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Slack is popular because it makes people think they are doing work or are being productive. When in reality tons of people spend more and more time "chatting"
by matchbok 6y ago
Slack is popular because it makes people think they are doing work or are being productive.
When in reality tons of people spend more and more time "chatting" and trying to communicate in Slack than... actually working.
The whole idea that chat is a good way to get most work done isn't true, IMO. It's inherently synchronous and a terrible way to manage time.
- coderintherye 6y ago>When in reality tons of people spend more and more time "chatting" and trying to communicate in Slack than... actually working. This has always been the cases. Offices are social environments. Chat formalizes some of that communication, which is actually quite useful. But it doesn't suddenly make a chatty, distracting co-worker less chatty or more productive. I don't think anyone is arguing that chat is how most work should get done, but rather that it a good tool for promoting legible communication and good communication is one of the most important factors in driving effective work.
- matchbok 6y agoMaybe. But most channels I'm in devolve into multiple cross-team chats that are interspersed and impossible to navigate if you aren't reading the messages as they come in. Hell, searching for topic of discussion that happened more than a few days ago is pretty much impossible in Slack.
- coderintherye 6y agoMy experience of Slack is that their search has gotten better recently, especially when using some of the filters available. That said, I would also agree that search is probably a key area for them to improve on.
- matchbok 6y agoThat exactly. The whole idea of a chatroom as a searchable archive doesn't make sense to me. Chats are quick bites of information that make sense "right now".
- merrvk 6y agoLet alone when someone starts providing some key information in a thread 3 pages up.
- benhurmarcel 6y agoBut a good tool could mitigate that. Mainly by providing an organization per thread and make it easy to catch up only from time to time. Like Zulip or Twist.
- Jommi 6y agoWould you have any data points to support this side of the argument? My anecdotal experience is that well managed synchronous chat with a searchable archive can be insanely powerful for reducing blockers in intellectual work.
- matchbok 6y agoI guess it's just my anecdotes, really. I find Slack search to be horrible because there is no grouping of conversations. For example, many times a day several people are trying to have several different conversations in the same channel. Reading through that afterwards is a mess. Basically, as a software dev I don't think there are actually too many things that need to be answered "right now". If that's the case then I would think there isn't enough planning involved.
- Jommi 6y agoWell there might be the context you're missing. You're looking at this as a software developer. I can tell you from a ops standpoint I get blocked daily just because of some small information missing/needed to be checked. Slack solves this. (If you're in the same timezone... Which is not always the case and slack falls apart here.)
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoYou need to communicate to work. Siloing yourself writing code is a sure way to write bad software. Why is synchronous communication inherently a bad thing? Makes no sense.
- soylentgraham 6y agoWhat was your super effecient way to communicate with people out of ear shot before/without IM/irc? Email? Conference calls? Daily meetings on site?