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Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

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Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#21

Post by Swizec »

airstrike wrote: post #18
paxys wrote: post #6

Here's what this conversation always boils down to: Slack is a tool, just like one of probably dozens you use in your day-to-day work. It doesn't set or enforce any guidelines for how it should be used. If left unchecked it has a tendency to amplify the worst parts of your company's culture. If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity. Speaking of the example in the article, there is…

> there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7. Uhh... except in Investment Banking. I suppose when your client is paying so much, they rightfully expect a 24/7 hotline.

Often baked into SaaS pricing models as well. At “call us” pricing tier $Company includes 24/7 support with guaranteed response time SLA

Oh you want the 30min SLA? Add 2 zeroes

The company then institutes the right on-call practices, ensures support staff is trained, triage is correct, etc

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#22

Post by Heliosmaster »

paxys wrote: post #6

Here's what this conversation always boils down to: Slack is a tool, just like one of probably dozens you use in your day-to-day work. It doesn't set or enforce any guidelines for how it should be used. If left unchecked it has a tendency to amplify the worst parts of your company's culture. If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity. Speaking of the example in the article, there is…

The guys at 37signals/Basecamp said it well here: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-presence-prison/

The problem isn't the tool, it's the mindset that often goes with it.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#23

Post by tomtheelder »

arawde wrote: post #12
kungito wrote: post #8

I mean slack isn't even that good. It's a shame it got so entrenched. I wish Discord makes a business productivity push

I've been telling my friends for months that if I were to create a startup I would use discord over slack, and my argument is always predicated around the fact that if you want to have a voice conversation with someone and share your screen the flow for it is easily 5x better than the slack calls. They laugh at me, but I think its a viable use case

Slack has a better ecosystem of work related add-ons, but to be honest I've never found those to be useful. I agree I'd prefer Discord.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#24

Post by paxys »

Swizec wrote: post #21
airstrike wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7. Uhh... except in Investment Banking. I suppose when your client is paying so much, they rightfully expect a 24/7 hotline.

Often baked into SaaS pricing models as well. At “call us” pricing tier $Company includes 24/7 support with guaranteed response time SLA Oh you want the 30min SLA? Add 2 zeroes The company then institutes the right on-call practices, ensures support staff is trained, triage is correct, etc

Yeah, that's my point though. You can't expect your employees to be permanently on call, watch them burn out, then blame Slack.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#25

Post by tomtheelder »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #5
gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #2

slack IS email. corporate communication changed medium but remained the same. paper/reports/memos > email clients > rich email clients > webmail+blackberry > webmail+email apps > slack (desktop email app) it is just the first, crappy, desktop email app client. The incumbents will eat them soon, just like microsoft and oracle ate all other email clients in the 90s. I mean, slack is already in someone’s plate.

No its not. What I find frustrating about Slack is that it gives certain people the ability to say "i didn't see that" regarding important work information. I regard properly reading your email part of your job, and if you're missing important emails, you're failing at it. I find that unless you send an email alongside whatever Slack notification, many people will just ignore it.

That's just a specific element of your workplace's culture then. At jobs I've worked at it would have been much more reasonable to say "I didn't see that email" than "I didn't see that Slack message." Like all communication methods, the standards that are set around them are more important than the mechanism itself.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#26

Post by telesilla »

wpietri wrote: post #14

Yeah, I think of Slack as the virtual version of the open office. Anybody can bother you at any time. In the real world, if we ever return to it, I like having physical team rooms, the sort of thing you have naturally when it's an early-stage startup in a single space. When everybody knows each other and is focused on the same goal, it's not hard to work out good communication and space-use norms. But scaling that up…

We make liberal use of emoticon statuses in Slack: the 'away' icon (red circle with a line) is extremely visual and obvious for us to know which staff are out, sick, busy.. It's become like closed doors for us over time as we all agree to respect it.

It probably helps we are over several timezones and each work irregular hours according to what's happening (kids pick up, teaching, sports..): we can't count on who is there at any time and consequently run the business asynchronously except for pre-planned meetings.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#27

Post by thrower123 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #5
gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #2

slack IS email. corporate communication changed medium but remained the same. paper/reports/memos > email clients > rich email clients > webmail+blackberry > webmail+email apps > slack (desktop email app) it is just the first, crappy, desktop email app client. The incumbents will eat them soon, just like microsoft and oracle ate all other email clients in the 90s. I mean, slack is already in someone’s plate.

No its not. What I find frustrating about Slack is that it gives certain people the ability to say "i didn't see that" regarding important work information. I regard properly reading your email part of your job, and if you're missing important emails, you're failing at it. I find that unless you send an email alongside whatever Slack notification, many people will just ignore it.

The problem with Slack-alikes is that you get buried under a deluge of notifications, so it is needlessly difficult to stay on top of things. Email is far better in this regard.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#28

Post by PragmaticPulp »

paxys wrote: post #6

Here's what this conversation always boils down to: Slack is a tool, just like one of probably dozens you use in your day-to-day work. It doesn't set or enforce any guidelines for how it should be used. If left unchecked it has a tendency to amplify the worst parts of your company's culture. If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity. Speaking of the example in the article, there is…

> If you make an effort to moderate it, it can be a huge asset to productivity.

Sounds good in theory, rarely works well in practice.

The only times I've seen Slack work well is when everyone involved starts with similar expectations about how it should be used and what's appropriate. In my experience, this is easiest to achieve when Slack channels are closely aligned with teams who are working together.

The model tends to break down when Slack is used for communication that is better served by e-mail, calls, or meetings. An easy rule of thumb is that if it crosses department boundaries and/or is something that needs to be formally communicated to an entire team, it's better to direct it to e-mail or a scheduled call.

> Speaking of the example in the article, there is absolutely no reason clients should have direct message channels with your company's employees and expect to get a response 24/7.

Strongly agree, but it's not just clients. Sales people, for example, love to use Slack because it's a backdoor channel to circumvent management and go straight to the engineers.

Re: Slack is the right tool for the wrong way to work

#30

Post by kelp »

pacificat0r wrote: post #16

I don't super understand these articles. Before slack we had Lync, and then skype, and now it's slack. It doesn't replace email, it replaced those other communication apps. I am aware that Slack has a crusade against email but the article or that business example didn't ask why not both? There's a need for real-time communication and there's a need for email too.

For better or for worse (I think to some degree, worse) I've found Slack has eliminated about 90% of my email use at work.

My work email is almost all automated emails, communications with people external to the company, and a small percent of internal communications. Nearly everything else is done over Slack.

So in my experience, it certainly is replacing email. Now, I'm not sure that it should. But it is.

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