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Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

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

#61

Post by jordan_curve »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #5
gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #2

slack IS email. corporate communication changed medium but remained the same. paper/reports/memos > email clients > rich email clients > webmail+blackberry > webmail+email apps > slack (desktop email app) it is just the first, crappy, desktop email app client. The incumbents will eat them soon, just like microsoft and oracle ate all other email clients in the 90s. I mean, slack is already in someone’s plate.

No its not. What I find frustrating about Slack is that it gives certain people the ability to say "i didn't see that" regarding important work information. I regard properly reading your email part of your job, and if you're missing important emails, you're failing at it. I find that unless you send an email alongside whatever Slack notification, many people will just ignore it.

I feel the exact opposite. If someone emails me, I’m likely to not see it, but if someone @s me on slack there’s no chance I miss it.

The whole upside of slack for me is that it makes it easier for me not to miss the things I absolutely need to see. I get a deluge of automated or templated emails every day. How am I ever supposed to reliably sift through the noise?

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

#62

Post by chmaynard »

"... e-mail was struggling to keep up with the world of hyper-messaging that it helped create." What tripe.

Author Calvin Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He seems to have a nice side gig as a tech pundit:

https://www.calnewport.com

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

#63

Post by paxys »

arawde wrote: post #12
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've been telling my friends for months that if I were to create a startup I would use discord over slack, and my argument is always predicated around the fact that if you want to have a voice conversation with someone and share your screen the flow for it is easily 5x better than the slack calls. They laugh at me, but I think its a viable use case

Look up their terms of service before considering it for work use. At the end of the day Discord is not enterprise software, and so will never be considered seriously for it.

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

#64

Post by tonymet »

dtech wrote: post #32
tonymet wrote: post #4

Slack is a big setback for the labor movement . It undermines any distinction between work and leisure

Why? Just set your notification hours to your work time and don't open it.

That's like saying "if your boss asks you to stay late, just say no" – easier said than done

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

#65

Post by cratermoon »

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…

At my employer we have Slack channels for engineering teams but anyone in the company can (and does) come in to ask what amount to low-level support questions. I've dealt with it on my team by rotating the job of responding so that whoever is on-call for the week deals with it. It means there's a lot of interruptions, unfortunately, for whoever is on call, but at least the rest of the team is explicitly given permission to ignore it.

As a company we could and should do better at the support system, but that's just one aspect of the problem with company expectations.

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

#67

Post by spoonjim »

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…

A 128oz tub of pork rinds with an easy-open cap is just a tool to alleviate hunger when you're looking for a salty snack. Placed next to an incredibly disciplined person like an Olympic athlete, the tub will probably last six months and not damage their health. But placed next to an ordinary person it will definitely encourage overeating.

Tools placed in the hands of imperfect people will be used imperfectly, and in a way that amplifies the properties of the tool more than the priorities of the person.

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

#69

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

Tools use and shape us to the same degree that we use tools. We're not enlightened rational choice actors who correctly discard bad tools and only use good ones, most of the time we just pick defaults, because choice is costly and attention is in short supply.

Build a culture with bad tools and you get a messed up culture. Applies both to the structure of many companies and their communication tools.

Funnily enough the point about choosing Slack can actually be made for skilled professionals and their companies. They can choose where to work, curiously enough many actually up at precisely the firms their top schools are funneling them to.

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

#70

Post by paxys »

cratermoon wrote: post #65
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…

At my employer we have Slack channels for engineering teams but anyone in the company can (and does) come in to ask what amount to low-level support questions. I've dealt with it on my team by rotating the job of responding so that whoever is on-call for the week deals with it. It means there's a lot of interruptions, unfortunately, for whoever is on call, but at least the rest of the team is explicitly given permiss…

We deal with the same. Here's an easy solution – set up a #support- channel for the team. If anyone asks a question in the regular channel, redirect them. Have a fixed rotation and SLA for the support channel.

In fact everyone now prefers this over the pre-Slack way where you had to randomly email or IM people one by one to try and get some help.

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