Unslacking Tideways Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#21

Post by dvtrn » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #14

dvtrn wrote: post #4

Slack makes this very difficult and at least for me, is a primary cause of anxiety and fear of missing out I unironically wonder how widespread this problem is among the specific group of people who blame their lack of productivity on Slack, or failing that, how many people would admit their FOMO is enhanced by chat apps. So many of the "productivity killing" problems I hear people griping about with Slack aren't rea…

> So many of the "productivity killing" problems I hear people griping about with Slack aren't really issues with slack, They're not specific to Slack, but they are specific to the existence of an official real time chat app. The boss expects you to read the chat, and if you just ignore it, you'll get in trouble and be deemed "irresponsible" if you aren't acting on it and participating in it.

That really sounds like the worst environment to be in, where "the chat" replaces actual planning meetings where assignments are delegated out and expectations set.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#22

Post by artursapek » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

In addition to the points in this article, I've also found real-time chat is much less efficient for deep discussions than email or voice. For some reason, people tend to break up their thoughts and post them as individual sentences. Maybe it's because that's similar to vocal communication - you want peoples' attention as you're speaking and sending what you want to say bit by bit is sort of like "having the floor". Or maybe it's the anxiety that the subject will change before you're done typing. But it's terribly inefficient because typing is slow and it results in people misunderstanding each other due to poorly structured writing. I find discussing significant plans/changes is much better done over email, where you get to craft your argument and make sure it reads well before you make several other people spend their time reading it.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#23

Post by andybak » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

sdan wrote: post #7

Definitely agree with your decision. After leaving slack entirely from a robotics team and a science club, our productively increased. No longer were we going off topic wasting precious time and making everyone in the channel read every 500+ messages some people engaged in. We instead chose to make more plans during meetings and through direct chat (Messenger). However, Slack is usefull for forums such as donkeycar.s…

> where many hobbists come in and have questions on this software/hardware project

I'm rather baffled by the use of chat for this kind of problem. (and I never clicked with IRC either)

So - I've got a problem and I come to a chat channel. It's probably been asked before. If I'm lucky I'll find my answer in a searchable chat archive and I won't need to visit at all. Otherwise I face two options:

1. Scroll back and try and find any previous mentions. Nearly impossible in my experience.

2. Ask my question and hope that people aren't sick of hearing it. If I'm lucky enough that a) someone is present who knows the answer and b) they respond in a timely manner then I still face the problem that - assuming it's busy enough for a and b to be likely - then my conversation is interspersed with several unrelated discussions. Also - the person helping me is likely to go quiet for long periods or disappear altogether because most probably they are doing other stuff.

Note that the final flaw (the interleaving of discussions) is a problem in all cases.

Now - can someone explain to me how this is better than a forum or Stack Overflow style site?

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#24

Post by GranPC » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

sdan wrote: post #7

Definitely agree with your decision. After leaving slack entirely from a robotics team and a science club, our productively increased. No longer were we going off topic wasting precious time and making everyone in the channel read every 500+ messages some people engaged in. We instead chose to make more plans during meetings and through direct chat (Messenger). However, Slack is usefull for forums such as donkeycar.s…

> Why not have meetings or meet up in real life rather than hiding behind a screen without any physical interaction?

Well, that's pretty hard to do if you're working remotely!

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#25

Post by cortesoft » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #9

> If you wait for a long time to reply to a message on chat, then the discussion thread is already spread in the history of the chat room and messages back and forth interleaved with many additional messages that are not related is not helpful. Use zulip - https://zulipchat.com . Opensource. Designed for threaded context.

I mean,slack has threads, too.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#26

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

dvtrn wrote: post #4

Slack makes this very difficult and at least for me, is a primary cause of anxiety and fear of missing out I unironically wonder how widespread this problem is among the specific group of people who blame their lack of productivity on Slack, or failing that, how many people would admit their FOMO is enhanced by chat apps. So many of the "productivity killing" problems I hear people griping about with Slack aren't rea…

Not quite sure I understand your argument. You seem to be saying Slack is a scapegoat, but say things like "Things are going to get missed, you're going to come in late to certain conversations, but I often wonder do you need to be on the bleeding edge of these talks if they don't directly relate to you or even reside in the periphery of your responsibility radius?"

I mean, you're right, you probably don't need to be on that edge, but Slack is this constant reminder of oftentimes BOTH important and unimportant issues, and they are difficult to separate so your attention is distracted regardless.

It's like saying "that endless supply of vodka in the liquor cabinet didn't make you an alcoholic." True, but if one DOES have a tendency to drink toward excess, getting rid of that liquor cabinet would be a great first step.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#27

Post by hw » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

Different teams use Slack differently, so it's kind of hard to gauge whether un-slacking works for a team.

We have a team of It's all about how your team uses the tool IMO and your team's organization of Slack. The key to FOMO is to not FOMO - missing out on conversations is fine (there are plenty you miss out on if everyone starts communicating and meeting offline), as long as you don't miss out on the important ones (which should be in a shared important channel).

Also, in a small company, over-communication is often more important than non-communication

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#28

Post by beberlei » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

a13n wrote: post #19

Check out Twist. https://twist.com I have no affiliation with the company/team, but love the product so much that I want to share it here! The whole idea behind Twist is to be a team communication that doesn't have the productivity issues Slack does. I think it's a very well positioned and timed product. We've been using it for months at our startup, Canny. Threads are a useful level of organization, such that it's a…

Author here. We tried Twist a while ago and it looked great, especially as you mentioned the Threads. But at the time had performance problems with larger threads and the REST API was very complicated to add simple posts. We didn't try it again afterwards. We use Basecamp now, and it has a forum and threads as well per team or project.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#29

Post by dvtrn » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #26

dvtrn wrote: post #4

Slack makes this very difficult and at least for me, is a primary cause of anxiety and fear of missing out I unironically wonder how widespread this problem is among the specific group of people who blame their lack of productivity on Slack, or failing that, how many people would admit their FOMO is enhanced by chat apps. So many of the "productivity killing" problems I hear people griping about with Slack aren't rea…

Not quite sure I understand your argument. You seem to be saying Slack is a scapegoat, but say things like "Things are going to get missed, you're going to come in late to certain conversations, but I often wonder do you need to be on the bleeding edge of these talks if they don't directly relate to you or even reside in the periphery of your responsibility radius?" I mean, you're right, you probably don't need to be…

Slack is this constant reminder of oftentimes BOTH important and unimportant issues, and they are difficult to separate so your attention is distracted regardless.

But the platform has a remedy for this does it not? In allowing you to turn on notifications for highlight words that you specify? Seems reasonable to me that if one wants to be alerted of conversations happening around certain topics, but work in peace without dings and bells for everything else, this feature works quite well in solving that split of attention between relevant and not relevant, no?

This may be an example of what I mean by boundaries; the user is completely able to define a boundary of distractions, turn them off, or turn them off but for certain highlight words so that they get notifications for, and are able to respond in a timely manner when a discussion comes up that might appreciate their input as a knowledge-holder/SME on the topic. Otherwise they continue to work unperturbed.

Is this a feature that people just don't know about or forgo using for some other reason, in your opinion?

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#30

Post by saagarjha » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #25

sandGorgon wrote: post #9

> If you wait for a long time to reply to a message on chat, then the discussion thread is already spread in the history of the chat room and messages back and forth interleaved with many additional messages that are not related is not helpful. Use zulip - https://zulipchat.com . Opensource. Designed for threaded context.

I mean,slack has threads, too.

They’re just a usability nightmare.