I (and somehow the rest of our company) has been spared the constant slack problem but I still don’t know if this is the nature of our work (we work on hardware) or the culture this company has somehow cultivated. Or both.
First, we use Teams. And we have set up Teams to be messenger/chat oriented first, and group chat second. In fact, the group chat feature is heavily controlled and limited to posting domain/company-wide updates. I don’t know if this was intentional, but so it goes.
Result: people use Teams as a substitute for walking across campus to ask a quick question. Or to bounce off an idea. Or to quickly check status. Or to send gifs in meetings.
Second, as a hardware focused company, traceability is super important. You don’t want to be leaving technical decisions on ephemeral chat. You don’t want drawings, schematics, and instructions lost to people just chatting in Slack/Teams.
Result: email/Jira/wiki it is.
Third: as a hardware focused company, the personnel is divided into technicians and engineers. And the technicians do not actively look at their phones/computers. It can be hours sometimes before one of them responds. Last thing you want is a tech looking at their phone every 10 minutes while wielding a rivet gun.
Don’t expect a design engineer to be so quick on their response time either. They’re either deep into a CAD design, in a design meeting, or on the floor with a tech. Don’t Ask to Ask is not specifically taught but most everyone learns to Just Ask because who knows when you’re “Hey I have a question” is getting answered.
Result: most online communication is asynchronous anyways. Urgent matters will result in a call or someone running across campus.
I’m sure Slack plagues many a hardware company. But somehow we have cultivated a culture that discourages spending too much time in chat or storing important info there. If a question becomes too long or complicated, we ask each other to email. If a question is asked too frequently, it is logged in the wiki. If a question becomes rather convoluted, we call each other to quickly resolve the matter.
Messaging doesn’t need to be the enemy. It can be a powerful tool to keep in touch with others flung across the campus/globe.