Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#371

Post by spookthesunset » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:36 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #281

jchung wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? I challenge you to consider whether your perspective applies to the 99% of people who use Slack that are not developers writing software. For those people, email is often not a place where well-argued discussions happen. It's usually a place where chat-like communication happens, slowly, and in an ill-fitting interface. For non-developers, let's take a operations assoc…

From my experience, in most office jobs, email is primarily used for serious and well-argued discussions concerning projects, business goals, technical details, etc. Software developers really don't use email any differently from IT support, accountants, HR managers, or salespeople. Non-developers generally reserve chit-chat for chat software, just like developers do. Not sure what it is about HN assuming software de…

> Not sure what it is about HN assuming software devs are somehow intellectually and professionally superior to others.

Dunno but this thread is full of a bunch folks rather arrogantly assuming their way is the One True Way.

Slack (and hipchat) didn't get big for no reason. It's because it fulfills a pretty big need. Tons of people in my company use & love Slack... Last company was a big hipchat company...

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#372

Post by munchbunny » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:37 PM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #196

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…

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…

I'm in the camp that Slack is a great UI for work chat, and that work chat is for low latency, low bandwidth communication.

If I want high latency, high bandwidth, there's email. If I need low latency, high bandwidth, that's an in person whiteboard session or a video call.

That does mean I think Slack is overhyped... but that also means I think Slack does something valuable. Just maybe not as valuable.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#373

Post by capkutay » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:38 PM UTC

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…

Those aren't slack problems, those are people problems. I can just as easily point to email threads that are incoherent and hard to follow. I can also point to meetings with no agenda that waste everyones time but give the appearance of 'managing' or team building.

When used properly (not lazily), Slack is a great place to organize communication between teams. At worst its Skype with a way better UI...what's wrong with that?

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#374

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:38 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #344

emodendroket wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems he is in a different camp, specifically the one where you aren't on a chat application all day

You're in the mute-everything-non-critical class, which is a good practice regardless of the client. If they really need you, they'll ring/call/DM. Otherwise, you can check it whenever you're ready.

I do that but it's not the same as not having a chat I'm expected to be checking.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#375

Post by snom380 » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

optimusclimb wrote: post #5

Hipchat took standard IRC, and added some interface fluff, youtube links, and emojis. They achieved great market footprint. Then Slack starts up later - makes literally the same exact product, and manages to surpass, and eventually subsume Hipchat. Crazy.

Do you think they're the exact same products, and that there's absolutely zero reason for anyone to prefer Slack over HipChat?

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#376

Post by dmode » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

Our Corp IT requested engineering to Pilot Google Hangout Chats as we already have GSuite. Turns out that Slack is the most expensive enterprise application that IT owns. It is more expensive that GSuite, although it provides a specific utility, while GSuite has emails, spreadsheets, docs etc. etc. That doesn't really sounds sustainable.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#377

Post by Groxx » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

jawilson2 wrote: post #258

apple4ever wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Slack now, and are looking to migrate to Mattermost (since we run GitLab already). We don't want to pay the price we'd need to pay to keep Slack, and plus we want to host our own.

We moved from Slack to Mattermost, and Mattermost is garbage. Messages are delivered late (by hours), if ever. You don't get notifications correctly. It takes seconds (more than 10 sometimes) to load a page. Sometimes the page goes blank. Much of our office has reverted to email and phone calls for many things that would have worked fine with Slack.

Worth noting that mattermost has made pretty significant improvements around this in the past several months, now that there's a large customer: https://eng.uber.com/uchat/

web/apps have been pretty much completely rewritten too. it's noticeably better, if you haven't used it for a while.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#378

Post by snaily » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

For being the business chat darling, Slack is just not that great at being an amazing chat platform.

I'm comparing to WhatsApp, because in my org that's what everyone defaults to, as the basic chat functionality in Slack is a subpar experience: * No delivery notices, even in private chat * Can't upload multiple attachments/images in one go, but instead defaults to N single uploads * No option not to download large images * Logs in slow, needs to be "connected" and thus struggles to send messages on intermittent connections

Maybe the HipChat infusion of people with a different viewpoint will help?

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#379

Post by maw » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #361

smt88 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email has a lot of problems, but the dealbreaker for my company is that it isn't secure.

If you want secure emails use GPG. Unlike slack, GPG is both open-source and offers government-level security. I don't think slack is more secure than GPG.

If that were viable people would already be doing it. It's not, and so very few people are. I wish this weren't the case but it is.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#380

Post by andygcook » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

slededit wrote: post #204

greglindahl wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was involved in the early days of IRC, and personally, I'm amazed at how great Slack is. I parachuted into an org which had a not-great email culture and took up Slack as a replacement. It was amazingly great.

I wish I could find the original document. They do spend about 1/8th talking about how it has to be a great experience. But the majority of the document discusses how they aren't a chat app, they had a broader vision of team communication. And so you don't compare Slack to IRC because IRC is "just" a chat app while Slack is for "collaboration". In the early days of Slack we had Office Communicator in Microsoft. But b…

Not sure, but perhaps you are referencing the article from Stewart Butterfield, We Don’t Sell Saddles Here: https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c5952...