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Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

bigtechnology.substack.com

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Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#51

Post by macspoofing »

overgard wrote: post #33
macspoofing wrote: post #16

Yes. 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?

Honestly it's just the little details... which are huge. For better or worse emoji reactions and gifs really change the tenor of conversations. You can say its just chat, and that's true, but people are complicated and the smallest of chat features changes interactions so much. Just as an example, "heres a new feature" vs "heres a new feature (+100 thumbs up emoji)", for better or worse that changes people.

>For better or worse emoji reactions and gifs really change the tenor of conversations.

As did emoticons. I miss emoticons.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#52

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

Twist. We’ve been using it as a slack alternative and it truly works as a better email replacement. It’s great for announcements, and isn’t super overwhelming with every channel organized like an inbox. The UX is super simple. Haven’t played with it too much just yet, but like it so far

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#53

Post by Brendinooo »

I see articles like this periodically here, and I never understand them.

I've used Slack for 6 years with an organization, it's been indispensable, and since I'm remote it's been my window into the company culture, which I'd characterize as healthy.

But then again, my job before that one tried to start a corporate intranet blog and then mothballed it while HR dragged their feet on a proper company policy for the comments section.

So...maybe it's not about the tools of communication, but the people behind them.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#54

Post by gameswithgo »

Brendinooo wrote: post #53

I see articles like this periodically here, and I never understand them. I've used Slack for 6 years with an organization, it's been indispensable, and since I'm remote it's been my window into the company culture, which I'd characterize as healthy. But then again, my job before that one tried to start a corporate intranet blog and then mothballed it while HR dragged their feet on a proper company policy for the comm…

It has been fine at my work as well. I understand that people get mad that is uses more resources than is necessary, I have that same aversion but that is a pretty ubiquitous software problem today, and is why I asked for the 6 core xeon laptop =)

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#55

Post by aeyes »

ashtonkem wrote: post #40

I hate Slack, but for unrelated reasons. Slack has no priority levels. Slack pings you: is it an alert, a question, an outage, or someone sending you a funny gif? You can’t adjust the relative priority of these alerts, so good luck! I’ve also seen that it regularly replaces documentation for teams. This is an issue, since slack just scrolls forever. You might have memorized the precise sentence to search for (I’ve do…

Everybody in a Slack channel can pin important messages, when somebody writes something noteworthy I pin it until it is moved to the documentation.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#58

Post by aeyes »

Turn off Slack and you'll have your employees in WhatsApp groups. What do you prefer? Nobody is going back to email.

If people behave unprofessionally on Slack then that is because they are unprofessional. I've been working with different corporate chat tools for years and haven't seen any major drama. And if the former lunchroom conversation moved to Slack, you can now hold the bad actors accountable.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#60

Post by kortilla »

paxys wrote: post #49
Minor49er wrote: post #15

My 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?

This is a basic feature of every other communication platform.
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