5 ms·

This and the WYSIWYG debacle indicate that Slack [or their product managers] have stopped caring about a significant portion of their users.

orf 7y ago
Yeah... the people who use the web app on their mobile over the app are in no way a significant portion but a very small minority.
- lukeschlather 7y ago
  Recently I found a bug in Slack, and I was communicating with their support over it. They asked me to check on the web in addition to the electron app. Now, the number of people who actually care enough to do this are a very small minority, but they are also very significant because they're happy to give Slack free QA. And as a member of this small minority that will reproduce a bug on multiple platforms and communicate back, I can say this seems pretty hostile to me and anyone else willing to pay money to do free QA for them.
  - mikeklaas 7y ago
    The reason they did that is to see if something in the local state of your client was causing the problem, not to get you to QA the bug.
    - lukeschlather 7y ago
      Sounds like QA work to me.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Par for the course in modern software dev I'm afraid.
peterlk 7y ago
Warning: pure speculation ahead. Look at their stock price. I bet there are a lot of tense board meetings happening right now. Culture flows from the top down, and if executives are panicking about the stock price, it makes sense that they'd lose focus. I mean, if you had stock at slack, it would be easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs and following the money instead of shipping an excellent product.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I see a common pattern among utility providing IT companies, that despite the core functionality can be supported by tens of people, it goes ahead and hires thousand anyways, which give raise to features that are neither core nor that anyone wanted. The company then go under as the business can’t generate enough revenue to feed the thousands of developer and management that has been brought in. If you have a good app, keep it that way by not increasing bloat, both technically and organizationally.
  - 8ytecoder 7y ago
    WhatsApp (pre FB) being the only exception I know of.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      I’ve never used WhatsApp, but I assume it got the same clone of Snapchat Stories that facebook stuffed into Messenger and Instagram?
      - benologist 7y ago
        IIRC the interesting point is it was a very, very small team - like 10ish people - and got acquired for $19 billion.
        Nextgrid 7y ago
        It got acquired for the trust people put in the brand, not the technology or the employees. Facebook needed a backdoor into people's contact lists and WhatsApp had a huge user base of people who authorised it to access contacts.
freewilly1040 7y ago
Why is the WYSIWYG thing a debacle? They provided the option to disable it within a few weeks.
- catalogia 7y ago
  They provided a way to disable it because it was a debacle.
joegahona 7y ago
How do you define "a significant portion of their users"? 51%? 25%? 1%?
zimpenfish 7y ago
Following the same kind of pattern as Flickr then, really.

orf 7y ago

Yeah... the people who use the web app on their mobile over the app are in no way a significant portion but a very small minority.

lukeschlather 7y ago
Recently I found a bug in Slack, and I was communicating with their support over it. They asked me to check on the web in addition to the electron app. Now, the number of people who actually care enough to do this are a very small minority, but they are also very significant because they're happy to give Slack free QA. And as a member of this small minority that will reproduce a bug on multiple platforms and communicate back, I can say this seems pretty hostile to me and anyone else willing to pay money to do free QA for them.
- mikeklaas 7y ago
  The reason they did that is to see if something in the local state of your client was causing the problem, not to get you to QA the bug.
  - lukeschlather 7y ago
    Sounds like QA work to me.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Par for the course in modern software dev I'm afraid.

peterlk 7y ago

Warning: pure speculation ahead. Look at their stock price. I bet there are a lot of tense board meetings happening right now. Culture flows from the top down, and if executives are panicking about the stock price, it makes sense that they'd lose focus. I mean, if you had stock at slack, it would be easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs and following the money instead of shipping an excellent product.

Aperocky 7y ago
I see a common pattern among utility providing IT companies, that despite the core functionality can be supported by tens of people, it goes ahead and hires thousand anyways, which give raise to features that are neither core nor that anyone wanted. The company then go under as the business can’t generate enough revenue to feed the thousands of developer and management that has been brought in. If you have a good app, keep it that way by not increasing bloat, both technically and organizationally.
- 8ytecoder 7y ago
  WhatsApp (pre FB) being the only exception I know of.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I’ve never used WhatsApp, but I assume it got the same clone of Snapchat Stories that facebook stuffed into Messenger and Instagram?
    - benologist 7y ago
      IIRC the interesting point is it was a very, very small team - like 10ish people - and got acquired for $19 billion.
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        It got acquired for the trust people put in the brand, not the technology or the employees. Facebook needed a backdoor into people's contact lists and WhatsApp had a huge user base of people who authorised it to access contacts.

freewilly1040 7y ago

Why is the WYSIWYG thing a debacle? They provided the option to disable it within a few weeks.

catalogia 7y ago
They provided a way to disable it because it was a debacle.

joegahona 7y ago

How do you define "a significant portion of their users"? 51%? 25%? 1%?

zimpenfish 7y ago

Following the same kind of pattern as Flickr then, really.