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Slack is awesome! The way people use it coupled with our expectations of feal-time follow up... is awful. Don’t blame the straw if the drink is bad?

andrei_says_ 8y ago
How do you use it? Doesn’t chat imply immediacy? How do you deal with the disappearance of content? How do you deal with not knowing where information is because now you have an additional place where it may be?
- egid 8y ago
  I have a feeling that companies using Slack that don't have retention polices - for compliance with Sarbanes–Oxley etc - probably have no issue with content disappearing. It's something we at Redfin only recently have had to deal with, and it's a total pain in the ass; people operated for years as if Slack was the total repository of knowledge, and now 3/4 of that information is gone. I've thought for a while that Atlassian and other providers of corporate wiki software could make a killing providing Slack integrations that let you search in one place.
  - andrei_says_ 8y ago
    It’s an interesting problem. Maybe a chat or that adds a conversation as an article on request?
- social_quotient 8y ago
  We use it for 2 reasons. Internally as a software dev shop it’s what connects everyone. Secondary is we are in a lot of our client slack accounts. The internal one seems natural and I don’t have many issues. We have about 75 people in it across maybe 10 projects at a time. We run in to issues on client slack accounts. The expectation is that they ping and we reply with an answer or action. This leave an “open connection” and when we have too many of these we get bogged down despite the relative value we provide. We are quick to leave channels or minimize the headcount that is in the client acct so we don’t bleed time. I agre chat implies immediate reply but so does sms, and for some people email as well. I think there has to be an awareness to the turn around time and interval. What I’ve found that causes issues is when trends change. If I ping you and you reply in 3 minutes then I get trained to expect it. If I notice you answer and chat at 3pm np, I can work with it. The inconsistency causes issues for me both myself and with others to us. Re: Disappearing content As in someone deletes a previous chat/file? Re:where the content I have gotten pretty good at search. Similar to email being the source of truth for files, specs etc... to me smack is just the new medium but same problem. Sure I wish outlook and slack had some abstracted file explorer of files by date/folder. But till then I search. One thing I’ll say I notice between my team and others is that we make strong use of linking to previous chats. We do it within slack but also in things like jira. This way that 20 min chat doesn’t get lost, it becomes meta/spec. What use cases are you hitting problems on? Either I can help or I’ve not hit them yet :) (Typed on mobile, excuse typos)
egid 8y ago
A more accurate title would probably have been "Slack's default settings are awful, and you're probably using it wrong", but that just isn't quite as catchy, you know? I will say that I disagree a bit with your analogy, although I get where you're going. I'd claim that Slack manufactures both the straw and the drink, and we're happily chugging it despite the fact that it's four loko and we know it's bad for us. I didn't tackle this in the article - you can, honestly, substitute Slack for any other communication tool, including email - but maybe I should've. Doesn't Slack hold some responsibility for how their product is used?
- social_quotient 8y ago
  Interesting point. You know what would be handy... training on slack. Because it’s a new medium (arguably I know) it affords treating it as a new system. Unlike many this one is behavioral in many ways. Slack etiquette or slack culture... not sure what to call it but I agree maybe slack could be more prescriptive in its use. I’m sure data exists somewhere about what success looks like.

andrei_says_ 8y ago

How do you use it? Doesn’t chat imply immediacy? How do you deal with the disappearance of content? How do you deal with not knowing where information is because now you have an additional place where it may be?

egid 8y ago
I have a feeling that companies using Slack that don't have retention polices - for compliance with Sarbanes–Oxley etc - probably have no issue with content disappearing. It's something we at Redfin only recently have had to deal with, and it's a total pain in the ass; people operated for years as if Slack was the total repository of knowledge, and now 3/4 of that information is gone. I've thought for a while that Atlassian and other providers of corporate wiki software could make a killing providing Slack integrations that let you search in one place.
- andrei_says_ 8y ago
  It’s an interesting problem. Maybe a chat or that adds a conversation as an article on request?
social_quotient 8y ago
We use it for 2 reasons. Internally as a software dev shop it’s what connects everyone. Secondary is we are in a lot of our client slack accounts. The internal one seems natural and I don’t have many issues. We have about 75 people in it across maybe 10 projects at a time. We run in to issues on client slack accounts. The expectation is that they ping and we reply with an answer or action. This leave an “open connection” and when we have too many of these we get bogged down despite the relative value we provide. We are quick to leave channels or minimize the headcount that is in the client acct so we don’t bleed time. I agre chat implies immediate reply but so does sms, and for some people email as well. I think there has to be an awareness to the turn around time and interval. What I’ve found that causes issues is when trends change. If I ping you and you reply in 3 minutes then I get trained to expect it. If I notice you answer and chat at 3pm np, I can work with it. The inconsistency causes issues for me both myself and with others to us. Re: Disappearing content As in someone deletes a previous chat/file? Re:where the content I have gotten pretty good at search. Similar to email being the source of truth for files, specs etc... to me smack is just the new medium but same problem. Sure I wish outlook and slack had some abstracted file explorer of files by date/folder. But till then I search. One thing I’ll say I notice between my team and others is that we make strong use of linking to previous chats. We do it within slack but also in things like jira. This way that 20 min chat doesn’t get lost, it becomes meta/spec. What use cases are you hitting problems on? Either I can help or I’ve not hit them yet :) (Typed on mobile, excuse typos)

egid 8y ago

A more accurate title would probably have been "Slack's default settings are awful, and you're probably using it wrong", but that just isn't quite as catchy, you know? I will say that I disagree a bit with your analogy, although I get where you're going. I'd claim that Slack manufactures both the straw and the drink, and we're happily chugging it despite the fact that it's four loko and we know it's bad for us. I didn't tackle this in the article - you can, honestly, substitute Slack for any other communication tool, including email - but maybe I should've. Doesn't Slack hold some responsibility for how their product is used?

social_quotient 8y ago
Interesting point. You know what would be handy... training on slack. Because it’s a new medium (arguably I know) it affords treating it as a new system. Unlike many this one is behavioral in many ways. Slack etiquette or slack culture... not sure what to call it but I agree maybe slack could be more prescriptive in its use. I’m sure data exists somewhere about what success looks like.