Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline?

brandur.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 205 posts

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

#131

Post by wintercarver »

At my company we have a “thoughtful communication” guide[1] that addresses Slack and other communication tools. The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. All “conversation” material essentially routes through email and it works great. Takes some getting used to but our Slack instance is very, very relaxed. Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so to (try our best to) preserve focus.

[1] https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/company/thoughtful-communicatio...

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

#133

Post by eitland »

wintercarver wrote: post #131

At my company we have a “thoughtful communication” guide[1] that addresses Slack and other communication tools. The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. All “conversation” material essentially routes through email and it works great. Takes some getting used to but our Slack instance is very, very relaxed. Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so t…

> The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. [...] Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so [...]

How do urgent combine with silencing notifications?

Honest question, it seems I am missing something from the context here.

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

#134

Post by woutr_be »

inevaexisted wrote: post #125

I introduced a similar thing at my work place and it works (there's a few points where people forget or sometimes there's cross over) we added some state to it to so in the context of triaging bugs. we reacted to the original message with: ticks - to indicate the bug or issue was accepted and we had enough information to raise the problem/issue into our tracking system cross - to indicate not a bug jiraicon - to indi…

I don't really understand this workflow, why does this need to happen in Slack at all, when you already use Jira? Wouldn't it be far easier to raise a ticket in Jira directly, have all the info there, and then mark is as a bug/no bug?

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

#136

Post by throwaway743 »

If you're in the US, be careful with what you write on a company channel/email. Both Slack and email can legally be read by management.

Know someone who works at a well known digital radio company. Prior to joining management they were in a coworkers channel where people vented about management, with the exception being them. Upon joining management they were asked why they didn't report on the gossip/venting earlier even though they never partook and it was explained that management was tracking all channels on the company's Slack. Those that were gossiping/venting all got let go

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

#137

Post by tomduncalf »

throwaway743 wrote: post #136

If you're in the US, be careful with what you write on a company channel/email. Both Slack and email can legally be read by management. Know someone who works at a well known digital radio company. Prior to joining management they were in a coworkers channel where people vented about management, with the exception being them. Upon joining management they were asked why they didn't report on the gossip/venting earlier…

From a quick skim of search results (e.g. [1]) it sounds like it’s unlikely (although not impossible) that they’d be reading private Slack messages as it usually requires a request to Slack who will ask for appropriate employee or legal consent. Of course this could be much easier to achieve (or avoid needing) than it sounds, I have no experience of this.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was more likely that they were either told about the chat by someone, or perhaps saw it over someone’s shoulder or whatever.

Still, it’s good advice to treat what you write on there as something that could one day be read by someone unintended for sure.

[1] https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/recode/2020/1/24/21079275/s...

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

#138

Post by whatshisface »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #109
underwater wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggle to understand a situation where that would ever be justifiable. If they have a good reason for deleting messages, that's bad. If their legal team is overzealous and that power is unchecked, that's also bad.

A situation where the corporation is engaged in embarrassing or illegal shit and they're using Slack so they can do all the above-board, non-embarassing stuff via email that would show up in discovery. 5 day retention is so wildly impractical, it's a tacit admission the corp is up to something. Gives legal time to drag anything out in court until it's all gone. By the time the other party learns they have the 5-day r…

>By the time the other party learns they have the 5-day retention, it's too late.

Anyone hoping to use this trick to pull off the perfect caper will be dismayed to discover that not only is the other party allowed to talk to your employees, human testimony is admissible.

The idea of trying to make the past go away after five days, by deleting the digital records, reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1494/.

I'd also like to point out that this thread - where we're discussing the pros and cons of a technique for getting rid of inconvenient records, is itself the kind of awkward talk that, if found in a Slack channel during discovery, would turn in to something else entirely in the hands of some other company's lawyers. That sheds an interesting light on these retention policies.

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

#139

Post by wintercarver »

eitland wrote: post #133
wintercarver wrote: post #131

At my company we have a “thoughtful communication” guide[1] that addresses Slack and other communication tools. The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. All “conversation” material essentially routes through email and it works great. Takes some getting used to but our Slack instance is very, very relaxed. Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so t…

> The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. [...] Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so [...] How do urgent combine with silencing notifications? Honest question, it seems I am missing something from the context here.

Fair question and good point. Our Slack isn’t absolutely quiet - we do have a channel for coordinating on customer issues (meets our urgent and ephemeral criteria) and it might be that some matters are raised by other processes outside of Slack but Slack itself is a good fit for in-the-moment collaboration. But in short we aren’t absolutists, it’s a mix of a few specific channels for certain contexts, channel-specific muting, and updating one’s Slack status - all under the guidance that Slack immediate responsiveness is not generally expected but more the exception. It sounds like a lot as I write that, but as a broader cultural norm within the company it does (so far!) support itself.

That said, I’ll pass your question on to the team as feedback, we should make the answer more clear.

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

#140

Post by R0b0t1 »

eitland wrote: post #133
wintercarver wrote: post #131

At my company we have a “thoughtful communication” guide[1] that addresses Slack and other communication tools. The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. All “conversation” material essentially routes through email and it works great. Takes some getting used to but our Slack instance is very, very relaxed. Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so t…

> The simple rule for Slack is it’s for ephemeral or urgent communication only. [...] Most employees silence all Slack notifications and are encouraged to do so [...] How do urgent combine with silencing notifications? Honest question, it seems I am missing something from the context here.

The default setup for Slack (I think) dings you on any traffic in any channel. This is insane. Dinging on a direct message or a mention in a channel is a lot more reasonable and basically mimics the behavior of IRC.
Post reply on HN