Comment by leesalminen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leesalminen | Hacker News Reader

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> My heart still sinks when I hear the Slack notification sound on evenings or weekends

Just turn off Slack notifications. I did this years ago (as a founder), and my life improved considerably. Three people at the company had my personal cell number. If it really was an emergency, they'd call. It only happened twice. Both times were legitimate emergencies that I would've wanted to know about ASAP.

After a few months of turning off Slack notifications I started telling all my employees to do the same. Most did. Everyone was happier.

> I firmly believe that good management can overcome these issues, but it must come from the top.

It starts at the top but is really implemented by middle management. As a leader, you have to get middle management on board with it, or some teams will end up with the short end of the stick. I had one team lead that would Slack their employees all weekend long and explicitly wanted a reply. Once I got word of this, I started calling that manager every single Sunday until they "got it".

> Just turn off Slack notifications.

As a person sending 3AM slack messages, I NEED you to do this.

I don't expect a reply at 3AM to a message asking you if you know about $WEIRD_THING and especially not when I send something like "remind me to talk to you about $FOOBAR on Monday"

Especially frustrating on evenings/weekends when people reply back quickly, but, on mobile and they can't effectively do the thing I need and are annoyed about not being able to do it right away and/or annoyed about me messaging them, but, I didn't need them to do it right then ANYWAY. I know it 10pm and you're heading to bed that's why I prefixed my message with "can you check tomorrow ...."

It leads me to not sending messages after-hours, which results in quick-small-tiny tasks/ideas being forgotten.

If it's really urgent, I'll call you!

Why are you sending non-urgent messages to coworkers at 3AM? That's extremely unprofessional if you are @'ing them or dming them directly.

People in different time zones exist?

I've worked with people in Sydney while being in London and plenty of slack messages were sent that would have been at 3/4am their time.

The expectation is they mute slack out of hours (which they do).

This seems like the natural consequence of abusing a system designed for synchronous chat as an asynchronous coordination platform. It's designed to go "ding" and grab your attention, immediately.

For comparison, email doesn't have to be explicitly muted and unmuted at the weekends.

I work with people in many time zones. We are on do not disturb mode outside work hours. That way I can send Slack messages that are non-urgent and not bother them. And in the extremely unusual case I want them to know, I can override the do not disturb anyway.

Isn't this setup basically the Slack default? Regardless, it's extremely easy to setup.

Ah didn't consider that, which is ironic since I worked across a +11TZ at $lastJob. Thanks for the clarification.

Completely disagree.

Manage your notifications properly.

Teams messages at 3AM don't bother me and, as I said, I don't expect a reply immediately and I'm not implicitly or explicitly penalizing people for not answering in a reasonable timeframe.

Have you considered sending an email instead?

I don't like email. Much prefer chat conversations, even at high latency.

I would recommend looking into something like Gator[0] that allows you to send messages that delay delivery until the recipients morning the following workday.

[0] https://slack.com/apps/ANPGHD2F8-gator

Mostly using teams, somewhat unfortunately.

Teams has gotten better over the past 2 or 3 years and slack has gotten worse enough that I don't care anymore.

Teams integrates really well since we're an Office365 org.

> Just turn off Slack notifications.

Fully agree, if it's compatible with the company.

But the workplace I described had an expectation of quick responses. Unfortunately, it came from the top. The CEO believed that responsiveness was one of the best indicators of success, which isn't exactly an uncommon belief in tech startup circles. Ignoring Slack messages was guaranteed to damage your career path at the company.

Responsiveness isn't actually a valid signal of employee ability, especially when everyone knows exactly how the game is played. The corporate climbers made sure to respond instantly to every message received in Slack. The trick was to minimize your responsibilities and workload, so you always had time to respond ASAP. Predictably, turnover was extremely high at this company. It's the only place I've ever worked where people routinely quit before the 12-month mark, giving up their signing bonus in the process.

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