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> 2. Stop using email. It's the worst format of online communication. Slack, MS Teams, etc. The difficulty with this, is that work can spiral quickly into just

> 2. Stop using email. It's the worst format of online communication. Slack, MS Teams, etc. The difficulty with this, is that work can spiral quickly into just spending the whole day responding to chat (slack/teams/etc) and no one ever gets any actual work done.

ExpendableGuy 3y ago
Thank you. I will fight this new trend of 100% Slack/Teams/Etc. as long as I possibly can. Email provides a barrier between you and the work -- email isn't a real time form of communication. Chats, meanwhile, imply immediate response. Hell, these apps even show when you're active -- I've gotten passive-aggressive messages like, "I know that you have DND on, but can you confirm you're seeing these messages?" chats outside of working hours. I get why Slack/Teams/Etc. is a great supplement to email, especially when it's a smaller internal team collaborating. But ditching email is a terrible idea.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  This is just culture / familiarity. Absolutely nothing about chat implies immediacy by necessity. But I agree that expectations are often set badly, and that's an important cultural problem to solve.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  My problem with email is the amount of spam makes it unusable, and I don't just mean unsolicited advertisements. I get spam from work in the form of notifications and unnecessary CC's, so I'm accustomed to ignoring all emails. I think it may also be generational: at my previous job, I get chewed out by my manager for not responding to some question another coworker had sent me. I was confused because I don't remember getting any questions from them, and I was told that he had emailed it to me. He's in his 40s and I was 26. I told him I get so many useless emails I never check work email. And the best way to reach me is via slack. Still, some on the team continued to use email
  - danaris 3y ago
    Sounds like you need to learn to manage your email inbox. I have dozens of filters set up to direct emails to particular folders before I ever see them. This is precisely the way to deal with automated notifications. They're always coming from the same source; in some cases, they're not going to your email directly, but to a group address that you can easily filter on. If you're getting unnecessary CCs from particular people commonly, you can set up a filter to automatically route that category (from:thisuser@company, cc:me) to a folder of "check this once a day (or whatever timetable) to see if anything real got through". The answer to "I have trouble with email," in an organization where email is a normal mode of communication, is not "so the whole rest of my team needs to change their workflow to deal with me." It's "so I need to pick up some skills and make checking my email part of my daily workflow."
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      The rest of the team didn't use emails, only the older team members did. Honestly, none of the companies I worked for used email for communication, I think it's abnormal to be the one using it on the team. Slack doesn't require as much configuration as you described. I don't get the point of email when we have slack
- alberth 3y ago
  Glad to hear I'm not alone. Question: do you think this would still be a problem if only 1:1 chat was allowed (no group chat existed). I've often wondered if the real problem is group chat / channels, and not per se the 1:1 type of chat messages.
sanderjd 3y ago
Yeah, in my experience, chat is way more useful for collaborating than email. But we also haven't built up as much tolerance to its distractions. I think this is in part the notification / filtering / snoozing tooling is still maturing, and in part it's just familiarity.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
I would also argue that email is superior in that it's searchable and captures context. by all means, use teams/slack/etc for discussions, but understand that they don't replace email, they enhance it.
crowcroft 3y ago
In large organizations I always see the same bad outcomes. 1. Lots of random DMs/Group DMs. Everything is messy, and gets lost easily. The 'closed' nature of DMs and small groups then often builds up cliques and creates office politics. 2. Move everything into open channels -> descend into pure chaos with 1,000s of channels that no one can keep up with.

ExpendableGuy 3y ago

Thank you. I will fight this new trend of 100% Slack/Teams/Etc. as long as I possibly can. Email provides a barrier between you and the work -- email isn't a real time form of communication. Chats, meanwhile, imply immediate response. Hell, these apps even show when you're active -- I've gotten passive-aggressive messages like, "I know that you have DND on, but can you confirm you're seeing these messages?" chats outside of working hours. I get why Slack/Teams/Etc. is a great supplement to email, especially when it's a smaller internal team collaborating. But ditching email is a terrible idea.

sanderjd 3y ago
This is just culture / familiarity. Absolutely nothing about chat implies immediacy by necessity. But I agree that expectations are often set badly, and that's an important cultural problem to solve.
shortrounddev2 3y ago
My problem with email is the amount of spam makes it unusable, and I don't just mean unsolicited advertisements. I get spam from work in the form of notifications and unnecessary CC's, so I'm accustomed to ignoring all emails. I think it may also be generational: at my previous job, I get chewed out by my manager for not responding to some question another coworker had sent me. I was confused because I don't remember getting any questions from them, and I was told that he had emailed it to me. He's in his 40s and I was 26. I told him I get so many useless emails I never check work email. And the best way to reach me is via slack. Still, some on the team continued to use email
- danaris 3y ago
  Sounds like you need to learn to manage your email inbox. I have dozens of filters set up to direct emails to particular folders before I ever see them. This is precisely the way to deal with automated notifications. They're always coming from the same source; in some cases, they're not going to your email directly, but to a group address that you can easily filter on. If you're getting unnecessary CCs from particular people commonly, you can set up a filter to automatically route that category (from:thisuser@company, cc:me) to a folder of "check this once a day (or whatever timetable) to see if anything real got through". The answer to "I have trouble with email," in an organization where email is a normal mode of communication, is not "so the whole rest of my team needs to change their workflow to deal with me." It's "so I need to pick up some skills and make checking my email part of my daily workflow."
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    The rest of the team didn't use emails, only the older team members did. Honestly, none of the companies I worked for used email for communication, I think it's abnormal to be the one using it on the team. Slack doesn't require as much configuration as you described. I don't get the point of email when we have slack
alberth 3y ago
Glad to hear I'm not alone. Question: do you think this would still be a problem if only 1:1 chat was allowed (no group chat existed). I've often wondered if the real problem is group chat / channels, and not per se the 1:1 type of chat messages.

sanderjd 3y ago

Yeah, in my experience, chat is way more useful for collaborating than email. But we also haven't built up as much tolerance to its distractions. I think this is in part the notification / filtering / snoozing tooling is still maturing, and in part it's just familiarity.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

I would also argue that email is superior in that it's searchable and captures context. by all means, use teams/slack/etc for discussions, but understand that they don't replace email, they enhance it.

crowcroft 3y ago

In large organizations I always see the same bad outcomes. 1. Lots of random DMs/Group DMs. Everything is messy, and gets lost easily. The 'closed' nature of DMs and small groups then often builds up cliques and creates office politics. 2. Move everything into open channels -> descend into pure chaos with 1,000s of channels that no one can keep up with.