3 ms·

IM's also great for keeping a whole team or group in-sync with a current team activity or sprint. If everybody on the team is aware of how to properly use IM,

IM's also great for keeping a whole team or group in-sync with a current team activity or sprint. If everybody on the team is aware of how to properly use IM, (and when to use an alternate means) - then most of the bad effects talked about in the ranticle are easily overcome. I'm not even sure it's possible to do remote work without IM.

kenhwang 7y ago
Keeping a group in sync is also possible (and I'd say preferable) via email, since current objectives and sprints don't change very quickly at all relative to the speed of conversation, and both have natural paper trails. But if your current objective is something like triaging a complex outage or live event, IM works beautifully for that. I've done remote work via long conference calls before and it works for certain types of work; I agree that IM is much more preferable.
tasty_freeze 7y ago
> I'm not even sure it's possible to do remote work without IM. As someone who has been working from home for 15 years, I'm here to say it only takes one counter example (me!) to say of course it is possible to work remotely without it. Recently I was forced to adopt slack on top of all the other communication channels in use (phone, webex, email). Perhaps it is a generational thing (I'm in my 50s), but I greatly prefer to talk or use email for both my personal and professional life. The two modes of communication are different enough that they fill different purposes. IM seems to be an awkward in-between mode of operation. I HATE getting a slack message, with the expectation that I'm always ready to be interrupted, and I owe a prompt reply. Typical slack interaction. I'm head down debugging something when slack clacks at me. I click on the app, and it says: "hey". The person on the other side is just probing to see if I'm really there. So I reply, "I'm here". But I can't go back to my work because I know a single sentence is going to interrupt me again very soon. Slack helpfully tells me "So and so is typing..." and I continue to sit like a dummy, waiting for it. Eventually the message arrives which was important enough to interrupt my flow and which began emptying my the cache of information I had amassed while debugging: "Are you working on bug #1234, or does someone else have it?" So I type, "Yes, I'm working on it right now." I close the window and try to get back in the flow, but 60 seconds later, slack clacks again at me. I open the window. "OK, thanks" it reads. Boy, that was a real productivity booster. And before someone snidely says that I'm a grumpy, out of touch programmer -- my reviews would indicate otherwise. Yes, it is nice that IM leaves a paper trail that a phone call doesn't, but typically there is one or two important points that come out of conversation and I can quickly add them in my TODO file.
- kstenerud 7y ago
  That's a prime example of poor IM skills. Messaging someone "hey" is a productivity killer, as you said, for the reasons you said, which is why you just shouldn't do it. Healthy IM communication should go a little more like this: Working, working... beep alt-tab "Hey, are you working on bug #1234, or does someone else have it?" "I'm working on #415, so someone else has it." alt-tab working, working... beep alt-tab "Do you happen to know where the Davidson account files went? I can't find them anywhere :/" "No, sorry. Maybe try the Z: drive?" alt-tab And if you don't want to be interrupted by anything except critical things, set "do not disturb" mode.
  - kenhwang 7y ago
    This exactly. If I'm doing concentration heavy work, I'll mute IM and batch respond when I get water/bathroom. I also have toasts on a side screen so `hey` messages I can quickly read and ignore without losing focus. IM is only as distracting as you let it be, and it's relatively easy to make it no worse than email.
  - jbverschoor 7y ago
    Welcome to the age of distraction. Where projects that should take a week take about 3 months bc of this crap. I hate IM for work. Email or other ways for people to think first.
- jasonkester 7y ago
  That matches my experience working with shops that use slack. I’ve made peace with it by telling myself that these companies value my attention more than they do my productivity. It still costs them the same for a day of my work, whether they slow me down or not. I try to communicate this to them as early and as clearly as possible. After that, if the ceo feels the urge to spend a few hundred dollars to find out “what are you working on right now”, that’s fine with me. I’ll dump the cache then spend an hour or so rebuilding it to get back to where I was. But I’d never use something like that in a situation where it was me paying the bills.
  - 7y ago

kenhwang 7y ago

Keeping a group in sync is also possible (and I'd say preferable) via email, since current objectives and sprints don't change very quickly at all relative to the speed of conversation, and both have natural paper trails. But if your current objective is something like triaging a complex outage or live event, IM works beautifully for that. I've done remote work via long conference calls before and it works for certain types of work; I agree that IM is much more preferable.

tasty_freeze 7y ago

> I'm not even sure it's possible to do remote work without IM. As someone who has been working from home for 15 years, I'm here to say it only takes one counter example (me!) to say of course it is possible to work remotely without it. Recently I was forced to adopt slack on top of all the other communication channels in use (phone, webex, email). Perhaps it is a generational thing (I'm in my 50s), but I greatly prefer to talk or use email for both my personal and professional life. The two modes of communication are different enough that they fill different purposes. IM seems to be an awkward in-between mode of operation. I HATE getting a slack message, with the expectation that I'm always ready to be interrupted, and I owe a prompt reply. Typical slack interaction. I'm head down debugging something when slack clacks at me. I click on the app, and it says: "hey". The person on the other side is just probing to see if I'm really there. So I reply, "I'm here". But I can't go back to my work because I know a single sentence is going to interrupt me again very soon. Slack helpfully tells me "So and so is typing..." and I continue to sit like a dummy, waiting for it. Eventually the message arrives which was important enough to interrupt my flow and which began emptying my the cache of information I had amassed while debugging: "Are you working on bug #1234, or does someone else have it?" So I type, "Yes, I'm working on it right now." I close the window and try to get back in the flow, but 60 seconds later, slack clacks again at me. I open the window. "OK, thanks" it reads. Boy, that was a real productivity booster. And before someone snidely says that I'm a grumpy, out of touch programmer -- my reviews would indicate otherwise. Yes, it is nice that IM leaves a paper trail that a phone call doesn't, but typically there is one or two important points that come out of conversation and I can quickly add them in my TODO file.

kstenerud 7y ago
That's a prime example of poor IM skills. Messaging someone "hey" is a productivity killer, as you said, for the reasons you said, which is why you just shouldn't do it. Healthy IM communication should go a little more like this: Working, working... beep alt-tab "Hey, are you working on bug #1234, or does someone else have it?" "I'm working on #415, so someone else has it." alt-tab working, working... beep alt-tab "Do you happen to know where the Davidson account files went? I can't find them anywhere :/" "No, sorry. Maybe try the Z: drive?" alt-tab And if you don't want to be interrupted by anything except critical things, set "do not disturb" mode.
- kenhwang 7y ago
  This exactly. If I'm doing concentration heavy work, I'll mute IM and batch respond when I get water/bathroom. I also have toasts on a side screen so `hey` messages I can quickly read and ignore without losing focus. IM is only as distracting as you let it be, and it's relatively easy to make it no worse than email.
- jbverschoor 7y ago
  Welcome to the age of distraction. Where projects that should take a week take about 3 months bc of this crap. I hate IM for work. Email or other ways for people to think first.
jasonkester 7y ago
That matches my experience working with shops that use slack. I’ve made peace with it by telling myself that these companies value my attention more than they do my productivity. It still costs them the same for a day of my work, whether they slow me down or not. I try to communicate this to them as early and as clearly as possible. After that, if the ceo feels the urge to spend a few hundred dollars to find out “what are you working on right now”, that’s fine with me. I’ll dump the cache then spend an hour or so rebuilding it to get back to where I was. But I’d never use something like that in a situation where it was me paying the bills.
- 7y ago