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Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

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Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#51

Post by grogenaut »

skohan wrote: post #49
fs2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience exactly. The most common observation with Slack is how people praise it as the next big thing in productivity. But this is always during the honeymoon phase, after a few months of working with Slack it usually quickly wears off.

I find it has utility in the fact that it's a searchable record of technical conversations I have had with my colleagues where I can go to recover details I might not remember from a month ago. Then again email also does this just fine, and doesn't cost as much.

Search is one of slacks worst features and I resort to scrolling which is also majorly painful. I can count on one hand the number of times I've found what I needed via slack search in 4 years with it. I've had it be unable to find the exact text of a message on screen in a channel I'm searching in a day later (tested).

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#54

Post by grogenaut »

Jedd wrote: post #43
ethbro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit I've found is in cross-team communication. Specifically of the "I need to reach out to this team I don't know about their product" variety. A) If they interact with Slack, I can search previous answers B) It promotes a culture of openness. Huge benefit in some orgs! We talk about our projects, warts and all, in public channels. If all your org channels are private, you're definitely Doing It Wrong C) It's…

> Slack is asynchronous. You are describing a proprietary, expensive, intrusive, demanding rewrite of SMTP.

Don't forget mailman + elastic search.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#56

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Kiro wrote: post #53
skc wrote: post #44

The only time I ever see positive views on Slack here is when Microsoft Teams is brought up :D

It's because HN is a stereotypical echo chamber where the correct opinion right now that fits the stereotype is to hate Slack.

That added nothing to the conversation. HN may have a uniformity of opinion, because a large fraction of effective people in Software don't like something. That would be worth talking about. Ad Hominem attacks are pointless.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#57

Post by grogenaut »

amichal wrote: post #21
codingdave wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a cultural problem. You can close Slack. You can check it every couple hours and catch up. You can turn off notifications. If your management has problems with this, that is a problem with their culture, not the tool. We have channels where discussions will spread over multiple days because there simply is no expectation that Slack is real-time.

Indeed. There are 80+ channels in my workplace of 20 people. Most people are subscribed to just a few relevant to their current projects and there is zero expectation that a non direct message will be read by subscribers until they are next focused on the project. It serves a semi public record of what’s going on and a place for questions, notifications of important updates. It makes it easier for me to focus on work…

We have around 6k channels for our 1500 employees. I have around 60 I'm in that I need to pay some level of attention to or that I'll get Facebook defriend shamed for leaving. Conversations happen instantly and at odd hours and decisions are made and then scrolled past. Each team I work with has at least 3 channels, public, private, oncall/cr. Often an additional one per micro service. It's a mess.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#58

Post by dajohnson89 »

skohan wrote: post #49
fs2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience exactly. The most common observation with Slack is how people praise it as the next big thing in productivity. But this is always during the honeymoon phase, after a few months of working with Slack it usually quickly wears off.

I find it has utility in the fact that it's a searchable record of technical conversations I have had with my colleagues where I can go to recover details I might not remember from a month ago. Then again email also does this just fine, and doesn't cost as much.

there's a hidden danger of using slack as a record of technical conversations: people start to rely on it, and less formal/rigorous specifications fall by the wayside.

but as i'm starting to learn: nobody really documents things anyways.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#60

Post by thecatspaw »

vishnu_ks wrote: post #46
thecatspaw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack also has channels.

Topics are not the same as channels. In Zulip each conversation in a channel would have a topic. A channel would be a collection of topics. You can ignore the topics you are not interested in and focus on topics that are relevant. So for catching up all you need to do is go through the topics in a channel instead of going through all the messages. https://imgur.com/UMBuOuh

Just the same as I can ignore threads in Slack which I have no interest in.

Its not the tool which break communication, its people not following rules. If people follow the "Use threads at all times" rule, slack is totally working fine. If people dont use it as their social media platform or keep their random thoughts to #random, there's no problem. It feels a bit tone-deaf to promote your tool in a thread about unproductivity caused by chat tools.

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