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Comment by AdamJacobMuller | Hacker News Reader

> 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!

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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.

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