Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
How is that Slack;s fault?
Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
101–110 of 131 posts
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The channel name is not the problem. The problem is that people will go to whatever channel they want and ignore any "official" support system. It's the same as the guy in sales who comes to your desk to bug you about something he promised a customer. He knows he's supposed to go through channels, but he's going to do what he wants, regardless of mechanism.
That can be solved with the right company culture and a good manager. If someone was disturbing my work in that manner I would mention it to my boss, who would probably tell me to not spend time answering them next time and direct them to the proper support channel. If it happened repeatedly, then my boss would escalate it with the salesperson’s boss.
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Strongly agree, but it's not just clients. Sales people, for example, love to use Slack because it's a backdoor channel to circumvent management and go straight to the engineers. And that's bad because?
Because management should be rigorously defending devs from being needlessly interrupted with whatever some sales guy thinks is important in the moment? Management can filter out the garbage, condense down the really important bits and deliver them during a time it won't knock dev out of the zone?
Worked fine where I worked. You know you can turn notifications off? You know you can tell a sales guy he's being annoying?
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Other people haven't been as lucky.
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#105I have used Slack for two years now and don’t see any problems with it. 35 people at my company.
You wouldn’t with only 35 people. Wait until you hit 350.
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The channel name is not the problem. The problem is that people will go to whatever channel they want and ignore any "official" support system. It's the same as the guy in sales who comes to your desk to bug you about something he promised a customer. He knows he's supposed to go through channels, but he's going to do what he wants, regardless of mechanism.
They will keep doing it if they keep getting positive results. Eventually it's up to you and your team to set boundaries.
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope the other commenter's idea of "right on-call practices" involve hiring enough employees to give a humane on-call schedule, and compensating appropriately for the on-call time. That's my idea of the right on-call practices, and would go very well with "add 2 zeroes" in the pricing of that SLA. But, yeah, a lot of places don't do that.
I had a manager tell me we can't hire people to be low productivity people just because we need people in the rotation. Idk if I agree with that, though I guess I get the point.
Who suggested hiring low productivity people?
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#108Here'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…
Slack expects you to look at slack during your work hours - and robs you from the focus needed for deep work.
Or, you do deep work, and lose on the decisions, chatter made in real time.
Slack turns the working environment to an equivalent of n open office where everyone chatters all of the time.
Good luck doing anything else.
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The channel name is not the problem. The problem is that people will go to whatever channel they want and ignore any "official" support system. It's the same as the guy in sales who comes to your desk to bug you about something he promised a customer. He knows he's supposed to go through channels, but he's going to do what he wants, regardless of mechanism.
They will keep doing it if they keep getting positive results. Eventually it's up to you and your team to set boundaries.
For sure, but then management gets unhappy because sales people are unhappy.
Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work
#110Earlier 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).
Threads are an extremely important asset in large channels to maintain organization. Less important in ad-hoc quick conversations in small DM groups for sure. I've never experienced any issues with people not using threads and the UX around it has always seemed fairly smooth to me.
I'm always not sure when a conversation will need a thread. Sometimes I start a thread and then it's over with just one message that provides the answer. Other times I don't start one right away, but now if I start one then the first 4 messages of context will be missing at the top. I would use threads ofif there were a way to create them retroactively.