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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?

#71

Post by Gigachad »

philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

I never bother reading slack backlogs. I use slack to get quick answers to questions and then for any kind of design decisions, they go in to a diagram or wiki page which will be discussed in the next meeting.

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

#72

Post by shmerl »

dariusj18 wrote: post #65

For me Slack did not replace email, it replaced Instant Messenger. It replaced standing up from my desk and walking into another office to ask a question that I ether needed the answer to now, or never. EDIT: I hate how all these code projects have their own Slack though, it's super annoying and has been a horrible way to engage with the community and get answers to questions. (Discord too)

I'm more annoyed that more of them don't use Matrix.

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

#73

Post by steelframe »

philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

My friend works at a company that -- on orders from legal -- has set a 5-day "disappearing messages" policy for all of the corp Slack. Unfortunately nearly all technical discussions happen on Slack. He tells me that it's not unusual for messages to start disappearing before the issue being worked on has even been resolved, and everyone has to re-ask the same questions and re-post the answers at that point, and sometimes things slip through the cracks. Then there's no way for people joining the company to get answers to already-asked-and-answered questions, and they end up spamming everyone on various channels with frequently-asked questions that often go ignored because people are tired of re-posting the same answers over and over again.

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

#74

Post by Gigachad »

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)

I’m just glad it doesn’t have read receipts

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

#75

Post by mediocregopher »

steelframe wrote: post #73
philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

My friend works at a company that -- on orders from legal -- has set a 5-day "disappearing messages" policy for all of the corp Slack. Unfortunately nearly all technical discussions happen on Slack. He tells me that it's not unusual for messages to start disappearing before the issue being worked on has even been resolved, and everyone has to re-ask the same questions and re-post the answers at that point, and someti…

Has legal decreed you can't have a wiki as well?

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

#76

Post by yurishimo »

TastyJhinga wrote: post #36
lmarcos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

But then your boss/manager can’t spy on you!

I think most of us are lucky enough to work in companies or roles where that’s an acceptable option, but many others are not. It’s gotta be a cultural company change or one driven by the product team at Slack.

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

#78

Post by Spoom »

nescioquid wrote: post #64
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…

> Casual, asynchronous chat is great ... I'm in the lead-weight-dragging tail (working in a bank using Teams, but dealt with this at the last job in Slack as well). The major hassle seems to be getting people to understand this is asynchronous communication (perpetrators are both developers and executives) and this problem seems to stand before the rest of the more sophisticated complaints evinced here can be even ad…

We have an unofficial policy in my company that all pertinent information should be in the first message specifically to avoid the scenario you mention. Highly recommended.

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

#79

Post by philip1209 »

PikachuEXE wrote: post #70
philip1209 wrote: post #47

I'm tired of constant chatting. Slack encourages quick, stream-of-consciousness, short responses. Plus, it's hard to find past discussion, and it's hard to jump in after being gone for a few days (or, even a few hours). Threads are absolutely the answer. But, the defaults matter - Slack isn't encouraging threaded, long-form messages. Instead, it makes all messages feel urgent - and it makes the cost of sending a mess…

I have tried Zulip but I think Twist has better UX & UI. https://twist.com/slack-alternative Supported by Doist which also supports Todoist which I am using

I've used Twist. It's a good piece of software, but I think it's too work-focused.

Consumerization of Enterprise is real - people don't want work to feel like work. Even Slack is more of a social tool than a work tool [1]. So, I think that the key to building a great work-focused tool is to start on non-work use cases - such as social groups.

Looking at Twist - I don't think it emphasizes usability, users in multiple workspaces, quality notifications, easy onboarding, and group discoverability. Take a look at the nav - it's built for hundreds of people, but groups will start with far fewer than that, and churn before they grow. Plus, it's entirely a logged-in experience - how many beloved forums are logged-in-only?

Twist is a good tool for certain uses - but I'm going for something more generalizeable.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/slack-is-...

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

#80

Post by TameAntelope »

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…

Yeah, I think the author could do well with just muting slack for a few hours a day, and hand out his phone # for emergencies.
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