5 ms·

Seems like it depends on work culture. If the expectation is you should answer ASAP, that's detrimental to coders. But if it's expected that you can respond som

by yboris 5y ago

Seems like it depends on work culture. If the expectation is you should answer ASAP, that's detrimental to coders. But if it's expected that you can respond sometime within a few hours, all is well. I strongly prefer Slack to email: the ability to search through past conversations, start multi-person conversations, and discuss things on a channel (with searchable history and sub-threads).

_wldu 5y ago
> If the expectation is you should answer ASAP, that's detrimental to coders. This reminds me of a Donald Knuth quote. I forget how it went exactly, but was something like this, "Some people have jobs that require them to be on top of things. My job requires me to be on the bottom of things. So I can't be interrupted by email."
dzhiurgis 5y ago
IMO semi ephemeral nature of free Slack is a feature for me. I used to keep zero inbox too, only archiving obviously important messages. If it’s not in ticket, git or wiki - it’s your fault. We are tiny, globally distributed team focused on documenting well so maybe thats why it works.
oliwarner 5y ago
> I strongly prefer Slack to email: the ability to search through past conversations, start multi-person conversations, and discuss things on a channel (with searchable history and sub-threads). It's a real shame I can't search my emails or CC people in. Oh... I won't pretend that they're the same thing, but those reasons to prefer ~Slack are things people readily do with email.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
> the ability to search through past conversations, start multi-person conversations, and discuss things on a channel (with searchable history and sub-threads). With a good email client you can do those things. E.g. you can make rules to move emails into folders, etc. Sure Slack is probably quicker at doing those things, but I prefer not having to rely on a 3rd party to run my business.

by yboris 5y ago

_wldu 5y ago

> If the expectation is you should answer ASAP, that's detrimental to coders. This reminds me of a Donald Knuth quote. I forget how it went exactly, but was something like this, "Some people have jobs that require them to be on top of things. My job requires me to be on the bottom of things. So I can't be interrupted by email."

dzhiurgis 5y ago

IMO semi ephemeral nature of free Slack is a feature for me. I used to keep zero inbox too, only archiving obviously important messages. If it’s not in ticket, git or wiki - it’s your fault. We are tiny, globally distributed team focused on documenting well so maybe thats why it works.

oliwarner 5y ago

> I strongly prefer Slack to email: the ability to search through past conversations, start multi-person conversations, and discuss things on a channel (with searchable history and sub-threads). It's a real shame I can't search my emails or CC people in. Oh... I won't pretend that they're the same thing, but those reasons to prefer ~Slack are things people readily do with email.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

> the ability to search through past conversations, start multi-person conversations, and discuss things on a channel (with searchable history and sub-threads). With a good email client you can do those things. E.g. you can make rules to move emails into folders, etc. Sure Slack is probably quicker at doing those things, but I prefer not having to rely on a 3rd party to run my business.