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Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this

by SandB0x 12y ago

Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this is not a silver bullet, and if you had a well functioning organisation you would manage just fine with old fashioned tools like email and Dropbox. > Support for private groups and 1:1 direct messaging gives you complete flexibility. Private things stay private, so just the right people see them. If you haven't managed to work out how to implement this kind of communication with email then aren't there bigger problems at your workplace? There are other things that bother me, such as > The “ambient awareness” that comes from increased transparency cuts down on the need for meetings. > “We no longer wonder what’s happening on the front line, we know. It makes our relationships deeper because we discover things about each other and we're in touch with exactly what’s happening.” So I now need to scroll through screens of idle chatter to try and figure out what some other team is doing? Is this constantly pinging me while I'm trying to work? Will every conversation descend into bikeshedding as every man and his dog wants to offer his opinion on the new logo or product feature? I've just never come across Slack in London yet, so maybe I'm yet to understand what it's like in practice.

dpritchett 12y ago
It's not a silver bullet but it's definitely helped our company. We are a mostly-remote Rails-focused company with tens of people throughout the Western hemisphere. I've found my communications with clients and teammates got a lot better once we added Slack to the Google Apps + Skype setup we already had in place.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rabino 12y ago
We have a pretty functional distributed organization and Slack has been a godsend for us. We totally love it.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
Slack has been hugely helpful in the 100% remote org I work for. If you want me to go into detail, my contact info is in my profile. In short, I live in Slack now and love it. Its an augmented reality I can share with my team, and the closest I'm getting to shared mind state without an implant in my head.
andreasklinger 12y ago
- Imho email doesnt scale - it's always in silos - even if you send to multiples - Email just creates more email. In communication methods like slack you can communicate stuff public for people to see if they want - but dont need to
- SandB0x 12y ago
  Thanks, and to the other responders, appreciate your views too. I can see the issue with scaling. There was a great video about the problems of email when Google Wave came out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo . So if this service lets people drop in and out of a conversation with ease then I can see the benefit. > Email just creates more email. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Email is not intrinsically bad. You can write one line chat-like responses and you can write formal letters. I can that moving your communication to a website with a different look and feel might make people behave differently though. However I am now curious to give Slack a try...
onewaystreet 12y ago
Why are you using Dropbox? Why not just use FTP? Seems kind of dysfunctional.
mattzito 12y ago
We're big users of Slack at my current employer, and we love it. But, no, it is not a silver bullet. The couple of things that I really like about it: - it's good for collaborative working or editing - got a fire going? about to push code live? Get all the relevant parties in a chat room and talk through it, and then destroy it afterwards - the integrations - for automated systems, slack messages are far less disruptive than emails - the indexing/searching of documents + chats - game-changer for finding that slide deck someone talked about a month ago > So I now need to scroll through screens of idle chatter to try and figure out what some other team is doing? It's not great for teams updating other teams on what's happening, we have our own home-grown system for that. It would be very useful if you could have an announcement-only channel, where you could specify the people who have the ability to post, and others cna listen, but they don't have that. > Is this constantly pinging me while I'm trying to work? It's configurable, but it has twitter- and irc-style mentions, so you can set your client to only ping you when you get specifically mentioned or something is posted in a critical channel > Will every conversation descend into bikeshedding as every man and his dog wants to offer his opinion on the new logo or product feature? It's possible, I guess, but the structure is such that you end up with channels that are important and those that are just interesting. Important channels you monitor throughout the day, interesting ones you check twice a day. For us, all the product-related channels I monitor as much as possible. Sales- and marketing-related channels, I maybe check sporadically That being said we are also heavy users of small private groups to keep things focused for specific scenarios. It's not magical, but Slack is a very well executed product. And compared with trying to use hangouts, hipchat, or Skype as yourchat client, it's so much better.
- ktsmith 12y ago
  > It's configurable, but it has twitter- and irc-style mentions, so you can set your client to only ping you when you get specifically mentioned or something is posted in a critical channel It also has keyword based notifications. I've got a few keywords set up on our rooms so if someone is talking about pieces I own I get a notification and can join in if necessary.
oskarth 12y ago
Have you ever worked at a remote company? If so, the benefits for group chat solution would be obvious. On the other hand, you could just use IRC (IRCCloud is $5/month and has support for embedded gists etc) and a private chat server. This is what we did at my last company. But I haven't used Slack for real, so don't take my word for it - it's not impossible there are even more benefits compared to IRC.
- bratsche 12y ago
  We used to use irc at my company, mostly because it's what we're all used to using in the past. But maintaining it was kind of a pain in the ass, and as the company grew larger it became more difficult to use and to keep track of who is who. For example, people who have known me for years know my irc name is bratsche, but newer people have trouble finding me on irc. We're using Slack now and this is not an issue. The search capabilities are nice occasionally, although when I was trying to search yesterday through a private conversation history it only gave me results from public rooms so I finally just had to scroll up a few days to find what I was looking for. Bookmarks/stars are a really nice, simple feature that is incredibly useful though. If someone says something and you think you're going to need to come back to that, just bookmark it right there. I remember years ago having conversations on irc and either copy/pasting into notes files or even taking screenshots of the window so I could come back to it. :)
anotherview 12y ago
We've had a really fantastic experience with Slack. It's possible to do something kind of similar (but not the same) if everybody uses the same extremely complex set of email filters and labels... but in reality, email tends to work very, very, very, very differently from Slack. Slack has very configurable notifications, so you can choose how much specific channels and conversations interrupt you, and you can choose how synchronous or asynchronous you want it to be. Well-implemented chat is hugely valuable. It's hard to overstate how valuable it is.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
I didn't quite get it too. I've started using it solo (haven't added any of the team) and there are a few cool features. One is that there is an integration that will automatically post new App Store reviews on our product to a room. I don't need to check that myself. I also integrated with our crash reporting tool so that reports go to a room and I'm notified without clogging up my email. I've also integrated with BitBucket and new commits get posted to a room which I can see being useful when I add team members. I haven't seen these integrations in other products (HipChat which we use currently).
manigandham 12y ago
It's just chat. We've had chat services for a long time, although the options for biz/corporate/enterprise have traditionally sucked. There is a lot of efficiency gained since emails can often be heavy and include lots of extra wording, signatures, greetings, etc. There are plenty of conversations that just move faster through a lightweight chat system. Lots of companies were using MSN, Skype, Lync, Gmail, IRC, etc to do chat before and now there's finally a better crop of tools like HipChat, FlowDock, Slack and others. They all offer various abilities above just chat messaging like APIs and integrations to get notified about various other things all in the same place. Is Slack a nice tool? Yes, it's finally a chat system that works for actual business needs. Is Slack worth this much and better than everyone else? Not sure, the other ones mentioned are pretty good too and there are still lots of missing features with all of them. $2.8B seems very inflated, but then again this is Silicon Valley at work.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>It's just chat. No, it is not "just chat." Chat is just one function. Slack basically brings ALL of the information that is relevant to your team in one place. It has out-of-the-box integrations with a TON of services, and all the data they are sending to your team's Slack feed can then be search on, which provides massive productivity advantages.
  - manigandham 12y ago
    So... it's just chat. With some integrations. I already stated this: > They all offer various abilities above just chat messaging like APIs and integrations to get notified about various other things all in the same place. Thanks for the confirmation.
    - enraged_camel 12y ago
      Just because the integrations present the data to the user in a chat interface does not make it "just chat." It's OK though. I know you're just being obtuse.
727374 12y ago
> Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Yes. The main alternative I've seen at a couple largish corporations is Microsoft communicator/lync. Lync has some good video/screensharing stuff, but slack is more reliable and provides a great search history feature, which is the killer feature IMO. Also, the mac client is much less buggy than what MS offers. I know these sound like tiny features, but Slack is there when you need it and stays out of your way when you don't, which is priceless when you're trying to get stuff done. Communicator always had a knack for crashing when I was trying to search history or in the middle of a chat. For those saying IRC is a good alternative, I've yet to see a deployment as useful and easy to use as Slack. Obviously IRC is cheaper, but I doubt most bigcorps are too price sensitive for messaging systems.
- lojack 12y ago
  IRC also doesn't necessarily archive old conversations, which is a requirement for any publicly traded company.
richardlblair 12y ago
There are a few problems with your arguments, but it's mostly that you aren't trying to see things from another perspective. You honestly come across as jaded, and only willing to see things from your own perspective. Email is not a great form of communication. Private chat has a lot of value. Being able to chat in real time is very very valuable. We use slack where I work, but we have always had a chat program of some sort. Having different chat rooms for different teams means you don't need to scroll through infinite chatter to get an answer, you can just ask it... and ask the right audience. Need to quickly see if you're platform is down? Hop in the OPS channel and see. Want to see what's up with CI? Hop in the Dev channel. Want to see if support is getting hammered? Hop in support... It's simple, easy to understand, and easy to use. It's searchable, and accessible. The other things you mention seem more like a culture issue than a tooling issue.

by SandB0x 12y ago

dpritchett 12y ago

It's not a silver bullet but it's definitely helped our company. We are a mostly-remote Rails-focused company with tens of people throughout the Western hemisphere. I've found my communications with clients and teammates got a lot better once we added Slack to the Google Apps + Skype setup we already had in place.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rabino 12y ago

We have a pretty functional distributed organization and Slack has been a godsend for us. We totally love it.

toomuchtodo 12y ago

Slack has been hugely helpful in the 100% remote org I work for. If you want me to go into detail, my contact info is in my profile. In short, I live in Slack now and love it. Its an augmented reality I can share with my team, and the closest I'm getting to shared mind state without an implant in my head.

andreasklinger 12y ago

- Imho email doesnt scale - it's always in silos - even if you send to multiples - Email just creates more email. In communication methods like slack you can communicate stuff public for people to see if they want - but dont need to

SandB0x 12y ago
Thanks, and to the other responders, appreciate your views too. I can see the issue with scaling. There was a great video about the problems of email when Google Wave came out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo . So if this service lets people drop in and out of a conversation with ease then I can see the benefit. > Email just creates more email. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Email is not intrinsically bad. You can write one line chat-like responses and you can write formal letters. I can that moving your communication to a website with a different look and feel might make people behave differently though. However I am now curious to give Slack a try...

onewaystreet 12y ago

Why are you using Dropbox? Why not just use FTP? Seems kind of dysfunctional.

mattzito 12y ago

We're big users of Slack at my current employer, and we love it. But, no, it is not a silver bullet. The couple of things that I really like about it: - it's good for collaborative working or editing - got a fire going? about to push code live? Get all the relevant parties in a chat room and talk through it, and then destroy it afterwards - the integrations - for automated systems, slack messages are far less disruptive than emails - the indexing/searching of documents + chats - game-changer for finding that slide deck someone talked about a month ago > So I now need to scroll through screens of idle chatter to try and figure out what some other team is doing? It's not great for teams updating other teams on what's happening, we have our own home-grown system for that. It would be very useful if you could have an announcement-only channel, where you could specify the people who have the ability to post, and others cna listen, but they don't have that. > Is this constantly pinging me while I'm trying to work? It's configurable, but it has twitter- and irc-style mentions, so you can set your client to only ping you when you get specifically mentioned or something is posted in a critical channel > Will every conversation descend into bikeshedding as every man and his dog wants to offer his opinion on the new logo or product feature? It's possible, I guess, but the structure is such that you end up with channels that are important and those that are just interesting. Important channels you monitor throughout the day, interesting ones you check twice a day. For us, all the product-related channels I monitor as much as possible. Sales- and marketing-related channels, I maybe check sporadically That being said we are also heavy users of small private groups to keep things focused for specific scenarios. It's not magical, but Slack is a very well executed product. And compared with trying to use hangouts, hipchat, or Skype as yourchat client, it's so much better.

ktsmith 12y ago
> It's configurable, but it has twitter- and irc-style mentions, so you can set your client to only ping you when you get specifically mentioned or something is posted in a critical channel It also has keyword based notifications. I've got a few keywords set up on our rooms so if someone is talking about pieces I own I get a notification and can join in if necessary.

oskarth 12y ago

Have you ever worked at a remote company? If so, the benefits for group chat solution would be obvious. On the other hand, you could just use IRC (IRCCloud is $5/month and has support for embedded gists etc) and a private chat server. This is what we did at my last company. But I haven't used Slack for real, so don't take my word for it - it's not impossible there are even more benefits compared to IRC.

bratsche 12y ago
We used to use irc at my company, mostly because it's what we're all used to using in the past. But maintaining it was kind of a pain in the ass, and as the company grew larger it became more difficult to use and to keep track of who is who. For example, people who have known me for years know my irc name is bratsche, but newer people have trouble finding me on irc. We're using Slack now and this is not an issue. The search capabilities are nice occasionally, although when I was trying to search yesterday through a private conversation history it only gave me results from public rooms so I finally just had to scroll up a few days to find what I was looking for. Bookmarks/stars are a really nice, simple feature that is incredibly useful though. If someone says something and you think you're going to need to come back to that, just bookmark it right there. I remember years ago having conversations on irc and either copy/pasting into notes files or even taking screenshots of the window so I could come back to it. :)

anotherview 12y ago

We've had a really fantastic experience with Slack. It's possible to do something kind of similar (but not the same) if everybody uses the same extremely complex set of email filters and labels... but in reality, email tends to work very, very, very, very differently from Slack. Slack has very configurable notifications, so you can choose how much specific channels and conversations interrupt you, and you can choose how synchronous or asynchronous you want it to be. Well-implemented chat is hugely valuable. It's hard to overstate how valuable it is.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

I didn't quite get it too. I've started using it solo (haven't added any of the team) and there are a few cool features. One is that there is an integration that will automatically post new App Store reviews on our product to a room. I don't need to check that myself. I also integrated with our crash reporting tool so that reports go to a room and I'm notified without clogging up my email. I've also integrated with BitBucket and new commits get posted to a room which I can see being useful when I add team members. I haven't seen these integrations in other products (HipChat which we use currently).

manigandham 12y ago

It's just chat. We've had chat services for a long time, although the options for biz/corporate/enterprise have traditionally sucked. There is a lot of efficiency gained since emails can often be heavy and include lots of extra wording, signatures, greetings, etc. There are plenty of conversations that just move faster through a lightweight chat system. Lots of companies were using MSN, Skype, Lync, Gmail, IRC, etc to do chat before and now there's finally a better crop of tools like HipChat, FlowDock, Slack and others. They all offer various abilities above just chat messaging like APIs and integrations to get notified about various other things all in the same place. Is Slack a nice tool? Yes, it's finally a chat system that works for actual business needs. Is Slack worth this much and better than everyone else? Not sure, the other ones mentioned are pretty good too and there are still lots of missing features with all of them. $2.8B seems very inflated, but then again this is Silicon Valley at work.

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>It's just chat. No, it is not "just chat." Chat is just one function. Slack basically brings ALL of the information that is relevant to your team in one place. It has out-of-the-box integrations with a TON of services, and all the data they are sending to your team's Slack feed can then be search on, which provides massive productivity advantages.
- manigandham 12y ago
  So... it's just chat. With some integrations. I already stated this: > They all offer various abilities above just chat messaging like APIs and integrations to get notified about various other things all in the same place. Thanks for the confirmation.
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    Just because the integrations present the data to the user in a chat interface does not make it "just chat." It's OK though. I know you're just being obtuse.

727374 12y ago

> Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Yes. The main alternative I've seen at a couple largish corporations is Microsoft communicator/lync. Lync has some good video/screensharing stuff, but slack is more reliable and provides a great search history feature, which is the killer feature IMO. Also, the mac client is much less buggy than what MS offers. I know these sound like tiny features, but Slack is there when you need it and stays out of your way when you don't, which is priceless when you're trying to get stuff done. Communicator always had a knack for crashing when I was trying to search history or in the middle of a chat. For those saying IRC is a good alternative, I've yet to see a deployment as useful and easy to use as Slack. Obviously IRC is cheaper, but I doubt most bigcorps are too price sensitive for messaging systems.

lojack 12y ago
IRC also doesn't necessarily archive old conversations, which is a requirement for any publicly traded company.

richardlblair 12y ago

There are a few problems with your arguments, but it's mostly that you aren't trying to see things from another perspective. You honestly come across as jaded, and only willing to see things from your own perspective. Email is not a great form of communication. Private chat has a lot of value. Being able to chat in real time is very very valuable. We use slack where I work, but we have always had a chat program of some sort. Having different chat rooms for different teams means you don't need to scroll through infinite chatter to get an answer, you can just ask it... and ask the right audience. Need to quickly see if you're platform is down? Hop in the OPS channel and see. Want to see what's up with CI? Hop in the Dev channel. Want to see if support is getting hammered? Hop in support... It's simple, easy to understand, and easy to use. It's searchable, and accessible. The other things you mention seem more like a culture issue than a tooling issue.