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> most workplaces won't tolerate not responding to instant messages and notifications. This. IM conversations take longer than in person ones (or video chats),

by d4nt 9y ago

> most workplaces won't tolerate not responding to instant messages and notifications. This. IM conversations take longer than in person ones (or video chats), have a higher rate of misunderstandings, cannot be flagged for follow up or bookmarked for reference, and the red blobs contribute to higher stress levels. It adds nothing to productivity, IMO. Yet being ‘present’ on slack is the new being at your desk before the boss.

optimuspaul 9y ago
My experience has been different. Things like slack have actually increased my ability to focus and get things done. My SLA for responding to slack is 2 hours, I can't focus on any one task for longer than that. Every two hours of so I check messages and respond then. It's great, it's far more relevant and filtered than email is and it isn't people showing up at my desk every 5 minutes.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  > it's far more relevant and filtered than email Huh? More filtered than email? Where in most cases you used to have sieve level server side filters and any kind of filter on the client side (in the real, desktop email clients era)? The capabilities of email filtering have been diminishing for many years, so I may even believe this is becoming true these days, but it certainly is shocking.
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    Not the person to whom you're responding, but my work email includes many messages from people who don't work for my company, while my Slack client doesn't. Not all of the Slack messages are relevant, but they are all more relevant than messages from outsiders.
    - detaro 9y ago
      Sort all email not from your company in a different folder or inbox, problem solved thanks to the filtering ability the GP talks about?
  - optimuspaul 9y ago
    email includes all sorts of low priority or informational only messages that don't need to be addressed quickly. Chat is things that are high priority but not urgent. They can be safely ignored for a few hours. Urgent is a phone call or sneaker net. When I get people that think chat is for urgent I educate them but most people in the city I live already understand that urgent requires a voice or face to face to reduce any ambiguity. This is nothing like filtering email. You'd never use email if you expect a reply quickly unless it were paired with a visit.
- synicalx 9y ago
  > My SLA for responding to slack is 2 hours You have a slack SLA?! How is that even measured, does slack have some kind of reporting tool?
asmosoinio 9y ago
> cannot be flagged for follow up or bookmarked for reference I think one of the best parts of Slack is that the messages can be referenced by simple URL. For example from a ticket. And searching helps find many old nuggets of information that were in a casual chat.

by d4nt 9y ago

optimuspaul 9y ago

My experience has been different. Things like slack have actually increased my ability to focus and get things done. My SLA for responding to slack is 2 hours, I can't focus on any one task for longer than that. Every two hours of so I check messages and respond then. It's great, it's far more relevant and filtered than email is and it isn't people showing up at my desk every 5 minutes.

pmlnr 9y ago
> it's far more relevant and filtered than email Huh? More filtered than email? Where in most cases you used to have sieve level server side filters and any kind of filter on the client side (in the real, desktop email clients era)? The capabilities of email filtering have been diminishing for many years, so I may even believe this is becoming true these days, but it certainly is shocking.
- pwinnski 9y ago
  Not the person to whom you're responding, but my work email includes many messages from people who don't work for my company, while my Slack client doesn't. Not all of the Slack messages are relevant, but they are all more relevant than messages from outsiders.
  - detaro 9y ago
    Sort all email not from your company in a different folder or inbox, problem solved thanks to the filtering ability the GP talks about?
- optimuspaul 9y ago
  email includes all sorts of low priority or informational only messages that don't need to be addressed quickly. Chat is things that are high priority but not urgent. They can be safely ignored for a few hours. Urgent is a phone call or sneaker net. When I get people that think chat is for urgent I educate them but most people in the city I live already understand that urgent requires a voice or face to face to reduce any ambiguity. This is nothing like filtering email. You'd never use email if you expect a reply quickly unless it were paired with a visit.
synicalx 9y ago
> My SLA for responding to slack is 2 hours You have a slack SLA?! How is that even measured, does slack have some kind of reporting tool?

asmosoinio 9y ago

> cannot be flagged for follow up or bookmarked for reference I think one of the best parts of Slack is that the messages can be referenced by simple URL. For example from a ticket. And searching helps find many old nuggets of information that were in a casual chat.