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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

> That isn't a problem with Slack. That's a problem with the way people are using Slack.

The notion that tools exist in some sort of vacuum away from users baffles me. Since Slack's only purpose is talking with other people, I don't how one can even theoretically evaluate it separate from usage.

This is a very common thing that happens with Slack. If it were just one team struggling to use it well, you might have a point. But past a certain size, I've only ever seen Slacks that a) have a problem with @channel, or b) have a carefully developed and enforced culture of controlling use of @channel.

I think the sophisticated version of this argument is "only experts should use use complex/difficult/dangerous tools". Which is a reasonable argument when talking about, say, wiring up detonators. But Slack's purpose is to connect everybody in a company. Suggesting that Slack is only for experts is to limit its market to a very small segment.

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Imagine your company has a mailing list that goes to everyone (it probably does; most organisations do). In a small company it's fine for anyone to send to it but it's quite annoying and unnecessary so the use of it is discouraged by company culture. As the organisation grows there's a point where the email administrator restricts who can send to it because it would be actively damaging to the email infrastructure if too many people used it, and it'd annoy a lot of people.

Very few people abandon email because their organisation has a mailing list.

Slack's @channel is exactly the same thing albeit on a smaller scale. If it gets too distracting just tell people not to use it so much.

I saw this at $work some years ago. Someone sent a mail to a weird mailinglist that I'd never seen before, which for some reason had 98,000 subscribers. Cue the "what is this list, please unsubscribe me" replies, which are of course sent to the mailinglist rather than the original poster.

I don't know the innards of Exchange, but from what I've heard, when Exchange receives a mail for a mailinglist, it makes a copy in each recipient's mailbox. That small thread with maybe 30 "please unsubscribe me" replies brought down the entire company mail system for about half a day. (Well, it didn't really bring it down; it was just busy shuffling copies of mails around.)

Sure. And email is circa 50 years old. At this point, given how distributed it is, it's basically impossible to change. It was not designed for the modern environment, so people have compensated with culture.

Slack, however, is new, centrally controlled, relatively easy to change, and frequently updated. So the email analogy doesn't apply at all.

> The notion that tools exist in some sort of vacuum away from users baffles me

This x1000

Software is developed and used in a social context. We can't disavow responsibility for the effects our Software cause.

Here's why someone may disagree:

Your company has hammers and screw drivers as your tools. If your employees only know how to use hammers, they are going to hammer screws. If your team only knows how to use screw drivers, they will shrug at nails. Hence, the tool is not always at fault for end user error.

Learning how and when it is appropriate to use the tools at hand is important.

Nobody actually hammers screws because it's obvious how the tools are intended to be used and that isn't it.

Counter-point: percentage of emails marked as urgent that are actually urgent.

The thing about software is that it enables us to do things we do well faster and more consistently by a large factor, it also causes the things we don't do well to multiply their damage.

My previous workplace everyone had tight deadlines and goals to meet, they were pressured both internally and externally to act in their best interest, this means that everyone believes their problem is top priority even when it's not a priority at all, and Slack makes communication a billion times faster so they bother whoever they can on Slack.

This usually means one of two things, either going to someone directly or blasting everyone on the channels that contain the entire company, this became the default for us and it was hell, at some point people would notify the entire channel because they couldn't find their mug.

IMO what Slack does, in this case, is expose much bigger issues within the structure of the company, these can't be fixed by switching chat apps.

My current company the communication channels and prioritization are very clear, Slack is not a problem, it is a helping tool.

I don't think anyone said that Slack is only for experts, but a training session or two wouldn't be remiss. Here's how you handle notification preferences, slash commands, and such. Especially for wide deployments among people of varying tech literacy.

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