81–90 of 162 posts
Someone new coming on board has a fairly organized point of entry, warts, bumps and all.
I know everyone has their own take on why slack is bad. From the interruption factor to Electron using all their memory. For me, the issue is that it gives teams a false sense about their tech debt. In every case I've seen, Slack slowly replaces persistent documentation. Every issue one runs into can be resolved with a quick @here to the proper channel, or a DM to the tamer of Eldritch horrors (every company has one)…
If you ever have to do this, you take it as a sign to transfer that information into a document somewhere.
I can understand the frustration with Slack but the comment about large companies using it doesn’t have much ground. I’m at a 3000+ employee company and slack works great for us. I think that one thing that has helped many people is to remember that you never have to reply immediately. Also, if you’re a stakeholder on something, then a final decision should not be made without your input. I’m sure that if you limit y…
I feel that many of these objections already have solutions within Slack. If you don't want to be disturbed by notifications, there is the Do Not Disturb option to snooze notifications. If you don't want to lose context, use Slack threads, which localize discussion around an issue to a single place. If you have a fear of missing out because you're piping everything to Slack - have you considered segregating your aler…
Hey, these all sound like very good hints on how to use Slack, especially the consensus on decision making. Maybe we have used Slack wrong, but especially the context was important for me and Slack threads are hard to enforce, you can "break out of the jail" easily, often by mistake.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, these all sound like very good hints on how to use Slack, especially the consensus on decision making. Maybe we have used Slack wrong, but especially the context was important for me and Slack threads are hard to enforce, you can "break out of the jail" easily, often by mistake.
> Slack threads are hard to enforce, you can "break out of the jail" easily, often by mistake. In particular, image uploads (and possibly other attachments?) are always posted to the main channel, even if the message they were attached to was in a thread. Trying to conduct an image-heavy discussion -- like a discussion about a graphical design -- in a thread will just mean the main chat gets interrupted by a bunch of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, these all sound like very good hints on how to use Slack, especially the consensus on decision making. Maybe we have used Slack wrong, but especially the context was important for me and Slack threads are hard to enforce, you can "break out of the jail" easily, often by mistake.
This resonates with me more easily than the tone of the OP. Slack is a very good tool. For some reason, bashing it is all the rage now, but most of the criticism is misplaced and unsubstantial. FWIW, I use Slack even though I work alone, just because the integration with various 3rd parties makes it a fantastic notifications hub (which I can silence/relay/amplify at will).
I have personally suffered from this far too long, specially when my work has been a hybrid of maker and manager. It becomes extremely hard to create pockets of maker time.
My solution has been to schedule 2-3 hour blocks of focused time around a project (Feature X) or responsibility (customer support) once or twice a day so that at the very least, I can create focus during those times. The key is to not over do it and get hung up on scheduling every minute, but just a few hours per day like this.
To facilitate this, I've built a slack bot that integrates with my calendar and I can mark these events as "Focus" events. The bot sets my status to "Do Not Disturb" during the event and if somebody tries to message me, they get a message that I am in heads down mode. They can then leave a note on why they were contacting me or if I they need me urgently, they can click a button and I get an immediate notification. When my focus time ends, I get a list of notes from my team on why they needed me and I can answer them one by one.
Effectively, I've found that once a team moves to Slack, all internal communication moves to Slack (instead of using slack for urgent sync and email for other async), and this brings back email like async model to Slack for the times when you need it.
You can try out the slack bot at https://slack.com/apps/A5MJB641F-oliv
In full disclosure, I've build the bot for my personal usage and don't intend to monetize it. It's just my way of giving back to the community. It's not very polished and doesn't have an onboarding flow, so if you need any help in using it, contact me at ishan.chhabra [at] gmail.com. I'll be happy to help.
I'm open to advice on how to wean our project from chat to email (probably?) Or some better platform that helps new users and developers onboard without so much static
>I have learned to be productive when I have a quiet space and can tinker on a problem without getting interrupted. Slack makes this very difficult [...] My ultimate goal is to get longer stretches of uninterrupted time to work on features, customer support or operational issues. A question for HN for a hypothetical feature: What if the Slack client app had "ambient awareness" such that it suppressed notifications wh…
Currently, I've built a slack bot for personal use that integrates with my calendar where I can create stretches of times as "Focus" events and during that time, the bot helps me establish an async communication model.
The bot sets my status to "Do Not Disturb" during the event and if somebody tries to message me, they get a message that I am in heads down mode. They can then leave a note on why they were contacting me or if I they need me urgently, they can click a button and I get an immediate notification. When my focus time ends, I get a list of notes from my team on why they needed me and I can answer them one by one.
Effectively, I've found that once a team moves to Slack, all internal communication moves to Slack (instead of using slack for urgent sync and email for other async), and this brings back email like async model to Slack for the times when you need it.
You can try out the slack bot at https://slack.com/apps/A5MJB641F-oliv
In full disclosure, I've build the bot for my personal usage and don't intend to monetize it. It's just my way of giving back to the community. It's not very polished and doesn't have an onboarding flow, so if you need any help in using it, contact me at ishan.chhabra [at] gmail.com. I'll be happy to help.