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Unslacking Tideways Company

beberlei.de

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Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#51

Post by beberlei »

Waterluvian wrote: post #5

When I was at a fully local company, slack was good for conversations where a few people might be actively discussing an issue and then I could come in hours later and skim the history, if it was a channel I felt relevant to be aware of. But slack was also super easy to use wrongly and drain so much time into. It really helped to declare slack a lossy source of comms. You shall not expect people to read it and you sh…

I don't know, Github + Basecamp are also used by fully remote teams and they don't focus on realtime chat functionality.

Some kind of tool is necessary for sure, but different tools set a different focus to provide a solution for organization teams and companies.

I guess everyone should find what works best for them.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#52

Post by jasode »

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…

>, I believe that slack in general is a waste of time in a TEAM. Why not have meetings or meet up in real life rather than hiding behind a screen without any physical interaction?

In the book "Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick[1], one programmer described how Mark Zuckerberg and the other programmers extensively chatted on AOL AIM even though they all sat at the same table elbow-to-elbow.

When one of the new programmers responded to one of MZ's chat texts by just looking up and vocalizing an answer, MZ didn't look away from his laptop to respond. Basically, the new programmer unintentionally broke the silence etiquette. The early Facebook team was using chat as virtual hallway conversations.

It seems the "correct" way to use realtime chat depends on differing personalities?

[1] there was more than one chat story in the book and this was one of them (but don't know for sure if Google Books link will show you the page excerpt): https://books.google.com/books?id=PxTvbM-VCPEC&pg=PA137&lpg=...

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#53

Post by tjoff »

andybak wrote: post #23
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…

I occasionally I find them very usable. Before you ask on IRC (on a channel you haven't visited before) you will google it extensively. If the question is either a quick question that anyone in the know can answer directly with a yes/no like answer then IRC can be a good option.

But I especially find that IRC is better for very niche questions that won't benefit anyone else (and won't have been asked before) that also requires some back-and-forth debug style to get to the bottom of it.

Similar to problems where email doesn't work and you need make a call instead. A ten minute call can sometimes save you a week of emails if they are not quick enough to answer (common with large timezone differences).

Also much quicker, you either get the answer or you don't, either way both are good to know (so that you know to try something else).

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#54

Post by jey »

jasode wrote: post #52
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…

>, I believe that slack in general is a waste of time in a TEAM. Why not have meetings or meet up in real life rather than hiding behind a screen without any physical interaction? In the book "Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick[1], one programmer described how Mark Zuckerberg and the other programmers extensively chatted on AOL AIM even though they all sat at the same table elbow-to-elbow . When one of the new pro…

Yeah. When minimizing off-topic chatter and using the chat features carefully (e.g. threads or private messages in addition to channels), chat hits a perfect balance of immediate but asynchronous coordination.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#55

Post by metamet »

stephengillie wrote: post #15
czardoz wrote: post #12

Personally, I really like Slack. It's just really useful as a centralized communication place, especially since it integrates with almost every SaaS platform under the sun. I guess it's not suitable for every team though.

I've only ever seen Slack in 1 of 2 modes: - Dozens of people in every room having multiple conversations, and any comment you make is quickly lost in the flow of other discussions. - Ghost town.

We use Slack and don't have either of those environments.

I suppose we make heavy use to group DM's and project specific channels, but it really helps us keep communication streamlined and direct.

We don't really use email. If we need to ping someone on a PR review, it's done in Slack. If one of our systems is having issues, it's automated through a specific Slack channel.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#56

Post by jonahx »

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…

This feels like the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument.

Of course you can assign moral blame however you please, but the relevant "policy" question (in both the gun case and the slack case) is empirical.

You could measure the productivity of a single team with and without slack and see how things compare.

My guess is Slack would not fare well in that experiment, but I've never done it.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#57

Post by beberlei »

orliesaurus wrote: post #39

Well Slack might have not worked for you. It doesn't work for everyone! Probably it works the worst for devs? Here is a story. I was working with a team of couple people located in different corners of the city. Everyone is remote except two who share an office. Up until a month ago everything was done over email. Sometimes you would send an email and get a reply in minutes, other times after hours. This was highly i…

Yes, i don't doubt that Slack works for companies. It doesn't work for our company and our value of trying to maximize uninterrupted work time.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#58

Post by gregmac »

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.

The only threaded chat I've used is Microsoft Teams, and I came away hating it.

One problem is that if you are trying to catch up on conversions, instead of just being time based, it's thread+time based, so while you can see which threads added messages while you were gone, it's not easy to actually read through them all.

The other big problem I found was people inevitably "reply" by (accidentally) creating a new thread, which then splits the conversation. If you're participating in real-time and there's not many separate conversions happening this isn't a big deal: but that's opposite to the situation where threading is actually theoretically useful, and catching up on multiple split threads is the worst combination of everything.

Maybe this is only really a problem with Microsoft's implementation, but I'm curious what other people have experienced?

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#59

Post by beberlei »

hw wrote: post #37
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…

> Things are going to get missed Hit the nail on the head here. Things will get missed. The nice thing about Slack is that you can at least catch up with some conversations you missed at the end of day or in your free time. When you miss an IRL meeting, it's much harder to catch up. FOMO will be an even bigger problem when people start setting up meetings, especially ones where you aren't invited to or you can't atte…

We don't stop communicating since we unslacked though. Instead we now moved discussions more to Github PRs+issues and Basecamp. So its still possible to read up, but it feels more structured around certain tasks.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#60

Post by stephengillie »

metamet wrote: post #55
stephengillie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only ever seen Slack in 1 of 2 modes: - Dozens of people in every room having multiple conversations, and any comment you make is quickly lost in the flow of other discussions. - Ghost town.

We use Slack and don't have either of those environments. I suppose we make heavy use to group DM's and project specific channels, but it really helps us keep communication streamlined and direct. We don't really use email. If we need to ping someone on a PR review, it's done in Slack. If one of our systems is having issues, it's automated through a specific Slack channel.

How much planning, training, and other efforts does your company put into mainlining group DMs and team channels?
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