Curing Our Slack Addiction • Hacker News Board

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#11

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:22 AM UTC

We use jabber in my office, and it's definitely higher friction than slack; this made me think of it as at least slightly a positive for the first time. We also have a wiki, and a searchable database for topical mailing lists, and those get used a lot.

If someone has to send me an IM to get an answer to something about our product, and I can't link the answer to them by just searching our wiki (or documentation if it's user-visible), then I file a note to add it.

I haven't ever felt the need to berate someone for asking me about easy to find information, because someone who isn't at least slightly embarrassed to have their question answered by a link to a resource they could have found on their own in under 30 seconds is probably going to have enough problems in other areas.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#12

Post by tootie » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:24 AM UTC

I love electronic communication and Slack in particular. For a distributed team, it's an absolute must that every important chat happen on Slack. Stuff spoken in person is imprecise, secretive and easily forgotten. Slack is clear, persistent, and public. Everyone is on the same page. I too feel the need to read every conversation, but compare that to having those conversations just happening without my knowledge.

The solution to this guy's problems are to chill out.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#13

Post by jesseg17 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

While I understand the motivation to move away from Slack, Basecamp, to me, seems like a worse alternative.

Most of my Basecamp interactions come from the emails that are sent on every thread change. It almost seems to be a proxy between conversation and email, which is counterproductive to its goal.

The key issue in this article is about the lacking of separation of concerns in Slack. I may be missing something, but it seems to be diametrically opposed to Slack's "always-on" structure. I would argue that Basecamp tends to devalue workplace communication through impersonal Basecamp-templated emails which often hide the original sender and thus any sense of urgency that would otherwise be generated. We have so many fantastic tools, but often email seems to be the unsung, yet essential, hopper for all of our notifications. For workplace communication and general project discussion, just email (under the right direction and guidelines - along with supplemental direct chat) strikes the perfect balance between urgency (or lack thereof), the ability to compartmentalize, and personal touch, without interfering directly with work by breaking concentration.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#14

Post by pbw » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:34 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #8

pbw wrote: post #5

Wow really surprised to hear they broke up with Slack. It seemed like a very good long explanation of the problem, basically no mention of any attempt to fix the problem, and then dropping the tool. We are deep into Slack and still liking it, but seeing some strain. This really rings true: "some of the most positive and uplifting individuals I know come off as curt and stressed and pissed off in Slack conversations."

tht makes no sense, every1 i kno is rlly good at xpressing their emotions in txt For real though, it's amazing what core parts of human interaction people will try to replace with an app. People need to understand what they're really giving up with face-to-face or verbal communication.. thousands of years of highly developed body language, tone, etc.

We are 100% remote company so face-to-face is not an option. However we do use video (gotomeeting). And I've been using and enjoying Slack's new "/call" feature. I'm eager to see how they implement video and screen sharing.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#15

Post by pbw » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:36 AM UTC

I'm wondering if Slack will ever implement something like Sococo or teamspeak's always-on voice chat. If you have not seen these it's quite a weird idea. If you are in the channel your speakers are always-on. Someone can speak to you without dialing and without you answering. They can simply say "Hey Fred..." and start talking.

I have not worked with these, but did try Sococo briefly. The way this would work in slack is you could opt-in to voice on a certain channel for collaboration intensive work. Might be a horrible idea I'm not sure.

I guess you could use /call this way? Hmmm... didn't think of that.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#16

Post by mr337 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:37 AM UTC

subpixel wrote: post #9

> We all knew how great it would be to have a repository of knowledge for people to find their answers, but Slack was simply too good at providing the quick fix we all needed. I'm seeing this across numerous open source project communities, and it's really infuriating. B/c these communities are not paying Slack, they don't have access to archives, and of course it's all invisible to Google. So a valuable Q&A that mig…

I couldn't agree more. Either ppl don't know or don't treat it of value to have history.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#17

Post by mr337 » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:41 AM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #7

You have to think of slack channels as coworking place and meeting rooms. You need to live mainly in one channel (the equivalent of the physical open office), and go to the other channels when called in, or when you have a bit of down time to check what's going on there. Like the buildings where we used to work, you do not need to visit every room.

I guess the hard part is the self policing the author mentioned.

At my employer we are having the same situation. Some ppl are at the point they check Slack 3 times a day, come in, lunch, before end of day.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#18

Post by llamataboot » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

I have no idea why the answer to this problem is "using Basecamp!" - That doesn't make sense to me at all. For me the answer has been to turn off notifications and shut Slack when I need to go heads down, but review it multiple times a day and chime in where needed. It's still such a vast improvement over an email or email+issues based workflow.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#19

Post by op00to » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

subpixel wrote: post #9

> We all knew how great it would be to have a repository of knowledge for people to find their answers, but Slack was simply too good at providing the quick fix we all needed. I'm seeing this across numerous open source project communities, and it's really infuriating. B/c these communities are not paying Slack, they don't have access to archives, and of course it's all invisible to Google. So a valuable Q&A that mig…

Information dropping into a black hole happens in IRC on Freenode all day, every day. The issue isn't just Slack.

Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction

#20

Post by _delirium » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 2:52 AM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #8

pbw wrote: post #5

Wow really surprised to hear they broke up with Slack. It seemed like a very good long explanation of the problem, basically no mention of any attempt to fix the problem, and then dropping the tool. We are deep into Slack and still liking it, but seeing some strain. This really rings true: "some of the most positive and uplifting individuals I know come off as curt and stressed and pissed off in Slack conversations."

tht makes no sense, every1 i kno is rlly good at xpressing their emotions in txt For real though, it's amazing what core parts of human interaction people will try to replace with an app. People need to understand what they're really giving up with face-to-face or verbal communication.. thousands of years of highly developed body language, tone, etc.

It depends a lot on the person for me. Some people are very good at conveying (and understanding) nuanced emotion in text, especially if they're people you've conversed with a lot in text already. Others are better in person, in videochat, or even on the phone (though some, like me, are particularly bad at phone). A few people I know are significantly better to converse with in text chat than in person, because they're much more fluent, confident, and open in text, and comparatively not as good at expressing themselves in face-to-face chats, stumbling over words and being more stressed and self-conscious.

In personal life, I find the people I'm closest to are people I talk to quite a bit through both modalities. We have different types of conversation in text chat compared to irl chat, which end up being complementary in my opinion.