Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

I love it when people use that terrible "backtrack" comic.

Slack only works for companies where the nature of their employees' work actually requires team communication that will benefit the organizations.

Like everything in life, it's always a trade off. You may gain scores for team work but will sacrifice individual creativity. Deep creative tasks always require a full strength of focus and that state is only attainable once we allow our mind some time to completely "dial in". You simply cannot switch from 0 to 100 and be in the zone within the span of just a few minutes.

When you are using Slack or any social media communication platforms, your brain must allocate cognitive resource to manage your ego because you do care about what other people think of your opinions. Since the pool of our cognitive resource is limited, we will have less remaining that can be dedicated to other real creative tasks.

On top of that, you now have a distraction source where you constantly have to switch attention to. This may condition your brain over time and cause it to lose the ability to "dial in".

Some companies were eager to force employees into using these tools while it didn't really provide any real tangible benefits, and may in fact even be destructive. Within a company only some departments should use it but some definitely shouldn't. It's the same reason why open office concept may work for certain organizations but not for all.

It is a truth universally acknowledged among managerial types, that given enough collaboration, all work becomes shallow. To that end, the business will increase the number of collaborative tools and the expectation of their use, because deep work presents a problem. It is a risk incurred by the business. Creative effort by an individual is not auditable, there's no paper trail. No actionable data -- data that would allow the business to verify each step of the process and estimate time and cost to completion -- is produced other than the creative output itself. The only person qualified to assess whether deep creative work by an individual is on track, on time, and under budget is the individual themself and they cannot be trusted! "Beware the guy in a room."

So the deep parts of the work are now the responsibility of the team, and in order to do that, the team needs to stay in constant communication. Yes, it's slower and less efficient, but the business values reliability and accountability at the expense of some efficiency.

This is why you don't get an office or even a desk -- you get about one linear meter of bench on which to set up your MacBook. This is why availability on Slack is paramount. This is why you're responsible for attending standup, planning, retro, grooming, Three Amigos, and whatever parking-lot meetings your PM has called throughout the week in addition to all the work you've committed to this sprint. This is why "sprints" in the first place.

If you work for corporate, odds are you've signed up to join a hivemind, with all that entails.

No guarantee that Atlassian Wikis will last forever either, but I'm certain that's the wiki 90% will be thinking of when "use a wiki" is suggested.

Backing up your knowledge store is a very separate task from your day-to-day use of it. It's just as possible to back-up your company's slack messages as it is to back-up the company's wiki.

While his/her comment may have been narrowly directed and could even be bordering trolling/flame-baiting, it made me think about how the structure of discussion groups in general could encourage echo chambers. His/her comment is a case-in-point as it's being downvoted.

I tend to believe discussion groups with comment voting systems (e.g., Reddit, Digg years ago) tend to further or more quickly close communication feedback loops that help lead to echo chambers: "what we like, what don't we like." People who want to actively engage will be more quickly discouraged if their perspectives differ and are quickly shunned, even if they're potentially valid. Those who remain will be conditioned with positive reinforcement when they repeat the status quo ("rewarded" with up-votes from peers).

Comment voting systems tend to suppress perspectives that challenge the status quo in general (they can also promote challenges, though anecdotally, I observe this far less). Even without voting systems though, peer pressure in discussions shapes the discussions in a feedback loop that, in my opinion, leads to echo chambers of perspectives.

Obviously the tradeoff is: what's the alternative? True garbage is posted that should be removed (spam, direct personal attacks, etc.). Moderator and editor systems shape discussions to their bias vs. a more distributed voting approach biases towards the status quo. Another option is to allow any perspective a perpetual voice (false negative spam and uncivil discussion emerges) which requires filtering/ignoring on a per participant/client basis (not good at promoting return visitors who want quality discussions), but this does allow exposure to new and differing perspectives.

I'm not sure what the best solution is. As you pointed out, and I agree entirely with you, his/her comment certainly could have been presented better and didn't need to attack HN directly. At the very least, for me, it illustrates frustration as a symptom of a potentially systematic problem.

Sometimes, I do wonder if "trolling" and "flamebaiting" often regarded as negative behaviors, are in reality healthy for discussion groups. They encourage a never ending revaluation (QA/QC, CD even) of ideologies adopted by the status quo and foster a competitive behavior of ideas using emotion for drive and momentum. I've read some of the best in-depth and even enlightening discussions spun out from such comments, once you get past initially emotionally fueled personal attacks. To be fair, I've also observed some of the most worthless volleyball of personal attacks. I suggest those disagreements and the emotional fuel help us push away complacency and strive for improvement instead of avoiding challenges. Without any emotion, few have desire to bpther exploring some ideas. Emotion isn't required to have a progressive discussion, but it seems to me to help light fires and engage more ideas, especially if done tastefully.