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How we scaled Slack to support 1000s of developers

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

#61

Post by tonyedgecombe »

andai wrote: post #36
eastbound wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Tangential, but you might want to look into GTD, I've found it very helpful for handling stuff I know I'd forget otherwise. Here's a good intro https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747703

I’ve never thought GTD is a good system for programmers. The last thing I want to do is interrupt some important piece of work because an incoming request will only take a couple of minutes.

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

#62

Post by bstsb »

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?

ironically enough you can see from the screenshot of their "internal webhook" that they're using discord to log when a new support thread on slack is created!

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

#63

Post by _Algernon_ »

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…

Yup. Excessive engagement maximizing is a bad thing for a communication method. If you succeed at maximizing engagement, all you have accomplished is a human Skinner-box. Good if you are in the business of selling attention, but not if you want productive employees.

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

#64

Post by simonkubica »

snowe2010 wrote: post #48
simonkubica wrote: post #28

This will probably sound like an ad, and is probably not super HN-friendly (given it can be more fun to just hack a custom tool together), but we just use Pylon for this and was surprised OP didn't do the same

Well we can’t if we have no clue what pylon is. And searching is absolutely no help because I’m not sure if you’re saying pylon is a replacement for railway, or slack, or some other part of the blog post.

My bad. It's a customer support platform built for/around Slack Connect

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

#65

Post by margana »

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…

This. It's gotten to the point where I don't check email at all because of the constant spam of mails that are not actionable and/or urgent. There are so many different types of automated mails that setting up filters is a never-ending battle. For me, email now serves as an archive/log of everything that has been going on in the company. I search my email to find details about things I am notified about via other channels.

Due to many people doing this, all important notifications that are actually actionable are now sent via Slack as well. So far these notifications are only for things where I actually need to urgently respond or do something, so none of the spam has yet reached Slack.

Also, no one ever seems to personally send an email to another employee because Slack is always the better option, and people actually respond on Slack, unlike via email.

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

#66

Post by jonathanlydall »

throwup238 wrote: post #50
belter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Have you used Microsoft Teams?

I have, and I generally prefer it to Slack, unlike Slack, it (off the top of my head):

- Has much richer message formatting and doesn't regularly do weird things to mess up the formatting as I'm composing a message. (Just this morning I was fighting Slack to try have nested bullet points not disappearing or de-indenting as I was composing a message).

- Consistently marks messages as read without me having to click chats multiple times for the unread indicator to disappear. With Slack I somewhat regularly have this problem, more than once a week.

- Like every other application on Windows, Ctrl+K works for adding a hyperlink. Slack is in fact so aware that people are used to using the Ctrl+K shortcut it even catches you trying to do it and then tells you how to add hyperlinks in their own special snowflake way.

- Doesn't clutter my Windows notification centre. Unless I clicked the notification center message it doesn't ever disappear. WhatsApp by comparison which also uses the Windows notification center does this perfectly. Slack is the same on iOS, it doesn't clear messages from the notification center once a message is read unless you clicked the notification.

Teams has its warts for sure, but I find it's considerably more polished than Slack in general.

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

#67

Post by matsemann »

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…

The update last year where replies in threads ping you (make the icon red etc) same as if you got a mention/DM is just insane. Makes you accidentally ignore more crucial dms because non important threads get updated.

I wish Slack had a "don't mute this channel completely, but only show it as unread once a day".

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

#68

Post by xnorswap »

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?

Also how does Slack still have an error where trying to move the cursor in/out of syntax highlighting can "trap" you so you no longer see the message that will actually get submitted.

You can desync the WYSWIG nature of it to the point where you submit text that was "invisible" to you while also potentially deleting text in the submission that you can still see.

A more simple to reproduce bug is that you can't edit before the first character of a syntax block. The cursor skips from outside the syntax block to after the first character inside the block.

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

#69

Post by darkwater »

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…

No "Slack apps" or Slack used as a notifications dump in your org? You are lucky.

But I would warn you: Slack doesn't solve the "stealing your attention issue" that you are currently experiencing only with email.

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

#70

Post by aulin »

throwup238 wrote: post #50
belter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Have you used Microsoft Teams?

No experience with slack but channels in teams are pretty terrible.

Notifications off by default so people create new channels with you as a member, write extremely important information inside them and you find out weeks later.

Each post is like an announcement so nobody uses them for the everyday trivial stuff you need a channel for. For casual technical discussion, asking for help. Whenever you post in a channel, assuming people enabled notifications and your post will be actually seen, everyone is compelled to answer as the UI screams for attention.

And don't get me started about it hiding part of a post by default so you answer thinking you read everything but you missed an essential part because post was 4 rows and 2 were hidden.

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