6 ms·

It's an interesting argument. When I hear it, I interpret it as "I'm too busy doing stuff to help anyone else do stuff." The people who do this, from my experi

It's an interesting argument. When I hear it, I interpret it as "I'm too busy doing stuff to help anyone else do stuff." The people who do this, from my experience, are also the people least likely to write tests, documentation, comments, or self-explanatory code. Then, when someone makes a mistake based on misreading this member's code, they are labeled as "incompetent." I agree that Slack has created an interruptible culture, and I'm not a fan of that, but we have yet to make a tool that transfers knowledge without either human contact or extensive documentation. Structured distraction is the alternative - we call them meetings. Nobody likes meetings either.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Slack, unintentionally, promotes interruptions under the guise of frictionless communications; it's very difficult to cultivate productivity in such a situation. Email is just as useful for tasking or questions, but without the constant interruptions (the receiver determines when they respond, and there's an asynchronous expectation, unlike Slack). There is nothing you need on a team immediately, unless your infrastructure is burning down, in which case PagerDuty or SMS is letting you know. Source: 3 years of Slack use in a fully remote environment, now working remote for an enterprise using Outlook for email, MS Teams for the occasional group chat 1-2 times/week, and Skype chat/phone calls/conference calls for the remainder. I prefer the later, as I get hours of uninterrupted time to focus each day.
- geofft 9y ago
  My impression is that companies that use Slack as an email replacement (including Slack themselves) have a culture where it's common to turn off push notifications / popups and check Slack periodically the way you'd check email periodically.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Possibly. That was not my experience ("turn off push notifications / popups and check Slack periodically the way you'd check email periodically."). I use Slack extensively for personal needs (non-profits, subject matter groups, friends/family teams) but I would not voluntarily use it in a business setting. It's one of the first questions I ask when interviewing for new positions.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    It's a been a year since I used slack but I distinctively remember that they didn't have anything to manage notifications / popups.
philwelch 9y ago
I like how you gloss over documentation as if it’s not even a viable solution. Documentation isn’t hard to generate. Set up a wiki so you can document things there, move your internal “how do I do X” chatter from Slack to email lists and maybe a StackExchange installation, and you end up with multiple indexable, searchable sources of long-form documentation. Sometimes, documentation is work. So do the work. People and organizations who avoid that kind of work and say “just use Slack” end up trading 1,000 hours of interruption over 1 hour of work.
- llimllib 9y ago
  Everywhere I've ever worked, "set up a wiki" has meant "create something once that nobody ever remembers the existence of"
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Because writing the documentation is work and seems hard so people don’t do it.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - ebiester 9y ago
    Or, it accumulates so much cruft that it's hard to find the valuable information. I think there's room for documentation librarians, whether by role or job title, but it's hard to justify the expense in smaller organizations.
    - ivan_gammel 9y ago
      It's a trained skill - everyone can be a librarian in the team.
      - ebiester 9y ago
        One person needs to lead the standards and the organization or the conflicting opinions will drive it apart. The librarian is a role, but that doesn't absolve the rest of the team from following the librarian's lead.
awinter-py 9y ago
Hmm As I get older I dislike meetings less, especially 1:1s. One-on-ones are usually the high point of my day.
slivym 9y ago
This is just the same problem everyone has with everything. Tools are useful but you need good culture built around those tools. Slack is great for getting help, or discussing a topic in real time, especially when you're canvasing for views. But it's incumbent on the people to be sure they're contributing to it appropriately. A classic trap young engineers fall into is spewing questions when they haven't thought about something for themselves. In that environment Slack can be very destructive. The fact that this guy repeatedly refers to middle management kind of hints to me that he doesn't understand that culture aspect.
rospaya 9y ago
> I agree that Slack has created an interruptible culture Slack isn't the first chat app used in a workspace, but it is the first one I've used that has tweakable mute settings and filters that can alert me only about things I care about. At my previous jobs I've used IRC or Google Hangouts/Talk which is equally interrupting but has less features.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Slack, unintentionally, promotes interruptions under the guise of frictionless communications; it's very difficult to cultivate productivity in such a situation. Email is just as useful for tasking or questions, but without the constant interruptions (the receiver determines when they respond, and there's an asynchronous expectation, unlike Slack). There is nothing you need on a team immediately, unless your infrastructure is burning down, in which case PagerDuty or SMS is letting you know. Source: 3 years of Slack use in a fully remote environment, now working remote for an enterprise using Outlook for email, MS Teams for the occasional group chat 1-2 times/week, and Skype chat/phone calls/conference calls for the remainder. I prefer the later, as I get hours of uninterrupted time to focus each day.

geofft 9y ago
My impression is that companies that use Slack as an email replacement (including Slack themselves) have a culture where it's common to turn off push notifications / popups and check Slack periodically the way you'd check email periodically.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Possibly. That was not my experience ("turn off push notifications / popups and check Slack periodically the way you'd check email periodically."). I use Slack extensively for personal needs (non-profits, subject matter groups, friends/family teams) but I would not voluntarily use it in a business setting. It's one of the first questions I ask when interviewing for new positions.
- user5994461 9y ago
  It's a been a year since I used slack but I distinctively remember that they didn't have anything to manage notifications / popups.

philwelch 9y ago

I like how you gloss over documentation as if it’s not even a viable solution. Documentation isn’t hard to generate. Set up a wiki so you can document things there, move your internal “how do I do X” chatter from Slack to email lists and maybe a StackExchange installation, and you end up with multiple indexable, searchable sources of long-form documentation. Sometimes, documentation is work. So do the work. People and organizations who avoid that kind of work and say “just use Slack” end up trading 1,000 hours of interruption over 1 hour of work.

llimllib 9y ago
Everywhere I've ever worked, "set up a wiki" has meant "create something once that nobody ever remembers the existence of"
- philwelch 9y ago
  Because writing the documentation is work and seems hard so people don’t do it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- ebiester 9y ago
  Or, it accumulates so much cruft that it's hard to find the valuable information. I think there's room for documentation librarians, whether by role or job title, but it's hard to justify the expense in smaller organizations.
  - ivan_gammel 9y ago
    It's a trained skill - everyone can be a librarian in the team.
    - ebiester 9y ago
      One person needs to lead the standards and the organization or the conflicting opinions will drive it apart. The librarian is a role, but that doesn't absolve the rest of the team from following the librarian's lead.

awinter-py 9y ago

Hmm As I get older I dislike meetings less, especially 1:1s. One-on-ones are usually the high point of my day.

slivym 9y ago

This is just the same problem everyone has with everything. Tools are useful but you need good culture built around those tools. Slack is great for getting help, or discussing a topic in real time, especially when you're canvasing for views. But it's incumbent on the people to be sure they're contributing to it appropriately. A classic trap young engineers fall into is spewing questions when they haven't thought about something for themselves. In that environment Slack can be very destructive. The fact that this guy repeatedly refers to middle management kind of hints to me that he doesn't understand that culture aspect.

rospaya 9y ago

> I agree that Slack has created an interruptible culture Slack isn't the first chat app used in a workspace, but it is the first one I've used that has tweakable mute settings and filters that can alert me only about things I care about. At my previous jobs I've used IRC or Google Hangouts/Talk which is equally interrupting but has less features.