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Comment by gcblkjaidfj | Hacker News Reader

slack IS email.

corporate communication changed medium but remained the same.

paper/reports/memos > email clients > rich email clients > webmail+blackberry > webmail+email apps > slack (desktop email app)

it is just the first, crappy, desktop email app client. The incumbents will eat them soon, just like microsoft and oracle ate all other email clients in the 90s. I mean, slack is already in someone’s plate.

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No its not. What I find frustrating about Slack is that it gives certain people the ability to say "i didn't see that" regarding important work information. I regard properly reading your email part of your job, and if you're missing important emails, you're failing at it. I find that unless you send an email alongside whatever Slack notification, many people will just ignore it.

That's just a specific element of your workplace's culture then. At jobs I've worked at it would have been much more reasonable to say "I didn't see that email" than "I didn't see that Slack message." Like all communication methods, the standards that are set around them are more important than the mechanism itself.

The problem with Slack-alikes is that you get buried under a deluge of notifications, so it is needlessly difficult to stay on top of things. Email is far better in this regard.

I only have notification for DMs, @'s and threads I'm following. No problem so far.

Now, if someone sends me an email, it might get buried between other stuff

I feel the exact opposite. If someone emails me, I’m likely to not see it, but if someone @s me on slack there’s no chance I miss it.

The whole upside of slack for me is that it makes it easier for me not to miss the things I absolutely need to see. I get a deluge of automated or templated emails every day. How am I ever supposed to reliably sift through the noise?

You can set up filters. How am I ever supposed to reliably sift through the noise on Slack?

Culturally, you make the onus on the sender to make sure the receiver got the message.

And then you get the most toxic slack trope: premptive read receipt.

> hi edmundsauto

(silence until you reply)

That's probably because Slack isn't the "main" communication where you are. Where I work it's the opposite, people answer slack but don't notice emails, because Slack is how we're "supposed" to communicate within the company.

Except that searching through email was a lot easier than searching for something in Slack. Important conversations would be scattered all throughout slack. I had a notes file in which I would store URLs for these important messages.

I just retired recently and can say truthfully that simply not having to deal with Slack has improved my sense of wellbeing immensely.

Slack super power is that you can search on other people's "email". So it kinda of make up but don't for the worse search

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