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I don't get the slack hate. It's just a chatroom, if your team is using it in a way that impedes productivity that's on you. Noone is forcing you to look at it

I don't get the slack hate. It's just a chatroom, if your team is using it in a way that impedes productivity that's on you. Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately every time there's new conversation happening.

Benjammer 8y ago
>Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately Ugh this is such a common strawman for why most people criticize Slack. I've never heard someone say "Slack has a weird magical power over me where I'm physically incapable of _not_ checking the notifications." What people are saying is that Slack _encourages_ synchronous communication through it's explicit design choices. Why do people want to use a tool where you have to exert conscious effort to deviate from the designer's intentions in order to get value from the product?
- marktangotango 8y ago
  IMO it’s the fear of missing a direct message from my boss is why I feel the need to check every notification immediately. I don’t know that he expects instant responses from the team, but he hasn’t said otherwise, either. Ideally there’s a culture where high priority is @here and non urgent is email. I have not seen this in practice.
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    I've been taken to task in the past by a boss who sits behind me because I ignored a chat message. So yeah that threat is real but maybe us pions are to blame and we need to "grow some" not put up with it and be prepared to instaquit if necessary. I get the feeling in most countries the demand for developers (etc...) is fierce.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      More to the point, if your boss is an asshole they can be an asshole without slack/chat
  - Benjammer 8y ago
    See, you're still missing my point. You are still jumping to the level of how _you_ emotionally feel about Slack and how _you_ choose to interact with it. I'm saying that, given a generic human Slack user, Slack's design team is optimizing for engagement. They are making explicit choices about how/where/why to show notifications and how the @ commands work, and their goals are to _increase engagement on Slack_. Their motivations are antithetical to the motivations of Slack's users, who would explicitly like to see _less_, but _more efficient_ engagement ("email is full of crap I never check it, with Slack I can mute certain channels," etc).
    - p1necone 8y ago
      > I'm saying that, given a generic human Slack user, Slack's design team is optimizing for engagement. They are making explicit choices about how/where/why to show notifications and how the @ commands work, and their goals are to _increase engagement on Slack_. I don't see this, Slack seems to have a pretty simple feature set to me. There's a different kind of notification for direct messages, and situations where someone consciously decides to flag a specific person in a channel message. (All features that aren't unique to Slack, and that I would expect any chat application to have). What would you expect it to do differently? It seems like the Slack devs are just making the notifications behave the way that I would intuitively expect them to behave, and how most people use IRC or other group chat apps.
      - Benjammer 8y ago
        What do you mean, you "don't see this"? What else would their goals be?
        p1necone 8y ago
        I don't see it as in I don't see anything in Slacks design that seems to be because of what you said. What incentive does Slack have to focus on metrics like "engagement" rather than building a genuinely useful product. They just charge the customer for it, they aren't an ad driven social network like Facebook where "engagement" actually directly translates to revenue.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    How is that different from sitting at your inbox all day waiting for an email from boss, while sitting by phone waiting for a call, and staying parked at your desk in case they walk by? That's a problem in your relationship, not in your tools.
- thrower123 8y ago
  It's uncomfortable any time that you are in an organization that mixes asynchronous and synchronous communications in the same channel. This is more a people problem than a technical one... different platforms can skew towards being more natural for one or the other, but nothing will save you from the Peter Potamuses of the world that use them incorrectly and stomp into your office or blow up your phone three minutes after they send an email, bellowing "Did you get that thing I sent you?"
- p1necone 8y ago
  It wasn't meant to be a strawman - this is genuinely how I'm interpreting most of the really negative comments about slack. Some people really don't seem to consider that they aren't being forced to use it synchronously by anything other than their own company culture.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Their own company culture and the design of Slack. Many people report a quickening of work tempo when Slack is adopted. As a contrast, look at email. Both of them allow the sending of text messages between individuals and groups. But the tool designs encourage different cadences. Note also the difference between this: > if your team is using it in a way that impedes productivity that's on you and this: > anything other than their own company culture The first clearly blames the individual. The second broadens from "team" to "company", so that's a bit better. But individuals aren't able to change company culture on their own. Especially given that a company's culture isn't isolated; it picks a lot up from the broader corporate work culture.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
> "Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately every time there's new conversation happening." Nobody except your employer. In shops that use slack it is often the expectation that slack messages should be read and responded to ASAP. If someone PMs you in slack that is taken to be the equivalent of an IM or a phone call, with the same implications of urgency. If there is a chat for your specific team then it's expected you are following that pretty closely (at least as closely as your email if not more so). Additionally, sometimes it's not possible to avoid paying too much attention to slack. If people have a habit of dumping lots of context and decision making into slack without putting that info elsewhere (like wiki, issues, email, etc.) then at some point you need to go back and read all that backlog to keep up to date on what the hell is going on, typically it's far easier to do that as close in time as possible to the original messages, so that you're in the loop. Relatedly, people have a habit of having substantive conversations and effectively virtual meetings in slack which can include decision making as well. Meaning they can make decisions without your input, advice, or consent if you're heads-down and not paying attention, which can mean people make the wrong decisions (they did it without additional context, information, or advice you could have provided) or they make decisions that put you individually at a disadvantage (because you "weren't in the room" when things got decided). Yes, these are absolutely undesirable and unnecessary ways of using the platform but they are also very common and they are some of the big reasons why people tend to dislike slack.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ramraj07 8y ago
  Sucks for you that you need to be responding ASAP but that's not necessarily the norm. My organization and team clearly set expectations that we are only expected to respond ASAP if it's regular work hours or if you're on call. All other times people can ping you but no one's gonna hold you to it if you don't reply all Sunday. In our team what organically transpires is that we generally get a response time of 3-8 hours over weekends and a few hours in weekday evenings. No one's complaining over lost sleep. And from what I've heard from my friends who all made informed decisions on where to work, that seems to be the norm. I'm perfectly fine with that. Looks more like you've decided these hardass companies are the only places worth working at for various reasons and have concluded that these are the norms everywhere.
ddebernardy 8y ago
True, but there's something to be said about the defaults. Unless you're experienced enough to know you should turn sound notifications off, `/mute` channels that are mostly noise but you still need to follow, and type `/dnd until 5:30pm` when you log in in the morning to get the message across that "no, I won't be reading this now unless you confirm it's actually time sensitive", it's easy to get interrupted by pointless messages all day long. (There's also something to be said about documenting decisions outside of slack.)

Benjammer 8y ago

>Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately Ugh this is such a common strawman for why most people criticize Slack. I've never heard someone say "Slack has a weird magical power over me where I'm physically incapable of _not_ checking the notifications." What people are saying is that Slack _encourages_ synchronous communication through it's explicit design choices. Why do people want to use a tool where you have to exert conscious effort to deviate from the designer's intentions in order to get value from the product?

marktangotango 8y ago
IMO it’s the fear of missing a direct message from my boss is why I feel the need to check every notification immediately. I don’t know that he expects instant responses from the team, but he hasn’t said otherwise, either. Ideally there’s a culture where high priority is @here and non urgent is email. I have not seen this in practice.
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  I've been taken to task in the past by a boss who sits behind me because I ignored a chat message. So yeah that threat is real but maybe us pions are to blame and we need to "grow some" not put up with it and be prepared to instaquit if necessary. I get the feeling in most countries the demand for developers (etc...) is fierce.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    More to the point, if your boss is an asshole they can be an asshole without slack/chat
- Benjammer 8y ago
  See, you're still missing my point. You are still jumping to the level of how _you_ emotionally feel about Slack and how _you_ choose to interact with it. I'm saying that, given a generic human Slack user, Slack's design team is optimizing for engagement. They are making explicit choices about how/where/why to show notifications and how the @ commands work, and their goals are to _increase engagement on Slack_. Their motivations are antithetical to the motivations of Slack's users, who would explicitly like to see _less_, but _more efficient_ engagement ("email is full of crap I never check it, with Slack I can mute certain channels," etc).
  - p1necone 8y ago
    > I'm saying that, given a generic human Slack user, Slack's design team is optimizing for engagement. They are making explicit choices about how/where/why to show notifications and how the @ commands work, and their goals are to _increase engagement on Slack_. I don't see this, Slack seems to have a pretty simple feature set to me. There's a different kind of notification for direct messages, and situations where someone consciously decides to flag a specific person in a channel message. (All features that aren't unique to Slack, and that I would expect any chat application to have). What would you expect it to do differently? It seems like the Slack devs are just making the notifications behave the way that I would intuitively expect them to behave, and how most people use IRC or other group chat apps.
    - Benjammer 8y ago
      What do you mean, you "don't see this"? What else would their goals be?
      - p1necone 8y ago
        I don't see it as in I don't see anything in Slacks design that seems to be because of what you said. What incentive does Slack have to focus on metrics like "engagement" rather than building a genuinely useful product. They just charge the customer for it, they aren't an ad driven social network like Facebook where "engagement" actually directly translates to revenue.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  How is that different from sitting at your inbox all day waiting for an email from boss, while sitting by phone waiting for a call, and staying parked at your desk in case they walk by? That's a problem in your relationship, not in your tools.
thrower123 8y ago
It's uncomfortable any time that you are in an organization that mixes asynchronous and synchronous communications in the same channel. This is more a people problem than a technical one... different platforms can skew towards being more natural for one or the other, but nothing will save you from the Peter Potamuses of the world that use them incorrectly and stomp into your office or blow up your phone three minutes after they send an email, bellowing "Did you get that thing I sent you?"
p1necone 8y ago
It wasn't meant to be a strawman - this is genuinely how I'm interpreting most of the really negative comments about slack. Some people really don't seem to consider that they aren't being forced to use it synchronously by anything other than their own company culture.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Their own company culture and the design of Slack. Many people report a quickening of work tempo when Slack is adopted. As a contrast, look at email. Both of them allow the sending of text messages between individuals and groups. But the tool designs encourage different cadences. Note also the difference between this: > if your team is using it in a way that impedes productivity that's on you and this: > anything other than their own company culture The first clearly blames the individual. The second broadens from "team" to "company", so that's a bit better. But individuals aren't able to change company culture on their own. Especially given that a company's culture isn't isolated; it picks a lot up from the broader corporate work culture.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

> "Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately every time there's new conversation happening." Nobody except your employer. In shops that use slack it is often the expectation that slack messages should be read and responded to ASAP. If someone PMs you in slack that is taken to be the equivalent of an IM or a phone call, with the same implications of urgency. If there is a chat for your specific team then it's expected you are following that pretty closely (at least as closely as your email if not more so). Additionally, sometimes it's not possible to avoid paying too much attention to slack. If people have a habit of dumping lots of context and decision making into slack without putting that info elsewhere (like wiki, issues, email, etc.) then at some point you need to go back and read all that backlog to keep up to date on what the hell is going on, typically it's far easier to do that as close in time as possible to the original messages, so that you're in the loop. Relatedly, people have a habit of having substantive conversations and effectively virtual meetings in slack which can include decision making as well. Meaning they can make decisions without your input, advice, or consent if you're heads-down and not paying attention, which can mean people make the wrong decisions (they did it without additional context, information, or advice you could have provided) or they make decisions that put you individually at a disadvantage (because you "weren't in the room" when things got decided). Yes, these are absolutely undesirable and unnecessary ways of using the platform but they are also very common and they are some of the big reasons why people tend to dislike slack.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ramraj07 8y ago
Sucks for you that you need to be responding ASAP but that's not necessarily the norm. My organization and team clearly set expectations that we are only expected to respond ASAP if it's regular work hours or if you're on call. All other times people can ping you but no one's gonna hold you to it if you don't reply all Sunday. In our team what organically transpires is that we generally get a response time of 3-8 hours over weekends and a few hours in weekday evenings. No one's complaining over lost sleep. And from what I've heard from my friends who all made informed decisions on where to work, that seems to be the norm. I'm perfectly fine with that. Looks more like you've decided these hardass companies are the only places worth working at for various reasons and have concluded that these are the norms everywhere.

ddebernardy 8y ago

True, but there's something to be said about the defaults. Unless you're experienced enough to know you should turn sound notifications off, `/mute` channels that are mostly noise but you still need to follow, and type `/dnd until 5:30pm` when you log in in the morning to get the message across that "no, I won't be reading this now unless you confirm it's actually time sensitive", it's easy to get interrupted by pointless messages all day long. (There's also something to be said about documenting decisions outside of slack.)