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The Problem with Slack at Scale

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Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#31

Post by schimmy_changa »

peterbonney wrote: post #27

It’s wild that Google, despite being the leader in startup email/business software and literally giving their Slack competitor to everyone for free as part of their Google Business subscription, STILL has such low mindshare in this space that it didn’t even merit a mention in the blog post. (Full disclosure: my company used Google Chat, and I find the integration ecosystem so pitiful that I’m constantly thinking abou…

Especially because they came so close so early with Google Wave! That was it, I think, but Google didn't have the confidence at the time to stick with it, and it was just too unpolished to keep out in the public at a time when everyone thought that whatever Google did was gold.

Seriously, I think the Wave ideas were the ones that hit the perfect feature-set for informal electronic business communication.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#32

Post by icelancer »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #20

We adopted Slack and I hate it but use daily. What I find so frustrating with Slack is that it's 1. Super terrible at threading. Threads are clearly discouraged and don't nest. This appears to be by design, but even Usenet handled threading better. 2. Slack is an information wastebasket - at least in my experience it's really hard to find information once there's a significant traffic in a deployment. 3. Too Much Not…

All communication tools are bad. It's about what you will tolerate. And Slack is pretty decent there.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#33

Post by onion2k »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #20

We adopted Slack and I hate it but use daily. What I find so frustrating with Slack is that it's 1. Super terrible at threading. Threads are clearly discouraged and don't nest. This appears to be by design, but even Usenet handled threading better. 2. Slack is an information wastebasket - at least in my experience it's really hard to find information once there's a significant traffic in a deployment. 3. Too Much Not…

Slack is a tool, and like all tools it can be used badly. You work at a company that uses it badly.

- No one should be using Slack for deep, branching conversations that require nested threads. Those would be lost and hard to refer back to in any system. Learn to separate and focus on things better.

- Slack is not a documentation system or a knowledge base, and shouldn't be treated like one. Pull salient points out of Slack chats and into a better place for holding information you'll go back to. I genuinely believe that Slack's crappy search tool is a feature. It discourages using Slack history as documentation.

- No one should be using channel wide messaging to the point where people are annoyed enough to mute notifications. Those people should be regulating what they broadcast, and use email instead when things need to be seen by lots of people.

Slack is a great tool for short form conversations, checkins, and automated notifications. But that's all. Using it for something that it's not fit for won't work, but that's not Slack's fault.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#34

Post by epivosism »

slg wrote: post #7

>Slack is based on IRC and is a messaging client. It was built for synchronous communication and not for collaboration. As a result, the way to scale Slack for a large company is to create more and more channels. This increases the amount of information generated in a company. Whilst this can be a good thing, Slack users don’t have the ability to filter high-quality information from low-quality. [emphasis mine] This…

"Save" is the solution. It's a toplevel option, way better than "read now" and "remind me in X hours".

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#35

Post by fulafel »

synicalx wrote: post #6

One thing I think Teams does well in this space, and where I feel Slack falls short, is the organisation of channels. With Teams you can put people in... well teams, and each team has channels and other data associated with it. This hierarchy makes it easy for people to keep a multitude of channels and data organised without actually having to do it themselves. Another thing I have to (begrudgingly) concede to Teams…

Teams makes it hard to form opinions about its potential good ideas because the totality of the user experience is so abysmal, a bit like it's hard to appreciate a details of craftmanship of a torture device from the victim POV.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#36

Post by epivosism »

molsongolden wrote: post #30
ngrilly wrote: post #15

I think Zulip has the potential to become a dominant solution in this space if they find way to make the UI as appealing as Slack. Zulip offers a new approach on how to structure discussions by threads while still being a chat application with a “linear” flow.

I switched companies which meant moving from Zulip to Slack. I don’t understand why people like Slack or what they like about the UI. Threading is terrible, async catchup is difficult, gif links don’t convert cleanly, group DMs are limited to 8 users then Slack suggests creating a new channel…?!

I've never used Zulip, and prefer slack threads to discord's attempt. Could you explain how they work in Zulip?

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#37

Post by mattwad »

peterbonney wrote: post #27

It’s wild that Google, despite being the leader in startup email/business software and literally giving their Slack competitor to everyone for free as part of their Google Business subscription, STILL has such low mindshare in this space that it didn’t even merit a mention in the blog post. (Full disclosure: my company used Google Chat, and I find the integration ecosystem so pitiful that I’m constantly thinking abou…

For personal use, GChat has really been hurt ever since they merged it into Mail. It's much harder to share files and access now. Also they took away video for some reason

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#38

Post by fulafel »

cyberpunk wrote: post #2

I mean, good luck… Getting into enterprise IM in 2022 is complete idiocy, but… Good luck. We already have the solution, it’s zulip, yet no one uses it or cares. > Slack is based on IRC Not true any more, maybe in ancient history. > It was built for synchronous communication. Also wrong.

The word "enterprise" is notable in its absence in the article. Framing your problem as "enterprise xxx" would evoke Teams and HipChat, not improved Slack.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#39

Post by vehementi »

mikebenfield wrote: post #23
citizenpaul wrote: post #16

>I spent nearly 4 years working on Workplace from Meta, so I’m familiar with building in this space. Some VC guy said this is one of the biggest red flags he looks for in a startup. It almost always leads to failure. I dont remember the exact reasons but something like it means the startup doesnt understand fundamental market segment issues and grit required to overcome them.

Sorry, could you clarify? What specifically is the red flag?

Presumably making your own Slack, or more generally spending time on things you don't have a competitive advantage at by reinventing someone else's wheel

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#40

Post by vemv »

I've long held the opinion the best chat app is no chat app, i.e. delegate everything to your favorite issue tracker and other forms of knowledge keeping (e.g. Git commits, design documents).

Let everything be either fully 'literate' (for lack of a better term: abundant context, complete paragraphs and argumentation, hyperlinking), or fully sync and human (meetings), with no in between other than email, used thinly.

I'd wager that this approach will be increasingly obvious as more people burn out from messy remote settings - many of which were improvised due to the pandemic, yet are here to stay.

It's a model that has worked well for OSS - many projects do just fine with Github alone, sustainably, for years.

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