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Unslacking Tideways Company

beberlei.de

141–150 of 162 posts

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#141
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, 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…

Did FB really start with library rules? My understanding is it’s the opposite now, stretching the limits of construction technology to build the largest possible open office.

Open offices with library rules often work fine. The problem is more when you have no rules, at which point it's an interruption free for all.

Libraries are the ultimate open offices after all. Tons of work used to and still gets done in libraries, and they're pretty much all open tables.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can reference 5 year old forum posts why can't you reference 3 year old chat conversations?

Structured threads vs an unending ticker tape of noise.

Why can't you have threads in a chat app?

This article is really, "We couldn't adapt our processes to Slack, so we blamed the tool and replaced a chat app with processes, because we're special snowflakes and how could anything Not Invented Here apply to our totally unique problems of communication?"

Sure, they ended up with a series of other tools to cover their workflows, the thing they "invented" was how those tools work together to cover the gaps created by not actually having a comprehensive and well-configured chat app.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#143
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, 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…

Did FB really start with library rules? My understanding is it’s the opposite now, stretching the limits of construction technology to build the largest possible open office.

All the more reason to have library rules.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#144
post #116
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

1. Those interleaved discussions are what makes it a worthwhile hangout for experienced users. 2. Conversely, they also mean that maybe you'll help someone else out while you're waiting. 3. It's easier to diagnose a problem in an informal back-and-forth than in the writing-for-posterity style that SO and fora encourage.

Chat might be ok for facilitating diagnosis, but when I'm searching for help I want an SO style answer. Bear in mind I've been doing IRC for a couple of decades, so it's not lack of experience.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#145
post #131
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, 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…

Personalities aside, chats are a track record (and searchable). Imagine remembering what your colleague asked you last Friday, and you promised to answer. Compare it with scrolling up and finding the exact question.

I'll take phone conversations to email (including a quick recap of the conversation) for precisely this reason. A searchable record of business comms can be invaluable.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#146
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Those interleaved discussions are what makes it a worthwhile hangout for experienced users. 2. Conversely, they also mean that maybe you'll help someone else out while you're waiting. 3. It's easier to diagnose a problem in an informal back-and-forth than in the writing-for-posterity style that SO and fora encourage.

Chat might be ok for facilitating diagnosis, but when I'm searching for help I want an SO style answer. Bear in mind I've been doing IRC for a couple of decades, so it's not lack of experience.

Many people looking for help aren't up to asking an SO style question.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#147
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is useful for group chat of 3-5 people. Occasionally a channel will have useful information. And then it's mostly important for coordinating lunch and sharing funny links. I'd say it's a 50/50 on work related and just screwing around. And sidenote I am not sure where term "ping you" came from, but it needs to go away. It honestly conveys the message I don't need to or want to talk to the person that said it.

> And sidenote I am not sure where term "ping you" came from, but it needs to go away. It honestly conveys the message I don't need to or want to talk to the person that said it. It's weird, isn't it. We all have our triggers, I suppose. For example, I assume anyone who explicitly qualifies only a small number of their comments with 'tbh' or 'Honestly...' is lying to me the rest of the time.

My trigger is unnecessary shorthand that leads to inefective communication. Short hand can be used at times, but it should be limited and the context will make it clear. And honestly I instantly hate anyone that messages "ty" instead of actually spelling out thank you.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#148
I can definitely understand this decision. We used to use Slack in my previous company which was a digital agency and being a client manager it was incredibly hard for me to keep track of the numerous chat messages i depended on in Slack but at the same time keeping up with the clients which were always, no matter how hard we tried - active only on email.

Altough Slack is a great concept i think in general the biggest problem of proprietary platforms is that usually the original task always starts somewhere else. Slack can work great as an end-point solution, where people don't need any other tools to exchange business content. If you think about it - most of the service driven business across the planet initially starts with a phone call or an email. After it successfully comes down the pipeline to a done deal - you kick it off with a meeting or something, you decide about the desired channel of communication and you can kick off the project.

Sure you set up some rules - like separate channels for unimportant topics or maybe you put separate tasks in a different tool etc.

If everyone sticks to the plan (including the client), than Slack works this way.

But not everyone sticks to the plan. It's because phone calls happen or emails happen in between, where you have to move discussions from where it started back to Slack and this was the whole problem for us. We were working a lot on improving our client's rate of happiness - and there was a clear correlation between them being satisfied with the work that was done and us adopting to their tech stack. Not the other way around. Everything that had to be moved to Slack, so it could be considered as 'a project'and people would keep track off - eventually was missing some sort of information that happened on email sometime during the process. And for us, that didn't help with improving our services.

So from my experiences, when working with services, the ideal tech stack situation for companies comes down to how companies work with clients. If clients can be adaptive to the core communication platform, than you'll find enough integrations to make the best work flows to help you optimise how the business work. But if you're working with clients that usually have their own preferred tech stack or involve more people - that the chances of Slack interrupting your workflows are much higher.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is generally regarded as the most reliable in my experience.

To the parent's point, how do you get a future employee to receive the information in an email that was sent before they started?

Exchange has so-called "Public Folders" you could also access through IMAP, but it was more convenient to use and search with Outlook. Conceivably you could make a similar 'public' maibox on a different mail platform, a poor man's newsgroup.
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