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Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

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Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I don't think I've ever used HipChat. What don't you guys like about it?

On the basic level, it doesn’t have as many integrations as slack. It’s mostly important for obscure services, as they often won’t be integrating thousands of chat apps, so they’ll choose Slack.

On the day to day level, it crashes even more than Slack, and syncs badly.

The pettiest and weirdest part is it doesn’t signal edited messages. The editing window is super short, but it still feels like being moonlighted when you read something and 2 secs later it’s a different thing.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#302
post #8

This reminds me of Aaron Levie’s recent take on Kara Swisher’s podcast - on how enterprise software is going to be either about Microsoft (jack of trades) or about a collection of smaller companies (specialists in their fields) integrated with one and other. Slack and Atlassian focusing on what makes them great and working together makes a lot of sense

The big fish (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) will continue to buy smaller companies until governments steps in and breaks them up in an anti-trust suit. The EU will lead that charge. The writing is on the wall.

if the EU just wants to fine the big tech companies out of existence, then the big tech companies will just stop doing business there. The EU cannot break those US companies up. If disproportionately large fines (e.g. the fine Google recently paid) continue, the tech companies will just leave - which may be what the EU wants, but it also seems that the EU is pretty bad at creating technology companies

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#303
It seems really weird to me that a CEO of a big company like Slack comes forward and comments "There’s fewer choices for people.” as if this is supposed to be a good thing. I get that this is true on paper, most CEOs however would rather hide this effect of a merger in order to avoid government regulation.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I don't think I've ever used HipChat. What don't you guys like about it?

In addition to many general software issues (it crashes a decent amount), it's not particularly easy to send images or documents over it (where as with slack I can take a screen shot of a dashboard and post exactly what I am referring too).

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#305
It's crazy to me that so many people here think IRC is a valid alternative to Slack in 2018.

With the recent trend of consumerizing business apps, IRC is an awful experience compared to so many modern chat apps. It's much harder to set up, looks way uglier, and lacks useful features.

Not to mention IRC has a somewhat technical setup, which makes any non-engineering team reluctant to buy in. Software companies have sales, marketing, design, product, support, leadership teams... use a tool that works great for everyone.

Personally we use Twist. I enjoy that it's lightweight and performant compared to Slack, which feels clunky (just take a look at your activity monitor).

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#306
post #66

Well, thanks to this today I learned that Microsoft had a product called Teams. I didn't see anybody using it but I saw plenty of people using Slack. Maybe is Team addressed to big companies? My customers are all medium or small. Does anyone here have some experience using Teams? Is it really in competition with Slack?

Teams at the moment is mostly used by massive companies, as Slack is really built for smaller teams. I like Slack, but it is very unreliable. I am constantly disconnected, have messages never sent. This is not on the free version, it's almost inexcusable in the amount of times it happens.

> I am constantly disconnected, have messages never sent.

Weird, I have never had those issues, and have been using Slack heavily on a daily basis for a couple of years.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is crap for many types of workflows that Slack excels in.

I'm curious as to how that breaks down? Which kind of workflows are best in email, which in Slack?

_This_ is the 64 thousand dollar question that no one seems to have a clear answer to, and leaves people frustrated with both email and slack.

I tried emailing longer form things at my current job and rapidly hit a cultural wall: people _do not like_ getting long emails, or emails with more than 1 or 2 replies. Slack people apparently have no problem with because it's "lighter weight", but I struggle to see how always-on disruption is lighter weight than check-it-a-couple-times-per-day email.

I think a deeper problem is lack of delineation of responsibility and adequate planning. Slack & other "always on" communication systems make it easy to say "why plan? I can _just ask_ when I need to know something" or "we'll have a conversation" rather than specifying & recording or relying on a more rigid interface like a ticketing system.

tl;dr: get off my lawn you dang kids!!

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not use Slack, we use IRC for direct and fast communication. We do not use it for things that need RFCs and technical specifications, for that we use gitlab and other tools. IRC is great and I am using it for 14+ years already. It's stable, fast, efficient and secure with lots of options. I've written a lot of IRC bots in many languages because protocol is so easy and every language have library/bot for IRC tha…

Can you share an image inline? Can you rapidly search the history? Can you customize alerts? Does it work reliably on mobile? You're debugging something and you want to share a screenshot, inline, how does that work on IRC? Can you start audio or video calls with room participants? Slack is great. I don't need to waste time writing bots because all of the tools I use already have simple integrations: GitHub, Box, Dro…

I think most of the "Why not IRC?" sentiment comes from a viewpoint of "I only use chat for sending short, ASCII sentences." The parent comment really captures the additional use-cases which make Slack much more productive for developers discussing code.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm firmly in the "email has no place in internal discussions whatsoever" camp. Tasks belong in tickets, long-term documentation/policies/meeting notes/etc belong in shared space (wiki), and discussions are faster and more productive in realtime (in-person, video call, or chat). E-mail might kick some of this off, or be used to schedule, but that should be it. The problem I think most people run into with the realtim…

"discussions are faster and more productive in realtime"

Real-time discussion is great if you don't have to think about what you're going to say before you say it. Unfortunately, that places a very, very low upper limit on the level of depth and consideration that a discussion can reach. Some decisions are hard enough and some situations are nuanced enough that you need to take your time with them, enough that the additional cost of making all of that time strictly synchronous can grow exponentially.

It also excludes large categories of people, including introverts and non-native speakers. I've worked with a number of people who just flat out did not or could not participate in real-time face-to-face discussions, but who could express themselves masterfully via email.

Of course, the "faster! instant! now! now! now!" crowd don't even have the patience for slower, deeper, better-reasoned discussions, which is why they shy away from any form of communication that has any more depth than a tweet or a PowerPoint slide. Slack is great for these people because they don't even have to string words together to communicate, they can just click on a reaction emoji.

Sure, some things (operations, for instance) have genuine urgency to them, and I think real-time communication is essential for situations like that. But if you're doing work that will have an impact on the span of months, quarters, or years--either major strategic business decisions, design, or project development--you're better served by thinking deeper instead of thinking faster, and deep thought is exactly what the long-form written word was invented for.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#310
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Email can also create bottlenecks and unneeded silos of information...

Sorry to get triggered but oh my god I dislike those buzzwords. I find those two come up any time attempts are made to delineate responsibilities or make it possible for teams to run in parallel (by saying "you work on this area of speciality, I'll work on that" i.e. "silos").
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