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Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

bigtechnology.substack.com

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Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#91
It easier to blame the tool then the culture and human nature.

Those tools just exposed many people subjective/inner feelings/views to the surface. It is up to leader to learn how to deal with the exposure.

I agree that these need to better managed and leaders need to step up, but the older culture of repressing and hiding info is gone in this age, and leader need to learn how to lead in today's world effectively.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#92
I don't understand the argument against Slack. Obviously this is not about people making fun of co-workers. That's just a bad culture and toxic environment and can happen even at the office. It's also not about Slack creating distraction. That's just how they're utilizing it if they have that issue, which is easy to fix.

Employees organizing union and protest is the big problem for some companies. And I don't think they can live without a communication tool either. Perhaps those companies wouldn't be happy about any tool for this matter unless it can provide some surveillance features.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#93
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my experience. I never bothered enabling notifications from Slack. I can only tell if I received a message if I actually see the red mark on the pinned tab's favicon. Sometimes I don't get back to people for 10 to 15 minutes and they've never complained about it.

Okay, back to the people who need Slack open for their jobs. Not being able to mute or suppress doesn't necessarily need HR if everybody thinks it's quirky and harmless fun. You're then the odd man out and ostracized for trying to do your job efficiently - it's pretty bogus, but until some HN user decides to create a new messaging channel. It's gotten to the point where people will avoid seeing you in person but just…

> Okay, back to the people who need Slack open for their jobs.

It's a requirement at my job, but no one is required to respond right away. Just in a reasonable time frame. Sometimes I have to wait 15 to 30 minutes before I get a response to a message and it's similar to how long people may wait for me to respond to them.

> It's gotten to the point where people will avoid seeing you in person but just as quickly ask if you "got that slack"

Before we had to start working from home, people would typically come to my desk to talk if they wanted me to look at something. If it was someone from another office, the same time frame as I described earlier for replying to a message was perfectly fine and no one complained about it. We've been using Slack for 2 years at my workplace.

> It's like e-mail but now you're expected to have it on your phone, home computer, work computer

I actually use an older smartphone that won't work with Slack (Nokia N9). It used to work when Slack had an IRC gateway, but not now. I also tell my employer that I refuse to install any work related software on my personal devices and they're fine with that. If it was that important, then they can provide me with company issued devices. So far, they haven't bothered.

As for notifications, it's up to you if you want to enable them and it applies to any type of chat client, not just Slack. I prefer just checking it periodically during work hours and any messages that I receive, I'll reply when I check for them. What you describe is a problem at the business level as opposed to a specific chat client.

For me, I would rather use a less resource intensive IM framework like IRC over Slack, mainly because it's a resource hog and frequently has significant UI lag when running it in a Firefox tab (to the point where I have to wait 3 to 5 seconds for text I type to show up on the screen).

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe raise an issue with your companies Slack admins to kick the bot.

In many smaller companies the person who added this bot is the slack admin.

"Hey, could you get rid of that annoying bot that's distracting people with its spam?"

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#95

My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.

"Hey, could you get rid of that annoying bot that's distracting people with its spam?"

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#96

My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.

"Hey, could you get rid of that annoying bot that's distracting people with its spam?"

[deleted]

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#97

My experience with Slack was it is a litmus test for your company culture. If you have people prone to histrionics and complaining, it's going to encourage that. If you have cliquish attrition-game players, they're going to create their own parallel channel scheme. If you have grandstanding drama queens who work an audience, it's the weapon of choice for the sort of people who send emails with long cc' lists. If you…

Yeah, I wonder what ever happened to the common-sense idea that culture flows outward from the people with the "power." Maybe it's by example, or maybe it's by unintended consequence. Maybe it's caused by some moralistic / idealistic sort of policy, or maybe it's through ignorance of the unconscious biases that people have. To that end, Slack, being a communications enabler, merely accelerates the rate of these thing…

We get what we reward, and leaders who espouse one set of values but reward another in practice are necessarily going to promote a layer of jerks. It's the literal recipe for a jerk factory.

To me, if there were a backlash against Slack, it is because it makes a great scapegoat. It's different from a social media platform because social platforms have to deal with the public, where a company has every tool it needs to evolve its culture. Personally, I think Slack could be a much needed twitter-killer by letting channels and instances promote messages to being public facing, while providing much of the value twitter doesn't.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#98
post #49

My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.

Frustrating, but I agree with Slack here. It isn't their job to police the behavior of your coworkers. Maybe try talking to the person directly? Or their boss? Or HR?

If they give me the option to mute someone (or in this case, something), that's not Slack policing anything. It's simply them enabling me to mute distractions. As I mentioned too, most of the others see no problem with the bot. They actually enjoy it. So muting it for myself would be preferable.

If Slack allowed me to ignore others, then I would be accountable for missing any important messages. I am okay with having that responsibility.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#99

My coworker wrote a bot for Slack that spams most of our channels with random gifs throughout the day. Most of my other coworkers find it amusing, but to me, it's quite distracting. I opened an issue with Slack to ask them to add an "ignore" feature, but they responded that ignoring anyone is counterproductive so they won't be adding it. Thanks, Slack.

Just close the app then, right? Does your job obligate you to be on Slack all the time, probably not. You get more time back, and deliver more value to your company's business.

I wish it was that simple. Questions and alerts come up frequently, and people expect as close to a real-time response as they can get.

Re: Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable

#100
At first, I thought it was a repost of an article from 2017 or 2018. But yeah, Slack sucks in many situations, especially in large companies. But it's a great tool for a small group high intensity collaboration (small=8-9 people max).
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