Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#51

Post by zaphar » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #45

oneplane wrote: post #35

Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it, even set status messages like "I will check my messages twice a day". There are plenty of 'product X is bad' write-ups, but all of them try to blame something while the blame is for something intangible which is much harder to write a clever title for. Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make su…

> Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it, even set status messages like "I will check my messages twice a day". From a workflow standpoint, this is optimal. The catch is that many people view Slack as e-mail but with an expectation of instant response. The farther your Slack communications stray from engineers, the more likely you are to encounter this mindset…

I maintain "API documentation" for my coworkers to refer to when they interface with me. In them I specifically call out that I do not view Slack as an instant response channel. I have a cell phone they can use if they need that type of SLA. Slack and Email are asynchronous. I have stuck with that since I started here and everyone seems to understand that those are the SLAs I commit to.

So far no one is upset with me about it.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#52

Post by jmpeax » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

oneplane wrote: post #35

Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it, even set status messages like "I will check my messages twice a day". There are plenty of 'product X is bad' write-ups, but all of them try to blame something while the blame is for something intangible which is much harder to write a clever title for. Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make su…

> Slack is fine and works fine. As a user, you can very easily turn it off and on at will, mute it

> Same goes for the open office; that can work just fine if you make sure everyone shuts their mouth while working

The analogy is not even close. You can mute slack, but you can't mute everyone in your office (without noise cancelling headphones being a permenant feature of your uniform).

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#53

Post by munro » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:28 PM UTC

Solvitieg wrote: post #46

This morning I had three members of my team private message me to tell me about their weekend. On one hand, maybe I'm an asshole because I don't care to have three separate conversations about my weekend. But there's something about Internet Messaging which makes it highly inefficient and basic small talk that should last 30 seconds in the office, last 30 minutes . I tend to use phrases like "ttyl" or "cya" to try to…

I don't know you or your coworkers, but dang, trash talking them on HN? Sounds like a great place to work . Definitely sounds like some communication issues going on.

I've worked for the past 8 years on remote teams, and from my experience, having a shared mind is very important to a highly productive team.

My suggestion to you would be to communicate with your coworkers that you've already talked about your weekend with so-and-so, building resentment with your coworkers is never good. Maybe even create a channel specifically to talk about your weekends! Who knows, you may like it. :)

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#54

Post by tonymet » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

atarian wrote: post #9

Raphmedia wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninstall it from your phone? Turn off notifications? Make a work profile on your android and get off it once your shift ends? I use Slack daily and I've never brought it home with me.

Pretty much this. If you don't set boundaries, your job will set yours.

Boundaries are set by the group culture. If your peers are always available, and you are not, you are the odd one out.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#55

Post by Raphmedia » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #33

Raphmedia wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninstall it from your phone? Turn off notifications? Make a work profile on your android and get off it once your shift ends? I use Slack daily and I've never brought it home with me.

Not saying you’re wrong, but it shouldn’t be up to the victim to prevent being abused for labor. A workplace that allows a tool to pervade into their worker’s personal life is not doing a good job protecting their workers, and are complacent in the abuse.

> but it shouldn’t be up to the victim to prevent being abused for labor

This depends on the situation. A workplace that enforce after hours always-on presence? Absolutely despicable. Should even be illegal, in my opinion.

An employee who decides on their own to install Slack on their personal device and then decide on their own to open it outside work hours? That's on them.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#56

Post by stavros » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #50

StavrosK wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the fact that defaults matter, and defaults shape the usage of the tool. I want to reply in threats, but often don't, because it requires me to let go of my keyboard and fumble around with the mouse to do it. That's why I vastly prefer Zulip (which additionally isn't slow as molasses).

I want to reply in threats Look, I feel ya, but it is important to stay professional even in the face of annoying coworkers.

Nice fingers you typed that comment with, it'd be a shame if anything were to... happen to them.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#57

Post by da39a3ee » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

> I do not dislike Slack as much as people assume given that I wrote a book titled “Deep Work,” which advocates for the importance of long, undistracted stretches of work.

This marks the author out as a fantasist. Once a company gets above a couple of hundred employees, the majority of the new employees simply are not the sort of people who do "long, undistracted stretches of work". You can't carry on for ever hiring people who both have that sort of mentality and intellectual fortitude, and also want their job to completely dominate their day rather than just 9-5.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#58

Post by dheera » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #14

Yeah, I think of Slack as the virtual version of the open office. Anybody can bother you at any time. In the real world, if we ever return to it, I like having physical team rooms, the sort of thing you have naturally when it's an early-stage startup in a single space. When everybody knows each other and is focused on the same goal, it's not hard to work out good communication and space-use norms. But scaling that up…

> it removes some of they physical signals and feedback mechanisms

For me the biggest annoying thing about Slack is the calling feature. I don't like unscheduled calls. It also often starts making a racket when I'm in the middle of another call with different software. I might write a browser plugin sometime to disable Slack calls.

For everything else though I usually just close Slack when I'm heads down working and open it during periodic breaks to check for anything important.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#59

Post by subsubzero » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #6

Here's what this conversation always boils down to: Slack is a tool, just like one of probably dozens you use in your day-to-day work. It doesn't set or enforce any guidelines for how it should be used. If left unchecked it has a tendency to amplify the worst parts of your company's culture. If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity. Speaking of the example in the article, there is…

I was going to post the same thing. Use tools in a healthy way and they should be useful not harmful.

I really like slack and use it constantly during work. If you need to go head down and focus on tasks needing concentration, put a notification on your slack profile saying you are busy. Make blocks on your calendar for sanity and concentration time and a slack status to match.

The same thing could be applied to email, I never answer my email later than work hours, sometimes the company itself is the issue, if they expect all hours communication I would look elsewhere, time and sanity are vital natural resources.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#60

Post by kevsim » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

kungito wrote: post #8

I mean slack isn't even that good. It's a shame it got so entrenched. I wish Discord makes a business productivity push

I make a product management tool/issue tracker that integrates to both tools, and I will say from the perspective of a developer integrating to them, Slack is easier to work with (though Discord is ok too). Little things like the "only visible to you" messages in slack make it much easier to make a nice integration.