threats, but often don't, because it requires me to let go of my keyboard and fumble around with the mouse to do it. That's why I vastly prefer Zulip (which additionally isn't slow as molasses).
Threads are an extremely important asset in large channels to maintain organization. Less important in ad-hoc quick conversations in small DM groups for sure. I've never experienced any issues with people not using threads and the UX around it has always seemed fairly smooth to me.
My issue is that I'll reply out of thread because it's much, much faster in Slack, and then I'll be kicking myself because that means I won't get notified of further replies (and neither will anyone else).
I'm always not sure when a conversation will need a thread. Sometimes I start a thread and then it's over with just one message that provides the answer. Other times I don't start one right away, but now if I start one then the first 4 messages of context will be missing at the top. I would use threads ofif there were a way to create them retroactively.
Another plus one for Zulip, huge improvement over Slack for me.
The reason I don't like threads is that I can't expand a thread without seeing it in the sidebar. That's so effing annoying.
Yeah, they really botched the implementation of such an essential feature.
A 128oz tub of pork rinds with an easy-open cap is just a tool to alleviate hunger when you're looking for a salty snack. Placed next to an incredibly disciplined person like an Olympic athlete, the tub will probably last six months and not damage their health. But placed next to an ordinary person it will definitely encourage overeating.
Tools placed in the hands of imperfect people will be used imperfectly, and in a way that amplifies the properties of the tool more than the priorities of the person.
Tools placed in the hands of imperfect people will be used imperfectly, and in a way that amplifies the properties of the tool more than the priorities of the person.
Bad analogy though because persistent channel-based chat is a good way to handle ephemeral and interactive collaboration, especially in a Covid world where few lightweight options exist. Do we have to open a Zoom, send an email or start a doc for every single thing?
I get that some environments might be fine without group chat, but for others it's indispensable.
I get that some environments might be fine without group chat, but for others it's indispensable.
I've had jobs where every little thing required a bunch of back and forth. Integration, and spinning up a new product. Slack (or IRC if you aren't hooked on giant emojis) work well for this.
But for the rest of my work there are questions but you can batch them if you think ahead, and write a good email. Or, just put the questions in the ticket and use the right collaboration tool.
I find that all chat-derived information needs to be rewritten (ideally) or being cut&paste into a document because chat is either ultimately ephemeral, or lives in an entirely different system from the rest.
But for the rest of my work there are questions but you can batch them if you think ahead, and write a good email. Or, just put the questions in the ticket and use the right collaboration tool.
I find that all chat-derived information needs to be rewritten (ideally) or being cut&paste into a document because chat is either ultimately ephemeral, or lives in an entirely different system from the rest.
I was going to post the same thing. Use tools in a healthy way and they should be useful not harmful.
I really like slack and use it constantly during work. If you need to go head down and focus on tasks needing concentration, put a notification on your slack profile saying you are busy. Make blocks on your calendar for sanity and concentration time and a slack status to match.
The same thing could be applied to email, I never answer my email later than work hours, sometimes the company itself is the issue, if they expect all hours communication I would look elsewhere, time and sanity are vital natural resources.
I really like slack and use it constantly during work. If you need to go head down and focus on tasks needing concentration, put a notification on your slack profile saying you are busy. Make blocks on your calendar for sanity and concentration time and a slack status to match.
The same thing could be applied to email, I never answer my email later than work hours, sometimes the company itself is the issue, if they expect all hours communication I would look elsewhere, time and sanity are vital natural resources.
At my employer we have Slack channels for engineering teams but anyone in the company can (and does) come in to ask what amount to low-level support questions. I've dealt with it on my team by rotating the job of responding so that whoever is on-call for the week deals with it. It means there's a lot of interruptions, unfortunately, for whoever is on call, but at least the rest of the team is explicitly given permission to ignore it.
As a company we could and should do better at the support system, but that's just one aspect of the problem with company expectations.
As a company we could and should do better at the support system, but that's just one aspect of the problem with company expectations.
When you force the company to use your custom internal platform instead of an industry standard, it's only fair that you become responsible for providing the instant answers they would otherwise get from Google and Stackoverflow.
Interruption is a feature. If we let our platform teams get into the zone and code too much, they'd NIH our damn editors. It's important to have support burden as a brake on the development of custom crap, and a thumb on the scale in favor of deploying tools that a) developers might already know, b) the internet definitely knows, and c) are higher quality and more capable than even the brightest team with your budget could create.
We have support channels for our Redis and MySQL installations. It is crickets in there. But the people who write a custom NoSQL are rightfully getting slammed 24x7.
Interruption is a feature. If we let our platform teams get into the zone and code too much, they'd NIH our damn editors. It's important to have support burden as a brake on the development of custom crap, and a thumb on the scale in favor of deploying tools that a) developers might already know, b) the internet definitely knows, and c) are higher quality and more capable than even the brightest team with your budget could create.
We have support channels for our Redis and MySQL installations. It is crickets in there. But the people who write a custom NoSQL are rightfully getting slammed 24x7.
We deal with the same. Here's an easy solution – set up a #support- channel for the team. If anyone asks a question in the regular channel, redirect them. Have a fixed rotation and SLA for the support channel.
In fact everyone now prefers this over the pre-Slack way where you had to randomly email or IM people one by one to try and get some help.
In fact everyone now prefers this over the pre-Slack way where you had to randomly email or IM people one by one to try and get some help.
The channel name is not the problem. The problem is that people will go to whatever channel they want and ignore any "official" support system. It's the same as the guy in sales who comes to your desk to bug you about something he promised a customer. He knows he's supposed to go through channels, but he's going to do what he wants, regardless of mechanism.
That can be solved with the right company culture and a good manager. If someone was disturbing my work in that manner I would mention it to my boss, who would probably tell me to not spend time answering them next time and direct them to the proper support channel. If it happened repeatedly, then my boss would escalate it with the salesperson’s boss.
They will keep doing it if they keep getting positive results. Eventually it's up to you and your team to set boundaries.
For sure, but then management gets unhappy because sales people are unhappy.
Alternatively, set up a #eng- or #dev- channel so you don't have to redirect anyone to #support-
> If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity.
Sounds good in theory, rarely works well in practice.
The only times I've seen Slack work well is when everyone involved starts with similar expectations about how it should be used and what's appropriate. In my experience, this is easiest to achieve when Slack channels are closely aligned with teams who are working together.
The model tends to break down when Slack is used for communication that is better served by e-mail, calls, or meetings. An easy rule of thumb is that if it crosses department boundaries and/or is something that needs to be formally communicated to an entire team, it's better to direct it to e-mail or a scheduled call.
> Speaking of the example in the article, there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7.
Strongly agree, but it's not just clients. Sales people, for example, love to use Slack because it's a backdoor channel to circumvent management and go straight to the engineers.
Sounds good in theory, rarely works well in practice.
The only times I've seen Slack work well is when everyone involved starts with similar expectations about how it should be used and what's appropriate. In my experience, this is easiest to achieve when Slack channels are closely aligned with teams who are working together.
The model tends to break down when Slack is used for communication that is better served by e-mail, calls, or meetings. An easy rule of thumb is that if it crosses department boundaries and/or is something that needs to be formally communicated to an entire team, it's better to direct it to e-mail or a scheduled call.
> Speaking of the example in the article, there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7.
Strongly agree, but it's not just clients. Sales people, for example, love to use Slack because it's a backdoor channel to circumvent management and go straight to the engineers.
> Strongly agree, but it's not just clients. Sales people, for example, love to use Slack because it's a backdoor channel to circumvent management and go straight to the engineers.
And that's bad because?
And that's bad because?
Because management should be rigorously defending devs from being needlessly interrupted with whatever some sales guy thinks is important in the moment? Management can filter out the garbage, condense down the really important bits and deliver them during a time it won't knock dev out of the zone?
Worked fine where I worked. You know you can turn notifications off? You know you can tell a sales guy he's being annoying?
We were banned by management from turning off notifications.
I once worked at a (open) office where sales people were constantly berating engineers, asking for a feature or pestering for a status update on a feature/bug in progress. It got so bad they installed a wall around that area.
I see lots of tools and they all have good and bad points.
- email is good for mindful conversations. It is slow and doesn't need to interrupt. mailing lists feed into this.
- wikis are great for information that is designed. But it takes a lot of energy, and really requires dedicated maintenance. I've never worked anywhere where internal wikis were better than mediocre.
- bug systems have an off-label use - they are great for finding out about problems in company specific software/systems
- ticket systems are great for resolving small problems. But they seem to be closed systems that aren't searchable.
- slack. Now slack is good, not evil. I think where slack shines is up-to-the-minute communication where several people help work through a problem. but in moderation! Be polite, do not nag.
It is also exceptional at "trivial" knowledge that nonetheless holds back bright minds from progress - and is searchable.
What goes into slack is the less-formal-than-email stuff, the less-organized-than-wiki stuff, and less-critical-than-bug-report stuff.
- email is good for mindful conversations. It is slow and doesn't need to interrupt. mailing lists feed into this.
- wikis are great for information that is designed. But it takes a lot of energy, and really requires dedicated maintenance. I've never worked anywhere where internal wikis were better than mediocre.
- bug systems have an off-label use - they are great for finding out about problems in company specific software/systems
- ticket systems are great for resolving small problems. But they seem to be closed systems that aren't searchable.
- slack. Now slack is good, not evil. I think where slack shines is up-to-the-minute communication where several people help work through a problem. but in moderation! Be polite, do not nag.
It is also exceptional at "trivial" knowledge that nonetheless holds back bright minds from progress - and is searchable.
What goes into slack is the less-formal-than-email stuff, the less-organized-than-wiki stuff, and less-critical-than-bug-report stuff.
I think this is very wise. Slack as the scapegoat isn't quite correct, the actual root cause is how they used it.
>Speaking of the example in the article, there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7. This is true with email, Slack, SMS and every other form of communication.
the craziness is that without slack this client would have still done this. I've had clients with my personal cellphone # printed out and put in the server room 'for emergencies only' but I'd have managers call me in the middle of the night because their helpdesk hasnt responded to their problem yet.
I was effectively on-call 24/7 and couldnt go do anything.
>Speaking of the example in the article, there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7. This is true with email, Slack, SMS and every other form of communication.
the craziness is that without slack this client would have still done this. I've had clients with my personal cellphone # printed out and put in the server room 'for emergencies only' but I'd have managers call me in the middle of the night because their helpdesk hasnt responded to their problem yet.
I was effectively on-call 24/7 and couldnt go do anything.
Tools use and shape us to the same degree that we use tools. We're not enlightened rational choice actors who correctly discard bad tools and only use good ones, most of the time we just pick defaults, because choice is costly and attention is in short supply.
Build a culture with bad tools and you get a messed up culture. Applies both to the structure of many companies and their communication tools.
Funnily enough the point about choosing Slack can actually be made for skilled professionals and their companies. They can choose where to work, curiously enough many actually up at precisely the firms their top schools are funneling them to.
Build a culture with bad tools and you get a messed up culture. Applies both to the structure of many companies and their communication tools.
Funnily enough the point about choosing Slack can actually be made for skilled professionals and their companies. They can choose where to work, curiously enough many actually up at precisely the firms their top schools are funneling them to.
Slack expects you to look at slack during your work hours - and robs you from the focus needed for deep work.
Or, you do deep work, and lose on the decisions, chatter made in real time.
Slack turns the working environment to an equivalent of n open office where everyone chatters all of the time.
Good luck doing anything else.
Or, you do deep work, and lose on the decisions, chatter made in real time.
Slack turns the working environment to an equivalent of n open office where everyone chatters all of the time.
Good luck doing anything else.
Slack doesn't expect you to do anything. Your coworkers do.
People don't interrupt me on Slack, simply because Slack doesn't jump in front of my IDE. When I see a notification dot and have time, I'll look at it and reply
People don't interrupt me on Slack, simply because Slack doesn't jump in front of my IDE. When I see a notification dot and have time, I'll look at it and reply
I don’t mind the pedantry; the issue I’m pointing out is that people will not wait for you to chime in but will make their decisions and move on. Because slack as a chat encourages that attitude.
The guys at 37signals/Basecamp said it well here: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-presence-prison/
The problem isn't the tool, it's the mindset that often goes with it.
The problem isn't the tool, it's the mindset that often goes with it.
Good article. I love reading Jason's thoughts on work culture. They must really have one of the best working environments in the world.
> there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7.
Uhh... except in Investment Banking. I suppose when your client is paying so much, they rightfully expect a 24/7 hotline.
Uhh... except in Investment Banking. I suppose when your client is paying so much, they rightfully expect a 24/7 hotline.
Often baked into SaaS pricing models as well. At “call us” pricing tier $Company includes 24/7 support with guaranteed response time SLA
Oh you want the 30min SLA? Add 2 zeroes
The company then institutes the right on-call practices, ensures support staff is trained, triage is correct, etc
Oh you want the 30min SLA? Add 2 zeroes
The company then institutes the right on-call practices, ensures support staff is trained, triage is correct, etc
Yeah, that's my point though. You can't expect your employees to be permanently on call, watch them burn out, then blame Slack.
I hope the other commenter's idea of "right on-call practices" involve hiring enough employees to give a humane on-call schedule, and compensating appropriately for the on-call time. That's my idea of the right on-call practices, and would go very well with "add 2 zeroes" in the pricing of that SLA.
But, yeah, a lot of places don't do that.
But, yeah, a lot of places don't do that.
I had a manager tell me we can't hire people to be low productivity people just because we need people in the rotation. Idk if I agree with that, though I guess I get the point.
Who suggested hiring low productivity people?
If there's not enough work to go around but you need people on the rotation your productivity will be low
In that case, just contract with skilled infrastructure consultants (whether as individuals or through multi-person consultancies) to share on-call duties with your infrastructure employee workforce on an as-paged basis rather than hiring them full-time.
Yeah, I think of Slack as the virtual version of the open office. Anybody can bother you at any time.
In the real world, if we ever return to it, I like having physical team rooms, the sort of thing you have naturally when it's an early-stage startup in a single space. When everybody knows each other and is focused on the same goal, it's not hard to work out good communication and space-use norms. But scaling that up into large open-plan offices can quickly turn maddening. It's the tragedy of the audio commons, and anybody can walk up and tap you on the shoulder.
For me Slack is the same problem, but worse in that it removes some of they physical signals and feedback mechanisms that work in an open-plan office.
In the real world, if we ever return to it, I like having physical team rooms, the sort of thing you have naturally when it's an early-stage startup in a single space. When everybody knows each other and is focused on the same goal, it's not hard to work out good communication and space-use norms. But scaling that up into large open-plan offices can quickly turn maddening. It's the tragedy of the audio commons, and anybody can walk up and tap you on the shoulder.
For me Slack is the same problem, but worse in that it removes some of they physical signals and feedback mechanisms that work in an open-plan office.
We make liberal use of emoticon statuses in Slack: the 'away' icon (red circle with a line) is extremely visual and obvious for us to know which staff are out, sick, busy.. It's become like closed doors for us over time as we all agree to respect it.
It probably helps we are over several timezones and each work irregular hours according to what's happening (kids pick up, teaching, sports..): we can't count on who is there at any time and consequently run the business asynchronously except for pre-planned meetings.
It probably helps we are over several timezones and each work irregular hours according to what's happening (kids pick up, teaching, sports..): we can't count on who is there at any time and consequently run the business asynchronously except for pre-planned meetings.
> Yeah, I think of Slack as the virtual version of the open office. Anybody can bother you at any time.
Open office doesn't mean that anyone can bother you at any time. It's important that companies set expectations about these things and enforce them to avoid that slippery slope.
Same goes for Slack. Once you expand beyond intra-team communication, it's important to set some expectations for what is and is not appropriate in Slack.
At the least happy point in my career, I had to be a member of over 100 Slack channels to get my job done and I received upwards of 100-200 @here and @channel notifications every day as people competed to stand above the noise. It was miserable. At the worst point, my time tracker was counting upwards of 4 hours per day spent in the Slack app.
Ironically, my efforts to push things to e-mails and scheduled calls was met with a lot of resistance from people who were afraid it would hamper flexibility and ruin asynchronous workflows. We also had absurd levels of office politics because people were treating each other as screen names instead of actual people working in other offices. I would take an open-office floorplan over that nonsense any day.
Open office doesn't mean that anyone can bother you at any time. It's important that companies set expectations about these things and enforce them to avoid that slippery slope.
Same goes for Slack. Once you expand beyond intra-team communication, it's important to set some expectations for what is and is not appropriate in Slack.
At the least happy point in my career, I had to be a member of over 100 Slack channels to get my job done and I received upwards of 100-200 @here and @channel notifications every day as people competed to stand above the noise. It was miserable. At the worst point, my time tracker was counting upwards of 4 hours per day spent in the Slack app.
Ironically, my efforts to push things to e-mails and scheduled calls was met with a lot of resistance from people who were afraid it would hamper flexibility and ruin asynchronous workflows. We also had absurd levels of office politics because people were treating each other as screen names instead of actual people working in other offices. I would take an open-office floorplan over that nonsense any day.
> Anybody can bother you at any time
I can't recall where exactly but at one seminar I took, well before chat programs were ubiquitous, the presenter called out in-person interruptions. Just a co-worker dropping by randomly and starting a conversation. There are ways to deal with that, but those tricks don't work so well in a virtual world when you can have dozens of people simultaneously demanding your attention. (and TBH they stopped working very well with the move to open offices)
I can't recall where exactly but at one seminar I took, well before chat programs were ubiquitous, the presenter called out in-person interruptions. Just a co-worker dropping by randomly and starting a conversation. There are ways to deal with that, but those tricks don't work so well in a virtual world when you can have dozens of people simultaneously demanding your attention. (and TBH they stopped working very well with the move to open offices)
> it removes some of they physical signals and feedback mechanisms
For me the biggest annoying thing about Slack is the calling feature. I don't like unscheduled calls. It also often starts making a racket when I'm in the middle of another call with different software. I might write a browser plugin sometime to disable Slack calls.
For everything else though I usually just close Slack when I'm heads down working and open it during periodic breaks to check for anything important.
For me the biggest annoying thing about Slack is the calling feature. I don't like unscheduled calls. It also often starts making a racket when I'm in the middle of another call with different software. I might write a browser plugin sometime to disable Slack calls.
For everything else though I usually just close Slack when I'm heads down working and open it during periodic breaks to check for anything important.
I built a Slack app that aims to recreate some of those physical signals by automatically managing my Slack status based on custom calendar rules (eg. collaborating, focused, out for lunch).
The goal is to allow all of our team members to control what their own day/communication rules are, and make those shoulder taps opt-in, not out.
link: https://holopod.com/slack-app
The goal is to allow all of our team members to control what their own day/communication rules are, and make those shoulder taps opt-in, not out.
link: https://holopod.com/slack-app
What you are describing isn't the problem for Slack, is the problem of requiring a green status icon: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-presence-prison/
Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it, even set status messages like "I will check my messages twice a day".
There are plenty of 'product X is bad' write-ups, but all of them try to blame something while the blame is for something intangible which is much harder to write a clever title for.
Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make sure everyone shuts their mouth while working; having your 'own' office space with lots of distractions isn't any better than having a 'shared' space with the same distractions. The problem is the distraction, not the space. At best you would state that a certain type of space makes a certain type of distraction easier to occur. But that's a lot more words when you catch more eyeballs with 'office bad, isolation good'.
Before we complained about the office, home, or Slack, we complained about Email. And before that about the phone and the pager. This isn't new. What's new is the scale and the amount of people not taking steps to do what works for them.
There are plenty of 'product X is bad' write-ups, but all of them try to blame something while the blame is for something intangible which is much harder to write a clever title for.
Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make sure everyone shuts their mouth while working; having your 'own' office space with lots of distractions isn't any better than having a 'shared' space with the same distractions. The problem is the distraction, not the space. At best you would state that a certain type of space makes a certain type of distraction easier to occur. But that's a lot more words when you catch more eyeballs with 'office bad, isolation good'.
Before we complained about the office, home, or Slack, we complained about Email. And before that about the phone and the pager. This isn't new. What's new is the scale and the amount of people not taking steps to do what works for them.
> Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it, even set status messages like "I will check my messages twice a day".
From a workflow standpoint, this is optimal.
The catch is that many people view Slack as e-mail but with an expectation of instant response. The farther your Slack communications stray from engineers, the more likely you are to encounter this mindset.
Years ago I would have argued that Slack is merely a tool and these are personal problems, but after setting Slack up at a few workplaces I've realized that they structure the defaults and notification settings to encourage this "always connected, always on" mode by default.
From a workflow standpoint, this is optimal.
The catch is that many people view Slack as e-mail but with an expectation of instant response. The farther your Slack communications stray from engineers, the more likely you are to encounter this mindset.
Years ago I would have argued that Slack is merely a tool and these are personal problems, but after setting Slack up at a few workplaces I've realized that they structure the defaults and notification settings to encourage this "always connected, always on" mode by default.
I maintain "API documentation" for my coworkers to refer to when they interface with me. In them I specifically call out that I do not view Slack as an instant response channel. I have a cell phone they can use if they need that type of SLA. Slack and Email are asynchronous. I have stuck with that since I started here and everyone seems to understand that those are the SLAs I commit to.
So far no one is upset with me about it.
So far no one is upset with me about it.
Other people haven't been as lucky.
>> The catch is that many people view Slack as e-mail but with an expectation of instant response.
I don't get this, because email is instant response. It arrives more or less instantly. Almost all digital non-verbal communications can invite an instant response.
Why is Slack so different than email?
The excuses are the same... "Well, I didn't have Slack open..." "Well, I didn't have Outlook open..." Hell, you could go back in time and say, "Well, I didn't have ICQ open..."
I don't see any difference.
I don't get this, because email is instant response. It arrives more or less instantly. Almost all digital non-verbal communications can invite an instant response.
Why is Slack so different than email?
The excuses are the same... "Well, I didn't have Slack open..." "Well, I didn't have Outlook open..." Hell, you could go back in time and say, "Well, I didn't have ICQ open..."
I don't see any difference.
I think there is one seemingly insignificant difference with big (behavioral) consequences: mails need to be "opened", and they're "unread" until you do that. This gives you an option, even after you learn what the email is about (reading the title, the sender, and knowing some context), whether you want to read it now or not.
On Slack, like any other instant messaging (especially the ones where the fact that you've seen a message is communicated to the other side), you don't have this option. You can, of course, snooze messages, but I doubt many people even know about that option, and a high fraction of those who do know just find it, at that moment, easier to answer immediately then to think about "scheduling" that answer.
Combining this with other characteristics that make online chat more like in-person chat (from simple functions like the ease of sending messages by pressing Enter, to more advanced ones like seeing when the other side is typing), it shifts the behavior, and people feel compelled to respond instantly - both by the expectations set by others ("everyone responds instantly to Slack so I have to as well") but maybe even more importantly by subconscious "burden" of not responding to an "already opened message".
On Slack, like any other instant messaging (especially the ones where the fact that you've seen a message is communicated to the other side), you don't have this option. You can, of course, snooze messages, but I doubt many people even know about that option, and a high fraction of those who do know just find it, at that moment, easier to answer immediately then to think about "scheduling" that answer.
Combining this with other characteristics that make online chat more like in-person chat (from simple functions like the ease of sending messages by pressing Enter, to more advanced ones like seeing when the other side is typing), it shifts the behavior, and people feel compelled to respond instantly - both by the expectations set by others ("everyone responds instantly to Slack so I have to as well") but maybe even more importantly by subconscious "burden" of not responding to an "already opened message".
> Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it
> Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make sure everyone shuts their mouth while working
The analogy is not even close. You can mute slack, but you can't mute everyone in your office (without noise cancelling headphones being a permenant feature of your uniform).
> Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make sure everyone shuts their mouth while working
The analogy is not even close. You can mute slack, but you can't mute everyone in your office (without noise cancelling headphones being a permenant feature of your uniform).
I think you mean that the analogy is hard to make in real-life where you can't control other people ;-) Which is true, but I was trying to shift the focus on the problem instead of where it happens to occur. Granted, for open-office plans it generally makes people feel like they can talk loudly because it's a space full of people and that's what you do in such spaces. But it's still the distraction (and noise), not the space itself. The ease of moving around is not available if you put walls everywhere. But that 'problem' isn't really seen as problematic, so the comparison becomes "loud office vs. quiet office" instead of "distracting but roamable office vs. silo'ed office". At that point we are of course trying to value one person's wish to roam as much as another person's wish to not be distracted.
Slack is like a bad email client. It takes the onus off the message author and instead places it on everyone else. It's not your job to make sure I'm CC'd when necessary, it's now my job to wade through dozens of channels to make sure I'm always up to date.
This has to be the core question of how all messaging/communications channels work. How much work is it to effectively send messages? How much work is it to effectively consume messages? I feel like this dichotomy ends up deciding so much about the human effects that eventually arise from these software decisions.
I do a lot of work with people in China, and my main complain with WeChat as a "do everything" medium is that it is 100% set up to prioritize the sender. In practice, this means set up to prioritize the boss. It is an absolute disaster for those on the receiving end: it's nearly impossible to keep track of and effectively act on incoming information. You must respond RIGHT NOW or that information is essentially lost.
In the end, I believe a messaging channel that requires more upfront work on the part of the sender ends up providing knock-on positive effects for everyone involved. But due to the generally ego-first thought process of all human beings – and the absolutely ego-first though process of most bosses – the channel that affords the least friction in sending appeals the most.
Everyone likes to think of themselves as being on the originating end of the firehose.
I do a lot of work with people in China, and my main complain with WeChat as a "do everything" medium is that it is 100% set up to prioritize the sender. In practice, this means set up to prioritize the boss. It is an absolute disaster for those on the receiving end: it's nearly impossible to keep track of and effectively act on incoming information. You must respond RIGHT NOW or that information is essentially lost.
In the end, I believe a messaging channel that requires more upfront work on the part of the sender ends up providing knock-on positive effects for everyone involved. But due to the generally ego-first thought process of all human beings – and the absolutely ego-first though process of most bosses – the channel that affords the least friction in sending appeals the most.
Everyone likes to think of themselves as being on the originating end of the firehose.
If you manage your business through email then your email app eventually look similar to Slack. Folders with rules to route mail to the right place so you don’t miss it.
This morning I had three members of my team private message me to tell me about their weekend.
On one hand, maybe I'm an asshole because I don't care to have three separate conversations about my weekend.
But there's something about Internet Messaging which makes it highly inefficient and basic small talk that should last 30 seconds in the office, last 30 minutes.
I tend to use phrases like "ttyl" or "cya" to try to escape the conversation. But it doesn't always work. So I end up just not responding after awhile. Either way I look like an asshole.
Slack or not, online communication lacks etiquette.
On one hand, maybe I'm an asshole because I don't care to have three separate conversations about my weekend.
But there's something about Internet Messaging which makes it highly inefficient and basic small talk that should last 30 seconds in the office, last 30 minutes.
I tend to use phrases like "ttyl" or "cya" to try to escape the conversation. But it doesn't always work. So I end up just not responding after awhile. Either way I look like an asshole.
Slack or not, online communication lacks etiquette.
I don't know you or your coworkers, but dang, trash talking them on HN? Sounds like a great place to work </sarcasm>. Definitely sounds like some communication issues going on.
I've worked for the past 8 years on remote teams, and from my experience, having a shared mind is very important to a highly productive team.
My suggestion to you would be to communicate with your coworkers that you've already talked about your weekend with so-and-so, building resentment with your coworkers is never good. Maybe even create a channel specifically to talk about your weekends! Who knows, you may like it. :)
I've worked for the past 8 years on remote teams, and from my experience, having a shared mind is very important to a highly productive team.
My suggestion to you would be to communicate with your coworkers that you've already talked about your weekend with so-and-so, building resentment with your coworkers is never good. Maybe even create a channel specifically to talk about your weekends! Who knows, you may like it. :)
You're right I might be insensitive and ideally I would have the time (and patience) to have a useful, thoughtful conversation with each person I talk to.
I don't have 8 years experience working from home, so it's possible this is something I can improve. I like the idea of having an open-channel for weekend discussion.
I don't have 8 years experience working from home, so it's possible this is something I can improve. I like the idea of having an open-channel for weekend discussion.
> Slack or not, online communication lacks etiquette.
Its probably you not them. If you dont like people message you about non work topics, just ignore their message or directly tell them that you are busy. They will get the message and stop being friendly with you.
Its probably you not them. If you dont like people message you about non work topics, just ignore their message or directly tell them that you are busy. They will get the message and stop being friendly with you.
I guess we are in the minority. Slack has been awesome for boosting communication and collaboration in our department. It's effectively killed awful e-mail communication on issues.
Instead, we carry on live, highly-interactive communications. Everyone pretty much understands if you are busy, however, and don't respond immediately.
Work without Slack would be awful.
Instead, we carry on live, highly-interactive communications. Everyone pretty much understands if you are busy, however, and don't respond immediately.
Work without Slack would be awful.
You are definitely the non-vocal majority.
or the one still in the honeymoon period.
I have been using chat tools for in-office work for 2 years and more recently at home work for another 2 years. I am well past the honeymoon period for these chat tools, and I quite like them.
When I started at a fully-remote company, where most communications happened on Slack, I was prepared to live with it as a necessity that I simply had to deal with, based on my negative perception of it from places like HN.
I actually found it to be a very nice way to keep casual communications open to a remote workforce, while also allowing for actual work communications and collaboration.
Now that I'm in another position at a company that is remote due to COVID, I find not having a well-managed Slack workspace a minus and I do feel less connected to the team.
I actually found it to be a very nice way to keep casual communications open to a remote workforce, while also allowing for actual work communications and collaboration.
Now that I'm in another position at a company that is remote due to COVID, I find not having a well-managed Slack workspace a minus and I do feel less connected to the team.
I don't super understand these articles. Before slack we had Lync, and then skype, and now it's slack.
It doesn't replace email, it replaced those other communication apps.
I am aware that Slack has a crusade against email but the article or that business example didn't ask why not both? There's a need for real-time communication and there's a need for email too.
It doesn't replace email, it replaced those other communication apps.
I am aware that Slack has a crusade against email but the article or that business example didn't ask why not both? There's a need for real-time communication and there's a need for email too.
For better or for worse (I think to some degree, worse) I've found Slack has eliminated about 90% of my email use at work.
My work email is almost all automated emails, communications with people external to the company, and a small percent of internal communications. Nearly everything else is done over Slack.
So in my experience, it certainly is replacing email. Now, I'm not sure that it should. But it is.
My work email is almost all automated emails, communications with people external to the company, and a small percent of internal communications. Nearly everything else is done over Slack.
So in my experience, it certainly is replacing email. Now, I'm not sure that it should. But it is.
At two companies where I have worked recently (IBM and a small startup), Slack quickly displaced email. Email was hardly used in either organization.
For me, Slack has completely replaced internal email. Email is now almost exclusively for external communication and endless newsletters.
Can't speak of other roles, but at least within tech/dev teams I have encountered Slack has replaced email almost 100%.
Slack drives me a bit nuts - everyone at my office loves it because it is very well optimized for engagement and, well, chat. That's great and all but in a work environment I want my tools optimized for communication and work, which are often at odds with chat. The SNR is completely wrong for me.
At my company, we use WhatsApp alongside Slack. It's primarily for legacy reasons, but we're seeing actually a really interesting phenomenon: because WhatsApp exists as a way to ping someone with an emergency request that should disrupt their flow, we can have a culture where direct messages and mentions in Slack should be answered reasonably promptly but not immediately, and should not disrupt bandwidth. So Slack, even with little red icons appearing, becomes a safe haven for creative thought, and operational craziness can be isolated elsewhere.
I wonder how many more productivity and sanity points society would have gained in the past few years if Slack had built in an @@ or @! symbol for a "SuperPing" that's differentiated from a normal ping (five knocks after the brush, perhaps?). Or even provide a structured way to set a priority on a mention, letting you reference that someone was involved in a thing you're writing about or that they should see it as an FYI, but make it clear that they don't need to worry about it immediately. You can make the UI have sane defaults so it's not overwhelming, then you either let culture sort itself out if people are misusing the system, or otherwise ensure there are speed-bumps to misuse.
It's ironic that even YouTube streamers benefit from being able to triage Superchats, with color coding based on the monetary value the sender ascribes to getting the streamer's immediate attention. Why is donation-based entertainment more sane than the business environment?
At the end of the day, humans don't work well when they're "always on." There's a balance between UI simplicity and the fundamental UX principal that not everything can be important. I do wonder if there's research on how many classes of things people can handle on a screen - rather than a binary classification between mentions and non-mentions, is there anything preventing us from handling a third priority level?
I wonder how many more productivity and sanity points society would have gained in the past few years if Slack had built in an @@ or @! symbol for a "SuperPing" that's differentiated from a normal ping (five knocks after the brush, perhaps?). Or even provide a structured way to set a priority on a mention, letting you reference that someone was involved in a thing you're writing about or that they should see it as an FYI, but make it clear that they don't need to worry about it immediately. You can make the UI have sane defaults so it's not overwhelming, then you either let culture sort itself out if people are misusing the system, or otherwise ensure there are speed-bumps to misuse.
It's ironic that even YouTube streamers benefit from being able to triage Superchats, with color coding based on the monetary value the sender ascribes to getting the streamer's immediate attention. Why is donation-based entertainment more sane than the business environment?
At the end of the day, humans don't work well when they're "always on." There's a balance between UI simplicity and the fundamental UX principal that not everything can be important. I do wonder if there's research on how many classes of things people can handle on a screen - rather than a binary classification between mentions and non-mentions, is there anything preventing us from handling a third priority level?
Email has priority levels. Sorting tasks into quadrants is a popular technique. People understand who should see a message, if it's important, and if it's urgent are 3 different questions. Slack just doesn't have a way to tell them apart.
IMO Facebook Workplace is vastly superior to Slack when you have a decent number of people around because:
a) posts and comments logically group discussion better than multiple interleaved discussions in a channel
b) the newsfeed does a decent job of surfacing interesting content (posts from groups/people you interact most with)
c) notifications in one place (with per-group options like “notify for every post” or “only when tagged” or whatever) beats clicking through each channel to scan everything that happened since you last looked. It puts the power to choose what to consume back in the hands of the recipient.
Sure, it’s not a real-time discussion platform but, IMO, most things at work don’t need this anyway. For the times this is useful (incident response, etc) small messenger groups work well.
YMMV, opinions mine, contents may settle in transit, etc
a) posts and comments logically group discussion better than multiple interleaved discussions in a channel
b) the newsfeed does a decent job of surfacing interesting content (posts from groups/people you interact most with)
c) notifications in one place (with per-group options like “notify for every post” or “only when tagged” or whatever) beats clicking through each channel to scan everything that happened since you last looked. It puts the power to choose what to consume back in the hands of the recipient.
Sure, it’s not a real-time discussion platform but, IMO, most things at work don’t need this anyway. For the times this is useful (incident response, etc) small messenger groups work well.
YMMV, opinions mine, contents may settle in transit, etc
I have used Slack for two years now and don’t see any problems with it. 35 people at my company.
You wouldn’t with only 35 people. Wait until you hit 350.
Probably those 350 people will be divided in teams, and those teams will have separate channels, right?
> I do not dislike Slack as much as people assume given that I wrote a book titled “Deep Work,” which advocates for the importance of long, undistracted stretches of work.
This marks the author out as a fantasist. Once a company gets above a couple of hundred employees, the majority of the new employees simply are not the sort of people who do "long, undistracted stretches of work". You can't carry on for ever hiring people who both have that sort of mentality and intellectual fortitude, and also want their job to completely dominate their day rather than just 9-5.
This marks the author out as a fantasist. Once a company gets above a couple of hundred employees, the majority of the new employees simply are not the sort of people who do "long, undistracted stretches of work". You can't carry on for ever hiring people who both have that sort of mentality and intellectual fortitude, and also want their job to completely dominate their day rather than just 9-5.
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Do other people not just wait to respond if you're busy?
slack IS email.
corporate communication changed medium but remained the same.
paper/reports/memos > email clients > rich email clients > webmail+blackberry > webmail+email apps > slack (desktop email app)
it is just the first, crappy, desktop email app client. The incumbents will eat them soon, just like microsoft and oracle ate all other email clients in the 90s. I mean, slack is already in someone’s plate.
corporate communication changed medium but remained the same.
paper/reports/memos > email clients > rich email clients > webmail+blackberry > webmail+email apps > slack (desktop email app)
it is just the first, crappy, desktop email app client. The incumbents will eat them soon, just like microsoft and oracle ate all other email clients in the 90s. I mean, slack is already in someone’s plate.
No its not. What I find frustrating about Slack is that it gives certain people the ability to say "i didn't see that" regarding important work information. I regard properly reading your email part of your job, and if you're missing important emails, you're failing at it. I find that unless you send an email alongside whatever Slack notification, many people will just ignore it.
I feel the exact opposite. If someone emails me, I’m likely to not see it, but if someone @s me on slack there’s no chance I miss it.
The whole upside of slack for me is that it makes it easier for me not to miss the things I absolutely need to see. I get a deluge of automated or templated emails every day. How am I ever supposed to reliably sift through the noise?
The whole upside of slack for me is that it makes it easier for me not to miss the things I absolutely need to see. I get a deluge of automated or templated emails every day. How am I ever supposed to reliably sift through the noise?
You can set up filters. How am I ever supposed to reliably sift through the noise on Slack?
Culturally, you make the onus on the sender to make sure the receiver got the message.
And then you get the most toxic slack trope: premptive read receipt.
> hi edmundsauto
(silence until you reply)
> hi edmundsauto
(silence until you reply)
That's just a specific element of your workplace's culture then. At jobs I've worked at it would have been much more reasonable to say "I didn't see that email" than "I didn't see that Slack message." Like all communication methods, the standards that are set around them are more important than the mechanism itself.
The problem with Slack-alikes is that you get buried under a deluge of notifications, so it is needlessly difficult to stay on top of things. Email is far better in this regard.
I only have notification for DMs, @'s and threads I'm following. No problem so far.
Now, if someone sends me an email, it might get buried between other stuff
Now, if someone sends me an email, it might get buried between other stuff
That's probably because Slack isn't the "main" communication where you are. Where I work it's the opposite, people answer slack but don't notice emails, because Slack is how we're "supposed" to communicate within the company.
Except that searching through email was a lot easier than searching for something in Slack. Important conversations would be scattered all throughout slack. I had a notes file in which I would store URLs for these important messages.
I just retired recently and can say truthfully that simply not having to deal with Slack has improved my sense of wellbeing immensely.
I just retired recently and can say truthfully that simply not having to deal with Slack has improved my sense of wellbeing immensely.
Slack super power is that you can search on other people's "email". So it kinda of make up but don't for the worse search
"... e-mail was struggling to keep up with the world of hyper-messaging that it helped create." What tripe.
Author Calvin Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He seems to have a nice side gig as a tech pundit:
https://www.calnewport.com
Author Calvin Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He seems to have a nice side gig as a tech pundit:
https://www.calnewport.com
To this day, I still wonder if the app is called Slack because it was designed to help you slack off?
No mention of IRC? It's still widely used for developer collaboration. It has most of the features of Slack, apart from the ability to share pictures of cats with coworkers.
I mean slack isn't even that good. It's a shame it got so entrenched. I wish Discord makes a business productivity push
I've been telling my friends for months that if I were to create a startup I would use discord over slack, and my argument is always predicated around the fact that if you want to have a voice conversation with someone and share your screen the flow for it is easily 5x better than the slack calls.
They laugh at me, but I think its a viable use case
They laugh at me, but I think its a viable use case
Look up their terms of service before considering it for work use. At the end of the day Discord is not enterprise software, and so will never be considered seriously for it.
This is a good point, one of the points that my friend made is that without a comparable revenue model you always run the risk of Discord shutting down whereas Slack wouldn't. With that said, I would happily pay for an enhanced nitro subscription to discord that allowed for enterprise use
Some SLAs at the very least would be nice. At present they don't even guarantee that they won't delete your data randomly for any or no reason.
Slack has a better ecosystem of work related add-ons, but to be honest I've never found those to be useful. I agree I'd prefer Discord.
The work add-ons for slack is something which is a strong selling point, but I've found Discord hooks to be straightforward to set up for my use cases.
I make a product management tool/issue tracker that integrates to both tools, and I will say from the perspective of a developer integrating to them, Slack is easier to work with (though Discord is ok too). Little things like the "only visible to you" messages in slack make it much easier to make a nice integration.
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Slack is a big setback for the labor movement . It undermines any distinction between work and leisure
Is it possible that in your work experience, the distinction between work and leisure was already being undermined?
As others have said, Slack often amplifies toxic workplace culture, just like any effective tool tends to be a "force multiplier" in the hands of its users.
As others have said, Slack often amplifies toxic workplace culture, just like any effective tool tends to be a "force multiplier" in the hands of its users.
Uninstall it from your phone? Turn off notifications? Make a work profile on your android and get off it once your shift ends?
I use Slack daily and I've never brought it home with me.
I use Slack daily and I've never brought it home with me.
Not saying you’re wrong, but it shouldn’t be up to the victim to prevent being abused for labor. A workplace that allows a tool to pervade into their worker’s personal life is not doing a good job protecting their workers, and are complacent in the abuse.
> but it shouldn’t be up to the victim to prevent being abused for labor
This depends on the situation. A workplace that enforce after hours always-on presence? Absolutely despicable. Should even be illegal, in my opinion.
An employee who decides on their own to install Slack on their personal device and then decide on their own to open it outside work hours? That's on them.
This depends on the situation. A workplace that enforce after hours always-on presence? Absolutely despicable. Should even be illegal, in my opinion.
An employee who decides on their own to install Slack on their personal device and then decide on their own to open it outside work hours? That's on them.
Is this actually happening though? You are claiming that companies are using Slack to creep into the personal lives of employees? Where is that even coming from? I’ve never had an employer force me to be always online, Slack or otherwise. Not counting on-call duty of course, but that’s completely different.
> You are claiming that companies are using Slack to creep into the personal lives of employees
No I’m not. The workplace might be completely in the blue about this, but if a workplace uses a tool that offers convince in installing this tool to your personal devises (or off hour workstation usage):
a) Make it absolutely clear that this is not expected
b) Provide instructions for workers on how turn the tool off during non-work hours
c) Reprimand users that bother workers with this tool during non-work hours
Anything short of that is complacency in labor abuse.
The problem slack (and tools like it) offers is that there will be a point where installing and enabling it on personal devises or out side of work hours will be convenient, be it off site on a convention or when finishing up a tight deadline. After that time workers will probably not remove it from the devise (the power of defaults), and that opens up avenues for complacency in abuse. At no point does the workplace need to make a conscious choice of malice, however harm will happen if the tool is used without disclaimers.
No I’m not. The workplace might be completely in the blue about this, but if a workplace uses a tool that offers convince in installing this tool to your personal devises (or off hour workstation usage):
a) Make it absolutely clear that this is not expected
b) Provide instructions for workers on how turn the tool off during non-work hours
c) Reprimand users that bother workers with this tool during non-work hours
Anything short of that is complacency in labor abuse.
The problem slack (and tools like it) offers is that there will be a point where installing and enabling it on personal devises or out side of work hours will be convenient, be it off site on a convention or when finishing up a tight deadline. After that time workers will probably not remove it from the devise (the power of defaults), and that opens up avenues for complacency in abuse. At no point does the workplace need to make a conscious choice of malice, however harm will happen if the tool is used without disclaimers.
If you don't have you work computer at home, you will not see Slack at home. If you install a work app on your personal phone, that's not Slack's fault.
The same pressure to check Slack on your personal phone on your off-time would be applied to work email, sms, or whatever it's used instead of slack
The same pressure to check Slack on your personal phone on your off-time would be applied to work email, sms, or whatever it's used instead of slack
There is a slight difference. Slack is used by workers for personal social interactions as well. For many workers Slack is as much a social media tool as it is a work tool. Many workers actually prefer to have slack open during off work hours to share memes with their work buddies.
Even for workers that don’t engage in social activities over slack normally might install it to their personal devices during a conference because that is where their colleagues are conversing, and then simply forget to uninstall it after the conference is done.
A workplace has to be aware that this is how normal people use this tool, and needs to make sure that no one misuses this access to workers during off hours.
Even for workers that don’t engage in social activities over slack normally might install it to their personal devices during a conference because that is where their colleagues are conversing, and then simply forget to uninstall it after the conference is done.
A workplace has to be aware that this is how normal people use this tool, and needs to make sure that no one misuses this access to workers during off hours.
This is the voice of reason. I feel like a lot of this negative sentiment is made against some dystopic fantasy evil corp that isn’t actually real. Companies will look after themselves, but so can you. Both are completely reasonable.
Yep. I'm happy to give out my phone number to people at work in case of emergencies, but I do not want work notifications at random hours of the day when I'm not working.
Slack has a feature to turn off notifications outside of working hours (or whatever hours you choose). That's what I use.
There seem to be two kinds of Slack user: People who despise Slack, and people who use Slack at work, but not for work.
In other words: The name tells you what it's for.
In other words: The name tells you what it's for.
armchair expert opinions
Slack is a tool, just like one of probably dozens you use in your day-to-day work. It doesn't set or enforce any guidelines for how it should be used. If left unchecked it has a tendency to amplify the worst parts of your company's culture. If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity.
Speaking of the example in the article, there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7. This is true with email, Slack, SMS and every other form of communication.
The criticism I most often hear is "Slack expects me to be online all the time". No, YOUR COMPANY expects you to be online all the time. Slack can be closed with one click.