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The Problem with Slack at Scale

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Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#81

Post by onion2k »

michaelt wrote: post #78
onion2k wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> You work at a company that uses it badly [...] Learn to separate and focus on things better. Maybe, but it's not within my power to change the behaviour of dozens or hundreds of other people, none of whom report to me. So if I join a company where Slack is a shitty experience, I'm going to have a shitty experience with it - even if the company is "holding it wrong"

I work in an organisation that has 9000 employees. I'm working on changing the way we document things. It's hard, but it can be done.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#82

Post by Dave3of5 »

another-dave wrote: post #76
Dave3of5 wrote: post #65

I'm actually really interesting in this. What are the top 3 things you could change in slack / teams that would make you switch. I'll go first: * Notifications settings are annoying I'm either swamped with notifications or miss them. I want to be able to switch of notifications for short periods * I want to group discussions about certain things. I.e. if we are discussing a JIRA issue I can select the message and gro…

Notifications need to be more intelligent — if Mary rarely posts in a channel (or joined the channel just to post) it might be worth more attention than John who keeps pressing enter mid stream of consciousness. If you've a long running channel like a "developers channel" it probably has some bot integrations — "the last PR failed linting". It should be possible to mute these without muting the whole channel. A lot o…

Yeah a lot of orgs and employees are pretty toxic and Slack and teams makes it very easy to be like that. I wonder if there is a tech solution to this or if it's something that has to be handled outside of the tool.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#83

Post by ThalesX »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #64
vemv wrote: post #40

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 work for a company distributed across the world with ~200 users in our 'watercooler' channel. I can't think of a better alternative to Slack that would enable everyone to stay in touch and feel part of a community. Email, forums, or — god forbid — enormous video chats would be overkill.

How do you feel about writing this in a community spanning thousands of people across tens of countries and providing only a fully ‘literate’ approach as per the GPs comment?

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#84

Post by pydry »

onion2k wrote: post #33
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 o…

I've noticed that a lot of tools, ecosystems and companies that have died out in tech have done so because they tried to adapt the users to their way of thinking rather than vice versa.

Frankly, I think if slack doesnt adapt to some of these use cases it'll die off and be replaced by something that does.

That said, I hate usenet style multi threading in any context. Im not sure why some people like it so much.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#85

Post by brixtonbrew »

This is spot on. But most software for work doesn't function at scale. It's not just Slack.

That's the central thesis behind Qatalog - which is really cool. It says it's a 'Work Hub that helps teams collaborate at scale'. Read more here if interested - https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-founder-ceo-tariq-rauf...

Some have described it as a structured Notion, but it combines lots of functionality from project management, to org charts, to threads and discussion, as well as knowledge management.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#86

Post by anotherhue »

onion2k wrote: post #33
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 o…

Unfortunately, Slack's interval growth metrics don't want us to do any of those things.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#87

Post by SMAAART »

We use Slack at work, and I hate it. The ratio of Signal to Noise is brutal, and there's no accountability.

But the issue is not Slack per se, Slack does what Slack does: synchronous, instant, INFORMAL communication.

If we want better processes we don't need a better Slack, we need better processes and enforcing better habits.

If we want traceability of information, we need data-rich communications and structured communications, and we have other tools to do that, from emails to databases to actual systems that reside outside Slack.

So now the problem is enforceability and not the tool per se.

My favorite solution is an Agile organization with Agile team. Vertically integrated where each lead has 4-5 reports, each responsible for projects, processes and documentation.

The problem to adoption is that the C-suite doesn't understand processes, and leads don't want to be bothered.

So the broken information system enterprise continue its crippled path, akin to walking in the dark.

The enterprise needs process innovation, not technical innovation.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#89

Post by vemv »

PikachuEXE wrote: post #49
vemv wrote: post #40

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 think there might be a term for it - Async-First Communication You can take a look at https://blog.doist.com/async-first/

Good resource, thanks!

I'm familiar with the term (as popularized by http://asyncmanifesto.org/) but perhaps 'async' is not enough of a self-sufficient term. Something can be async but also happen to be poor.

Re: The Problem with Slack at Scale

#90

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

onion2k wrote: post #33
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 o…

Your argument is just another “you’re holding it wrong”

People are using these chat systems for such things so maybe Slack as a company should build in the smarts extract the data into a more permanent format.

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