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I hate to say email, but I feel like the venue for not time sensitive messages is.. email. I had this dynamic at my last gig with very pushy users, spamming of

I hate to say email, but I feel like the venue for not time sensitive messages is.. email. I had this dynamic at my last gig with very pushy users, spamming of @here/@channel, and a boss working weird hours. I found no solution other than disabling all notifications for slack. Still, when I would wake up & quickly scan through slack to make sure there were no open fires to login & help with, I would invariably have to dig through commingled fires & "just sending this now cuz I'm online" threads. My next solution became that I just stopped even checking slack at all in the morning until I was either in-office, or ready to login while remote. Otherwise I found myself stewing about some annoying but non-urgent messages that I had exposed myself to. Most people would prefer to get 1 properly thought out email than to wake up to a series of 5-10 slack messages or slack wall of text. If I want to go back to an email, I can leave the individual message unread. A slack message I end up with a red dot next to my bosses name for an unread message (and obscures any more messages that have come since) OR use the "remind me" feature to them get a red dot popping up next to my bosses name in an hour to make me jump thinking my boss has some new urgent thing to ask me. We've invented a pretty good async non-urgent message medium, and yet forgotten how to use it. I think all of these super clever DM strategies are self defeating.

AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
I don't like email. Keep in mind my workflow is much more likely to result in you ending up in a new task focused group or with a new message in a group vs a 1:1 DM.
- efdee 4y ago
  This pretty much demonstrates the problem most people have with your approach: it isn't about you - it's about the wellbeing of the people you work with. Also, 'just turn off notifications' isn't a solution. Having to ignore messages from your superior puts people in a very uncomfortable position. Granted I know very little about you other than the tiny bits of information gathered in this post, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've worked with people exhibiting similar attitudes and it is extremely toxic.
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    Yup. "just ignore your boss" is usually considered a CLM (Career Limiting Move)
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Yes, and being on the receiving end of that behavior, I hate it. And in slack it is very hard to manage other than turning off all notifications and just shrugging your shoulders. I can't mark individual messages for followup easily, so I have to leave entire DMs/groups/channels unread.. missing subsequent messages. I end up in 50 different channels, 30 different DM groups and 20 1:1 DMs over the course of a week. Some conversations span 5 different channels/DMs as people are added/removed.. Outlook would just have one nice threaded email on the subject. Slack I end up with 5 little red dots on my channel browser pane.. it's a mess. I've now had to institute a policy for myself on escalations that is - if it doesn't come through PagerDuty, it's not an incident or urgent. This in theory, by official policy is correct. In practice, this is like a union slowing down the trains..
- steveBK123 4y ago
  OK one more! Beyond out of hours.. A huge huge problem with slack versus email is out-of-office behaviors. In outlook, I set myself OOO in calendar, create a scheduled OOO response with active dates and audience types to respond / not respond to (internal/external). It's like 3 clicks, and defaults to the same message I always use, and I have to set myself OOO in calendar already anyway so people don't book meetings / my boss knows I am out. In Slack, I mark myself away, set my status to OOO, put a stupid little palm try icon up, disable notifications and... AND I still get people blasting me with DMs as if I am working. I come back to a mess of unreads I need a couple hours to unwind as I scroll up channels/DMs/etc. Users can even force notifications through against my will (except that I disabled them at OS level :-) ). Slack needs an OOO response tool, and even the ability to block senders to go a step further.

AdamJacobMuller 4y ago

I don't like email. Keep in mind my workflow is much more likely to result in you ending up in a new task focused group or with a new message in a group vs a 1:1 DM.

efdee 4y ago
This pretty much demonstrates the problem most people have with your approach: it isn't about you - it's about the wellbeing of the people you work with. Also, 'just turn off notifications' isn't a solution. Having to ignore messages from your superior puts people in a very uncomfortable position. Granted I know very little about you other than the tiny bits of information gathered in this post, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've worked with people exhibiting similar attitudes and it is extremely toxic.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Yup. "just ignore your boss" is usually considered a CLM (Career Limiting Move)
steveBK123 4y ago
Yes, and being on the receiving end of that behavior, I hate it. And in slack it is very hard to manage other than turning off all notifications and just shrugging your shoulders. I can't mark individual messages for followup easily, so I have to leave entire DMs/groups/channels unread.. missing subsequent messages. I end up in 50 different channels, 30 different DM groups and 20 1:1 DMs over the course of a week. Some conversations span 5 different channels/DMs as people are added/removed.. Outlook would just have one nice threaded email on the subject. Slack I end up with 5 little red dots on my channel browser pane.. it's a mess. I've now had to institute a policy for myself on escalations that is - if it doesn't come through PagerDuty, it's not an incident or urgent. This in theory, by official policy is correct. In practice, this is like a union slowing down the trains..
steveBK123 4y ago
OK one more! Beyond out of hours.. A huge huge problem with slack versus email is out-of-office behaviors. In outlook, I set myself OOO in calendar, create a scheduled OOO response with active dates and audience types to respond / not respond to (internal/external). It's like 3 clicks, and defaults to the same message I always use, and I have to set myself OOO in calendar already anyway so people don't book meetings / my boss knows I am out. In Slack, I mark myself away, set my status to OOO, put a stupid little palm try icon up, disable notifications and... AND I still get people blasting me with DMs as if I am working. I come back to a mess of unreads I need a couple hours to unwind as I scroll up channels/DMs/etc. Users can even force notifications through against my will (except that I disabled them at OS level :-) ). Slack needs an OOO response tool, and even the ability to block senders to go a step further.