Did they bother to measure time wasted on email without Slack? We use Slack at my company and especially since we have all switched to remote work it has been great. Gone are the huge email threads you didn’t want to be on. No more dumb one word confirmations and short questions that made up a bunch of clutter.
Maybe if you didn’t organize the channels well. But I love being able to ignore channels that are going crazy, but have nothing to do with me.
There are times when you want a long format thing like email for interoffice communication - but it’s more rare now.
I have liked practically every post above me. Its not the platform its the users. I am in a 1000 person tech company, spread over three states, with many people working from home as required. Slack is a great way to keep in touch.
I particularly like the built in video conferencing. It means we can set up a meeting from absolutely anywhere.
Its a great way to get stuff done.
Yes, it does get used for long email-like messages, but making them interactive can be a benefit as well, because in a conversation, you can listen to the other person, rather than just responding to what you think they would say,
Slack is a great tool for fast non-private quick communication that might have some value if additional stakeholders see what’s going on. It’s somewhere between email and a weekly staff meeting. It’s also great for a team that’s commonly not all in the office.
If your business Slack has turned toxic it’s absolutely your company culture, not Slack.
True for any group chat tool, really. There have to be some guide rails there.
My favorite really stupid thing is when male colleagues try to “chat me up” on Skype for Business (??!) or try to get me to engage in a conversation via an unsanctioned Slack chat on controversial topics like women being bad at tech (Per this idiot, I’m obviously an exception to that rule and shouldn’t mind having a fact-based conversation on that topic during the middle of my work day. I think he was really surprised at the ferocity he received in reply).
Group chat tools in general are great for global collaboration though, if the company culture can handle it.
tools have form. we adapt our behavior to support the form they require. that may result in good outcomes for us. or not.
do people generally build tools to achieve beneficial outcomes? of course. but the users of those tools may or may not reap the benefits of those outcomes. the benefits may accrue to the people who created or introduced the tool. benefits may be good at one time, and not another. the benefits may even be imaginary. or the good may not outweigh the bad.
people love to say tools are neutral, or that bad outcomes are necessarily the fault of the users. but tools are constructed to have specific outcomes; users be damned.
Slack is ok. Privacy and security is a concern. If you are confused by what someone means in chat, you can do a voice or video call from Slack. And then there is Zoom for video conferencing.
Eh. Most of his objections can be solved by turning off desktop notifications and running Slack in a tab in a background window or on a different virtual desktop. Desktop notifications just suck all around and I don’t miss them for email, slack or anything.
slack allows for less filtered less formal conversations. what those conversations contain depends on the people not the tool. our office slack is a constant stream of encouragement and help and sharing of ideas and resources. It has been one of the best things we’ve done for productivity on small teams as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wayyyyy off the mark on this one. Remote communications, mobile chat, link sharing, quick code snippets, bug reports, dedicated channels for integrations to talk with us (project planning, customer support, github commits, pull requests, systems monitors, deploy notices.) Ad hoc video conferencing.
Sounds like a PEBKAC issue with your team or IPO bitterness. Email is for long form communication, Slack is a vital daily sharing tool.
i agree, these are huge for our company as well. we have integrations with asana and google docs also. there are many very powerful integrations that can dramatically optimize workflows.
I just started at a place with Slack, and I’m only seeing two things: information being requested and shared in a helpful and searchable way, and cute animal pics.
It’s an open office, so sometimes you’re slacking the person ten feet away from you, but you also have a record of the answer. And quick breaks looking at the cute animal pics channel have helped me get through these first months of getting used to never conversing with my coworkers.
And Slack doesn’t require headphone removal to answer a 3 second question, and can be properly ignored until you’re done typing that line. Ephemeral communications and reaction gifs are its wheelhouse. It Just Works (for us.)
This sounds great, but “directed, short meetings” unfortunately seem to be on the business management endangered species list.
I can def see where communication sprawl in the guise of pushing collaboration could threaten to turn the workday into one long meeting at which you’re trying to get your work done.
The internet radio station I work on uses Slack to run the station and communicate with the listeners. We’ve had two bad apples and they were easy to eject.
The Disquiet Junto is a music collaboration platform and is full of great friendly people; Slack helps us communicate in close to real time.
At my job, we use Slack for just about everything. Almost no email. Works great.
There are shortcomings: the “pay for it if you want your history” means that the top two have lost a lot of history because I can’t afford to pay to keep it available. Otherwise a lot better.
Years ago I wondered why people were raving about Slack so much, reading this article today I was wondering why people were hating on Slack so much. Then I read the manifesto page for Level and it clicked.
This is all new to you damn kids!
I think Slack is around the third big wave of Chat (or IM) as a business tool that I’ve seen. Workplace chat is old enough now that it was being parodied on a TV show canceled 15 years ago.
What this really tells me is that in about 2-4 years I need to start working on a Chat as a Productivity Tool app. That way I’m in position to launch it just as every one has forgotten about Slack and it’s ilk and is ready for a new wave of hype.
So far, no mention of the main thing I like having Slack around for: automated messages going to Slack instead of my email. JIRA, Jenkins, and so on? They go into Slack channels, and I can peruse as needs be rather than have to go in and delete 20 mails a day, and accidentally delete the request for HR for more info before they can approve my trip.
Really, Slack was made more for software dev teams instead of for regular office communication. For sharing snippets of code, for having a searchable history, that sort of stuff. All the chatter with colleagues on other continents happens on Skype. Fnord.
EDITING TO ADD: Oh, and skimming all the way through the article reveals that the beef that the authors have with Slack isn’t just with Slack, but with the whole communicating via text chat and “productivity suites” which are often admittedly abused. I maintain a “get up and walk to the other desk” policy myself, and encourage others. Which means my PM’s tend to be simply “I have a question, can you come on over?”
