Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email • Hacker News Board

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#71

Post by hyperdimension » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

vosper wrote: post #30

booleandilemma wrote: post #20

Can people still passive-aggressively cc my boss on emails to me when they want me to drop everything to work on their special issue?

> Dear [sender], thanks for bringing this to my attention. Booleandilemma is actually busy on other work at the moment, and needs to be able to focus on that. Please send these requests to me, rather than to booleandilemma, and I will get take care of prioritising them. If we need to discuss this further I'd be happy to jump on a call with you. > Thanks, and have a nice day > Booleandilemma's boss I guess we can drea…

Please tell me you're hiring! :)

But seriously, I find including someone's boss on the first email to them (I'd imagine to just prioritize the sender's task and make the recipient look bad if they don't follow through) is highly passive-aggressive. In general, my boss is concerned in what I accomplish for/with my team, and it sure would be nice to do whatever thing you're foisting upon me, but I'd just like to tell them to add it to the ever-elongating queue of other teams' requests. I've got my own job to do!

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#72

Post by sriku » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:34 AM UTC

ryan29 wrote: post #46

> Front is like Slack for your email, except instead of creating another distracting, noisy, always-on tool, Front allows users to spin up ephemeral chats within email threads themselves. That's the exact opposite of what I'd want. Most small businesses have the same email problem that I always feel like I do. Too many requests come in via email and it's hard to track, discuss, resolve, and (at a later date) referenc…

> Forward an email to a special address. Ex: ryan29@todo.example.com (the TODO address for ryan29@example.com).

This should be possible with ryan29+todo@example.com though .. in conjunction with filtering. I use this for bookmarking and some basic categorisation.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#73

Post by hyperdimension » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:39 AM UTC

hyperdimension wrote: post #71

vosper wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dear [sender], thanks for bringing this to my attention. Booleandilemma is actually busy on other work at the moment, and needs to be able to focus on that. Please send these requests to me, rather than to booleandilemma, and I will get take care of prioritising them. If we need to discuss this further I'd be happy to jump on a call with you. > Thanks, and have a nice day > Booleandilemma's boss I guess we can drea…

Please tell me you're hiring! :) But seriously, I find including someone's boss on the first email to them (I'd imagine to just prioritize the sender's task and make the recipient look bad if they don't follow through) is highly passive-aggressive. In general, my boss is concerned in what I accomplish for/with my team, and it sure would be nice to do whatever thing you're foisting upon me, but I'd just like to tell t…

I'd also like to add that internships are all about learning the corporate world, right?

Well, way back when, as someone who likes to do a good job, but quickly (Personally, I just don't like a backlog of work,) as a bright-eyed intern, I learned very quickly not to ever 'be nice' to anyone not on your team.

It was 'just another internship-learning-experience,' but it sure opened my eyes to the two Iron Laws of corporations:

(1) If it breaks, and you touched it last, it's entirely your fault.

(2) [This was an extremely hard lesson to learn as a 'naturally helpful' kind of person:] If you help someone with something, it's your responsibility. Forever.

Needless to say, I learned quickly. I learned that corporations are more or less perversions of regular society where everyone tries to punt work off to whoever else seems most suitable or exploitable.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#74

Post by kilburn » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:40 AM UTC

martinesko36 wrote: post #68

Disclaimer: I work on Emailio ( https://emailio.com ), a YC company that is a direct competitor to Front. We help you build healthy email habits. Slack is detrimental to team communication in several ways, and bringing it to email is a mistake imho. Slack combines the stress and urgency of text messaging with the importance of email. Your Slack becomes a Facebook or Twitter feed - another infinite feed that addicts y…

> Furthermore, asynchronous communication has proven poor for wellness and worklife balance.

I think you meant "synchronous" here ;)

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#75

Post by martinesko36 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:43 AM UTC

kilburn wrote: post #74

martinesko36 wrote: post #68

Disclaimer: I work on Emailio ( https://emailio.com ), a YC company that is a direct competitor to Front. We help you build healthy email habits. Slack is detrimental to team communication in several ways, and bringing it to email is a mistake imho. Slack combines the stress and urgency of text messaging with the importance of email. Your Slack becomes a Facebook or Twitter feed - another infinite feed that addicts y…

> Furthermore, asynchronous communication has proven poor for wellness and worklife balance. I think you meant "synchronous" here ;)

Can you elaborate? Slack's async feed used to ping me every 5 min and distract me from coding. I also found myself having OCD about going through each and every message that was sent to all channels - very low ROI obsession. I like the slightly higher barrier of having to send emails and refresh your email inbox :)

EDIT - thanks to everyone correcting me on the sync vs async! I fixed it in the original comment.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#76

Post by mslate » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:47 AM UTC

npiit wrote: post #26

>$49/$79 per user billed annually. Seriously who pays for such a rudimentary product all that money. The pricing doesn't make any sense.

Comments like these are a great reminder of how disconnected HN comment section can be from reality. That pricing is nothing.

At that price, if it helps close 1 incremental sale a month per seat it pays for itself.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#77

Post by mfkp » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:47 AM UTC

martinesko36 wrote: post #68

Disclaimer: I work on Emailio ( https://emailio.com ), a YC company that is a direct competitor to Front. We help you build healthy email habits. Slack is detrimental to team communication in several ways, and bringing it to email is a mistake imho. Slack combines the stress and urgency of text messaging with the importance of email. Your Slack becomes a Facebook or Twitter feed - another infinite feed that addicts y…

Companies are still launching with iOS/Mac only? Very Silicon Valley of you. Ignoring Windows and Android is just silly these days.

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#78

Post by kilburn » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:49 AM UTC

martinesko36 wrote: post #75

kilburn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, asynchronous communication has proven poor for wellness and worklife balance. I think you meant "synchronous" here ;)

Can you elaborate? Slack's async feed used to ping me every 5 min and distract me from coding. I also found myself having OCD about going through each and every message that was sent to all channels - very low ROI obsession. I like the slightly higher barrier of having to send emails and refresh your email inbox :) EDIT - thanks to everyone correcting me on the sync vs async! I fixed it in the original comment.

In my mental scheme slack is mostly synchronous (people expect a reply, there's a @here thingy to ping everyone, etc) whereas e-mail is asynchronous (people don't expect an immediate reply).

You said "asynchronous communication is detrimental to your health". Since asynchronous=email, I read "email is detrimental to your health". I thought you meant the contrary (slack is detrimental to your health -> synchronous communication is detrimental to your health) so I though it was a mistake.

Wasn't it?

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#79

Post by caffeinewriter » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

martinesko36 wrote: post #75

kilburn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, asynchronous communication has proven poor for wellness and worklife balance. I think you meant "synchronous" here ;)

Can you elaborate? Slack's async feed used to ping me every 5 min and distract me from coding. I also found myself having OCD about going through each and every message that was sent to all channels - very low ROI obsession. I like the slightly higher barrier of having to send emails and refresh your email inbox :) EDIT - thanks to everyone correcting me on the sync vs async! I fixed it in the original comment.

Synchronous communication typically means something that demands your attention as soon as something is sent. Asynchronous communication is something that typically handled whenever you're ready for it. To put it in programming terms, synchronous communication "blocks" until you deal with it, where as asynchronous doesn't require you to deal with it until you're ready to.

https://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-advisor/questions/s...

https://status.net/articles/synchronous-vs-asynchronous-comm...

Re: Front: The $1.3B Startup Slackifying Email

#80

Post by martinesko36 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 6:52 AM UTC

mfkp wrote: post #77

martinesko36 wrote: post #68

Disclaimer: I work on Emailio ( https://emailio.com ), a YC company that is a direct competitor to Front. We help you build healthy email habits. Slack is detrimental to team communication in several ways, and bringing it to email is a mistake imho. Slack combines the stress and urgency of text messaging with the importance of email. Your Slack becomes a Facebook or Twitter feed - another infinite feed that addicts y…

Companies are still launching with iOS/Mac only? Very Silicon Valley of you. Ignoring Windows and Android is just silly these days.

I don't really like Silicon Valley's mentality either, but no need for judgment. I totally feel you, and for us as a very small company we had the choice of either a) building a great native iOS/Mac app or b) Electron that runs everywhere but is ultimately a poor experience. We want to build a sustainable business not fueled by VC money, so our bandwidth is very limited. We decided to go the native route and work with the platforms we are experts on. There's some great Windows/Android clients though!