Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 730 posts

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#211

Post by viraptor »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

It depends on the company model. If everyone works in the same place, is probably not that useful. If you're partially/fully remote, something like Slack is pretty much necessary. It really changes the way you experience other people.

There's one side of it that's less organised then a proper email chain. There's the other side that replaces the physical water-cooler and allows people to join public conversations they'd otherwise not be aware of.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#212

Post by csallen »

ggg9990 wrote: post #103
jedberg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Taking out a competitor is good for Slack, said Butterfield: “There’s fewer choices for people.”"

Really surprised that a CEO would make a comment like that on the record.

"There’s fewer choices for people," is such a short quote that I would avoid judging it on its face without seeing the full context.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#213

Post by karlkatzke »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

We use HipChat. It’s terrible, and it has been a frequent comment that having Slack would help us build better communication culture, because people avoid using hipchat (and use Skype or other platforms instead).

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#214

Post by lvillani »

solatic wrote: post #177
detaro wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its fair to blame them on the failure of the solution you picked before, and nobody else will be able to handle better.

I'm not blaming Mattermost for Atlassian's choices, I'm saying, you can't really try to recruit dissatisfied HipChat customers with promises of a supported migration if you can't help HipChat customers de-facto migrate from their old product to your product.

I read this as HipChat’s own export function having problems handling large amounts of data.

I’m not sure how this is Mattermost’s fault.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#215

Post by ghein »

solatic wrote: post #140
merlincorey wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slack doesn't have an on-prem option. Microsoft Teams doesn't have an on-prem option. What are enterprises supposed to use, RocketChat? Matrix? With no clear migration path? Mattermost[1], with a clear migration path from Slack, at least. [1] https://mattermost.com/

Enterprise E20 pricing (with the all-important high-availability clustering feature) is unlisted. Yeah, going back to opaque pricing and needing consultants to take care of anything and everything is a real step up /sarcasm

It's the only way to run a business.

Everyone has different needs, different existing environments, different service expectations+++

So you can't effectively stick to one price for the "large" tier. Given the differences in complexity and capacity consultants are needed. Startups can't build in-house service teams - the economics are misaligned. Not that you can get away from consultants if you buy from Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, or IBM...

Plus there are issues in terms of pricing and domain expertise across different industries - Federal, Education, Health.. legal issues in what your pricing can be and serious issues around their compliance environment means you need different teams of people to serve different verticals.

If you really need HA you are going to call anyways to negotiate. No one puts 15000 licenses on a credit card.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#216

Post by rvanmil »

qabqabaca wrote: post #57
joeblau wrote: post #26

I've never really gotten into any of Atlasssian's products. It seems like they make tools for managers with bolt on functionality for engineers (which may be why I never caught onto their products). I hope this is good news for Slack, but as a software engineer today, Atlasssian's products are not the first ones I would recommend in any category.

What would you recommend instead of Jira?

Our team is happy with https://www.pivotaltracker.com

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#217

Post by pm90 »

philwelch wrote: post #200
mmanfrin wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. You fall in to the former, and I would bet that a lot of people here fall in to the former. However, many people fall in to the latter, and Slack handily beats the competition there. There is also an element of having nice and polished features baked in that appeals to many people. Want it on your phone? There's an app. Want to…

> There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. I'm firmly in the "email should be used for substantive discussions" camp, but ever since we got the bandwidth and CPU necessary for the internet to not be a primarily text-based medium, the illiterates took over and that was the end of that.

That's a little too harsh. Not everyone is good at expressing themselves through an email chain; doesn't mean they're illiterate though.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#218

Post by ironjunkie »

Karunamon wrote: post #194
ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

None of the problems you mentioned are unique to any particular messaging product, up to and including IRC and Jabber. And with respect, you cannot speak to any culture other than the few you've been a part of. I can say with some authority that this is not a problem at my workplace. The reason IM has proliferated is precisely because it's instant and usually targeted. Email is a pain in the ass and usually serves as…

I would agree with you, except that Slack promotes actively that culture of quick response and disruption. And I indeed blame that most work cultures took that in blindly without reflecting on what the impact would be.

I see it as something similar to the rise of open-spaces. Now there is a backslash against it because people finally realize that it was overhyped and that open-spaces are maybe not always that good.

Regarding emails, I disagree with you. It is still my go-to channel for deep technical discussions on difficult subjects on which you need to reflect. With emails, I have no pressure to respond directly. When I respond, I will write multiple well constructed paragraphs where I explain why I would do this or this technical choice. Emails are archived easily and can be reread and referenced later.

Slack is a dumping ground of irrelevant messages, the opposite of your experience.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#219

Post by mdeeks »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

Going through all of your channels you don't need immediate updates from and doing /mute will go a long way to getting the silence you want. People can still @mention you to get your attention if needed. You can check muted channels on your own time when you feel like it. You should also set up Do not Disturb and turn off the red notification dots.

The rest is a cultural problem that exists will all communication channels (including email). Ask people to be mindful and not use @channel all of the time (you can disable @channel if it is abused). Ask people to keep their chats to relevant channels. e.g. Daily interesting links do not belong in #general, please keep it to #random. Stuff like that.

Also, encourage people to move long complicated topics to a thread (to not annoy everyone in the room). Or ask them to compose a larger email or wiki page on the topic.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#220

Post by alienreborn »

core-questions wrote: post #70
joeblau wrote: post #26

I've never really gotten into any of Atlasssian's products. It seems like they make tools for managers with bolt on functionality for engineers (which may be why I never caught onto their products). I hope this is good news for Slack, but as a software engineer today, Atlasssian's products are not the first ones I would recommend in any category.

I run the Atlassian stack for my company, so here's some thoughts on this: - Jira is pretty bog-standard these days, huge installed base. It's a bit weird to administer, and not as powerful in many ways as I'd like (especially compared to a more flexible system like ServiceNow). However, it's entrenched and a lot of people like it. - Confluence is a top tier wiki. I actually find it very nice to work with, both from…

Every engineer I met dislikes Confluence. Engineers who write most of the documentation don't like using Confluence which lead to out dated, subpar and incomplete documentation.

In my org, I noticed this and created a github repo to push documentation in Markdown. I created initial version of docs and now every engineer in our team uses it because they know markdown, appreciate version controlled docs and can use whatever editor they want to. This repo is now filled with quality documentation for most of our stack and operations.

Post reply on HN