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I don’t get why people dislike slack. I find it brilliant. Maybe your company requires certain behaviour, but that’s not a problem with the tool, nor will any

I don’t get why people dislike slack. I find it brilliant. Maybe your company requires certain behaviour, but that’s not a problem with the tool, nor will any other tool make things better.

j45 3y ago
Interruption is the enemy of productivity. Notifications rarely work for you. Slack seems to work around keeping people looking without context A well designed and well run slack requires a thoughtful setup and we’ll trained users which itself can become a barrier to participating. In the free slack world, far too much information is lost after 90days and those slack communities stagnant and die. Slack could offer tools free for non profits and join the other software tools who help support open source projects.
- JoyfulTurkey 3y ago
  I agree on the notifications thing. A few friends and I are doing some side consulting and decided to use a Google Space within our public Gmail accounts. It has worked great and I haven't missed a thing, especially with the Gmail app on the phone, but I can mute pretty easily if I want to.
- midasuni 3y ago
  Why do you have notifications turned on? I have notifications on a couple of critics channels where time critical incidents are logged, they fire every month or two and that’s where I want to stop what I’m doing and look at those. With teams however I can’t seem to find a way of muting corporate spam channels, so I have to keep the program closed when deep working. I prefer teams to zoom now I’m afraid, the persistence of meeting chat windows for example, but for textual collaboration slack is orders of magnitude better. Maybe because we have managed to get our entire organisation at least federated and most channels are global or in large enough departments that you only need to be in one or at most two.
  - j45 3y ago
    I’m not sure I have notifications on. I don’t get many. Teams definitely misbehaves in respecting notifications, less so on Apple products. I believe some notification settings are employer side settings.
the_gipsy 3y ago
It's slow and sluggish and full of bloat.
- dkdbejwi383 3y ago
  I’ve always found it fast enough for what it needs to do. It’s not a game engine or trading platform so I’m not sure aggressive optimisation would add as much value for the average user, compared with e.g. development effort spent on things like better search or channel organisation, for example.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Not realtime is fine. Waiting a minute or so for it after resuming from sleep to sync the state (where at some point it will show you new message notifications but prevent from switching to those channels) is not fine.
  - the_gipsy 3y ago
    I'm not talking about "game engine speed". It's a chat program for orgs, so the absolute baseline is switching chats and loading messages and media fast - or at least not sluggishly slow. Instead, slack keeps growing features that my org never uses.
haswell 3y ago
Tools absolutely matter. Behavior is enabled by what the tool enables. The tyranny of the default means that an organization not prepared to rigidly apply certain best practices will live and die based on those defaults. This may not be universally bad, but for some environments, it’s quite bad. Twist looks like it focuses on many of the Slack issues that bite bigger teams. It’s one thing for me to better manage my use of slack, create focused topic channels, snooze notifications, etc. But none of this matters when there are 100 other teams all using the product haphazardly. Better defaults won’t magically fix this, but there is a lot of value in defaults that encourage better habits. The focus on async communication also seems interesting. My biggest issue with Slack was that people expect immediate answers, and that it’s easy to lose track of things if you don’t stay on top of the pings as they come in. Again, this expectation doesn’t magically disappear with a new tool, but a new tool that focuses on this, and the introduction of which can be used as a catalyst for encouraging behavior change seems valuable. Better tools won’t solve the whole problem, but I’m glad they’re putting these ideas out into the market. If nothing else, I hope it leads to more interest in deep work, true async communications, and awareness of the toxic and attention-destroying nature of many Slack instances.
- necovek 3y ago
  My biggest issue with Slack is that people think I expect immediate answers. What I like about Twist is that this would be a good interface for email, slack and forums/discussions.
inciampati 3y ago
It might make sense if you work at a company, but it's also used very inappropriately, I think, in the context of scientific research. The problem we have is that we collaborate between company units on Slack and so all of us have dozens to hundreds of Slack instances with separate logins. I don't know how people tolerate it. Discord has a much better approach. It seems that slack may not be able to match it for historical, bureaucratic, and technical reasons. I've moved anything I can to matrix and encourage everyone to do the same. A collaboration only necessitates invites to a channel. It matches the way we work and it's more flexible.
- hiidrew 3y ago
  I agree, this is my main critique of Slack. Discord's approach to servers as only requiring one login for many makes way more sense. Compared with Slack's multiple logins for many, way more confusing.
  - grardb 3y ago
    I hate it as well, but here's my best guess as to why change it is unlikely: Most of their revenue probably comes from companies, which virtually always issue company emails for their employees. In that case, you'd still have the problem of multiple logins (admittedly fewer, though). If you've ever used Discord with multiple logins, it's actually not seamless at all. You essentially switch accounts and are only able to see the chats associated with one account at a time. Thus, not only would it probably be a non-trivial technical challenge, but they would also need to put in additional UI and UX work to make the experience better than what Discord offers. And all that effort probably isn't worth it when their money comes from customers who won't benefit from it. Ultimately, I think if you want to run a chat but aren't providing the members with emails, you probably shouldn't use be using Slack.
    - hiidrew 3y ago
      You're right about the multiple logins with discord critique. A seamless switcher would be nice to have.
    - 3y ago
ghusto 3y ago
Because it promotes shitty behaviour and poor mental health practices. Jumping on every alert (message) is a recipe for ADHD (yes, you absolutely can _develop_ ADHD) and anxiety becoming the norm.

I don’t get why people dislike slack. I find it brilliant. Maybe your company requires certain behaviour, but that’s not a problem with the tool, nor will any other tool make things better.

j45 3y ago

Interruption is the enemy of productivity. Notifications rarely work for you. Slack seems to work around keeping people looking without context A well designed and well run slack requires a thoughtful setup and we’ll trained users which itself can become a barrier to participating. In the free slack world, far too much information is lost after 90days and those slack communities stagnant and die. Slack could offer tools free for non profits and join the other software tools who help support open source projects.

JoyfulTurkey 3y ago
I agree on the notifications thing. A few friends and I are doing some side consulting and decided to use a Google Space within our public Gmail accounts. It has worked great and I haven't missed a thing, especially with the Gmail app on the phone, but I can mute pretty easily if I want to.
midasuni 3y ago
Why do you have notifications turned on? I have notifications on a couple of critics channels where time critical incidents are logged, they fire every month or two and that’s where I want to stop what I’m doing and look at those. With teams however I can’t seem to find a way of muting corporate spam channels, so I have to keep the program closed when deep working. I prefer teams to zoom now I’m afraid, the persistence of meeting chat windows for example, but for textual collaboration slack is orders of magnitude better. Maybe because we have managed to get our entire organisation at least federated and most channels are global or in large enough departments that you only need to be in one or at most two.
- j45 3y ago
  I’m not sure I have notifications on. I don’t get many. Teams definitely misbehaves in respecting notifications, less so on Apple products. I believe some notification settings are employer side settings.

the_gipsy 3y ago

It's slow and sluggish and full of bloat.

dkdbejwi383 3y ago
I’ve always found it fast enough for what it needs to do. It’s not a game engine or trading platform so I’m not sure aggressive optimisation would add as much value for the average user, compared with e.g. development effort spent on things like better search or channel organisation, for example.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Not realtime is fine. Waiting a minute or so for it after resuming from sleep to sync the state (where at some point it will show you new message notifications but prevent from switching to those channels) is not fine.
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  I'm not talking about "game engine speed". It's a chat program for orgs, so the absolute baseline is switching chats and loading messages and media fast - or at least not sluggishly slow. Instead, slack keeps growing features that my org never uses.

haswell 3y ago

Tools absolutely matter. Behavior is enabled by what the tool enables. The tyranny of the default means that an organization not prepared to rigidly apply certain best practices will live and die based on those defaults. This may not be universally bad, but for some environments, it’s quite bad. Twist looks like it focuses on many of the Slack issues that bite bigger teams. It’s one thing for me to better manage my use of slack, create focused topic channels, snooze notifications, etc. But none of this matters when there are 100 other teams all using the product haphazardly. Better defaults won’t magically fix this, but there is a lot of value in defaults that encourage better habits. The focus on async communication also seems interesting. My biggest issue with Slack was that people expect immediate answers, and that it’s easy to lose track of things if you don’t stay on top of the pings as they come in. Again, this expectation doesn’t magically disappear with a new tool, but a new tool that focuses on this, and the introduction of which can be used as a catalyst for encouraging behavior change seems valuable. Better tools won’t solve the whole problem, but I’m glad they’re putting these ideas out into the market. If nothing else, I hope it leads to more interest in deep work, true async communications, and awareness of the toxic and attention-destroying nature of many Slack instances.

necovek 3y ago
My biggest issue with Slack is that people think I expect immediate answers. What I like about Twist is that this would be a good interface for email, slack and forums/discussions.

inciampati 3y ago

It might make sense if you work at a company, but it's also used very inappropriately, I think, in the context of scientific research. The problem we have is that we collaborate between company units on Slack and so all of us have dozens to hundreds of Slack instances with separate logins. I don't know how people tolerate it. Discord has a much better approach. It seems that slack may not be able to match it for historical, bureaucratic, and technical reasons. I've moved anything I can to matrix and encourage everyone to do the same. A collaboration only necessitates invites to a channel. It matches the way we work and it's more flexible.

hiidrew 3y ago
I agree, this is my main critique of Slack. Discord's approach to servers as only requiring one login for many makes way more sense. Compared with Slack's multiple logins for many, way more confusing.
- grardb 3y ago
  I hate it as well, but here's my best guess as to why change it is unlikely: Most of their revenue probably comes from companies, which virtually always issue company emails for their employees. In that case, you'd still have the problem of multiple logins (admittedly fewer, though). If you've ever used Discord with multiple logins, it's actually not seamless at all. You essentially switch accounts and are only able to see the chats associated with one account at a time. Thus, not only would it probably be a non-trivial technical challenge, but they would also need to put in additional UI and UX work to make the experience better than what Discord offers. And all that effort probably isn't worth it when their money comes from customers who won't benefit from it. Ultimately, I think if you want to run a chat but aren't providing the members with emails, you probably shouldn't use be using Slack.
  - hiidrew 3y ago
    You're right about the multiple logins with discord critique. A seamless switcher would be nice to have.
  - 3y ago

ghusto 3y ago

Because it promotes shitty behaviour and poor mental health practices. Jumping on every alert (message) is a recipe for ADHD (yes, you absolutely can _develop_ ADHD) and anxiety becoming the norm.