5 ms·

You're in the mute-everything-non-critical class, which is a good practice regardless of the client. If they really need you, they'll ring/call/DM. Otherwise, y

You're in the mute-everything-non-critical class, which is a good practice regardless of the client. If they really need you, they'll ring/call/DM. Otherwise, you can check it whenever you're ready.

munificent 8y ago
I think you're confusing communication throughput with latency. I also don't like using chat at work. It's not because I want less interaction, it's because I want less interruption. Email has a norm of asynchrony where I can respond to email when I reach a good point in my current task. With chat, the other party is presumed to be sitting staring at the screen waiting for my reply, so I have to drop what I'm doing to respond. I don't think the latter is good for my overall productivity.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  I have a different expectation while using Slack. I agree that enough people have your expectation that it's something that should be discussed and agreed upon by everyone using the 'chat' system... Slack provides an easy @channel and @everyone mechanism to control notifications.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  I completely agree. It is also the effort to interruption ratio that has reached a tipping point. Once upon a time if I wanted someone's help right now i would have to walk to the actual desk, and bribe them with caffeine or chocolate. If the effort of levering myself out of my chair was greater than the benefit to me I stayed put - hence interrupting another person had a minimum price point - the other person may not like it but the price was paid in public and there was a perceived value to the business. Phones reduced that price point - but it still has a cost to me. Now IM / Slack has flipped it on its head - the cost to the interruptor is negligible but the cost for the interruptee is their mental derailment - and no ability to judge the overall benefit of helping until it is too late Plus I don't really see the win - for real time co-ordination it's hard to beat a mass phone conference ( we are doing a complex release with phased rollouts and devops watching the traffic - then get your headsets on, and everyone must hurry up and wait) Slack is just secondary for that - useful for spelling out what has been said but otherwise ... For letting others know what has happened - that's called an after the fact report or "email". So really i don't see the use case except it means that when like the phone, i reach you i am confident of a reply in a given time period - that may well be defining facto
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
  I find clients tend to call to ask "a quick question", this is very disruptive. My experience is if they can't be bothered putting it in writing, then it's probably not very important.
- overgard 8y ago
  Have you considered that just might be your own psychological burden though? I mean, plenty of people I know respond to slack messages a few hours after the fact, and I myself don't feel super guilty for turning it off for a few hours, and nobody seems to care.
- karmelapple 8y ago
  I have never expected that the other party is sitting and staring at the screen in any Slack or chat I’ve used. An @mention will change the expectation of interrupting or not, but as someone who has used various chat programs for 24 years of my life, this ha never been an expectation I’ve had, nor one I’ve seen too frequently expressed. What do you think has caused that expectation in your mind? Do you wish that for the people you’re chatting with? Have you worked with people who do expect that? Honestly curious. I wonder how my growing up with it, and in chat rooms with mostly tech-savvy folks, has affected my use and expectations of it, too.
  - porker 8y ago
    I've used Slack when contracting at companies (remote and sat in the same room) > Have you worked with people who do expect that? Yes. Manager expects it to be like talking to you across the room. You answer there and then. If you slack him though he doesn't expect to reply immediately and gets annoyed if you interrupt him to say you really need an answer. > Do you wish that for the people you’re chatting with? Yes, saves making a telephone call. There again, if I Slack someone, it'd better be important not time-wasting.
  - munificent 8y ago
    > I have never expected that the other party is sitting and staring at the screen in any Slack or chat I’ve used. OK, maybe not literally staring at the screen. > What do you think has caused that expectation in your mind? I think the structural analogue and communication style — even the name! — of chat is a verbal conversation. In a conversation, you say as little as needed and then pause for the other person to take their turn. Each utterance is pretty short so that you give the other party a chance to respond. If you do that asynchronously, it takes forever to work through a sizeable quantity of content. In email, the analogue is written letters. The expected asynchrony is high and in return the writing style accommodates that: each email is usually a roughly complete though with possibly some paragraphs. Since you know the person replying to you can reply to individual sections, it's OK to put out a complete thought. You don't have to shorten it to give them a chance to interject.
emodendroket 8y ago
I do that but it's not the same as not having a chat I'm expected to be checking.
dingaling 8y ago
> Otherwise, you can check it whenever you're ready. It's the "check it" that's a mess in a high-volume environment. E-mail threads that can be seen to branch, and in a pinch I can skip irrelevant branches once I've determined their vector. But each Slack channel is a continuous stream of text with a tiny scroll slider. There's no possibility of skipping a couple of pages of messages unless one just seaeches for direct mentions, at which point why bother? If it's important they'll just ring / call / e-mail..

You're in the mute-everything-non-critical class, which is a good practice regardless of the client. If they really need you, they'll ring/call/DM. Otherwise, you can check it whenever you're ready.

munificent 8y ago

I think you're confusing communication throughput with latency. I also don't like using chat at work. It's not because I want less interaction, it's because I want less interruption. Email has a norm of asynchrony where I can respond to email when I reach a good point in my current task. With chat, the other party is presumed to be sitting staring at the screen waiting for my reply, so I have to drop what I'm doing to respond. I don't think the latter is good for my overall productivity.

greglindahl 8y ago
I have a different expectation while using Slack. I agree that enough people have your expectation that it's something that should be discussed and agreed upon by everyone using the 'chat' system... Slack provides an easy @channel and @everyone mechanism to control notifications.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
I completely agree. It is also the effort to interruption ratio that has reached a tipping point. Once upon a time if I wanted someone's help right now i would have to walk to the actual desk, and bribe them with caffeine or chocolate. If the effort of levering myself out of my chair was greater than the benefit to me I stayed put - hence interrupting another person had a minimum price point - the other person may not like it but the price was paid in public and there was a perceived value to the business. Phones reduced that price point - but it still has a cost to me. Now IM / Slack has flipped it on its head - the cost to the interruptor is negligible but the cost for the interruptee is their mental derailment - and no ability to judge the overall benefit of helping until it is too late Plus I don't really see the win - for real time co-ordination it's hard to beat a mass phone conference ( we are doing a complex release with phased rollouts and devops watching the traffic - then get your headsets on, and everyone must hurry up and wait) Slack is just secondary for that - useful for spelling out what has been said but otherwise ... For letting others know what has happened - that's called an after the fact report or "email". So really i don't see the use case except it means that when like the phone, i reach you i am confident of a reply in a given time period - that may well be defining facto
Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
I find clients tend to call to ask "a quick question", this is very disruptive. My experience is if they can't be bothered putting it in writing, then it's probably not very important.
overgard 8y ago
Have you considered that just might be your own psychological burden though? I mean, plenty of people I know respond to slack messages a few hours after the fact, and I myself don't feel super guilty for turning it off for a few hours, and nobody seems to care.
karmelapple 8y ago
I have never expected that the other party is sitting and staring at the screen in any Slack or chat I’ve used. An @mention will change the expectation of interrupting or not, but as someone who has used various chat programs for 24 years of my life, this ha never been an expectation I’ve had, nor one I’ve seen too frequently expressed. What do you think has caused that expectation in your mind? Do you wish that for the people you’re chatting with? Have you worked with people who do expect that? Honestly curious. I wonder how my growing up with it, and in chat rooms with mostly tech-savvy folks, has affected my use and expectations of it, too.
- porker 8y ago
  I've used Slack when contracting at companies (remote and sat in the same room) > Have you worked with people who do expect that? Yes. Manager expects it to be like talking to you across the room. You answer there and then. If you slack him though he doesn't expect to reply immediately and gets annoyed if you interrupt him to say you really need an answer. > Do you wish that for the people you’re chatting with? Yes, saves making a telephone call. There again, if I Slack someone, it'd better be important not time-wasting.
- munificent 8y ago
  > I have never expected that the other party is sitting and staring at the screen in any Slack or chat I’ve used. OK, maybe not literally staring at the screen. > What do you think has caused that expectation in your mind? I think the structural analogue and communication style — even the name! — of chat is a verbal conversation. In a conversation, you say as little as needed and then pause for the other person to take their turn. Each utterance is pretty short so that you give the other party a chance to respond. If you do that asynchronously, it takes forever to work through a sizeable quantity of content. In email, the analogue is written letters. The expected asynchrony is high and in return the writing style accommodates that: each email is usually a roughly complete though with possibly some paragraphs. Since you know the person replying to you can reply to individual sections, it's OK to put out a complete thought. You don't have to shorten it to give them a chance to interject.

emodendroket 8y ago

I do that but it's not the same as not having a chat I'm expected to be checking.

dingaling 8y ago

> Otherwise, you can check it whenever you're ready. It's the "check it" that's a mess in a high-volume environment. E-mail threads that can be seen to branch, and in a pinch I can skip irrelevant branches once I've determined their vector. But each Slack channel is a continuous stream of text with a tiny scroll slider. There's no possibility of skipping a couple of pages of messages unless one just seaeches for direct mentions, at which point why bother? If it's important they'll just ring / call / e-mail..