Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#151

Post by xfitm3 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #118

protonimitate wrote: post #28

I'll play devils advocate. I like Slack, and having a group communication tool has only increased my productivity. How? - Having a place to easily search for issues others have had in the past. Sure, you can search emails or ask the same questions, but it's nice to search and find answers from other peoples conversations. - Integration for production alerting, customer feedback, and deployment pipelines. Instead of m…

Slack can be a terrible tool if you let it, but it can be wonderful, too, if you tune your notifications, and use DnD when you need it. Also, schedule DnD for non-work hours so you are never bothered outside of work hours, unless there is a true emergency (and if you work at a place with a lot of emergencies, then you have a shitty workplace). It's a tool. Use the tool, don't let the tool use you.

Slack is hostile to users and panders to management. It's a sound business strategy. I can't trust the platform, I'll always be second class.

What about scheduled DnD for days off? Ability to /ignore annoying bots? Two basic features which should've been added long ago.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#152

Post by m_t » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

frgotmylogin wrote: post #107

m_t wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've found that a good way to lower the hassle on starting a zoom is to create a permanently open meeting with your phone number as the meeting ID But in zoom you do have a personal meeting ID, isn't what your describing just replacing that? > My only complaint with zoom is the lack of a prompt before launching video. As another commenter said, you can disable auto joining video and audio in the settings. I do thin…

You do get a personal meeting ID, but most people already have their phone number memorized. Being able to just instantly start a meeting from anywhere comes in handy. Agreed on the default video thing. I'm in no rush to reactivate my camera though, and "Surprise! You are on camera!" isn't something I give software a do-over on.

Yeah I completely agree.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#153

Post by klibertp » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

rjdagost wrote: post #138

klibertp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calls are really, really bad for shared knowledge building. Either you require each call to end with a note, discourage one-to-one calls and favor group calls, or accept that the speed of knowledge diffusion in the team will slow down to a crawl. I believe it's easy to see the downsides of all of these possibilities. Mailing lists, Usenet, IRC, Slack, bulletin board, wiki, GitHub issues - doesn't matter which, use wh…

I disagree with your "text is superior" stance. You assume that the point of a phone call is to enhance "shared knowledge building", but that's often not the case. A phone call is meant to communicate something directly, and that "something" may or may not be knowledge that should be spread through the team. Phone calls have disadvantages, but so does text. There is information that gets lost when we reduce our commu…

> I find it to be much easier to infer someone's mood and intent when I talk to them vs. reading chat messages.

All the deaf programmers of the world would like to have - haha - a chat with you. You'd surely quickly recognize their mood :P

I'm being sarcastic, but the accessibility angle is a serious one.

> and that "something" may or may not be knowledge that should be spread through the team

Whatever you talked about, either resulted in a decision (which should be documented anyway, because you never know who and when may be affected by it) or it didn't, in which case it could have been an email to one person or a group of people.

> I find it to be much easier to infer someone's mood and intent when I talk to them

That's a problem with the literacy of that person. All the words needed to express various moods and intents are there in the dictionaries; this is a battle-tested, mature technology (I mean, written English) which only got so much better since we're able to attach funny cat pictures to each sentence now.

> There is no universally better communications mode.

Of course, as it depends on what you consider "better". What I'm saying is that text is better for accessibility, transparency, scalability and searchability. Speech, on the other hand, makes expressing one's emotions easier. Such an advantage.

Probably the only good use for a call is to notify all the right people when some disaster happens (and really quick - seconds to minutes - decisions are required) or in case a CEO prepared a New Year's speech (at least if they honestly worked on their public speaking skill). Everything else is unnecessarily disruptive, favors quick responses when thoughtfulness is often more important, and gets incredibly messy quickly when you start adding more people.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#154

Post by okmokmz » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #130

protonimitate wrote: post #28

I'll play devils advocate. I like Slack, and having a group communication tool has only increased my productivity. How? - Having a place to easily search for issues others have had in the past. Sure, you can search emails or ask the same questions, but it's nice to search and find answers from other peoples conversations. - Integration for production alerting, customer feedback, and deployment pipelines. Instead of m…

The article explicitly says they chose asynchronous by default -- which I interpret to mean that you switch off those notifications and make slack poll-only. You talk about searching the history but to me the search tools are so weak that I figure only the recent slack messages have relevance -- instead slack is as transient as a text message. Mail at least can be searched as a corpus.

Searching for old messages has always worked fine for me

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#155

Post by morpheuskafka » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #126

protonimitate wrote: post #28

I'll play devils advocate. I like Slack, and having a group communication tool has only increased my productivity. How? - Having a place to easily search for issues others have had in the past. Sure, you can search emails or ask the same questions, but it's nice to search and find answers from other peoples conversations. - Integration for production alerting, customer feedback, and deployment pipelines. Instead of m…

I agree Slack can be used effectively, but I don’t think its design encourages it. It encourages massive distraction — more active user time — by its default client and organization level settings. Nor do I think this is as simple as “you can simply exit the program.” If the company or team has certain expectations on communication that won’t work if you do it without consulting with your team. A lot of people are no…

If your company wants you to sit on Slack all day and not do "deep work" the that's on then, and if it's a waste of your time then it will be their wasted money. So the companies are just as invested in this as employees are.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#156

Post by davidscolgan » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

protonimitate wrote: post #28

I'll play devils advocate. I like Slack, and having a group communication tool has only increased my productivity. How? - Having a place to easily search for issues others have had in the past. Sure, you can search emails or ask the same questions, but it's nice to search and find answers from other peoples conversations. - Integration for production alerting, customer feedback, and deployment pipelines. Instead of m…

I agree. As a remote freelancer, I'm currently in (checks the app) 5 Slacks. I have explicitly told everyone in each of those Slacks that I treat it as async only. I sometimes have it up, and sometimes don't when I'm cranking. I definitely don't have push notifications coming into anything.

I've found being in Slack is a great way to feel less isolated, and conversations that might not otherwise happen happen. I also am in very small channels, usually no more than 5 people. This may contribute to why I like it. I can't imagine being in a 50-100 person Slack with everyone messaging everyone. Especially if I'm expected to keep up. The low population count makes it so that I rarely miss anything.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#157

Post by Agathos » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #37

rjdagost wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the worst part of it (as the article mentions) is that it feels like you are doing something productive when you're using Slack, but the majority of time you're actually not. You're generating conversations, notifications, and in general producing tangible output that for me is subconsciously gratifying. That hooks me in to using the service even though consciously I know that I'm not getting real work done.

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…

> It's far more scalable than ticketing. Issues can be resolved in three lines of text, rather than ticket creation, queue, assignment, closing, etc.

My experience has been that it goes on for thirty or three hundred lines of problem report -> steps to reproduce -> troubleshooting -> proposed solution -> etc. Two days later someone else gets pulled in so they look at a Jira ticket with an empty description and zero comments...

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#158

Post by davidscolgan » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #126

protonimitate wrote: post #28

I'll play devils advocate. I like Slack, and having a group communication tool has only increased my productivity. How? - Having a place to easily search for issues others have had in the past. Sure, you can search emails or ask the same questions, but it's nice to search and find answers from other peoples conversations. - Integration for production alerting, customer feedback, and deployment pipelines. Instead of m…

I agree Slack can be used effectively, but I don’t think its design encourages it. It encourages massive distraction — more active user time — by its default client and organization level settings. Nor do I think this is as simple as “you can simply exit the program.” If the company or team has certain expectations on communication that won’t work if you do it without consulting with your team. A lot of people are no…

Whether or not Slack encourages workflows (and I can see how it would), I think in order to be an effective human in the modern era _requires_ thinking critically about technology choices and how to use them. Cal Newport's new book Digital Minimalism was a great read about this - be intentional about your tech choices, and be intentional about when and how you use them. Otherwise it's super easy to just get sucked into spending all day wasting time on the most distracting and addicting sites. Company culture can be shaped (though it's definitely hard when you are on the bottom of the hierachy).

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#159

Post by peter_d_sherman » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

Fascinating article and discussion.

I'm not sure I completely agree with the article's premise, but what's important here is the debate, rather than the article's premise or conclusions.

This discussion would be broadened by the question: "With respect to the tools that a company mandates you use (and this includes software, like Slack) -- do those tools control you, or do you control them, and do they make you more productive or less productive, and in what scenarios?"

Maybe that's a separate discussion however...

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#160

Post by backpackway » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

Guess I get downvoted to hell but I won't care and share my thoughts:

Slack is for most employees a way to socialize, to get connected, to be not alone because employees are actual lonesome creatures looking for community, looking for something to belong to. Heck, companies are for employees the same. They want to to find friends, to get laid, to network because they can't outside of their free-lunch-corp. If they had to work in the basement in a shitty 3-people-firm, alone, they would have run away the first day.

I haven't been employed for a long, long time, so my view on employees is quite negative and opinionated: employees except the sales ones are in terms of social interactions, networking, finding friends compared to non-employees way underdeveloped (to use a polite term). Don't confuse hanging around with peers in a company being social. Most wouldn't be able to find close peers outside of their company and comfort zone.

Hence, they need Slack so urgently, so they can chat, plan boring get-togethers and like each others messages with crappy emojis.