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Slack sets you to "Away/Offline" after 10 minutes of inactivity by default, and by "relatively quickly" I mean, within an hour or two. If you can't close Slack

Slack sets you to "Away/Offline" after 10 minutes of inactivity by default, and by "relatively quickly" I mean, within an hour or two. If you can't close Slack or update your status to let people know you are unavailable for long periods of time, what is the point of being on Slack? Or a team for that matter? Barring an emergency, I'm not going to call someone directly because they're too busy working to (team)work. If you can't play nicely on a team then maybe a different job is for you?

rafael09ed 6y ago
> Barring an emergency, I'm not going to call someone directly because they're too busy working to (team)work. I think that's the point. Very rarely do you need someone to respond immediately.
- qw 6y ago
  I agree. I have mail notifications available, but nobody is expecting me to actually answer a mail the same minute it is sent. If I am working on something, I will wait until I have time for it. Why should Slack be different? It's just another asynchronous communication tool. The conversations have the possibility to be synchronous, but that is up to the users's involved. As others have pointed out, I reserve the right to be decide how I spend my time. A team player should not expect to be able to decide how my time is spent. If I am busy and someone just sends a "Hi" message without any context, i will ignore it until I have finished my task unless I have a reason to suspect that it is urgent.
joshmanders 6y ago
> If you can't play nicely on a team then maybe a different job is for you? This is a bullshit copout. It's a cultural issue if people cannot be respectful of their co-workers time. It is very common that if something is important to use important modes of communication such as phone calls. My team for example is very asynchronous because that is our culture. Our team is located all over the country and some people in different parts of the world. If any of us needs each other during our typical work hours and its important, it's usually a call over our VOIP system. NONE of us take Slack as an immediate answer messaging platform.
- kempbellt 6y ago
  No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working <- which more a cultural issue than being disrespectful of people's time in my opinion. I have nothing but respect for my coworkers personal time. I couldn't care less, personally, if you need to take hours, days, weeks, or even months off of work for whatever reason. Do what you need to do. However, if you are on Slack and suggesting to people you are available when you are not, that is bullshit to me. It's not difficult to close the app or update your status to put in an ounce of teamwork so people know how to work around your actual availability.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working <- which more a cultural issue than being disrespectful of people's time in my opinion. me working != available to immediately respond to your question. I'm not going to drop all the context for a bug I'm close to fixing to reply to a slack message. if I've been working on a bug for hours and I'm nowhere near a solution, I might switch gears and help you with your issue. I can't know at the beginning of investigating a bug which state I'm going to be in when you ask your question.
  - joshmanders 6y ago
    Online status does not mean I am available, the online status tells my team that I am indeed, in my work day and they can message me and get a response when I'm actually available. Clocking in physically at your job tells your employer you're working, but it doesn't mean you're available immediately for their attention.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Yes text chat tools have too little engagement. I worked on a startup called Sococo (still exists; pivoted to be a WebRTC clone) that used a map. You could see each little bobblehead on the map, either in their office, in a conference room, in a break room, with our without their headset on. You clicked your guy into the room to conference with people in that room. If you didn't want to be bothered, you put your bobblehead into your office and closed the door, maybe took your headset off. You could see who was in meetings and with whom. You could see them flashing as they talked in turn. You wanted to interrupt somebody, you could knock on their door. They could 'let your in' or chat 'give me a minute' or whatever. It included chat tools in the rooms, so you could have text side-conversations while the talking was going on. It was very, very useful. The company that made it, had employees on 3 continents and 7 states. I didn't actually know where my coworkers lived, unless they told me. Yet I could communicate without friction. I miss the old Sococo.
marcosdumay 6y ago
I am active. I am just focused on an important task, and won't throw my hard earned flow away just to answer your "hi" for you to trap me into waiting you slowly type stuff and maybe even disappearing without getting to the point. If you can't articulate what's your subject at the moment you contact me, you'll get a very low priority. (Yeah, there are some people that do it out of a paranoid level of politeness and are easy to talk with even though they won't initiate a request. I will gladly make an exception for them.)
vmception 6y ago
So tell me, does slack set me to unavailable if Im in a different slack workspace? I have about two dozen communities I could be in, fortunately most of them moved to discord or telegram to avoid people like you Does it say I’m unavailable if I have slack open in a browser tab and I’m using other tabs What about the desktop app? What about the mobile app? Surely they all influence the status of each other My life doesnt revolve around slack and slack status, why does yours?

rafael09ed 6y ago

> Barring an emergency, I'm not going to call someone directly because they're too busy working to (team)work. I think that's the point. Very rarely do you need someone to respond immediately.

qw 6y ago
I agree. I have mail notifications available, but nobody is expecting me to actually answer a mail the same minute it is sent. If I am working on something, I will wait until I have time for it. Why should Slack be different? It's just another asynchronous communication tool. The conversations have the possibility to be synchronous, but that is up to the users's involved. As others have pointed out, I reserve the right to be decide how I spend my time. A team player should not expect to be able to decide how my time is spent. If I am busy and someone just sends a "Hi" message without any context, i will ignore it until I have finished my task unless I have a reason to suspect that it is urgent.

joshmanders 6y ago

> If you can't play nicely on a team then maybe a different job is for you? This is a bullshit copout. It's a cultural issue if people cannot be respectful of their co-workers time. It is very common that if something is important to use important modes of communication such as phone calls. My team for example is very asynchronous because that is our culture. Our team is located all over the country and some people in different parts of the world. If any of us needs each other during our typical work hours and its important, it's usually a call over our VOIP system. NONE of us take Slack as an immediate answer messaging platform.

kempbellt 6y ago
No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working <- which more a cultural issue than being disrespectful of people's time in my opinion. I have nothing but respect for my coworkers personal time. I couldn't care less, personally, if you need to take hours, days, weeks, or even months off of work for whatever reason. Do what you need to do. However, if you are on Slack and suggesting to people you are available when you are not, that is bullshit to me. It's not difficult to close the app or update your status to put in an ounce of teamwork so people know how to work around your actual availability.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working <- which more a cultural issue than being disrespectful of people's time in my opinion. me working != available to immediately respond to your question. I'm not going to drop all the context for a bug I'm close to fixing to reply to a slack message. if I've been working on a bug for hours and I'm nowhere near a solution, I might switch gears and help you with your issue. I can't know at the beginning of investigating a bug which state I'm going to be in when you ask your question.
- joshmanders 6y ago
  Online status does not mean I am available, the online status tells my team that I am indeed, in my work day and they can message me and get a response when I'm actually available. Clocking in physically at your job tells your employer you're working, but it doesn't mean you're available immediately for their attention.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Yes text chat tools have too little engagement. I worked on a startup called Sococo (still exists; pivoted to be a WebRTC clone) that used a map. You could see each little bobblehead on the map, either in their office, in a conference room, in a break room, with our without their headset on. You clicked your guy into the room to conference with people in that room. If you didn't want to be bothered, you put your bobblehead into your office and closed the door, maybe took your headset off. You could see who was in meetings and with whom. You could see them flashing as they talked in turn. You wanted to interrupt somebody, you could knock on their door. They could 'let your in' or chat 'give me a minute' or whatever. It included chat tools in the rooms, so you could have text side-conversations while the talking was going on. It was very, very useful. The company that made it, had employees on 3 continents and 7 states. I didn't actually know where my coworkers lived, unless they told me. Yet I could communicate without friction. I miss the old Sococo.

marcosdumay 6y ago

I am active. I am just focused on an important task, and won't throw my hard earned flow away just to answer your "hi" for you to trap me into waiting you slowly type stuff and maybe even disappearing without getting to the point. If you can't articulate what's your subject at the moment you contact me, you'll get a very low priority. (Yeah, there are some people that do it out of a paranoid level of politeness and are easy to talk with even though they won't initiate a request. I will gladly make an exception for them.)

vmception 6y ago

So tell me, does slack set me to unavailable if Im in a different slack workspace? I have about two dozen communities I could be in, fortunately most of them moved to discord or telegram to avoid people like you Does it say I’m unavailable if I have slack open in a browser tab and I’m using other tabs What about the desktop app? What about the mobile app? Surely they all influence the status of each other My life doesnt revolve around slack and slack status, why does yours?