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Chat is toxic to productivity. Teams need to get questions answered 'eventually' (exactly when depends on the team) without interrupting each other.
by awinter-py 11y ago
Chat is toxic to productivity. Teams need to get questions answered 'eventually' (exactly when depends on the team) without interrupting each other.
- cyphar 11y agoExcept sometimes you're blocked on something and need to know the answer now to finish a task. If you switch to something else while waiting for a 2 minute answer, you end up wasting a lot of your time.
- awinter-py 11y agoInterruptions are sometimes time-savers for the interruptor but they're costly to the interuptee. Some problems are important and merit an interruption, yes. But if you build a culture around instant communication, your worst people will drag down your best people. The default should be digest mode (and god help me because my 50 year-old desk-neighbor said that to me 2 years ago and at the time I thought 'man this is an old human being').
- Terr_ 11y agoIt bothers me that "you can freely interrupt employees" is actually an implicit part of how Slack is marketed towards management. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11197449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11197449)