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Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

bigtechnology.substack.com

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Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#71

Post by lambdasquirrel »

motohagiography wrote: post #42

My 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…

Yeah, I wonder what ever happened to the common-sense idea that culture flows outward from the people with the "power." Maybe it's by example, or maybe it's by unintended consequence. Maybe it's caused by some moralistic / idealistic sort of policy, or maybe it's through ignorance of the unconscious biases that people have.

To that end, Slack, being a communications enabler, merely accelerates the rate of these things happening. You can turn it off, but then you can turn off the company too. You can try to make everything out in the open open, but then you quench creativity as well as meaningful 1-1 interactions between people.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#72

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #14
staticassertion wrote: post #5

A 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…

> 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. I've asked this question of managers many times. The answer is usually some variation on "The shitty ones are the ones who know how to work the system to their advantage the best. They're the most likely to sue for wrongful termination and otherwise make my life hell if I fire them."

The best thing to do is to closely and carefully document their inappropriate behavior.

Anybody can do this, not just HR. If you have overwhelming evidence of job misconduct and provide it to your company, it gives them ammunition to defend themselves against those sorts of legal recourses.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#73

Post by ponker »

macspoofing wrote: post #47
ponker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has charm. Emoji reactions, animated GIFs, pleasant notification sounds, etc. Makes a big difference.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#74

Post by AceyMan »

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.

I've got a good eye for UX and have sent several improvements / feature adds via the /feedback mechanism. (I was one of the earliest complainers about the WYSIWYG fiasco, for ex.) For everything I've suggested they have some inane response tantamount to "that would allow users to do something that we decided no one should need to do." Their Product Engineers are shamefully obtuse is the vibe I get.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#75

Post by Falkon1313 »

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?

They don't need to police anyone. It would be you deciding who/what you choose to mute. They give you the ability to mute channels, but not to mute bots. It should be something they could add.

My company's approach is just that bot posts go in their own dedicated channels that anyone can mute or watch as they see fit. That works ok for us. But it doesn't give someone that option in a company that allows bot posts in any channel.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#76

Post by donatj »

kortilla wrote: post #60
paxys wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Blocking people within your own company is just adding dysfunction to the company. If it gets to that point where someone is justifiably blocked by someone else (harassment, etc) HR should get involved and someone should be fired.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#77

Post by sharadov »

Cacti wrote: post #13
rigel_kentaurus wrote: post #4

This article would've been better with some concrete examples, or a study, or really anything to back it out. "Slack can be used for bad things". Well, so can email, mailing lists, support forums, internal chat systems (jabber), etc. Not even one example, just "A lot of my CEO and founder friends talk about this". As with any tool, it's how you use it. Best implementations I have seen of Slack is when the rules are c…

Exactly. “High-school type problems” are created by immature people, not the tool. That kind of behavior would never be tolerated at any of the companies I’ve worked at, no matter what the medium. Tech companies, and startups in particular, tend to have these problems because their culture and leadership is sophomoric and immature, and those people hire and promote (or fail to fire) similar people. If a CEO thinks th…

Exactly I've worked at places like this and the cadence is usually set by the people in leadership. If the boss up top is a drunk and boning every 20 year old ( been at one such place ), it sets the tone for everyone else. Also does not help if everyone in the team is young and DTF.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#78

Post by Falkon1313 »

"Ultimately, many CEOs and analysts I spoke with said it’s up to company leaders to create a healthy culture and make sure it’s lived out."

That's the key takeaway from that article. It has nothing to do with Slack or any other specific form of communication. The headline is just clickbait. Even the CEOs complaining about it admit that the problem isn't the media, it's the culture that they create and control that's the problem.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#79

Post by c00ls0sa »

u801e wrote: post #70
colinmhayes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many jobs do require Slack open all the time. At my job that's the entire point, if it can wait send an email, if it needs attention now, slack. People get upset if you don't respond within 5 minutes, even if it's just to say I'll get back to you.

Not in my experience. I never bothered enabling notifications from Slack. I can only tell if I received a message if I actually see the red mark on the pinned tab's favicon. Sometimes I don't get back to people for 10 to 15 minutes and they've never complained about it.

Okay, back to the people who need Slack open for their jobs.

Not being able to mute or suppress doesn't necessarily need HR if everybody thinks it's quirky and harmless fun. You're then the odd man out and ostracized for trying to do your job efficiently - it's pretty bogus, but until some HN user decides to create a new messaging channel. It's gotten to the point where people will avoid seeing you in person but just as quickly ask if you "got that slack" the second they do. It's like e-mail but now you're expected to have it on your phone, home computer, work computer - never a chance to say "no" because you didn't feel like reading it at the time even as it's 9 pm on a Monday night. It's invasive and turns work banter into privatized logs of discussion - from an entry level POV this is terrible.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#80

Post by yborg »

overgard wrote: post #41
ponker wrote: post #17

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.

This is why it will win.
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