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Unslacking Tideways Company

beberlei.de

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Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#91

Post by rabidrat »

beberlei wrote: post #69
quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #62

I feel that many of these objections already have solutions within Slack. If you don't want to be disturbed by notifications, there is the Do Not Disturb option to snooze notifications. If you don't want to lose context, use Slack threads, which localize discussion around an issue to a single place. If you have a fear of missing out because you're piping everything to Slack - have you considered segregating your aler…

Hey, these all sound like very good hints on how to use Slack, especially the consensus on decision making. Maybe we have used Slack wrong, but especially the context was important for me and Slack threads are hard to enforce, you can "break out of the jail" easily, often by mistake.

Yeah, I wish you could migrate messages to a thread retroactively.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#92

Post by rabidrat »

personjerry wrote: post #18
gregmac wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost agree, but email should also be treated as lossy. It drives me crazy when people send mass company emails with, for example, new policy or forms attached, and don't post them elsewhere. New hires only see them if someone remembers they exist and forwards them, plus it's impossible to figure out current state without spending a bunch of time playing email archeologist.

Email is generally regarded as the most reliable in my experience.

To the parent's point, how do you get a future employee to receive the information in an email that was sent before they started?

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#93

Post by village-idiot »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #83
village-idiot wrote: post #31

I know everyone has their own take on why slack is bad. From the interruption factor to Electron using all their memory. For me, the issue is that it gives teams a false sense about their tech debt. In every case I've seen, Slack slowly replaces persistent documentation. Every issue one runs into can be resolved with a quick @here to the proper channel, or a DM to the tamer of Eldritch horrors (every company has one)…

> The smell for this behavior is having to search Slack for that last time someone helped you solve your problem. Slack is a great way to spread information, but it's a terrible tool to organize and store information. If you ever have to do this, you take it as a sign to transfer that information into a document somewhere.

A good plan, for certain. In my experience very very few people follow this advice, myself definitely included.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#94

Post by chronid »

hermanradtke wrote: post #68
quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #62

I feel that many of these objections already have solutions within Slack. If you don't want to be disturbed by notifications, there is the Do Not Disturb option to snooze notifications. If you don't want to lose context, use Slack threads, which localize discussion around an issue to a single place. If you have a fear of missing out because you're piping everything to Slack - have you considered segregating your aler…

I agree that slack can have a place as long as there are expectations around what to use it for. How do people coordinate around incidents without something like slack? It used to be that everyone had to hop on a conference bridge, which I personally never liked. For important discussions and decisions, we often paste a log of a chat and a link into tickets or change requests. This helps capture the conversation and…

A ticket for tracking the incident (with posts to graphs, alerts, other tickets and so on - what you use slack for) + conference bridge for live discussion focused on restoring availability is what I personally like.

As long as you keep it technical and kick the salespeople out of it, the conference call is very useful tool to keep people focused on mitigating the problem ASAP instead of spending time looking for the root cause (ex: restarting the application/reverting the bad commit instead of fixing a bug, creating a new build and pushing it through).

If the issue is not killing the company you can chat about it, sure, feel free to use the tool you feel most comfortable with. If we are in a "the site is down" situation though chatting is too slow (and I always promise the SWEs I will insta-revert their last deployment when that happens until I find a good one, though I rarely do so), and talking keeps your hands free.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#96

Post by closeparen »

jasode wrote: post #52
sdan wrote: post #7

Definitely agree with your decision. After leaving slack entirely from a robotics team and a science club, our productively increased. No longer were we going off topic wasting precious time and making everyone in the channel read every 500+ messages some people engaged in. We instead chose to make more plans during meetings and through direct chat (Messenger). However, Slack is usefull for forums such as donkeycar.s…

>, I believe that slack in general is a waste of time in a TEAM. Why not have meetings or meet up in real life rather than hiding behind a screen without any physical interaction? In the book "Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick[1], one programmer described how Mark Zuckerberg and the other programmers extensively chatted on AOL AIM even though they all sat at the same table elbow-to-elbow . When one of the new pro…

Did FB really start with library rules? My understanding is it’s the opposite now, stretching the limits of construction technology to build the largest possible open office.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#97

Post by wsy »

jonahx wrote: post #78
dvtrn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can assign moral blame however you please, but the relevant "policy" question (in both the gun case and the slack case) is empirical. You absolutely can but if there's something about my post that insinuates any sort of 'moral' blame that a comparison to the "Guns don't kill people" trope (there's probably a better word for this) is warranted, then I've massively failed to express my intent clearly. All…

> but let me raise my hand right now and admit that I am absolutely guilty of checking every notification I see come in and breaking my own flow, it's why I even hold this position Right, so you are blaming yourself morally here ( guilty of ...). I'm not saying you're wrong to do so. I'm just saying that to solve the problem you can either: 1. blame yourself, and try to improve your own discipline when using slack. 2…

True, but it is also analogous to throwing out your hammer to avoid hitting yourself on the nail.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#98

Post by jonahx »

wsy wrote: post #97
jonahx wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but let me raise my hand right now and admit that I am absolutely guilty of checking every notification I see come in and breaking my own flow, it's why I even hold this position Right, so you are blaming yourself morally here ( guilty of ...). I'm not saying you're wrong to do so. I'm just saying that to solve the problem you can either: 1. blame yourself, and try to improve your own discipline when using slack. 2…

True, but it is also analogous to throwing out your hammer to avoid hitting yourself on the nail.

Good point. In the particular case of slack, I think there are other ways to retain the benefits of the "hammer" without smashing your thumb every day, as it were.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#99

Post by Waterluvian »

beberlei wrote: post #51
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

When I was at a fully local company, slack was good for conversations where a few people might be actively discussing an issue and then I could come in hours later and skim the history, if it was a channel I felt relevant to be aware of. But slack was also super easy to use wrongly and drain so much time into. It really helped to declare slack a lossy source of comms. You shall not expect people to read it and you sh…

I don't know, Github + Basecamp are also used by fully remote teams and they don't focus on realtime chat functionality. Some kind of tool is necessary for sure, but different tools set a different focus to provide a solution for organization teams and companies. I guess everyone should find what works best for them.

Agreed. I'm not advocating for slack. I'm more advocating that slack isn't strictly bad like some seem to be saying. It can work. It can also be misused.

Re: Unslacking Tideways Company

#100

Post by personjerry »

rabidrat wrote: post #92
personjerry wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is generally regarded as the most reliable in my experience.

To the parent's point, how do you get a future employee to receive the information in an email that was sent before they started?

You include it in their onboarding
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