I still try to understand what Slack is that IRC isn't. At the moment I'm in the "someone managed to make money out of copying IRC"-phase including copying all the problems/pain points of IRC according to this article and comments here so far (highlighting, channel inflation, multiple conversations in one channel at the same time overlap ..) - what do I miss?
Curing Our Slack Addiction
101–110 of 187 posts
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#102I still try to understand what Slack is that IRC isn't. At the moment I'm in the "someone managed to make money out of copying IRC"-phase including copying all the problems/pain points of IRC according to this article and comments here so far (highlighting, channel inflation, multiple conversations in one channel at the same time overlap ..) - what do I miss?
I don't use Slack, but perhaps people prefer its UX?
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#103Here's my best practices list: 1. The best use of slack is the free edition which has limited history. Once this lack of history is made clear, people use it simply for online pings. Since notes, files and everything will disappear, people will automatically put the effort to put those things in the right tools (wiki, bug tracker etc). 2. Don't expect people to be online. It's the same as irc. If people are there, th…
The integrations are indeed a gimmick. They consume so much space that they end up being shoved into their own channel, where nobody ever looks... so what was the point of them again?
I agree that some integrations are a gimmick, but having content relevant integrations has helped out our team immensely. We'll have channels specific to a project, so notifications that JIRA stories have been resolved, knowing if a build fails, exception logs from production, are all intertwined with us discussing the project throughout the day so they get exposure.
One thing that we've loved is being able to log information into other tools when it is top of mind. Discussing a recent bug that you noticed "/jirio create bug Username can contain spaces" and it's logged in JIRA to be dealt with accordingly.
The potential for custom integrations is incredible but obviously keeping the noise level down is key.
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#104I'm confused, I never used basecamp. Are slack and basecamp direct competitors? Isn't basecamp primarily a project management software like Jira/Redmine?!
Basecamp includes chat, plus message boards for conversations on a specific topic and pings for 1 on 1 private communications.
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#105Slack does a good job overall, but I'm glad to see articles like this one challenging the enthusiasm that they've seen of late. I'm starting to share the article's opinion that Slack encourages unthoughtful communication. I do wish the author had spent a little time pointing out some specific product decisions that lead to the kinds of problematic communication they were seeing. For example, basic product choices lik…
I have a hard time agreeing that "Slack's a far sight better than email." The lack of threading and context (mentioned in AB's writeup) means you have to maintain a lot of state (and keep up to date) in order to get any value. That defeats the point of having automation! For good or ill, the 40+ year history of mail means there are various tools and conventions that allow your computer to do part of the work for you.
Also, email is an open standard, with plenty of choices in both client and server software. Slack is a proprietary system. Why are we actively axing solid, widely distributed, open ecosystems for proprietary ones? It'd be like if everyone woke up one day and decide "eh, Linux is just not animated-giphy enough, let's all switch to this startup OS with a crippled free version."
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing. A channel for every tweet would create a lot of channels for us. We've had a few hundred tweets today. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=wordf... In general our workflow is to have 2 people in the org able to reply to tweets. And the rest of us are the peanut gallery just expressing what we think in the channel. So it works better to have it read-only in a single channel - at…
It's a channel for every "conversation", not tweet. The benefit here is that you can keep talking to someone without asking them to email support@company.com. There is usually a window of open channels -- 15 or 40, say, that remain active in parallel. Oldest channels outside the window get auto-archived. You can also favorite directly from Slack with "-sameroom Only those people who are "on call" will actually see th…
This seems terrible. If much rather people used proper support software like desk for support
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#107Completely agree with @mmaunder comment on setting time for checking slack and not using it other times. No matter what tool be it outlook or blackberry, you need to set timing for the communication and collaboration. For the people who have collaboration/communication as not a primary job like developers/designer/engineer etc..
Also it is completely unacceptable to call this checking a tool beyond your shift/work a culture and it is indeed a bad practice setup by lead/ceo to keep everyone working all the time. The companies pay you for your time, so unless u get paid extra allowance to check these tools after hours please do not do it. For emergencies situation let people SMS and if no response in 15 minutes then call and that too have roaster who will be on call in which week or month.
It is a job of the leader/manager to ensure people have work life balance and they should setup internal polices and procedure to ensure people don't get to appreciate the one who is always on rather the ones who contribute with in the work hours. The management should make a culture of people talking about it so that it does not become forceful as people start doing this always on and others fear that they would be considered contributing less if they don't be online hence everyone stays on line for no reason.
For a company like 1Password there is absolutely no reason to be online all the time except for the support folks(and they too with in thier shift and have enough people to cover 24/7) and dev's can be engaged on call as required. All they need is setup couple of core hours every body is online to communicate and status update. Even geo diverse teams you can have core hours that ensure everyone is online for about 1 hour or 2 at the same for each team , if it is absolutely necessary.
I wish startup ceo's understand this and account that 8 hours a day is what person can reasonably put in work and if you need more hours it is going to cost business and that is part of the budgeting process. If you can't afford that then you are not yet ready to start the startup or do it it yourself. For god sake it is 21st century and if you are going to change the world first change your mindset and change the your company and make it a first class and make it 22nd century company where employees are not exploited because they can be(in the name passion, happiness, blah blah blah).
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CEO of a flat company probably has a need to see everything, JIC. Not all use cases are equal.
Sure, but how does Basecamp fix the problem? Wait for part 2, I guess.
Asynchronous communication ... slows things down and encourages a bit more thoughtful communication.
The founder of Basecamp alluded to this in a post very similar to this one https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-74...
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#109Why not IRC, Jitsi, Jira and a wiki.
IRC for chitchat / asking questions (PMs and highlights so there's no immediate need to respond)
Jitsi / IRC for meetings or small team collaboration.
Jira for bugs
Wiki for documenting design decisions and future work
Re: Curing Our Slack Addiction
#110Here's my best practices list: 1. The best use of slack is the free edition which has limited history. Once this lack of history is made clear, people use it simply for online pings. Since notes, files and everything will disappear, people will automatically put the effort to put those things in the right tools (wiki, bug tracker etc). 2. Don't expect people to be online. It's the same as irc. If people are there, th…
Integrations are useful to avoid an extra step, especially when the person you want is exactly the person who is "expecting to be interrupted / they are feeling helpful at that moment". E.g. when someone submits a PR - email would fill up everyone's inbox, paging/sms would be far too noisy. What you want is whoever's available at the moment to go review it - so Slack is the best channel to be notified.