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Comment by bvandewalle | Hacker News Reader

I disagree, Slack became the online equivalent of "butts in seats" and in those turbulent times it has more potential than ever to be wrongly used.

I think it's partially the company culture that should make it clear that no substantial discussion or decisions should be made on the IM tool (Slack or something else). The issue is that Slack (the product) goes against creating such a culture.

Email is still a way better tool for long complex asynchronous opinionated discussions.

What I find the most damaging is the expectation that you should always be online watching all your channels in order to not miss some bit of information (or show that you are online, busy, doing work).

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>Email is still a way better tool for long complex asynchronous opinionated discussions.

Every experienced and/or powerful person I've worked with felt and preached exactly the opposite: whatever happens, absolutely do not ever have a complex conversation over email. Pick up a phone, schedule a meeting, walk over to them, just make the decision unilaterally, literally anything else.

That may be your personal experience, but I doubt that it's universal.

Consider the reported policy at Amazon of requiring several pages of written document for every meeting in order to ensure the functioning of that meeting. That's a pretty strong emphasis on the asynchronously written word.

Apparently they still do have meetings, but that may be simply a vehicle for psychological alignment more than for actual detailed discussion.

Those documents are famously read synchronously in silence at the start of those meetings though.

I never worked there, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out some managers expect it to be read before the meeting so we can start it on time. Those managers would be likely to communicate that preference forcefully at the start of the meeting.

Oh, there are plenty of cases where people ask me to write documents. They don’t read them though. They’re just props I’m expected to have when explaining verbally in the meeting.

To make decisions quickly, I totally agree.

If you want to understand the why, it is essential to have it in writing.

If the problem is complex, then one guy writing for 30 minutes can provide more clarity than 5 discussing for an hour.

Email is a bad tool for discussion.

However, it can be a good tool for information dissemination. (There are better tools - I'd argue that sending information should be pull rather than push, but that's just my preference).

So yes, have a guy write something down for 30 minutes, get people to read it, and then have an actual conversation / chat about it.

Email is a bad tool for discussion in that it lasts too long, and too many people can save copies; it's far better to have ephemeral and limited-distribution discussions, so if something obnoxious or actionable is said, nobody is opened up to legal actions.

The modern trend of people believing accusers is pushing against this wisdom, but it's still far better to not have evidence. That said, I'm sure Slack can be persuaded to destroy incriminating logs if the right pressure is applied. One of the benefits of people moving away from self-hosted solutions.

Every enterprise-friendly messaging system offers configurable retention policies. Messages involving certain roles or keywords may need to be retained for years to comply with regulations, while others can be deleted after a few days to minimize risk.

I completely agree with you. By writing I was thinking about RFCs not emails.

Have a face-to-face discussion and have a shared written document. If I have to chose between the two, the I would favor the written document though.

When collaborating over ambiguous topics where the potential to be misunderstood is high, you need to use the "richest" communication channel possible. Body language, facial expression, and the fast feedback loop can help you quickly establish a sense of common ground.

On the other hand, status updates or sharing of metrics/information can easily be done asynchronously, because the potential to be misunderstood is low. It's also a more scalable approach and persists over time.

> When collaborating over ambiguous topics where the potential to be misunderstood is high, you need to use the "richest" communication channel possible. Body language, facial expression

I would dispute that body language and facial expression are somehow always correctly interpreted or unambiguous, like most forms of communication.

Written word, or a series of characters in a string, as I think we in a technical forum with many programmers in particular can appreciate, can in fact remove quite a bit of ambiguity if everyone is careful about what they type.

Github has many examples of this in-progress.

I completely disagree. If the problem is complex you need to have an in person discussion on a white board rather than writing a long winded email that will mostly be filler information that the reader already knows. It probably won't even answer the issue the reader wanted to know either. And now you've wasted 30 minutes.

Have you ever learned about something complex from a book?

That would imply you don't need a whiteboard and 10 minute meeting in order to transfer information to one another.

Interesting question. I've tried to self-study from books alone, and it's never worked. The book always seems to work best in concert with the professor or TA's whiteboarding.

Wasn't thinking about email but more about RFCs.

I have been in such whiteboard discussions. Then I had the same discussion again one week later because another one needed the information. And again. And again.

I have heard from such whiteboard decisions. Then I heard a very different conclusion from the same whiteboard decision. And another. And another.

> What I find the most damaging is the expectation that you should always be online watching all your channels in order to not miss some bit of information (or show that you are online, busy, doing work).

That sounds either like toxic work culture or maybe the way slack is used in your company has created assumptions that may not be entirely warranted.

Where I work, there is no such expectation. If it's something urgent, people use @-messages so the recipient gets a notification, with reasonable care not to abuse them. If it's anything else, it's normal messages which can be read when convenient. Some, including me, turn off Slack entirely when diving deep into some task but I still get phone notifications for @-messages and a couple of keywords I've set up for urgent matters. If people appreciate each others time and attention, it's actually a fairly pleasant tool to use. We're not a large team, though, maybe it's different in larger orgs.

> Email is still a way better tool for long complex asynchronous opinionated discussions.

Yup. Every time you have a product discussion in Slack, it’s like taking a $100 bill and lighting it on fire.

While I share some of your feelings about IM at work I have learnt it depends on the personalities within the team.

Extroverts and Introverts have different needs. Throw in the needs of Creatives or Agreeable people into the mix and there is a very wide spectrum of different needs.

Assuming all can communicate one way with one tool is a bad idea. Good managers/leaders have some intuitive sense of this.

Especially during crisis. Trait differences and unmet needs get amplified if not handled sensitively.

So whatever heuristics you want to develop on top of your observations - take personalities within your team into account - they all handle stress/info overload differently - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invent...

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