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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

#411

Post by gexla »

jakubp wrote: post #358
warp_factor wrote: post #351

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history. - They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate. - They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS. - They managed to make a lo…

It's not just productivity. It can also damage quality of relationships and introduce unnecessary conflict - as any written communications tool does - because people also fall for using Slack to discuss tough issues. It doesn't replace actual in-person conversation, but especially younger workers and managers don't know that and suffer a lot due to lack of emotional fidelity of actually using their bodies to talk.

Communication tools don't create this issue, they only bring it closer to the surface. You have to learn to manage your emotions. If you don't then it's always going to something which holds you back. If it affects younger workers more than others, then that's because they haven't learned this skill yet. It's one of many things which people new to the workplace have to manage.

Some of the other more obvious emotional issues include procrastination and imposter syndrome. Everyone experiences these emotional swings. Experienced workers learn how to manage them. The earlier the better.

There are lots of things broken in the space of "work." Teaching younger workers how to deal with emotions is one of them.

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

#413

Post by walterstucco »

todd3834 wrote: post #366
warp_factor wrote: post #351

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history. - They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate. - They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS. - They managed to make a lo…

An alternative perspective: - Chat apps have been around for a while but now that Slack has been so widely adopted working remote has become a lot easier. - Screen sharing for pair programming where everyone has the client installed and we don’t have to convince anyone to pay for it is great. (I’m very sad Slack is shuttering this service though) - When I’m in the office I find that people who used to interrupt me by…

The point is you don't need slack for any of that.

I remember

- everyone is on IRC

- everyone is on ICQ

- everyone is MSN

- everyone is on Jabber

- everyone is on Skype

- everyone is on Gtalk

- Do you remember Gitter?

All of them in a way or another enabled what you're talking about

The only difference was that no one was advocating so blatantly for a tool thinking it made them look cool

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

#414

Post by coldtea »

gexla wrote: post #411
jakubp wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just productivity. It can also damage quality of relationships and introduce unnecessary conflict - as any written communications tool does - because people also fall for using Slack to discuss tough issues. It doesn't replace actual in-person conversation, but especially younger workers and managers don't know that and suffer a lot due to lack of emotional fidelity of actually using their bodies to talk.

Communication tools don't create this issue, they only bring it closer to the surface. You have to learn to manage your emotions. If you don't then it's always going to something which holds you back. If it affects younger workers more than others, then that's because they haven't learned this skill yet. It's one of many things which people new to the workplace have to manage. Some of the other more obvious emotional…

>Communication tools don't create this issue, they only bring it closer to the surface. You have to learn to manage your emotions. If you don't then it's always going to something which holds you back.

That's close to saying "bullets don't kill people, the hole in their vital organs does".

The thing is, text-based communication tools are problematic compared to face-to-face communication, even in people who know how to "manage their emotions", because they hide non-verbal clues and make statements easier to misconstrue.

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

#415

Post by tdj »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #354
warp_factor wrote: post #351

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history. - They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate. - They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS. - They managed to make a lo…

> So yeah I don't blame them but I blame every company that falls for this. While I understand where your complaints are coming from, I encourage you to think about the fact that so many companies are "falling" for them. You and I might care about disturbances, "attention driven" work culture, open protocols, etc., but not everyone is a software engineer. The world is bigger than that. Clearly, some people quite enjo…

My beef with Slack is that everyone in this comments section is pretending it's an async communication tool, but that is only true people that are used to working without context switching and acknowledge that interrupting someone has a cost. For everyone else, there is an expectation of prompt responses, or you are considered untrustworthy if you take too long to respond.

I suspect a lot of frustration fundamentally revolves around trust. If there is a lack of trust, it must get compensated with an increase in visibility. Slack just happens to be a decent tool to provide visibility.

Story time: in a company I worked for, the Most Senior Engineer requested to be exempt from participating on Slack as the only person outside management, and skip the daily stand-ups. He did get a lot more done. I envied him quite a bit - mostly because our stumbles and challenges (just normal development stuff) were very visible and prompted lots of nervouse queries from PMs and sales people via Slack about why our tests are failing and why we needed to refactor code, whereas he only needed to show the end result of his work after a few months. Even if we had both experienced the same amount of 'challenges', his way of working gave him a lot more credibility because he got to control the narrative where his solution emerged working as designed (because any development hurdles he may have had were invisible to our PMs and sales). However, he did have a lot of pre-existing trust with key people to pull this off in the first place.

I hope I get to a point in my career where I can operate like that.

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

#416

Post by dingaling »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #34
geodel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and they didn't need to bend or break laws to succeed. I agree. There is no law against half-assed, bloated Electron based desktop software that can bring even recent hardware to its knees.

Why does anyone use the app instead of the site?

> Why does anyone use the app instead of the site?

Because on Android at least the website detects that you're on a mobile device and switches to read-only mode. Correct, you can't even post a reply without fudging user-agent or installing the app.

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

#417

Post by thatfrenchguy »

warp_factor wrote: post #351

Congratulation to them. I think what they did is absolutely amazing and will be seen retrospectively as one of the biggest fads of history. - They managed to disturb millions of worker to an attention-driven work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate. - They managed to change chat from a set of open protocols to a single closed app terribly written in JS. - They managed to make a lo…

Let’s not forget how it helped this « we need to be connected to work all the time » BS culture.

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

#418

Post by Marazan »

cdash wrote: post #346
davedx wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think enterprise companies switch a product they’re already using with all the integrations to another (possibly inferior) product just because of price? That’s not usually been my experience

No, the switch to a product that is fully integrated with another more important product that they already use.

And with Flow adding integrations all the time Microsoft are real close to a killer Business product.

Seriously, Flow is good stuff.

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

#419

Post by kashyapc »

askafriend wrote: post #361

Slack is great. The valuation makes sense and I wish them continued success. All the integrations, and workflows that Slack has enabled for our company make us more productive. I would hate to go back to what came before it. IRC is complete trash and I don't know why anyone would use it in the same sentence as Slack. UX matters. It matters A LOT.

"Complete trash"? Please.

I realize I'm feeling (objectively?) "defensive" as an everyday professional IRC user for the last 10-ish years. That said, having tried many of the recent obese chat tools (which do have some nice properties), I still maintain the stance that IRC's clutter-free nature brings a certain tranquility and clarity.

Sure, IRC absolutely has its problems. However, as noted elsewhere[1], despite its flaws, IRC's strengths still shine with great luminence, when it comes to plain text-based communication.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20119407

    - - -

It reminds of something I recently read in an essay called Coon Tree (written in 1956) by the inimitable E.B. White:

"Many of the commonest assumptions, it seems to me, are arbitrary ones: that the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the complex more advantageous than the simple, the fast quicker than the slow, the big greater than the small, and the world is remodeled by Man the Architect functionally sounder and more agreeable than the world as it was before he changed everything to suit his vogues and his conniptions."

I didn't quote the surrounding context (which itself is quite enjoyable) for brevity. But do read the full essay if you can.

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

#420

Post by thatfrenchguy »

gexla wrote: post #411
jakubp wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just productivity. It can also damage quality of relationships and introduce unnecessary conflict - as any written communications tool does - because people also fall for using Slack to discuss tough issues. It doesn't replace actual in-person conversation, but especially younger workers and managers don't know that and suffer a lot due to lack of emotional fidelity of actually using their bodies to talk.

Communication tools don't create this issue, they only bring it closer to the surface. You have to learn to manage your emotions. If you don't then it's always going to something which holds you back. If it affects younger workers more than others, then that's because they haven't learned this skill yet. It's one of many things which people new to the workplace have to manage. Some of the other more obvious emotional…

Technically tools shape you and how you think, the same way the company culture shapes the actions you do.

If you see everyone answering slack messages at 10pm, you’re likely to do the same unless you’re strong-willed.

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