23 ms·

A major reason for departures at Slack was “remote work request rejected”

• henriquez 6y ago
  To be fair what the hell are they supposed to do with all their remote workers when Slack (frequently) goes down? Do they put everyone on Skype?
  • jowday 6y ago
    At other companies I've worked at ops teams fall back to IRC if the main comms infra is down.
    • bArray 6y ago
      ^ This. You get people who will scoff IRC for its simplicity, but ultimately the up-time is near 100%. I've communicated on it effectively all the way for to a 5kB/s internet connection and it was still quite responsive. A similar story using Jazz RTC - it used to go down every week or two weeks or so. It was so bad that we had quick dial to their call center. The joke was, we used to switch over to a Raspberry Pi hosted locally in the office running a Git Server - and there was zero downtime on that.
      • war1025 6y ago
        > a 5kB/s internet connection Unclear if you mean 5 kiloByte or 5 kilobit. I'm assuming you must have meant kilobit since 5 kB was a pretty respectable download speed back in dialup days. It absolutely baffles me how bloated and inefficient our modern computing infrastructure is.
        • jdsully 6y ago
          Lets be real though, nobody actually enjoyed dialup speeds. Sure, we were lucky we had the internet at all but when cable and DSL came around it was a breath of fresh air.
          • bArray 6y ago
            I don't miss the speed, but I miss what the speed enforced. Pages were lighter and less wasteful with resources. These days you have pages that will not load without JS enabled, which is sometimes 10x or 100x the actual content it's displaying. That's not to mention images - people happily throw in a 1MB image, because why not? A 10MB gif to replaces a 1MB video, because why not? Of course there are still people in remote areas, poorer Countries, low-signal zones, etc, who actually do have to deal with this daily. I remember reading a while back how Youtube and Facebook were completely unusable for some users because of this - not because of the actual content they are delivering.
            • gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
              mbasic.facebook.com
            • 6510 6y ago
              My old laptop with win 7 cant run youtube 144p (anymore). It just freezes up. If I download the videos in lubuntu, vlc plays the 720p but 480p is all I need. There is clearly nothing wrong with the hardware.
              • jdsully 6y ago
                I think a lot of that is GPU acceleration of the video codecs.
          • u801e 6y ago
            > nobody actually enjoyed dialup speeds When downloading files, there was a lot of waiting involved, but if you were dealing with email without attachments, usenet, IRC, and some of the older chat platforms like ICQ, AIM, MSN messenger, yahoo messenger, etc. the lack of speed wasn't really noticable. These days, most websites and online platforms like Slack won't work at dial-up speeds.
            • jdsully 6y ago
              Usenet could take quite a while to download your messages. All text websites and IRC were reasonable by the time of 33.6kbaud modems, but even by 1995 most websites had some graphics to download which were always painful. It only got slower from there as more was added each year. This episode of computer chronicles may remind you of the joy and horror of that time period. Note that most of these people are actually on corporate networks not dialing in... and its still horrendously slow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf6kVEN1lbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf6kVEN1lbk
        • GlitchMr 6y ago
          5 kilobit per second should be fine for IRC. A typical PRIVMSG command is what, 200 bytes or so, which gives space for three PRIVMSGs in a second. IRC doesn't compress, but it's also not particularly wasteful with bandwidth.
        • bArray 6y ago
          I meant 5 kilo bytes. Of course that speed is screamingly fast for IRC, but for most of the internet you're left with a completely unusable experience. Try loading Slack on a 5kB connection for example and post back your results in a week! :-)
      • Twirrim 6y ago
        We'd just made the transition from local hosted HipChat over to Slack about a month before a _big_ outage occurred. The team responsible for the internal tools got told by management to do some herculean efforts to get hipchat temporarily resurrected. I logged in to my desktop machine, and had IRC up and running in under 5 minutes and had details out to the team ready to use it should an emergency strike. It's _really_ simple to spin up an IRC server for such purposes. Just about the time the Slack outage was over, the HipChat server was back and working again... :) (there's a lot of reasons why it took so long, and it wasn't really Atlassian's fault)
        • bArray 6y ago
          It genuinely is impressive. The protocol itself is so simple that building something like a bot to write the results of builds is a job that can easily be done in a day (assuming you're completely working from scratch, i.e. pushing bytes over sockets). There are quite a few clients that even support encryption, so it's not even necessarily insecure either.
      • Jetrel 6y ago
        Just a small bit of polite anecdata, but I've fled IRC partly due to some pretty extreme quality-of-service problems - and these were on the major servers and communities that were really the only raison d'etre for using it in the first place - things like Freenode and stuff. Basically we had a lot of cases of silent failure where messages would completely fail to go through, and this led to some pretty nasty social awkwardness, because there was no indication the service wasn't being 100% reliable. I only ever discovered it after several years, when I had a bouncer logged in from a rather different network address, and it was pretty terrifying how much was getting dropped (sometimes up to 10% of messages - although usually it was "periodic" failures where a whole conversation would essentially be dead for one side. I observed this over several months, and it was just mindblowing. It was the silent failure that was the most insidious thing - there was absolutely no indication things weren't working perfectly, and it was only after we discovered this that we had the horrible realization that all of those communication problems we had in the past were not because individual "people" were bad communicators (or were ignoring you, being rude, etc), but because they genuinely weren't receiving entire paragraphs of text. At random, with no indication anything was dropped. There are a lot of other extreme frustrations we had with IRC, but this "hidden QoS problem" was the last straw. A lot of the work we were trying to coordinate on it (gamedev stuff) involves more than just text, and just trying to share images across the thing constantly felt like being a second-class citizen (manually uploading something to an FTP when even AIM/MSN could transfer stuff no problem with a copy-paste). The fact that I was forced to use it for over a decade ... I've lost thousands of manhours of my life fighting with it when almost any modern tech stack would have avoiding those particular wastes of time, and that's just something I can't forgive. As irrational as it may be to do so - I can't help but hate it. :(
        • bArray 6y ago
          Dropping messages is something that should notify you - in the raw protocol this is entirely possible, so it's just something that needs to be added to the client. The problem of adding files is something that it would be nice to solve, I think in general the IRC servers themselves wouldn't want to potentially sacrifice the ability to handle text whilst being overloaded with attachments. It feels like something that could be solved with a third party server and a client that supports it, with a short-ish TTL to keep the server freed up. Receiving side it would simply be a case of opening a link or deciding if the content can be displayed inline. I quite like not being available when I'm offline. I don't want to logon to have a quadrillion messages to read back through - most out of date and don't concern me. We have email for this kind of thing.
      • hrktb 6y ago
        What was your solution for cross-client logs and offline messages ?
        • bArray 6y ago
          Generally if people are offline, don't send them stuff. If you really need them to read some information, there is email.
          • hrktb 6y ago
            Fair enough for DMs. But what about channels and shared conversations ?
    • _sbrk 6y ago
      ircII forever
    • brightball 6y ago
      We use GSuite for all of our office tools and the Google Slack competitor is our official policy for if Slack goes down. We all already have accounts setup without paying for anything else so it’s a simple transition during an incident.
      • aloisdg 6y ago
        We use google chat too. Why even bother with Slack?
    • shlant 6y ago
      can someone recommend a IRC client on OSX that is still maintained and isn't garbage?
      • deanclatworthy 6y ago
        Weechat. runs in Cli. Supports mouse mode and is cross platform. Run it in tmux or even better on a shell. It’s superb.
      • m_eiman 6y ago
        Textual works well for me.
      • mickael-kerjean 6y ago
        I use thelounge everyday for my open source work, it's awesome. There's a demo on their website: https://demo.thelounge.chat/ https://demo.thelounge.chat/
      • chris_wot 6y ago
        Textual
      • bzb3 6y ago
        Textual is the best and it's free software. (I think it's in brew cask)
      • nikanj 6y ago
        irssi
      • yc-kraln 6y ago
        Quassel
  • Consultant32452 6y ago
    I have the exact opposite experience. Slack works but Skype is always messed up.
  • dawnerd 6y ago
    Actually get work done?
  • floatingatoll 6y ago
    Conference calls are a thing phones can do, at absolute worst.
  • cameronbrown 6y ago
    IRC for ops people, everyone else... email?
  • umanwizard 6y ago
    Facebook does 99.9% of their collaboration over Workplace/WorkChat but keeps IRC servers alive for this exact reason.
  • 7177Y 6y ago
    I've never had a reliability issue with slack. Interesting that you have such a different experience.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    When I interviewed there ~3 years ago, yes, I asked, and I think they use Skype when there's an outage. And IRC server hosted on another cloud would work just as well, too.
• ProAm 6y ago
  Slack is the Sharepoint of communication tools, we just have to use it because our companies force us.
• diogenescynic 6y ago
  As much as I like Slack, I think they go hand in hand with Jira and Confluence—-and I think all of them are more relevant and necessary than ever.
  • caogecym 6y ago
    Agreed. One powerful feature of Slack is search. The best thing about it is that it works! You can look for troubleshooting discussions (e.g. code build issue) and usually there’s a solution already. In that sense it’s also a permanent information page like Confluence, albeit less structured, but a perfect fit for info like tedious bug finding thread where people just don’t feel like writing up a well organized wiki for it.
    • CameronNemo 6y ago
      Is this a joke? Slack should not be used as a permanent information store, and the search is fairly terrible.
      • caogecym 6y ago
        You can search for data years back, but you don’t have to. E.g. code troubleshooting tips are only relevant for a couple months, since the code keeps changing. The other nice thing is that you can share the findings via link of a thread or single comment with your team, and they don’t have to leave Slack to be able to see them, which is definitely a smooth experience - if they are already on Slack at that moment. In terms of search experience, it probably depends on use case, but I dont think Slack’s search is apparently worse than its alternatives like Outlook, Confluence, Jira etc. - if at all.
        • diogenescynic 6y ago
          Agree, it's not perfect but it's better than nothing at all which is usually the alternative.
  • downerending 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tobyhede 6y ago
  Slack the company really needs to embrace distributed work practices if they want to actually build a tool for distributed work practices. Slack has totally become a drag on productivity and a net negative. Channel and message overload is arguably not much better than the email system it is meant to replace. My prediction is that Slack will be replaced quite quickly by the first tool that really nails remote messaging and coordination. Slack is not it.
  • downerending 6y ago
    Not sure, but I think this got me fired from a job. Slack was a main channel for our group of 30. Critical messages in real time on the (several) channels. So, must monitor channels in real time, all day. Whoops, no time left to get real things done. Why aren't you getting anything done? I don't miss it.
    • JohnBooty 6y ago
      I’m sorry, but this is poor company culture, not a Slack issue per se. A company with this sort of issue would struggle with any communication tool or medium; the root issue here is an utter lack of understanding about proper working conditions and the concentration needed to do this (and most any) sort of work. I’ve been in a similar boat at a similarly poor company. It is trivial to use Slack in a non-destructive way. Our company follows a simple rule. If you need somebody’s attention, you @mention them. We do not have to monitor anything. It is expected that you will keep an eye on your team’s channel when your time and attention permit as of course there may be some hallway-style conversations going on, but you are never required to monitor any channel, much less several channels. That is what mentions and notifications are for. It is absolutely mind-blowing that some companies screw this up so badly.
      • NhanH 6y ago
        At the extreme, everything is poor company culture, not <insert tool> issue per se. That is not a good argument. Being tagged @mention several times a day, with the expectation that you respond right away (ie < 3-5minutes) is just as much a drag on productivity. And I have not seen any company explicitly (put in their written guidelines) states that you should not be expected to respond to a slack @mention right away.
• smsm42 6y ago
  It sounds very ironic that the company whose whole business is built on facilitating remote workplace communication would be willing to lose talent in order not to let people work remote.
  • 6510 6y ago
    uhh.... eliminate talent? The dogfooding experiment ended by firing everyone.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    Their model is around workplace communication in general, it doesn't have to be remote. And maybe they're just pushers, not takers.
    • smsm42 6y ago
      > Their model is around workplace communication in general, it doesn't have to be remote It doesn't, but I think the added value of Slack is much more prominent in remote scenario than when everybody is in (roughly) the same room. If it's not good enough to enable that - makes one think what it's good for? > And maybe they're just pushers, not takers. Then reasonable question to ask is - why not? What do they know that the takers don't?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mrdonbrown 6y ago
  This bugged me about Atlassian when I worked there as well. On one hand, one of the key marketing messages was about working from home, and additionally, they had an evangelist talking about the "future of work" being remote. On the other hand, only a couple teams out of probably 50 allowed remote work. Signs are showing the pandemic is changing attitudes, hopefully permanently. I guess the saying "the future is here, just not evenly distributed" can apply to companies as well as society as whole.
  • ReptileMan 6y ago
    > Signs are showing the pandemic is changing attitudes, hopefully permanently. I wouldn't bet on it. Big corporate middle management is not about productivity or success but about control.
    • bregma 6y ago
      Inertia is a terrible thing to lose.
    • CydeWeys 6y ago
      Don't underestimate how much inertia will be established after a year plus of perma-WFH. That's a lot to try to come back from. After a whole year, most people who are renting will have had their leases expire, and may have moved farther out where they can get more value for their money.
    • wayoutthere 6y ago
      Corporate middle management is starting to learn how to control workers in a distributed environment. It's catching on in corporate America, but people probably won't like the results.
    • smsm42 6y ago
      Yes, but you rarely can put it in the open this way. It's one thing to say "I think remote teams are hard to make work efficiently, let's not risk that" and another is "I crave control so I won't allow remote teams even if it were easy to make it work". And you could get away with the former easily as top management is happy with "don't mess with a thing that works" approach. But now when we'll have an example of remote teams working, the former argument is dead. Now if your real argument is the latter, you won't be able to lay it bare for everybody to see, so insisting on banning remote work would be way harder.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• coldtea 6y ago
  So the hypocrisy is strong at Slack...
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    This isn't hypocrisy. This is like calling people who make dog food but don't eat it hypocrites.
    • coldtea 6y ago
      It's more like calling a company who builds a remote work product and touts the advantages of remote work in their blog and marketing, but frowns upon it internally, as hypocrites... Not to mention that this is a bad choice of example, as the verbatim suggestion to "eat your own dog food" is an old-time best practice in the software world.
• princevegeta89 6y ago
  Slack sucks ass from a UX perspective.
• unexaminedlife 6y ago
  I'm in the midwest. It would be a long list if I tried to name all the companies who (pre-covid) were not hiring remote. I haven't forgotten their names and hope others won't either. They all had the resources and know how, but the folks in control of these companies are all about power. My personal opinion is those companies should not end up in powerful positions in the market after this just because they were forced to do what they should've done in the first place.
  • HenryBemis 6y ago
    Same in London. Majority ofcompanies didn't go past 1 day per week and only if "exceptional circumstances" (e.g. a strike/major incident on the railways - meaning you already spent 2-3 trying to get in) and while the managers/directors were working 2-3 days per week from the office (mostly to take a 3h lunch break with their mates and return at 3pm pissed-drunk). I never chased those contracts because life > work, and London commute is a royal pain in the ass. > should not end in powerful position I believe they will JUST because of that reason. They will be forced to adapt, drastically increase the WFH, and staff will unleash their productivity and companies will benefit from that. It may take a while since staff may be a bit undisciplined/disorganized in the beginning but eventually they will be super productive. And bad managers will try to take the glory and set up daily zoom calls just to ascertain dominance to their packs.
    • hackissimo123 6y ago
      At my wife's last job (this was also in London) her manager didn't let anyone work from home - but then frequently worked from home herself. When my wife asked her why it was okay for her to work from home when she didn't let anyone else do it, her reply was "because I'm the manager".
      • ponker 6y ago
        I expect this was not a high functioning company.
  • gwright 6y ago
• paxys 6y ago
  If a team isn't set up for remote work, a single employee moving to a new location and timezone (while the rest are in SF) is absolutely going to affect everyone's productivity. Unless the role was remote to begin with, such requests would get denied at most companies, so I don't see what the big point of contention is here.
  • bfdm 6y ago
    My reading is just that there was documented demand and they likely lost talent over it.
    • qroshan 6y ago
      Actually we don't know that. May be a couple of loudmouthed people.
    • random32840 6y ago
      My reading is that people who are planning to move anyway put in remote work requests just in case. You need more context to evaluate something like this.
      • 6510 6y ago
        the context is remote work
  • AdrianB1 6y ago
    Back in 2007 I moved to a team where everybody was located in the same building in USA and I was alone a continent away. The team was definitely not set for remote work, it was the first time they tried it. When I changed the team in late 2010 I was the best rated in that team and I was replaced by 3 people in Germany (my role expanded), already knowing remote can work. During the 4 years in that team I went to the US office 2 times for a few days each time.
  • closeparen 6y ago
    If they move anywhere outside the Western Hemisphere. I have no problem doing meetings with coworkers in New York and even São Paulo, although Europe and Asia are indeed brutal. My team is very lucky in that our remote collaborators are in Latin America rather than India. At this point I simply decline any meetings with India unless someone very high level personally asks me to be there. Getting away with it so far.
• rtpg 6y ago
  Before all of this I would be very happy to dunk on Slack for this. But _they are now doing remote like all of us_. They have fixed the problem. Dunking culture that just doesn't let people get credit for improving is exhausting and just boring as hell.
  • unexaminedlife 6y ago
    IMO they should get no credit for doing what they refused to do when they could but didn't have to. Now that they have to, and are doing it, what credit do they deserve?
    • t-writescode 6y ago
      Positive reinforcement when someone does the right thing is a great way to keep them doing the right thing. For many people, if someone isn't treated any differently when they change their behavior for the better, what value is there in changing behavior to something harder and less self-serving?
  • toyg 6y ago
    This is just because they had no other choice. It’s like complimenting a caught serial killer because, after being surrounded by policemen at every move, he stopped killing.
  • AdrianB1 6y ago
    This is logic used backwards.
• me551ah 6y ago
  The biggest problem with Slack for me is how slow it is. I have been using chat apps for a couple of decades now, starting from mIRC to IM chat applications. And slack is by far the slowest chat product that I have ever used. Takes a few seconds to startup, takes GBs of ram just so that I can send chat messages and the interface just isn't snappy. Earlier I would keep chat apps open in my system tray all the time since they were so lightweight and barely consumed any resources, but every now and then I need to shut slack down if I'm running out of memory.
  • coandco 6y ago
    I'd recommend Ripcord [1] as a blazingly fast native app that can talk on Slack and Discord while taking a max of ~50-100MB of memory at any given time, even with lots of connections/channels open. [1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/
    • Multicomp 6y ago
      I tried ripcord and enjoy the idea of it, but I can't replace my slack workflow because ripcord does not have slacks keyboard integrations. What ends up happening is I try to leave ripcord open and then every time there is more than just basic use of slack, I have to open up the original electron client to post pictures or polls or similar.
      • danpalmer 6y ago
        Agreed. Speed is only half the problem with Slack. The other half is lack of integration with the system it's running on. Ripcord doesn't do any better than Slack at this, and in many cases does worse.
      • thewebcount 6y ago
        Yeah, I agree that's an issue. It's funny though because even if I'm running Slack in my browser, if someone posts a picture, it shows a thumbnail and you have to click on it and open it in a new window. It's such a horrible workflow. Ripcord makes that even slightly worse because if I click on an image in Ripcord, it launches my browser and I have to log in to Slack, navigate to the channel with the image, click on the image to open a new window... etc. Given that Slack doesn't work remotely, I also have to ask, do they actually use their product? Because I can't imagine someone who can change the product putting up with the ridiculous workflows that Slack forces on you.
• youeseh 6y ago
  If your team or company's culture sucks, then Slack will amplify it. On the other hand, if you work in an environment where people respect each other's time, communicate clearly and don't try to pass the buck, then Slack will amplify this too. Our experience has been very different from many of the people here. We were forced to switch from being in-house to remote only due to the Covid-19 outbreak. We were using Slack before the whole company started working from home. If it weren't for Slack, our transition would have been much more difficult. The features have been great, including the ability to start a call that anyone in the channel can participate in. The UX has been great. The uptime has been solid too.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• GrumpyNl 6y ago
  I never understood slack and why it got so populair.
• bbarn 6y ago
  I don't know why people think Slack is a remote working tool. The reason slack is popular, is it was better than hipchat, which was better than gchat/hangouts/lync, which was better than IRC. It solves a specific problem, but when you try to shoehorn it in as your solution to remote-everything, of course it fails.
  • brown9-2 6y ago
    The very first words on slack.com right now are: > WORK FROM HOME > Slack brings the team together, wherever you are > With all of your communication and tools in one place, remote teams will stay productive no matter where you’re working from. They are heavily marketing Slack as an essential tool for remote work since Covid hit.
    • mosselman 6y ago
      So if something is marketed as a means to reach a certain goal, it suddenly is the way to reach that goal? In other words, if I start wearing Nike shoes, will I become an athlete? If I start drinking Heineken, will I become an amazing socialite and travel the world from party to party? If I use Axe body-spray, will gorgeous women fall over themselves to be with me?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • DFHippie 6y ago
        If you say something is true and you know that it isn't, you're lying. If you demonstrate that you're lying, people won't take you seriously.
      • brown9-2 6y ago
        Slack positioning itself as a remote working tool makes it fair to discuss if it really is a remote working tool or a remote working company, which is exactly what the person I am replying to commented about.
• SteveMorin 6y ago
  Asana with its inbox workflow (most people don’t pay attention to this feature) will help all remote companies. It basically is a non noisy inbox for tasks , when paired with a culture of not providing immediate feedback works nicely. Didn’t believe it at first but after using it for onboarding all remote like how it enables async work. We also use slack and think the two pair really well. Allows for deep work even as a manager. Disclaimer I am a recent Asana hire that onboarded remotely.
• klyrs 6y ago
  This kinda reinforces the cynical narrative that slack is intended to replace the "watering hole" so we have less excuses to leave our desks.
• purplezooey 6y ago
  Why do I still get an instant headache when I read Twitter. It's like a bad meeting with a few blowhards that suck out all the air, except magnified by 100x.
  • awinder 6y ago
    I prefer to think of it as a human chicken coop. There may be some greater signal in the madness but pretty sure it’s 99% just yelling and poop.
  • standardUser 6y ago
    Strange how just because it's on Twitter, people treat it as if it has more value than any other online comment thread. No one is going through YouTube or Breitbart comments and pretending they have value beyond anonymous ranting.
    • 7177Y 6y ago
      I think because Twitter's energy is different. People intend their forum accounts to be relatively anonymous, but expect twitter to be a place where you show your name and face. Twitter is more personal.
      • ganstyles 6y ago
        Yeah, and while some people talk big with no credentials/experience to back up the talk, there are a lot of people I don't know personally that I follow whose opinions I trust more than some anonymous forum commentator. That being said, I deleted Twitter in January and am much happier for it.
• gregkerzhner 6y ago
  Someone said that Slack was the "open office" of communication software. I think this is a good analogy - but at my work it feels more like working from a huge, lively dinner table. Sure - you can put on some noise cancelling headphones and ignore the conversation, but it will still be distracting, and worse, people will judge you for being antisocial. Every once in a while, if you are lonely or your current task is sporadic and slow, it makes sense to bring your computer to the dinner table and casually work while being part of the party. However, if this is your environment 40 hours a week, its highly taxing to productivity. My only answer is to mute all Slack notifications or turn off Slack all together. This works in the short term, but in the long term I bet it will be detrimental as I wont be seen as a "helpful" person that answers questions. Ironically, I think it's exactly those types of qualities that will help you to get promoted. Our Slack rewards the developer that just "hangs out" and answers questions all day instead of getting meaningful work done. That being said, I think the problem isn't necessarily Slack, but large, poorly organized organization. Personally, I am part of a dozen "catch all" Slack channels that put me into direct contact with over 100 people. That might make sense for some jobs, but it's absurd for a software developer. My actual day to day work involves mainly working with a few developers and a manager or two. My Slack should reflect that - it should literally just be a chat between these 5 people. The rest of the organization should not be able to Slack me that easily, and instead only be able to contact me through a triage process. If there is really a question from someone that I am best qualified to answer, then I am willing to answer it, but they should have to first determine that from other, more external facing people. So I think the ultimate problem with Slack is that it makes it too easy for too many loosely related people to contact each other. It's like giving every passenger in the airplane a way to send a message to the pilot.
  • t-writescode 6y ago
    If your entire issue with Slack is people being able to message you out of the blue and doing it always, it sounds like something you should speak with your manager about for solutions.
    • projektfu 6y ago
• irrational 6y ago
  My work has more than 100 slack channels (I once asked if there was a place to see a list of all slack channels and was met with laughter. Apparently that isn’t something slack provides?) Whenever I need a question answered by a particular team I’ll post it to what seems like might be the most relevant channel. 99/100 they will direct me to a new channel I’ve never heard from. So I’ll join that channel and post my question. At this point I have about 80 channels spread across 5... whatever groups of channels are called in slack. Frankly it is overwhelming. It would be a full time job just trying to keep up with all the channels (I’d estimate there are 3000-10000 new messages everyday across all channels). I haven’t figured out anyway to know if something has been posted that would interest me under the deluge. On occasion I’ll be searching for something and discover that on a channel a very important announcement or policy change was made recently that I missed under the deluge. Anyway, I’ve given up. I’ve turned off notifications and don’t even open it up unless I have a question that needs answered. Then I start the arduous task of trying to figure out the right channel.
  • t-writescode 6y ago
    This seems like something you need to discuss with management and your coworkers about changing.
    • irrational 6y ago
      I work for a Fortune 100 company with thousands of IT people. I literally have no idea who I would talk to about this. Maybe there is a slack channel for that ;-)
      • t-writescode 6y ago
        I would start with your immediate boss and maybe his skip-level. For the skip-level come with a precise explanation of what Slack is doing well, what your experience with Slack seems to show for negative and some potential remedies :)
        • irrational 6y ago
• t-writescode 6y ago
  It seems there's a lot of frustration here about the use of Slack effectively, so I'm going to re-post something I posted a bit over 2 months ago in a different conversation about slack. You can find it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574009 I've used Slack at 3-ish different companies. Each company has different practices when it comes to Slack; and, as someone who has used Slack so much that it's mentioned about him at those companies (not always in a positive light?), I have a few thoughts and rules about the best Slack usage that I think help, in general. 1) At any not-small company, you're going to want to almost immediately change your Sidebar from "Everything" to "Unread and starred conversations". 2) Star all channels that you personally need to keep track of (or want to keep track of for a certain amount of time) and all people that you want to talk to or are currently in an important conversation with. 3) Unstar channels and people where #2 is no longer the case. 4) Create private channels for any conversation / project or issue that will ever require more than the people that are currently in a 'multi-person private message'. Archive them when the issue is over. 5) Use @here sparingly and @channel way more sparingly. If you're at a company that doesn't use @here / @channel sparingly, mute them for the channels that use them in excess. My current company has a meeting room shortage, so every single time a meeting room is freed up unexpectedly, there's an @here in one of our channels. That channel has @here notifications disabled. 6) If you can, in your broader "all the devs hang out here and can chat about work stuff" or "talk with ops here" channels, consider adding group aliases, so you can say, in those channels @ops, or @team-ops to notify just that group when things are important. 7) Use @here sparingly, yourself. Use it only for extreme situations. 8) Give chatty bots their own channel. Having the pull request bot for your dev team in the same channel as active development is going on, or in the same channel as other teams are supposed to come in to talk to you about a project your team is working on is just not the best. 9) Current, unproven experiment: at my current job, my team is experimenting with a heavy use of threads. Previously, we had multiple projects occurring concurrently and historical knowledge on features is spread across the team with a lot of new members, so we can't use the tricks of private channels per project to as much effect. Threads have a lot of weaknesses when it comes to readability and following; but, they do reduce the chances that someone's important message will get lost in a swarm of other messages on more pressing issues. edit: Whoops, thought of more. 10) Use snippets for any bit of code even slightly long. I'm thinking like 7 lines or more. There's syntax highlighting, and they're collapsible, saving precious screen real-estate 11) Use Posts for large format messages you want to post to a channel or multiple channels. They have formatting, headers, and so on. They're also collapsible, again to save on screen real-estate. 12) Personal preference: try to not send multiple, short messages, unless that's your company's culture. It breaks up the conversation and makes it a bit hard to follow where a thread is, if you're using threads. For example, which message do you put the response on? The part where the situation got confusing? A random message in the middle? The last one? The first one? edit 2, 3: more adding (I'll just add more after this and not say I'm adding more, if it happens again), and some removing some unnecessary information 13) Mute channels that you want to remain in, but don't want to be bothered by (maybe unmute @here and @mentions on this channel). This could include your company's random chatting channel, or the operations channel, or even your personal team's channel if you're currently heads down in a major project, but you might need to be pinged for something serious.