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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

#71

Post by whstl »

darkwater wrote: post #69
whstl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We add some apps ourselves to our own profiles (I have the Google Calendar one for example) but this is at least opt-in.

The problem with email is that you subscribe to a service (or “get subscribed to”) and suddenly there’s 200 messages per week on your inbox that you gotta filter out and figure what the heck you’re gonna do with…

The worst part is that you often NEED some of those notifications, a small portion of them at least, but an email notification is the shittiest form of notification ever when SaaS apps are involved, and SaaS apps rarely allow for good configuration granularity.

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

#72

Post by aulin »

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.

I prefer email. I'd really prefer if people read what I write though. The big problem with email is people can't read.

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

#73

Post by fhd2 »

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 love email. It's the exclusive way we communicate at our company, too. We almost use it like Slack, writing short messages, usually getting a response pretty immediately. For group discussions, we use plain old mailing lists (Topicbox from Fastmail currently).

It's not perfect, for sure, but:

1. You can use a client of your choice.

2. You can filter in any way you like.

3. You're not stuck with any particular provider, and migration is not a big deal.

4. You can organise things in a way that works for you (inbox zero etc.), I find that a lot easier than the typical notifications.

5. It comes with all kinds of "integrations", e.g. GitLab comments can just be responded to via email, which I use a ton when on the go. A CI failure, customer question etc you can just forward to discuss it. When set up reasonably, it's the one communication channel you need.

It takes some discipline and self organisation, but I haven't heard about developers hating email. I think there's a ton of reasons not to hate it. Is it non-trivial to use well? Sure. Do others use it in questionable ways? Sure. The same is true for Slack and all that as well. But I can't think of anything that I found easier to manage at the end of the day.

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

#74

Post by brightball »

darkwater wrote: post #69
whstl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The nice thing about those Slack integrations is that you can usually have a conversation with your team to adjust them for usefulness, such as better signal to noise ratio.

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

#75

Post by high_na_euv »

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…

>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.

You wrote this and then;

>would expect developers to dislike a web chat, as tech-savvy people generally seem to prefer more lightweight

What?

Web chats are not heavy

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

#76

Post by high_na_euv »

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 used Teams for years and I like it, really.

I also use Discord privately, so I know the alternative

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

#77

Post by grougnax »

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?

this

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

#78

Post by gorbypark »

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?

Yeah, Discord for coding related things is far superior than anything else I've tried in the space (Slack, Teams, Skype, Mattermost, etc).

I've not actually used it in a professional setting but there are a large number of very active/thriving coding related communities (mostly open source, but not exclusively) and Discord seems to handle them well.

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

#80

Post by AlotOfReading »

brightball wrote: post #74
darkwater wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The nice thing about those Slack integrations is that you can usually have a conversation with your team to adjust them for usefulness, such as better signal to noise ratio.

"usually" is the key word there. A previous employer had a "learning" team that used their slack bot to send unblockable DMs to everyone in the company every time they released optional employee trainings. "Work like an NBA player!" The manager was verbally abusive to anyone who brought it up as an issue too.

They didn't program the bot very well though, because it had a separate employee->acct list from the org that you could modify to change who was messaged.

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