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Should this be considered controversial? I’m not sure what service they offer but if a client asks for someone to join the their slack why would anyone accept

Should this be considered controversial? I’m not sure what service they offer but if a client asks for someone to join the their slack why would anyone accept unless they were paying someone to monitor it on a full time basis? Would you do work for free? Nah. This isn’t a slack thing.

onion2k 7y ago
This isn’t a slack thing. This isn't a Slack thing per se, but it is a "direct line of low cost comms to the team" thing, and Slack encourages that. There's an implicit cost to things like face-to-face meetings. You can literally bill for them, so they don't happen very often (relatively speaking). By using a chat app you can bombard a team with requests for free, and there's an expectation that they're not going to push back because the 'real time' nature of it means they won't have time to carefully consider a negative response. It's much easier just to say yes, so teams do. A lot of clients abuse that. Managing clients is hard, and it's a real problem.
- mjevans 7y ago
  This makes a lot more sense when the company and contracts involved are big enough that you don't /have/ to bill because a support or customer liaison / requirements solicitor gets included as a full time position as part of the contract. The implication also being that they act as the filter that's often missing on such "low cost" communications.
RandallBrown 7y ago
Why would you accept an email from someone unless they were paying someone to monitor emails on a full time basis? Maybe it's just the way the companies I've worked at have used slack, but it's never been expected to be any more "real time" than email.
- luckylion 7y ago
  This. In my experience: if "joining slack" means you spend a lot of time chatting about random things and get to know the people privately, you're not doing your job and the work culture is a red flag. I've seen people do the same via email, where they quickly spiral out of work and end up sending each other pics of their pets all day. I don't think it's a medium thing, it's a people thing.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > it's never been expected to be any more "real time" than email. If that's the case, then why not just use email? I always thought that the only value that an IM system brings is that it's real-time.

onion2k 7y ago

This isn’t a slack thing. This isn't a Slack thing per se, but it is a "direct line of low cost comms to the team" thing, and Slack encourages that. There's an implicit cost to things like face-to-face meetings. You can literally bill for them, so they don't happen very often (relatively speaking). By using a chat app you can bombard a team with requests for free, and there's an expectation that they're not going to push back because the 'real time' nature of it means they won't have time to carefully consider a negative response. It's much easier just to say yes, so teams do. A lot of clients abuse that. Managing clients is hard, and it's a real problem.

mjevans 7y ago
This makes a lot more sense when the company and contracts involved are big enough that you don't /have/ to bill because a support or customer liaison / requirements solicitor gets included as a full time position as part of the contract. The implication also being that they act as the filter that's often missing on such "low cost" communications.

RandallBrown 7y ago

Why would you accept an email from someone unless they were paying someone to monitor emails on a full time basis? Maybe it's just the way the companies I've worked at have used slack, but it's never been expected to be any more "real time" than email.

luckylion 7y ago
This. In my experience: if "joining slack" means you spend a lot of time chatting about random things and get to know the people privately, you're not doing your job and the work culture is a red flag. I've seen people do the same via email, where they quickly spiral out of work and end up sending each other pics of their pets all day. I don't think it's a medium thing, it's a people thing.
JohnFen 7y ago
> it's never been expected to be any more "real time" than email. If that's the case, then why not just use email? I always thought that the only value that an IM system brings is that it's real-time.