How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers • Hacker News Board

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#51

Post by whstl » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:54 AM UTC

defanor wrote: post #27

> It gives us 50x better engagement than email and 8x better response times to customers. Does it mean that it forces the customers to send 50 messages instead of a single mail message? > However, developers hate email. Always feels awkward when there are general statements about the group you belong to, which are certainly false at least for you, and possibly for most others you know in that group. If anything, I wo…

I'll offer a counterpoint:

The one thing I like better about Slack over email is the lack of constant spam from random apps.

Working in a company means that only 1% of my email is actually from humans. I must constantly add new filters, because even small companies today use dozens of SaaS products that are constantly fighting for my attention, and only a small fraction of those messages is actually useful for me.

Slack so far is just humans. Plus integrations mostly added by developers for developers.

Of course this can change at any time, and I'll have random robot spam in Slack. Which means I will have no option other than start ignoring Slack as well and start asking people to come to my desk. Which might cause me to finally go into carpentry as I have been promising to do for the last 15 years.

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#52

Post by rightbyte » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:57 AM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #47

> However, developers hate emai I prefer email. Email is asynchronous, It does not interrupt my flow or my presentations, I can decide when I spend tine responding. Then I can fully focus on the emails and type the response they merit. Of course you have the person sending you an email and 30s later they tap you on the shoulder to ask if you got that email.

Ye I feel like many times when people complain about email they complain about the emails' content not the concept of sending email, which is then misinterpreted.

The more I think about this, the more "don't shoot the messenger" fallacies I see around me.

Like, the complaints about overly bureaucratic documentation was interpreted as critique of documentation by "people". Etc.

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#53

Post by rippeltippel » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

eastbound wrote: post #29

defanor wrote: post #27

> It gives us 50x better engagement than email and 8x better response times to customers. Does it mean that it forces the customers to send 50 messages instead of a single mail message? > However, developers hate email. Always feels awkward when there are general statements about the group you belong to, which are certainly false at least for you, and possibly for most others you know in that group. If anything, I wo…

> However, developers hate email If there’s one thing I hate more than email, it’s not being able to mark an item as unread, and put it in a folder to address it later. Slack is synonym of stress. The Slack stress compounds with being pinged all the time, on various topics. It transforms a developer role into a manager role.

Both Slack and (most) email clients allow you to mark items as unread and set reminders. Being pinged all the time sounds more like an organisational issue, where comms channels are left to grow wild and unstructured. It's definitely not down to Slack.

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#54

Post by dbbk » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:16 AM UTC

defanor wrote: post #27

> It gives us 50x better engagement than email and 8x better response times to customers. Does it mean that it forces the customers to send 50 messages instead of a single mail message? > However, developers hate email. Always feels awkward when there are general statements about the group you belong to, which are certainly false at least for you, and possibly for most others you know in that group. If anything, I wo…

They still offer support by email though

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#55

Post by agos » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

jdve wrote: post #46

agnivade wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to know what other alternatives have you found better.

We use Twist at my company. I find the emphasis on asynchronous communication refreshing. It encourages more thoughtful discussion. Basecamp also lends helpfully in this direction, although adopting Basecamp means accepting an entire project management system as well.

I found that the way Basecamp tries to achieve async communication is to make sync communication as painful as possible. Not a great experience.

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#56

Post by walthamstow » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:26 AM UTC

eastbound wrote: post #29

defanor wrote: post #27

> It gives us 50x better engagement than email and 8x better response times to customers. Does it mean that it forces the customers to send 50 messages instead of a single mail message? > However, developers hate email. Always feels awkward when there are general statements about the group you belong to, which are certainly false at least for you, and possibly for most others you know in that group. If anything, I wo…

> However, developers hate email If there’s one thing I hate more than email, it’s not being able to mark an item as unread, and put it in a folder to address it later. Slack is synonym of stress. The Slack stress compounds with being pinged all the time, on various topics. It transforms a developer role into a manager role.

Remind me -> in 20 mins / 1 hours / 4 hours / tomorrow / next week. Or you can click the 'save for later' bookmark icon with no time alert.

The pings are within your control. If your org has an unruly Slack workspace, get on top of your notification settings or just leave it closed most of the time and check in periodically.

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#57

Post by internet_points » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:31 AM UTC

meh, freenode had 90K users at its peak =P

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#58

Post by oblio » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:31 AM UTC

eastbound wrote: post #29

defanor wrote: post #27

> It gives us 50x better engagement than email and 8x better response times to customers. Does it mean that it forces the customers to send 50 messages instead of a single mail message? > However, developers hate email. Always feels awkward when there are general statements about the group you belong to, which are certainly false at least for you, and possibly for most others you know in that group. If anything, I wo…

> However, developers hate email If there’s one thing I hate more than email, it’s not being able to mark an item as unread, and put it in a folder to address it later. Slack is synonym of stress. The Slack stress compounds with being pinged all the time, on various topics. It transforms a developer role into a manager role.

Besides the "Save for later" & co, just mute all the channels that aren't essential and leave the obsolete ones.

If someone wants to raise issues from marginal sources, let them go through the friction of messaging in the main channel or DMing.

You don't need to react to everything.

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#59

Post by oblio » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:33 AM UTC

belter wrote: post #37

culi wrote: post #22

I apologize if this is more of a response to the headline than the article content, but how does Slack, a professionally-oriented messaging app, not have syntax highlighting features for their markdown while Discord— a casual, gamer-oriented messaging app– does?

Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows: - Endless channel creation that buries crucial info... - Confusing side-panel threads that are easily missed, leading to fragmented discussions... - Notification overload that bombards you with pings... It's success it's a mystery, I can only attribute to fashion or the hype…

> Notification overload that bombards you with pings...

95% of people that say this don't mute channels (at all or enough).

Re: How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

#60

Post by VectorLock » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:41 AM UTC

whstl wrote: post #51

defanor wrote: post #27

> It gives us 50x better engagement than email and 8x better response times to customers. Does it mean that it forces the customers to send 50 messages instead of a single mail message? > However, developers hate email. Always feels awkward when there are general statements about the group you belong to, which are certainly false at least for you, and possibly for most others you know in that group. If anything, I wo…

I'll offer a counterpoint: The one thing I like better about Slack over email is the lack of constant spam from random apps. Working in a company means that only 1% of my email is actually from humans. I must constantly add new filters, because even small companies today use dozens of SaaS products that are constantly fighting for my attention, and only a small fraction of those messages is actually useful for me. Sl…

And if they do make them to slack, usually all those things that you would have to manually make filters for are usually in their own channels that you can just mute.