Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

Post by icedchai » Fri, Feb 18, 2022, 2:05 AM UTC

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #27

hackandtrip wrote: post #20

To me, it is incredible that Slack is used WITHOUT threads. There is no way that information and discussions can be effective without a threaded conversation - it would just be pure cause otherwise. Also, I find feature-specific channels to be such a pleasure. It's easy to have everyone focused on the same topic in a given channel, without any confusion or missing information between different channels or private mes…

What are "no-focus times"?

Post by philip1209 » Fri, Feb 18, 2022, 2:07 AM UTC

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…

Post by philip1209 » Fri, Feb 18, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC

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…

Post by nescioquid » Fri, Feb 18, 2022, 2:21 AM UTC

Spoom wrote: post #78

nescioquid wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Post by underwater » Fri, Feb 18, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

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…