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Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

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Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#31

Post by PragmaticPulp »

tptacek wrote: post #25

I think the answer here is pretty straightforward: run a Discourse board alongside your Slack, and nudge conversations out of the Slack and onto the board. The board works for long-form stuff, and for stuff you need to reference in the future; Slack works for interactivity when you want the interactivity . We've been doing this for over a year at Fly.io and it's worked out great; I wish every other place I've worked…

> and nudge conversations out of the Slack and onto the board

Getting serious conversations out of Slack and into a more thoughtful medium seems to be the key to success.

Every time I've seen Slack used as the central repository of communication and information, it's a disaster. No, I don't want to sift through 30 pinned messages in each of the 5 channels vaguely related to a topic to find some piece of information I need. Treat Slack as casual, interactive chat, but get the information and decision-making into a better medium as soon as it becomes more important.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#32

Post by e2021 »

brimble wrote: post #18
e2021 wrote: post #3

One of the things I miss working at Facebook is the internal FB (called Workplace). It basically replaced email for the whole company, and worked really well for long form posts where maybe you would write some proposal up or make an announcement and get a bunch of comments. I now work at a slack centric company, and it just doesn't compare - there is no 'newsfeed', so unless you remember to check all the channels, y…

I've seen internal Facebook-alikes a couple places and they've been gross LinkedIn-tone places taken over by HR and managers doing rah-rah-let's-go-we're-so-great stuff and a few workers trying to kiss ass. What about Facebook's kept it from being that? Broader culture, or was there some enforcement of it? (plus, and this is just a me-problem, I find them impossibly confusing because they ape Facebook's UI, which I f…

Good question, and I don't know the answer, because I've never seen the alternatives. In WP anyone can create a group, and make it private, so you can just make a private group for a bunch of engineers to work on some project with no pressure to be 'performative' for the rest of the company. Basically its a replacement for email distribution lists, but with many advantages over plain email.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#33

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

interesting article because Stripe had quite a couple of "culture & hiring" issues the past months. This is just another example that the company is toxic and they rather focus on existing process/tools than people.

Working in shops that used slack (usually it means it's used heavily) has taught me to avoid any shop that uses that tool because knowledge isn't captured properly. There was a critical thread here accusing the same of Discord (for good reason). But Slack doesn't get the same fire from the HN crowd and it makes me wonder.

I guess you can create the same mess with Teams, but in the end it's the company culture that decides where to have discussions and at what point that value generated by those should be captured via which means. I certainly will not scroll up more than 2 pages in a chat so if info is lost better write an email.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#34

Post by PragmaticPulp »

lmarcos wrote: post #16
dhbradshaw wrote: post #7

In the main article Slack communication is assumed to be synchronous. I find life to be a little happier when it's assumed to be asynchronous. That means turning off some channel notifications. When I really want effective synchronous communication I tend to escalate from Slack to audio or video a screen share -- it seems like there's an extra layer of collaboration that you can have with a bit higher bandwidth. For…

Slack would become the best chat app for every company out there with just one simple feature (or the lack of it): - remove the "user is online" green dot. Really, it's not needed. Once it's removed then everything becomes async by default (and so everything slows down a little bit =>everyone is happier)

E-mail is inherently async. Async to the core. Why not just send your async requests as an e-mail so the other person can handle it as they process their inbox?

Slack excels at real-time, interactive communication. It's chat, designed for back-and-forth. Your messages will get scrolled into the backlog if there's a lot of chat while you're away.

The green dot (or the "busy" setting) is great for understanding whether the other person is going to receive your message as a notification at their computer or a push message on their phone. That's highly relevant.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#35

Post by wheybags »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #7

In the main article Slack communication is assumed to be synchronous. I find life to be a little happier when it's assumed to be asynchronous. That means turning off some channel notifications. When I really want effective synchronous communication I tend to escalate from Slack to audio or video a screen share -- it seems like there's an extra layer of collaboration that you can have with a bit higher bandwidth. For…

I have all notifications off all the time. I check slack when I have a moment, like if I'm waiting for CI or a long compile. Actual highlights will turn the tray icon red, so I will notice soon, but replying even to highlights immediately is madness.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#36

Post by TastyJhinga »

lmarcos wrote: post #16
dhbradshaw wrote: post #7

In the main article Slack communication is assumed to be synchronous. I find life to be a little happier when it's assumed to be asynchronous. That means turning off some channel notifications. When I really want effective synchronous communication I tend to escalate from Slack to audio or video a screen share -- it seems like there's an extra layer of collaboration that you can have with a bit higher bandwidth. For…

Slack would become the best chat app for every company out there with just one simple feature (or the lack of it): - remove the "user is online" green dot. Really, it's not needed. Once it's removed then everything becomes async by default (and so everything slows down a little bit =>everyone is happier)

You do know that you can set yourself as away and nobody will be able to see your online status?

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#38

Post by dimgl »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #33

interesting article because Stripe had quite a couple of "culture & hiring" issues the past months. This is just another example that the company is toxic and they rather focus on existing process/tools than people. Working in shops that used slack (usually it means it's used heavily) has taught me to avoid any shop that uses that tool because knowledge isn't captured properly. There was a critical thread here accusi…

Really…? You won’t work at a place because they use a certain chat application?

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#39

Post by xfitm3 »

admax88qqq wrote: post #19
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

> For the next five years I operated in “Slack culture”, the communication paradigm that I suspect is in use by many companies these days. Email inboxes were more or less reserved for broadcasts from exec and HR along with JIRA spam. Everything else happens on Slack. This is the real problem, IMO. Slack shouldn't be replacing e-mail or meetings or phone calls. It's great for impromptu discussions with a lot of back-a…

> but once it becomes a serious conversation with multiple parties you need to escalate to a call or meeting or e-mail. Why? Having multiple different communication buses seems like a problem as well. Possibly a worse one IMO

The real problem is Slack's engagement tactics. Reducing time on Slack benefits everyone, except Slack itself.

Re: Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

#40

Post by jader201 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24
admax88qqq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but once it becomes a serious conversation with multiple parties you need to escalate to a call or meeting or e-mail. Why? Having multiple different communication buses seems like a problem as well. Possibly a worse one IMO

If you need a specific list of people engaged in a conversation, you can either: 1) Schedule something in a time slot that works for everyone. Everyone arrives prepared to focus on the conversation and reach a conclusion before returning to work. 2) Ping them in Slack or @channel and try to pry them away from whatever they're working on. Get a mix of half-attention and hurried responses and force your devs to choose…

It depends, though.

Meetings are expensive, and often a waste of a number of people's time. And sometimes figuring out _who_ should be there is a problem (and cause also burn time).

Having broader discussions in a Slack thread has the benefits of:

a) it fosters transparency -- others are able to see the discussion, and chime in or move on

b) it's asynchronous -- others can chime in when they're able to, vs. having to drop what they're doing and join a meeting

c) it's self-documenting -- others that may not have been able to attend the meeting, or may just want to know the context/takeaways can just review the discussion

Of course, it has the downside of blocking a decision, where a meeting can help arrive at a decision more quickly. But -- at least, in our experience -- most decisions aren't urgent, and the turnaround time a Slack thread yields is typically sufficient. When it's not, we'll jump on a call.

Email, to me, is the worst of both worlds. You mention below that it forces more thought, and I agree with that as an upside. But typically (again, in our experience), people are pretty put together pretty well-thought-out discussions together, so it's not really an issue for us. We _never_ use email, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

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