Comment by cik2e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cik2e | Hacker News Reader

Reading this article was honestly sickening. As I went on I got a growing sense of something horribly wrong with the author/culture of the company. And then these paragraphs all out confirmed my suspicions:

> Slack forced me to evaluate things very fast and respond quickly, otherwise I would miss my opportunity to join a conversation before it moved onto something else.

> Then there was the fact that we had so many channels and direct messages and group chats. It multiplexed my brain and left me in a constant state of anxiety, feeling that I needed to always be on guard.

> And I had to read everything. I felt that I had no choice as often decisions would be made in Slack that I needed to know. And in other ways it was simply an addiction that needed to be fed.

Blaming the tool for this kind of behavior would be comical but for the fact that it's actually scary scary to see someone with this little self awareness. At least he got the "addiction" part right.

Reality check. My company of ~80 people uses Slack (sparingly) as a slightly better alternative to gchat/Skype. We have jira for issues and a wiki for persistent knowledge. No one here likes being interrupted or always being on guard for the next chance to participate in a conversation. So we just don't do it and Slack has yet to force us to.

I dunno. The tool didn't work for the author.

Are they really to blame for this? It's an alternate view. One I don't agree with either: but that's fine. I don't have to agree with everything.

If it doesn't work for their team, they're saying "it didn't work for us: don't force it for you, too." I see nothing wrong with that.

You have a positive experience with Slack. I use Slack too.

One thing I an certain of, and this goes beyond Slack: people often spend a lot of time giving valuable input into a situation. That input should most definitely, absolutely, be read. If they didn't think it was important, they would not have spent the time on it.

Using chat applications like Slack, it's extremely easy to feel like others are skimming over that important information. Sometimes I get the feeling that I did not give an adequate response: it's only because I didn't have time.

I don't like coming across this way. Seems the author doesn't, either.

The author cares about their culture, and the business, in a very deep and obvious way. Maybe too much. Who's to judge?

First off, the author acknowledges that it's not the tool's fault. The author specifically indicates that they were aware it was a cultural problem and tried to fix it. The author specifically says that they were hoping to reintegrate slack once they figured out how to do it in a more healthy fashion.

Your comment, on the other hand, passes quick, merciless judgement on a culture you have exactly one blog post's worth of insight into… Unaided by the benefit of a careful reading of that post's content.

> Reading this article was honestly sickening.

Judge not lest ye be judged, I would say.

> Blaming the tool for this kind of behavior would be comical but for the fact that it's actually scary scary to see someone with this little self awareness.

It' not at all comical. I think the part you don't get is that this is the _main_ reason why most people started trying out slack to start with. People were using chat before slack as well. The reason they tried slack was because of the notifications, alerts, integrations and history. When you get these features, the tool becomes very different from irc and this is what the post is about.

I agree. For me, the red flag was when the coworker asked him why he was so stressed. If things are working for other people, but not you, then something on your end probably needs to change. To me, it sounds like the author needs to trust his coworkers more. It's OK not to be involved in every decision. Sit back and let people own some things, and save your focus for the things you've decided to own. Everyone will be happier and more productive.

>Reading this article was honestly sickening

Really dude? Why you don't check your tolerance threshold?

I think I'll stick with email from now on.

Same here. It's very hard to get actual work done when one is constantly distracted by conversations that can't safely be ignored. Email is bad enough, in that regard.

An old-school analogy comes to mind. People used to BS in common space. But it was just BS. Decisions were made, or at least formalized, in meetings.

For what it's worth, last week I asked for help with user testing a couple new features on a startup in three different Slack groups I'm a member of, and also via around 150 cold emails. Response rates were 21x better to the same ask in a cold email versus a Slack message.

And this isn't just a one-off either, I've seen other people report the same thing consistently, where 'conversion' rates in response to even the most basic questions or asks are pretty much zero.

Like IRC vs email. #shocker

The difference is that with Slack you usually have some sort of common bond with the other people there, in terms of being either members of the same organization or else mutual alumni of some organization.

Because of that it's not immediately obvious that Slack should be no different than just asking a Linux question in some random FreeNode channel or whatever. That's actually a pretty big issue that doesn't bode well for the longterm viability of Slack, if (for example) it turns out that it leads to significantly worse organizational decision-making than email due to lower participation rates.

That's funny, since starting to use Slack I struggle to remember to check my email. Not much important happens there any more for me.

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