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Slack is no longer for "hackers". It's mainstream now. My company of 500 with only 30 devs uses it. These are power moves by Slack. They want to have greater c

Slack is no longer for "hackers". It's mainstream now. My company of 500 with only 30 devs uses it. These are power moves by Slack. They want to have greater control over the communication medium and presentation If you thought they were ever going to support extensions of their IRC gateway for long, then you misunderstood their product and who their market was or rather who their market became

as1mov 8y ago
> My company of 500 with only 30 devs uses it. Same at my workplace. Slack is mostly used by the managers, all the devs avoid it. Even if you don't mind the proprietory protocol, the performance even on beefy machines is an absolute dumpster fire, that nobody wants to touch the app with a ten foot pole.
- pkaye 8y ago
  Its the opposite at my workplace. Mostly the developers use Slack. What do your devs use instead?
  - katheriin 8y ago
    Slack definitely started from the software niche, but is far from the only player in the field. Others mentioned Mattermost, Discord, but really, there are so many viable options out there. See this list of 25+ alternatives for example: https://fleep.io/blog/best-slack-alternatives/ https://fleep.io/blog/best-slack-alternatives/ From cloud-based to self-hosted, open-source and commercial... As long as they integrate with the tools devs use, there will be devs who use it.
  - g3rv4 8y ago
    We use bonfire, which is the same tool the community at Stack Overflow uses to interact.
    - miles_matthias 8y ago
      Is there a link to bonfire somewhere? You're not talking about Facebook's video call app are you?
      - bluehatbrit 8y ago
        This is as far as I've gotten with Google on a mobile phone. http://dev.bonfire.stackoverflow.com/beta-access http://dev.bonfire.stackoverflow.com/beta-access
      - g3rv4 8y ago
        it’s this: https://chat.stackoverflow.com https://chat.stackoverflow.com but unfortunately, it’s not open source or available for other teams to use in private.
        kabacha 8y ago
        Oh god it's an ugly, slow mess. - Why does it have list of users with their avatars and everytime new person comes in it has a huge, slow animation lol - ads for other rooms and quarter of the screen is "best comments top list" - the chat user avatars are unaligned, some are bigger, some smaller, some have usernames under avatare, some on the right. I'm not sure if it's a late april fools joke or what's going on here.
  - nambit 8y ago
    Mattermost.
  - Slartie 8y ago
    Another Mattermost user here. When Slack came up, some of our development teams picked up using it, because it was free and didn't have to be installed and because of "it was that hot new thing from Silicon Valley that all devs use now". Most people loved it. I've always been in the "we try to keep our other infrastructure mostly in-house for control/privacy/anti-lock-in reasons, so why add a dependency to an external service and push internal documents onto it while we don't even pay for that thing?" camp and therefore flat-out refused to use Slack until the issue of internal instant messaging got enough attention to be discussed on a company-wide level. It was agreed upon the need for such a service, but it was also recognized that the way in which Slack was used to serve that need was not sustainable and far from rational, so alternatives were discussed and we eventually settled on trying out Mattermost. Within weeks, all teams using Slack had moved over to Mattermost, and even most of the people who never wanted to use Slack for various reasons, including me, were okay with giving Mattermost a try. Most kept using it, so it has become a widely accepted part of our internal infrastructure now.
- 24gttghh 8y ago
  I see your 500:30 and raise you with 30:5 at my company. It's complete overkill.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  My company of I dunno, with some 2000 devs uses it. Mainstream is the right word.
- Pistos2 8y ago
  I'm hardly a Slack fan, but, in fairness, I've never considered Slack to be slow or resource intensive. Either the web UI or the (OSX) desktop app. Or are you referring to audio calls and video calls?
  - Marazan 8y ago
    Slack is ludicrously chuggy for basic operations. Why does it take so insanely long to start up?
Ekuju 8y ago
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about discord?
- philtar 8y ago
  I use discord personally all the time and really wanted to use it for business but couldn't. Some reasons: * You are in all channels, all the time. * no threaded replies (most important) * the notifications system is weird * weak integration system (integrations cannot add widgets to chat) Some more reasons that I forgot. But these ones most importantly.
- gandreani 8y ago
  Little late with the reply and it's probably disappointing too. I don't use discord so I don't have any opinions about what their product or future is
- aepiepaey 8y ago
  Discord is no better than Slack. While I haven't seen any legal threats, they tend to threaten end users with bans (due to breach of ToS) for using third party clients, client modifications (like BetterDiscord), and "self-bots".
- aiiane 8y ago
  Discord doesn't really solve any problems in the text chat space any better than Slack, and introduces additional problems like its lack of ability to leave/join channels.
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
    Oh you can set up mandatory Slack channels too.
BeefySwain 8y ago
Embrace Extend <- we are here Extinguish
- stephengillie 8y ago
  MS Teams has become pretty popular, but they haven't marketed it nearly as much as Slack.
  - bartread 8y ago
    We've actually just switched to MS Teams. It's OK. Does the job. But, to be honest, I'm no great fan of instant messaging so I'm always going to react a bit like that to it. Main difference is cost. If you're already paying for Office 365 then paying for Slack Enterprise (or Plus, or whatever it's called these days) across a fast growing organisation of 170 people on top starts to look really hard to justify versus Teams. You can, of course, stick with the free version but this caused two problems for us: - We ran out of integrations, - We found losing message history more than a few days old was really starting to hurt us - you couldn't even go back and refer to a conversation you'd had last week. Teams isn't perfect: it's purple theme is pretty gross (actually it has a couple of other themes, but they're both foul as well), it can be very slow/laggy, and it has a plethora of UX annoyances (like having poorly designed chat window layout and formatting that wastes loads of space) but we saved £20k/annum by switching over to it. And we now have conversation history and unlimited integrations. Plus, I have to say, I do not approve of this move by Slack. They could have approached it much more positively by partnering with the author (as an example).

as1mov 8y ago

> My company of 500 with only 30 devs uses it. Same at my workplace. Slack is mostly used by the managers, all the devs avoid it. Even if you don't mind the proprietory protocol, the performance even on beefy machines is an absolute dumpster fire, that nobody wants to touch the app with a ten foot pole.

pkaye 8y ago
Its the opposite at my workplace. Mostly the developers use Slack. What do your devs use instead?
- katheriin 8y ago
  Slack definitely started from the software niche, but is far from the only player in the field. Others mentioned Mattermost, Discord, but really, there are so many viable options out there. See this list of 25+ alternatives for example: https://fleep.io/blog/best-slack-alternatives/ https://fleep.io/blog/best-slack-alternatives/ From cloud-based to self-hosted, open-source and commercial... As long as they integrate with the tools devs use, there will be devs who use it.
- g3rv4 8y ago
  We use bonfire, which is the same tool the community at Stack Overflow uses to interact.
  - miles_matthias 8y ago
    Is there a link to bonfire somewhere? You're not talking about Facebook's video call app are you?
    - bluehatbrit 8y ago
      This is as far as I've gotten with Google on a mobile phone. http://dev.bonfire.stackoverflow.com/beta-access http://dev.bonfire.stackoverflow.com/beta-access
    - g3rv4 8y ago
      it’s this: https://chat.stackoverflow.com https://chat.stackoverflow.com but unfortunately, it’s not open source or available for other teams to use in private.
      - kabacha 8y ago
        Oh god it's an ugly, slow mess. - Why does it have list of users with their avatars and everytime new person comes in it has a huge, slow animation lol - ads for other rooms and quarter of the screen is "best comments top list" - the chat user avatars are unaligned, some are bigger, some smaller, some have usernames under avatare, some on the right. I'm not sure if it's a late april fools joke or what's going on here.
- nambit 8y ago
  Mattermost.
- Slartie 8y ago
  Another Mattermost user here. When Slack came up, some of our development teams picked up using it, because it was free and didn't have to be installed and because of "it was that hot new thing from Silicon Valley that all devs use now". Most people loved it. I've always been in the "we try to keep our other infrastructure mostly in-house for control/privacy/anti-lock-in reasons, so why add a dependency to an external service and push internal documents onto it while we don't even pay for that thing?" camp and therefore flat-out refused to use Slack until the issue of internal instant messaging got enough attention to be discussed on a company-wide level. It was agreed upon the need for such a service, but it was also recognized that the way in which Slack was used to serve that need was not sustainable and far from rational, so alternatives were discussed and we eventually settled on trying out Mattermost. Within weeks, all teams using Slack had moved over to Mattermost, and even most of the people who never wanted to use Slack for various reasons, including me, were okay with giving Mattermost a try. Most kept using it, so it has become a widely accepted part of our internal infrastructure now.
24gttghh 8y ago
I see your 500:30 and raise you with 30:5 at my company. It's complete overkill.
Aeolun 8y ago
My company of I dunno, with some 2000 devs uses it. Mainstream is the right word.
Pistos2 8y ago
I'm hardly a Slack fan, but, in fairness, I've never considered Slack to be slow or resource intensive. Either the web UI or the (OSX) desktop app. Or are you referring to audio calls and video calls?
- Marazan 8y ago
  Slack is ludicrously chuggy for basic operations. Why does it take so insanely long to start up?

Ekuju 8y ago

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about discord?

philtar 8y ago
I use discord personally all the time and really wanted to use it for business but couldn't. Some reasons: * You are in all channels, all the time. * no threaded replies (most important) * the notifications system is weird * weak integration system (integrations cannot add widgets to chat) Some more reasons that I forgot. But these ones most importantly.
gandreani 8y ago
Little late with the reply and it's probably disappointing too. I don't use discord so I don't have any opinions about what their product or future is
aepiepaey 8y ago
Discord is no better than Slack. While I haven't seen any legal threats, they tend to threaten end users with bans (due to breach of ToS) for using third party clients, client modifications (like BetterDiscord), and "self-bots".
aiiane 8y ago
Discord doesn't really solve any problems in the text chat space any better than Slack, and introduces additional problems like its lack of ability to leave/join channels.
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  Oh you can set up mandatory Slack channels too.

BeefySwain 8y ago

Embrace Extend <- we are here Extinguish

stephengillie 8y ago
MS Teams has become pretty popular, but they haven't marketed it nearly as much as Slack.
- bartread 8y ago
  We've actually just switched to MS Teams. It's OK. Does the job. But, to be honest, I'm no great fan of instant messaging so I'm always going to react a bit like that to it. Main difference is cost. If you're already paying for Office 365 then paying for Slack Enterprise (or Plus, or whatever it's called these days) across a fast growing organisation of 170 people on top starts to look really hard to justify versus Teams. You can, of course, stick with the free version but this caused two problems for us: - We ran out of integrations, - We found losing message history more than a few days old was really starting to hurt us - you couldn't even go back and refer to a conversation you'd had last week. Teams isn't perfect: it's purple theme is pretty gross (actually it has a couple of other themes, but they're both foul as well), it can be very slow/laggy, and it has a plethora of UX annoyances (like having poorly designed chat window layout and formatting that wastes loads of space) but we saved £20k/annum by switching over to it. And we now have conversation history and unlimited integrations. Plus, I have to say, I do not approve of this move by Slack. They could have approached it much more positively by partnering with the author (as an example).