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Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

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Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#81

Post by coffeefirst »

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…

Yes! The Noise Machine aspects, the sprawling dumpster that is threads, and the fact that there's no way for all 7 people DMing me at once to see that there are 7 of them DMing me at once make the platform an indispensable nightmare.

I'm starting to notice that organizations with long term remote experience like Basecamp and Automatic rely a lot more on longer, async communication over instant messaging. There might be something to that.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#82

Post by mr_tristan »

A favorite quote: "culture eats strategy for breakfast".

Slack and Teams just feed this instinct to spew thoughts without thinking about your communication first. Everything about modern society reinforces this. And it's not remotely generational; or, I haven't noticed much of a difference between generations in regards to depth of conversation. It's just different tools of choice.

So, I'm sure everyone will hate these tools, but really, they just haven't figured out how to communicate deeply and meaningfully together. And no tool is gonna make that happen for you. It's a culture problem.

I'm 100% sure if they ban Slack and Teams, and go back to email, everyone is just gonna hack email to say all the same stupid crap they're saying right now. Maybe it'll slow things down a bit, but I can't see it transforming much of anything.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#83

Post by paxys »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #75
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?

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…

I'm pretty sure you can mute bots, since they are just like any other user (right click on bot DM -> mute conversation). Or you can mute/leave the channel itself. You can also hide images/GIFs posted in channels by default.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#84

Post by ViViDboarder »

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.

Maybe raise an issue with your companies Slack admins to kick the bot.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#85

Post by detaro »

paxys wrote: post #83
Falkon1313 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm pretty sure you can mute bots, since they are just like any other user (right click on bot DM -> mute conversation). Or you can mute/leave the channel itself. You can also hide images/GIFs posted in channels by default.

Neither of the options you describe mutes the bot when posting in a channel, which was the feature asked about.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#86

Post by aeternum »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #69
oceanswave wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve found the same behavior in normal person to person speech, so we’ve implemented a gag policy that nobody talks to one another during business hours. Ultimately, it’s person to person communication that we’ve found is the broken tool for, granted, a minority of users so we’ve implemented this policy company wide.

Your satire rings very flat because it doesn’t happen much in person to person communication. The whole reason it’s noteworthy to talk about it in regards to Slack is that it does happen to a much greater extent in Slack and other chat programs than in almost any other corporate communication system, enough to make it clear that instant messaging , not people, is the core of the issue.

My experience is the exact opposite. All personnel problems have occurred in-person, often at company events. I find that employees are generally much more considerate and careful about what they say over slack as everything basically becomes permanent record.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#87

Post by vbsteven »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #84
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.

Maybe raise an issue with your companies Slack admins to kick the bot.

In many smaller companies the person who added this bot is the slack admin.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#88

Post by Akababa »

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.

Have you talked to the person who made the not? They might not realize how distracting it is. Maybe they'll move it to another channel as a compromise.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#89

Post by [deleted] »

sharadov wrote: post #77
Cacti wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#90

Post by bob1029 »

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…

Point 1 can sound harsh at times, but when you consider the consequences of a toxic team member being left to interact with the rest of the organization every day, it becomes clear that there is a bigger problem at play.

You do not want your good employees to suffer at the hands of a bad employee. It might be difficult to do the right thing in these cases. I would try to focus on the people/products/customers you are helping and less on the negativity you are removing.

I have personally witnessed the consequences of toxicity spreading throughout a team. It is incredible how much productivity you lose and how much more stress you have in your life when everyone is salty all the time.

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