I'd be up for no Slack channels at all, but I'm just old schoool. I find Slack quite distracting.
Ask HN: How do you feel about backchannel communications for engineering teams?
21–23 of 23 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you feel about backchannel communications for engineering teams?
#22With all due respect to the other answers in other threads, it sounds to me that there is a toxic company culture if employees feel they need a “private” slack channel where they can post work appropriate messages without reprisal. I understand that a single dev can’t always fix the underlying problem and sometimes needs to focus on mitigating a symptom. But should the question really be “what can we do to fix the co…
I’m surprised that people want private channels so much. Most teams I’m on have been public only, and it’s never been an issue. Even private messages are frowned upon, better to have input from others. It’s especially annoying if someone from another team is asking for help but the context is hidden behind a wall.
And outside of engineering they generally self select out of the channel. Or we trust that the people we work with to understand that they aren’t the intended audience in those channels - they’re still welcome but usually don’t contribute.
Re: Ask HN: How do you feel about backchannel communications for engineering teams?
#23With all due respect to the other answers in other threads, it sounds to me that there is a toxic company culture if employees feel they need a “private” slack channel where they can post work appropriate messages without reprisal. I understand that a single dev can’t always fix the underlying problem and sometimes needs to focus on mitigating a symptom. But should the question really be “what can we do to fix the co…
I’m surprised that people want private channels so much. Most teams I’m on have been public only, and it’s never been an issue. Even private messages are frowned upon, better to have input from others. It’s especially annoying if someone from another team is asking for help but the context is hidden behind a wall. And outside of engineering they generally self select out of the channel. Or we trust that the people we…
Same here. We also have quiet offices with no more than 2 people per room for our devs. Maybe it’s no surprise we have a strong company culture.