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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

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Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#211

Post by irascible »

tjpnz wrote: post #189

Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.

Slack is what allows me to work from home, spend more time with my family.. avoid a 4 hour commute each day.. and be able to use my own high end computing equipment for work.

I mentor other people in my field via multiple slack channels.. and I have seen the results of that turn into new opportunities for work and new opportunities for my employer.

Slack has its problems, but what it enables for me is incredible.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#212

Post by narag »

marcrosoft wrote: post #194
narag wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would replace "the future" with saying that it's much more profitable for vendors and less convenient for users, so it's being adopted as fast as vendors can overcome users's resistance.

It is actually much more convenient for users. They can switch computers/phone/OSes and have the same experience. The same is not true with native apps.

It's more convenient for some applications, but it's not the case yet for many applications. Evolution of browsers will probably favour web platform for everything except the more close-to-the-metal ones.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#213

Post by dingo_bat »

tjpnz wrote: post #189

Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.

It is about 1000x better than Skype for Business.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#214

Post by fouc »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #75
theturtletalks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlassian has a wider suite of products. I would say HipChat is the Slack alternative. Slack has nothing like Jira, BitBucket, or Trello. And Atlassian is more developer centric whereas Slack is monetizing enterprise users.

HipChat is awful, and only an alternative in a very charitable sense of that word. > Slack has nothing like Jira, BitBucket, or Trello. And thank goodness for that, because those are awful as well.

Actually hipchat was quite nice to use, fast and responsive for awhile, and I loved some of their built in emoticons. I think they didn't really maintain it and keep it up to date with the competition.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#215

Post by burgerboy »

tjpnz wrote: post #189

Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.

If you can't handle using a chat program you are a moron

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#216

Post by ineedasername »

tjpnz wrote: post #189

Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.

Honestly I feel the same way about email. I work in an office culture where rapid email replies are strongly encouraged. But as a project-based worker, that kills my momentum. I've generally gotten away with semi-ignoring it by checking email morning, mid-day, end of day, and strongly encouraging people to call me in the interim with anything truly urgent.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#217

Post by Kudos »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #176

I hear people mention Slack once in a while on various forums but I have no clue what it is. I do not know anyone who uses it so it's not something I, or anyone I know, feels a need for--otherwise we would be searching it out. And therein lies a problem. $16B for something few people need or want? I guess I have to look up Slack and see what it is. EDIT: So I looked it up and it looks like something useful for a lot…

There's a venn diagram with an intersection of people who use Hacker News and people who don't know what Slack is, and it's literally just you. It's bizarre to me that you feel the need to share your opinion on the valuation of something you knew nothing about a half an hour ago.

That said, $16B seems to be about 4x more than I would have expected.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#218

Post by BurningFrog »

tjpnz wrote: post #189

Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.

Is Slack the real problem, or are you just blaming the messenger?

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#219

Post by ec109685 »

fpvracing wrote: post #116
jMyles wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Discord superior? I haven't really used it but my first impressions are that it seems very tailored to the gaming community. At NuCypher switched to Discord from Slack. It's not particularly tailored , but certainly cultural influenced. There are maybe a feature or two that make more sense for gaming, but it's very useful for business. The Discord voice features are particularly useful and are in use every d…

> Slack also has a disastrous "feature" wherein any user can cause the SlackBot to send a message to another user. In an open instance (which Slack seems wont to discourage), this means that a user can easily impersonate another user and purport to be sending messages in an official capacity. Could you tell me more about that? How is that done and is there a way for workspace owners to prevent it?

They have since marked messages from an integration in a way that distinguishes them.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#220

Post by Salgat »

tjpnz wrote: post #189

Just throwing out there but has Slack genuinely improved the work lives of anybody? I've used it for my past two jobs and have yet to find a way of using it that doesn't destroy my productivity or make me genuinely afraid of receiving a message and being thrown off what I was doing.

Without slack I couldn't work full remote.
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