This should just be a first-class, front-and-center feature already. Everybody plays this game. It's so stupid.
Just let me skim my messages at midnight without signaling to co-workers that I'm up and that they should feel free to continue bothering me.
Also better that other people do the same to me so I don't keep sitting there like an idiot waiting for a response that isn't going to come.
Remember status messages? Available / away / idle? That you could set manually? Before Google Hangouts decided that everybody who owns a phone should just be green all the time, which EVERY OTHER CHAT APP decided to copy? So fucking stupid.
Things are getting out of hand shitty with these adcentered A/B big data UIs.
Remember AIM away messages that would auto respond to friends with a custom message if you were logged in but AFK or even sitting at keyboard but wanted some quiet?
I miss it.
So much so that I’ve started writing an auto-responder for slack because despite having a “Presence”/Status feature that I use very judiciously (In a Meeting/On a call/Gone to Lunch/PTO) I’ve found-across multiple jobs-people barge right through them, then follow up with emails asking “are you available for a moment?” when I’m really trying and desiring focus (and also because I’m not signing up to someone else’s hosted SaaS service to do this).