Do platforms like Slack really offer a great benefit to a business? Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems that if you had a dysfunctional organisation then this is not a silver bullet, and if you had a well functioning organisation you would manage just fine with old fashioned tools like email and Dropbox.

> Support for private groups and 1:1 direct messaging gives you complete flexibility. Private things stay private, so just the right people see them.

If you haven't managed to work out how to implement this kind of communication with email then aren't there bigger problems at your workplace?

There are other things that bother me, such as

> The “ambient awareness” that comes from increased transparency cuts down on the need for meetings.

> “We no longer wonder what’s happening on the front line, we know. It makes our relationships deeper because we discover things about each other and we're in touch with exactly what’s happening.”

So I now need to scroll through screens of idle chatter to try and figure out what some other team is doing? Is this constantly pinging me while I'm trying to work? Will every conversation descend into bikeshedding as every man and his dog wants to offer his opinion on the new logo or product feature?

I've just never come across Slack in London yet, so maybe I'm yet to understand what it's like in practice.