Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhbradshaw | Hacker News Reader

In the main article Slack communication is assumed to be synchronous. I find life to be a little happier when it's assumed to be asynchronous. That means turning off some channel notifications.

When I really want effective synchronous communication I tend to escalate from Slack to audio or video a screen share -- it seems like there's an extra layer of collaboration that you can have with a bit higher bandwidth.

For meetings I like to have audio plus a screen share of a shared document -- usually not a Slack document, because it's valuable to have more than one person be able to make edits.

View on HN

Slack would become the best chat app for every company out there with just one simple feature (or the lack of it):

- remove the "user is online" green dot.

Really, it's not needed. Once it's removed then everything becomes async by default (and so everything slows down a little bit =>everyone is happier)

E-mail is inherently async. Async to the core. Why not just send your async requests as an e-mail so the other person can handle it as they process their inbox?

Slack excels at real-time, interactive communication. It's chat, designed for back-and-forth. Your messages will get scrolled into the backlog if there's a lot of chat while you're away.

The green dot (or the "busy" setting) is great for understanding whether the other person is going to receive your message as a notification at their computer or a push message on their phone. That's highly relevant.

I don't understand the love of email. It's little pieces of conversations that get sent around in an ad hoc way.

Email doesn't have an easy way to add someone to a thread, or to manage a forked conversation. It's closed and non-discoverable by default.

> Email doesn't have an easy way to add someone to a thread

You add them to the cc list.

> or to manage a forked conversation.

Your email client is at fault there, any decent email manages forked conversations.

> It's closed and non-discoverable by default.

Thats why you have mailing lists which are indexed and searchable. You may see 'closed and non discoverable' as a downside, I do not. Anything that should be discoverable should be on a wiki.

>You add them to the cc list.

I have very minimal experience using email, but doesn't this just add them to a new message as opposed to adding them to old messages?

Yes, in this case you explicitly introduce the reader with context, which is important when you have specific information that may be considered sensitive, or history that is not relevant.

Anyone reading the "to" line can see where the reader was introduced.

I find workplaces that default to closed conversations, and require explicit reading in of new participants, to be poor places to work. It feels like people use connections, being involved in key discussions, and their ability to connect people, as social currency. This is good for them, bad for the rest of the organisation.

I find it great, it saves me from information overload. For 'project' things, these often start on a mailing list and I can go back/search a mailing list if its that important.

I'll be honest to say, most things that is said in any communication medium is a complete waste of time. Having i searchable rather than forcing it on people globally is the only scalable option.

You do know that you can set yourself as away and nobody will be able to see your online status?

But then your boss/manager can’t spy on you!

I think most of us are lucky enough to work in companies or roles where that’s an acceptable option, but many others are not. It’s gotta be a cultural company change or one driven by the product team at Slack.

Or just leave yourself 'online' all the time.

I've never noticed that dot before. Just because I have slack open doesn't mean I'm available, and that's what I'd expect from anyone.

I’m just glad it doesn’t have read receipts

I have all notifications off all the time. I check slack when I have a moment, like if I'm waiting for CI or a long compile. Actual highlights will turn the tray icon red, so I will notice soon, but replying even to highlights immediately is madness.

Is there a way to have this async communication presented in a better way? I am on Discord, Telegram, and Slack sometimes with thousands of members. Yet, I mostly don't read posts anymore because it's just a full marketplace talking and finding that needle in a haystack of good information is impossible. So unless I am in sync I can't read.

Yeah, I think the author could do well with just muting slack for a few hours a day, and hand out his phone # for emergencies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com