6 ms·

There are modes of work where Slack or another instant messaging option make me far more productive than anything else, and there are modes where it makes me fa

There are modes of work where Slack or another instant messaging option make me far more productive than anything else, and there are modes where it makes me far less productive. When collaborating on a time sensitive issue with remote colleagues it's fantastic. When trying to get my head down and complete a tricky bit of work it's awful. I think the most important thing is not using Slack or avoiding Slack, it's building a culture that allows people to opt-out of it, without any sort of penalty, perceived or otherwise. If people want to hang out in Slack they can, if they want to shut it off for the day and just drop in to give a standup update or something like that, that's fine too. Important things are done asynchronously in a forum that everyone can experience.

mooreds 7y ago
> When collaborating on a time sensitive issue with remote colleagues it's fantastic. When trying to get my head down and complete a tricky bit of work it's awful. I have found slack to be wonderful when troubleshooting production downtime. Not just during it, but after, for the post mortem. Other times I try to treat it like email. That means turning off the notifications and closing the client for long periods of time.
- paggle 7y ago
  When there is a live issue I like to get everyone on a call and just keep it running even if there’s nothing to say. Just the little sounds of puzzlement or frustration are sometimes a clue to open up further conversation
vcavallo 7y ago
what is it people say? “/thread” or something. you’ve nailed it and nothing else needs to be said about Slack.
- na85 7y ago
  >/thread Yes, that's what they say. It's like closing an HTML tag. I disagree that nothing more needs to be said about Slack, though. It's a highly influential application, for better or for worse, and the social issues around it aren't opened and closed quite so easily as a div tag.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
> Important things are done asynchronously in a forum that everyone can experience. This is how email or ticketing systems to an extent work. Though we have a rule that certain ticket discussions should go into a ticket itself so decision changes are not lost and people have accountability (which is better cause I get asked sometimes why I wrote code a certain way by the very person who suggested the change).
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > we have a rule that certain ticket discussions should go into a ticket itself The last three companies I've worked at had the same rule, except with no exceptions. All discussions get recorded into the system, precisely for the reason that you state -- so there's a historical record of what was discussed, what was decided, and why. Any "external" communications, such as with email or IM, are expected to be copy/pasted into the system so its permanently recorded in a useful way.
  - noja 7y ago
    That's a lot of extra stuff to read through. Do you summarise the discussion too?
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      Most places that I've been at that have worked this way have had periodic "checkpoints" in the tracker (usually when the code involved is sent to QA), where the current state is summarized at a 10,000 ft level. In practice, these records are only read from beginning to end when someone new to the issue at hand needs to come up to speed. Otherwise, the value is in being able to search through the record to find specific things.
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      Jira has the ticket description section which gets updated to the latest goals / spec as things change. The history is for context of "who said do this" / "why did we do x"
- 7y ago
isostatic 7y ago
> When trying to get my head down and complete a tricky bit of work it's awful. Turn off notifications. Just like email, or SMS, or the phone. Don't blame the tool if you aren't using it right.
- human20190310 7y ago
  If you can't opt out of it completely, that means that there is some socially-determined expectation as to how responsive you're going to be. Not everyone can unilaterally set their own level of responsiveness without a negative impact on their standing in the company.
- UI_at_80x24 7y ago
  If you work in an environment where the 'rules' are followed then yes, that works fine. Turn off the notifications and go about your task. However, not everyone has that luxury. In my office, we are required to keep slack running. There are bullshit channels like #random, #memes, etc. that I have set to ignore. But then there are "Serious" channels where if the Boss speaks the expectation is complete participation. #General <Boss> I want to make all the icons a corn-flower blue across all of our sites. --Now here is an example of the boss being an idiot and interrupting 30% of the staff. The accountants don't care, neither do the secretaries, the Help-desk, the Customer-support, or the SysAdmins. But because the idiot starts the conversation in the wrong fucking channel every damn reply and conversation that is sparked because of this interrupts me. Incorrectly using the "tool" disrupts everybody who does use it correctly. If this was an email, it'd be safely ignored for 4+hrs. I'm not mad at Slack, I'm mad at corporate overlords who shouldn't even be allowed to touch a computer. But because Slack exists, I am forced to despise it. I've got half a dozen other ways to send IM's to my co-workers. I never got interrupted in the past with bullshit like I do with Slack.
  - hyperpape 7y ago
    Your boss sounds pretty bad. I doubt you’re going to have a good time with any set of tools.
  - isostatic 7y ago
myspy 7y ago
That's why Basecamp is better suited for work in my opinion. Don't use chat to solve problems. Use longform text like messages. And avoid notifications. Allow your team to response in a matter of hours/days, not minutes. Let them think about and rethink a problem or question. This requires to be able to work on a couple of problems at the same time. Divide the work accordingly. Or use the time waiting for a response to learn something. There's a quote going like this: The urgent is not important and the important is not always urgent.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  "Allow your team to response in a matter of hours/days, not minutes. Let them think about and rethink a problem or question." Is anyone using dsr55rhel? I need to reboot it.
  - rgoulter 7y ago
    "Last week I needed to reboot dsr55rhel. I was blocked for 8 hours because of the way we communicate things. To avoid this next time, I suggest we: ..." "Last week I lost 3 days of my work because someone rebooted dsr55rhel and I didn't see the reply in time. To avoid this next time, I suggest we: ..." There are probably cases where it's necessary for multiple people to be communicating/collaborating on some issue simultaneously and synchronously. Most won't be. I think cases like "what if something comes up and you need multiple people" is a smell that something can be improved, rather than a common unavoidable problem.
  - asdfasdf1234567 7y ago
    SLACK INSTALLED, 5 MINUTES LATER Is anyone using dsr55rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:00 Is anyone using dsr72rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:05 Is anyone using dsr21rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:09 Is anyone using dsr97rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:11 ..ad infinitum 1 Month Later, some over the top, ITIL compliant business-flow is setup to quash that nonsense. And now everyone is suffering the consequences with hyper bloated business process procedures. ...basically the disease, the cure, and the cure for the cure are all equal when killing productivity. It really comes down to people and discipline. You're either working with smart, competent, well adjusted adults, or you're not. If your organization is small, brilliant, tight ...then any/all decent tools can be utilized to maximum effectiveness, because again it's people. But the larger the organization, it mitigates any and all tools, even the best of tools, and it also mitigates the possibility of having a small collection of really smart, talented people. Smart people in this environment typically will feel suffocated in a few years, unless they are protected from the endless nonsense that large organizations naturally create. This is how brilliant managers operate, and the competitiveness is interesting to see. Savy manager, makes his way up the food chain by being a problem solver. How does he solve it? Pooling talent, shielding them, in exchange he has high expectations from them, they come through, all are heroes, but the manager gets majority of credit. He/she then gets moved to a higher level, or a group that tackles harder problems. He streamlines the group, gets rid of the dead weight, steals better talent from other teams, protects his team pushing the boundaries as granted to him/her due to previous successes, then uses the potential to solve problems that no one else can/wants-to solve. Wash Rinse Repeat. If someone regulary utilizes a broadcast to ask everyone "who is using this server, anyone on it, can I reboot it?" Something is terribly screwed up at that organization. And having Slack as the broadcast tool is just an enabler.
blevo 7y ago
>I think the most important thing is not using Slack or avoiding Slack, it's building a culture that allows people to opt-out of it, without any sort of penalty, perceived or otherwise. The new book "Indistractable" makes exactly this point. Incidentally it also talks about how the Slack company uses Slack, and this is exactly their point, too. The book goes on to talk about "Psychological Safety." In this case, defined as the lack of '>any sort of penalty'
brightball 7y ago
Really, just turning in do not disturb for chunks of time is good
StreamBright 7y ago
I disabled all notification from slack every platform I have it. Same with email, facebook and all the other platforms that designed to disrupt your normal workflow or life.
autokad 7y ago
problem with any messaging system is people abuse it / don't respect other peoples time, and software can't control for that. people have to own up. an example not necessarily tied to work directly: there was a slack channel at work that was dedicated to free food. if you brought in food, or someone or a vendor was giving out food, you told the channel what food / when / where + an optional picture. Problem was, some people would just chat - about their vacations, dogs, etc and I would have to ask them to take it to another channel or talk direct message, because they would bury actual food announcements and cause all sorts of notifications. instead of realizing their folly, they would fight back and say you can always mute the channel, which totally negates the reason for being in the channel. You also see alert crepe. someone has an idea of sending service information to a channel, and before you know it you have 25 channels dominated by computer talk.

mooreds 7y ago

> When collaborating on a time sensitive issue with remote colleagues it's fantastic. When trying to get my head down and complete a tricky bit of work it's awful. I have found slack to be wonderful when troubleshooting production downtime. Not just during it, but after, for the post mortem. Other times I try to treat it like email. That means turning off the notifications and closing the client for long periods of time.

paggle 7y ago
When there is a live issue I like to get everyone on a call and just keep it running even if there’s nothing to say. Just the little sounds of puzzlement or frustration are sometimes a clue to open up further conversation

vcavallo 7y ago

what is it people say? “/thread” or something. you’ve nailed it and nothing else needs to be said about Slack.

na85 7y ago
>/thread Yes, that's what they say. It's like closing an HTML tag. I disagree that nothing more needs to be said about Slack, though. It's a highly influential application, for better or for worse, and the social issues around it aren't opened and closed quite so easily as a div tag.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

> Important things are done asynchronously in a forum that everyone can experience. This is how email or ticketing systems to an extent work. Though we have a rule that certain ticket discussions should go into a ticket itself so decision changes are not lost and people have accountability (which is better cause I get asked sometimes why I wrote code a certain way by the very person who suggested the change).

JohnFen 7y ago
> we have a rule that certain ticket discussions should go into a ticket itself The last three companies I've worked at had the same rule, except with no exceptions. All discussions get recorded into the system, precisely for the reason that you state -- so there's a historical record of what was discussed, what was decided, and why. Any "external" communications, such as with email or IM, are expected to be copy/pasted into the system so its permanently recorded in a useful way.
- noja 7y ago
  That's a lot of extra stuff to read through. Do you summarise the discussion too?
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Most places that I've been at that have worked this way have had periodic "checkpoints" in the tracker (usually when the code involved is sent to QA), where the current state is summarized at a 10,000 ft level. In practice, these records are only read from beginning to end when someone new to the issue at hand needs to come up to speed. Otherwise, the value is in being able to search through the record to find specific things.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Jira has the ticket description section which gets updated to the latest goals / spec as things change. The history is for context of "who said do this" / "why did we do x"
7y ago

isostatic 7y ago

> When trying to get my head down and complete a tricky bit of work it's awful. Turn off notifications. Just like email, or SMS, or the phone. Don't blame the tool if you aren't using it right.

human20190310 7y ago
If you can't opt out of it completely, that means that there is some socially-determined expectation as to how responsive you're going to be. Not everyone can unilaterally set their own level of responsiveness without a negative impact on their standing in the company.
UI_at_80x24 7y ago
If you work in an environment where the 'rules' are followed then yes, that works fine. Turn off the notifications and go about your task. However, not everyone has that luxury. In my office, we are required to keep slack running. There are bullshit channels like #random, #memes, etc. that I have set to ignore. But then there are "Serious" channels where if the Boss speaks the expectation is complete participation. #General <Boss> I want to make all the icons a corn-flower blue across all of our sites. --Now here is an example of the boss being an idiot and interrupting 30% of the staff. The accountants don't care, neither do the secretaries, the Help-desk, the Customer-support, or the SysAdmins. But because the idiot starts the conversation in the wrong fucking channel every damn reply and conversation that is sparked because of this interrupts me. Incorrectly using the "tool" disrupts everybody who does use it correctly. If this was an email, it'd be safely ignored for 4+hrs. I'm not mad at Slack, I'm mad at corporate overlords who shouldn't even be allowed to touch a computer. But because Slack exists, I am forced to despise it. I've got half a dozen other ways to send IM's to my co-workers. I never got interrupted in the past with bullshit like I do with Slack.
- hyperpape 7y ago
  Your boss sounds pretty bad. I doubt you’re going to have a good time with any set of tools.
- isostatic 7y ago

myspy 7y ago

That's why Basecamp is better suited for work in my opinion. Don't use chat to solve problems. Use longform text like messages. And avoid notifications. Allow your team to response in a matter of hours/days, not minutes. Let them think about and rethink a problem or question. This requires to be able to work on a couple of problems at the same time. Divide the work accordingly. Or use the time waiting for a response to learn something. There's a quote going like this: The urgent is not important and the important is not always urgent.

iamnotacrook 7y ago
"Allow your team to response in a matter of hours/days, not minutes. Let them think about and rethink a problem or question." Is anyone using dsr55rhel? I need to reboot it.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  "Last week I needed to reboot dsr55rhel. I was blocked for 8 hours because of the way we communicate things. To avoid this next time, I suggest we: ..." "Last week I lost 3 days of my work because someone rebooted dsr55rhel and I didn't see the reply in time. To avoid this next time, I suggest we: ..." There are probably cases where it's necessary for multiple people to be communicating/collaborating on some issue simultaneously and synchronously. Most won't be. I think cases like "what if something comes up and you need multiple people" is a smell that something can be improved, rather than a common unavoidable problem.
- asdfasdf1234567 7y ago
  SLACK INSTALLED, 5 MINUTES LATER Is anyone using dsr55rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:00 Is anyone using dsr72rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:05 Is anyone using dsr21rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:09 Is anyone using dsr97rhel? I need to reboot it. 0:11 ..ad infinitum 1 Month Later, some over the top, ITIL compliant business-flow is setup to quash that nonsense. And now everyone is suffering the consequences with hyper bloated business process procedures. ...basically the disease, the cure, and the cure for the cure are all equal when killing productivity. It really comes down to people and discipline. You're either working with smart, competent, well adjusted adults, or you're not. If your organization is small, brilliant, tight ...then any/all decent tools can be utilized to maximum effectiveness, because again it's people. But the larger the organization, it mitigates any and all tools, even the best of tools, and it also mitigates the possibility of having a small collection of really smart, talented people. Smart people in this environment typically will feel suffocated in a few years, unless they are protected from the endless nonsense that large organizations naturally create. This is how brilliant managers operate, and the competitiveness is interesting to see. Savy manager, makes his way up the food chain by being a problem solver. How does he solve it? Pooling talent, shielding them, in exchange he has high expectations from them, they come through, all are heroes, but the manager gets majority of credit. He/she then gets moved to a higher level, or a group that tackles harder problems. He streamlines the group, gets rid of the dead weight, steals better talent from other teams, protects his team pushing the boundaries as granted to him/her due to previous successes, then uses the potential to solve problems that no one else can/wants-to solve. Wash Rinse Repeat. If someone regulary utilizes a broadcast to ask everyone "who is using this server, anyone on it, can I reboot it?" Something is terribly screwed up at that organization. And having Slack as the broadcast tool is just an enabler.

blevo 7y ago

>I think the most important thing is not using Slack or avoiding Slack, it's building a culture that allows people to opt-out of it, without any sort of penalty, perceived or otherwise. The new book "Indistractable" makes exactly this point. Incidentally it also talks about how the Slack company uses Slack, and this is exactly their point, too. The book goes on to talk about "Psychological Safety." In this case, defined as the lack of '>any sort of penalty'

brightball 7y ago

Really, just turning in do not disturb for chunks of time is good

StreamBright 7y ago

I disabled all notification from slack every platform I have it. Same with email, facebook and all the other platforms that designed to disrupt your normal workflow or life.

autokad 7y ago

problem with any messaging system is people abuse it / don't respect other peoples time, and software can't control for that. people have to own up. an example not necessarily tied to work directly: there was a slack channel at work that was dedicated to free food. if you brought in food, or someone or a vendor was giving out food, you told the channel what food / when / where + an optional picture. Problem was, some people would just chat - about their vacations, dogs, etc and I would have to ask them to take it to another channel or talk direct message, because they would bury actual food announcements and cause all sorts of notifications. instead of realizing their folly, they would fight back and say you can always mute the channel, which totally negates the reason for being in the channel. You also see alert crepe. someone has an idea of sending service information to a channel, and before you know it you have 25 channels dominated by computer talk.