This is an advantage of Microsoft Teams... the product is so utterly without charm that I doubt anyone is recreationally loitering in it.
Yeah, Teams tends to murder conversation. It's not even broken, its just not quite worth engaging with.
Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
41–50 of 155 posts
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#42My experience with Slack was it is a litmus test for your company culture. If you have people prone to histrionics and complaining, it's going to encourage that. If you have cliquish attrition-game players, they're going to create their own parallel channel scheme. If you have grandstanding drama queens who work an audience, it's the weapon of choice for the sort of people who send emails with long cc' lists. If you have hustlers who pretend you owe them things and always seem to cc' your boss, they will use public channels for off hours callouts that sit for hours before you can respond.
The one anti-pattern personality that Slack does mitigate well is people who use in person meetings and phone calls to make after the fact misrepresentations, and I suppose, sales.
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#43> “They create problems, high-school-type problems,” one CEO of a midsized firm told me. “People are making fun of co-workers, they’re acting unprofessionally, and it’s technically a company system.”
The crux of this is that Slack enables long, heated arguments that normally would be defused by:
1. Being surrounded by your coworkers
2. The frown of your manager
3. The strain on the faces of those around you
It basically comes down to 80s/90s era concepts of netiquette: try to imagine that the person you're writing your response to is a thinking and feeling individual, and imagine their reaction to your words. Read out your words that you've written in the heat of the moment and think hard about how they'll be felt when read.
If you have an employee who is prone to ridiculing others and won't desist from doing so when asked...
FIRE
THEM
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#44Oh, they are doing "unprofessional" things in a tool that facilitates informal communication now, are they? Well. It's called chatter. That will either happen over the watercooler, or it will happen over text. The only problem is that off the cuff remarks can be part of the permanent record now. But otherwise, they should be harmless. And also... maybe go fix the problems people are "bearish" about? (also what's this…
I don’t disagree with some of your other points, but having problems and being inclined to complain about them are often separate things.
Like at startups, there are often a ton of problems, naturally. At some startups people complain a lot. At some they’re good at fixing or ignoring problem for some greater goal. Aiming for the latter (I.e not amplifying) should be a goal as well while you reduce your problems.
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#45Feel like they missed an obvious opportunity to coin the term slacklash...
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#46A lot of these issues seem to come down to: 1. Just fire the shitty people. I don't know why companies don't do this more in the US - it's at-will, just fire them. 2. Why are you trying to stop your employees from organizing???? > “The onus is on the CEO,” Flory said. “Our focus has been on the values,” Agreed on this last statement. Ultimately if Slack is becoming a toxic environment there are obviously other issues…
A communication environment is just a reflection of culture.
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#47Yes. It's only a matter of time before there is a backlash to Slack. I won't understand the backlash when it comes, just as I didn't understand the excitement. Slack is just a chat client. Chat has been around forever. Corporate chat clients have been around forever. What am I missing?
An iPhone is just a phone. The Beatles are just a band. Michael Jordan is just a basketball player. I don’t get the excitement.
I get what you're trying to say, but ... I still don't see it. I introduced slack at work a few years ago. It's fine, it's modern and has nice UI (UX on the other hand ... is just OK). I also used chat clients and IRC since the 90s. I don't see slack being the Michael Jordan of Chat clients. I don't see how it is a fundamental change the way the iPhone was.
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#48Oh, they are doing "unprofessional" things in a tool that facilitates informal communication now, are they? Well. It's called chatter. That will either happen over the watercooler, or it will happen over text. The only problem is that off the cuff remarks can be part of the permanent record now. But otherwise, they should be harmless. And also... maybe go fix the problems people are "bearish" about? (also what's this…
> The only problem is that off the cuff remarks can be part of the permanent record now.
I don't think you appreciate the scale of how many headaches this can create for a large company. Previously, A says something mean about B at the watercooler, even if somebody overhears it's all he says, she says. With Slack (or any other group chat/IM system), if A says the same thing, it's broadcast to everybody else on the channel and anybody can take out of context screenshots and run squealing to HR/EEOC/lawyers/whoever. And it's all accessible to anybody with a subpoena on a fishing expedition as well.
And you can't just fix the company or the people: beyond a certain scale, no matter how good your hiring process and training, no matter how awesome your company culture and benefits, you'll get permanently unhappy people, shit-stirring trolls, wackos with extreme views and all the other weird creatures that populate any Internet forum. So eventually you have to converge on reserving chat only for strictly work-related comms and training people to take anything with the mildest whiff of controversy to talking in person/over video.
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#49My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.
Frustrating, but I agree with Slack here. It isn't their job to police the behavior of your coworkers. Maybe try talking to the person directly? Or their boss? Or HR?
Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
#50My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.
I also looked into blocking people on Slack but it's 'antithetical' to their whole mission or whatever, so I went this route: https://github.com/ketanbhatt/block-slack-users