4 ms·

They claim Slack is distracting while the picture at the top of the article is a bunch of people working in cramped quarters in an open office. I think they ha

They claim Slack is distracting while the picture at the top of the article is a bunch of people working in cramped quarters in an open office. I think they have bigger fish to fry here. Slack has a mute button. All that requires is self control. You can't mute coworkers sitting too close to you. Even with headphones (which notice half the people in the photo are wearing) you can only somewhat filter out the distracting people.

eddieroger 10y ago
I agree that they have other issues beyond Slack with respect to productivity, but playing Devil's Advocate, muting Slack has the downside of just creating a large backlog of missed messages, and if the culture is to be dependent on it, mute only shifts distractions to later instead of eliminating them. This is worse if the culture holds impromptu Slack meetings that you can easily miss by being on mute. In that case it would be the culture and not the tool, admittedly, but any tool will have a similar problem.
- kethinov 10y ago
  Firstly, impromptu is bad. Work requires focus, not "oh look a squirrel!" People learn delayed gratification in life. The same goes for the urgency of someone in your org randomly deciding everyone needs to talk about my random thoughts right fricking now. Secondly, messages piling up is a feature, not a bug. You engage when you need a mental break and you're in an engagement mood. If other people are in that mood at the same time, great. If not, then if you force them to engage with you anyway you are harming their productivity. People need to learn this. People get in the zone at different times and this needs to be respected.
thinkingkong 10y ago
To play on this, theres a big difference between ignoring messages for awhile and having a shared understanding that everyone is ignoring messages. I think thats where we need to focus.
ydt 10y ago
No kidding. That office layout is a nightmare. My last 2 gigs have been pretty weighted towards slack as the preferred communication medium amongst the team. My experience has been that it allows me safely ignore my email inbox with the assurance that anything truly vital will be directly messaged to me on slack. It's lived up to the hype for me.
- cylinder 10y ago
  My wife is going to leave her job almost exclusively because of this open office sweatshop layout. She's coming home noticeably more stressed and tired even though she's working less hours and easier work than her last job (cubicle).
untog 10y ago
To be fair, Vice is an online magazine, not a programming firm. I can absolutely imagine that group conversations are more important in such an environment.
- kethinov 10y ago
  Yeah because it's not as if writing high quality articles takes focus or anything. ;)
- voidz 10y ago
  Actually they are an ad agency. Their core business is to create advertisements for their customers. It may sound weird when you read it like this, but on the other hand it's not that uncommon: Google is also an ad agency. So the right point to make here is that their pseudo-magazines are for the most part intended as an outlet for their ads. This is all what I have been told anyway, by a buddy who had a job at one of their European branches.
  - collyw 10y ago
    I would say its more a case of, Google is a search company who's revenue model is advertising, while Vice is an online magazine who's revenue model is advertising. Neither of them actually create the ads, they sell space to display them.
trhway 10y ago
the coworkers' noise doesn't cause the dopamine spikes like the IM does and thus doesn't creates addiction. The guys should be applauded for having been able to recognize the problem and taking control [or at least making serious attempt to] over their dopamine addiction. Many comments here are equivalent to "drink responsibly". Well, one can do it if one can ... otherwise cutting it off is a pretty sensible thing to do.
- kethinov 10y ago
  "Drink responsibly" isn't a great analogy. Drinking adds no tangible utility to anything significant. People do it because it's fun, not because it improves the quality of their work. Group chat adds tangible value to work when used responsibly. You can create a cultural requirement that minimizes interruptions by consigning random chit chat or idle questions to IMs that can be safely ignored for a time by muting notifications. When, "hey which internal CMS has this thing I need?" is an IM I can safely mute when I need to focus instead of a productivity-destroying shoulder tap, that is significant. If they were experiencing a dopamine addiction because they couldn't learn how to properly contextualize and ignore notifications when they needed to be in the zone, that's on them, not the tool.
  - trhway 10y ago
    >Drinking adds no tangible utility to anything significant. People do it because it's fun, not because it improves the quality of their work. many creative people worked or were inspired "under influence" of various stuff causing addiction. >Group chat adds tangible value to work when used responsibly. some claim so. Well, for example cigarettes or a glass of wine help too - by calming down. Wine is also great for heart and blood vessels. And meth (ADHD drugs) is very useful for increasing concentration and productivity even for healthy people. They give it to [healthy] pilots for example. >If they were experiencing a dopamine addiction because they couldn't learn how to properly contextualize and ignore notifications when they needed to be in the zone, that's on them, not the tool. Blame (internal and external) is a typical trap of addiction. The way out is to understand what it isn't about blame, it is about what to do. Honestly accepting your weakness if you can't manage addiction and go sober completely.
breathesalt 10y ago
You can't mute your boss, and they're the only messages anyone pays attention to. You can only ignore support for 20 minutes max before your boss starts typing your handle.
- kethinov 10y ago
  Only in terrible office cultures. If everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. Good office cultures clearly delineate between what needs a person's urgent attention and what can wait for 20 minutes while someone wraps up something they're doing.
brobinson 10y ago
>Slack has a mute button. I mute every single channel I'm in (30+) and just check Slack once at the beginning of the day and once at the end of the day. I still get notifications for @messages and respond if necessary.
bowlich 10y ago
I find the Slack mute (away) doesn't quite do what I want. There is still a visual display in the icon tray that indicates that conversation is going on. Short of closing out of Slack entirely there doesn't appear to be a way to make it remove all auditory and visual notifications that new messages are coming in. I would love to have more control over what kinds of auditory and visual notifications can appear when away or not away and be able to specify what can trigger them. Which right now slack is very limiting on those kinds of settings.
- kethinov 10y ago
  Personally I hide the icon as well. It's entirely possible for me to not know when there is chat activity unless and until I want to.
- Swizec 10y ago
  On Mac OS you can just put your computer on Do Not Disturb and notifications stop happening. I use it all the time. Sure the icon still updates, but it's invisible until you look at it.

eddieroger 10y ago

I agree that they have other issues beyond Slack with respect to productivity, but playing Devil's Advocate, muting Slack has the downside of just creating a large backlog of missed messages, and if the culture is to be dependent on it, mute only shifts distractions to later instead of eliminating them. This is worse if the culture holds impromptu Slack meetings that you can easily miss by being on mute. In that case it would be the culture and not the tool, admittedly, but any tool will have a similar problem.

kethinov 10y ago
Firstly, impromptu is bad. Work requires focus, not "oh look a squirrel!" People learn delayed gratification in life. The same goes for the urgency of someone in your org randomly deciding everyone needs to talk about my random thoughts right fricking now. Secondly, messages piling up is a feature, not a bug. You engage when you need a mental break and you're in an engagement mood. If other people are in that mood at the same time, great. If not, then if you force them to engage with you anyway you are harming their productivity. People need to learn this. People get in the zone at different times and this needs to be respected.

thinkingkong 10y ago

To play on this, theres a big difference between ignoring messages for awhile and having a shared understanding that everyone is ignoring messages. I think thats where we need to focus.

ydt 10y ago

No kidding. That office layout is a nightmare. My last 2 gigs have been pretty weighted towards slack as the preferred communication medium amongst the team. My experience has been that it allows me safely ignore my email inbox with the assurance that anything truly vital will be directly messaged to me on slack. It's lived up to the hype for me.

cylinder 10y ago
My wife is going to leave her job almost exclusively because of this open office sweatshop layout. She's coming home noticeably more stressed and tired even though she's working less hours and easier work than her last job (cubicle).

untog 10y ago

To be fair, Vice is an online magazine, not a programming firm. I can absolutely imagine that group conversations are more important in such an environment.

kethinov 10y ago
Yeah because it's not as if writing high quality articles takes focus or anything. ;)
voidz 10y ago
Actually they are an ad agency. Their core business is to create advertisements for their customers. It may sound weird when you read it like this, but on the other hand it's not that uncommon: Google is also an ad agency. So the right point to make here is that their pseudo-magazines are for the most part intended as an outlet for their ads. This is all what I have been told anyway, by a buddy who had a job at one of their European branches.
- collyw 10y ago
  I would say its more a case of, Google is a search company who's revenue model is advertising, while Vice is an online magazine who's revenue model is advertising. Neither of them actually create the ads, they sell space to display them.

trhway 10y ago

the coworkers' noise doesn't cause the dopamine spikes like the IM does and thus doesn't creates addiction. The guys should be applauded for having been able to recognize the problem and taking control [or at least making serious attempt to] over their dopamine addiction. Many comments here are equivalent to "drink responsibly". Well, one can do it if one can ... otherwise cutting it off is a pretty sensible thing to do.

kethinov 10y ago
"Drink responsibly" isn't a great analogy. Drinking adds no tangible utility to anything significant. People do it because it's fun, not because it improves the quality of their work. Group chat adds tangible value to work when used responsibly. You can create a cultural requirement that minimizes interruptions by consigning random chit chat or idle questions to IMs that can be safely ignored for a time by muting notifications. When, "hey which internal CMS has this thing I need?" is an IM I can safely mute when I need to focus instead of a productivity-destroying shoulder tap, that is significant. If they were experiencing a dopamine addiction because they couldn't learn how to properly contextualize and ignore notifications when they needed to be in the zone, that's on them, not the tool.
- trhway 10y ago
  >Drinking adds no tangible utility to anything significant. People do it because it's fun, not because it improves the quality of their work. many creative people worked or were inspired "under influence" of various stuff causing addiction. >Group chat adds tangible value to work when used responsibly. some claim so. Well, for example cigarettes or a glass of wine help too - by calming down. Wine is also great for heart and blood vessels. And meth (ADHD drugs) is very useful for increasing concentration and productivity even for healthy people. They give it to [healthy] pilots for example. >If they were experiencing a dopamine addiction because they couldn't learn how to properly contextualize and ignore notifications when they needed to be in the zone, that's on them, not the tool. Blame (internal and external) is a typical trap of addiction. The way out is to understand what it isn't about blame, it is about what to do. Honestly accepting your weakness if you can't manage addiction and go sober completely.

breathesalt 10y ago

You can't mute your boss, and they're the only messages anyone pays attention to. You can only ignore support for 20 minutes max before your boss starts typing your handle.

kethinov 10y ago
Only in terrible office cultures. If everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. Good office cultures clearly delineate between what needs a person's urgent attention and what can wait for 20 minutes while someone wraps up something they're doing.

brobinson 10y ago

>Slack has a mute button. I mute every single channel I'm in (30+) and just check Slack once at the beginning of the day and once at the end of the day. I still get notifications for @messages and respond if necessary.

bowlich 10y ago

I find the Slack mute (away) doesn't quite do what I want. There is still a visual display in the icon tray that indicates that conversation is going on. Short of closing out of Slack entirely there doesn't appear to be a way to make it remove all auditory and visual notifications that new messages are coming in. I would love to have more control over what kinds of auditory and visual notifications can appear when away or not away and be able to specify what can trigger them. Which right now slack is very limiting on those kinds of settings.

kethinov 10y ago
Personally I hide the icon as well. It's entirely possible for me to not know when there is chat activity unless and until I want to.
Swizec 10y ago
On Mac OS you can just put your computer on Do Not Disturb and notifications stop happening. I use it all the time. Sure the icon still updates, but it's invisible until you look at it.