Someone should create an app that, when a person writes something and hits 'send,' the app looks at the content and determines whether it's true, useful, interesting, and necessary. If it's not, the communication is automatically deleted without being sent. This might cut down on 98% of all the things people yammer on about.
87
@Anne great idea for the best known turbo twitterer in the USA.
30
I started a new job in a media company and not only are there dozens of channels with no identified specific purpose, but two separate Slack workspaces I have to monitor. And because channels pop up willy nilly with no shared parameters, the same message will get sent to multiple channels "just in case". I'm about to turn off the whole app and tell folks if they actually need to speak with me, pick up the landline phones we all have. And every time you get notified of a new message in one of the dozen plus channels you're supposed to keep up on, the context switching derails whatever momentum you had. So glad I'm nearing retirement. Hope my brain hasn't been completely fried before then. This is another reason I've stuck with a flip phone. When I go home, I'm at home, y'all can leave me the heck alone.
65
I've read all the comments trying to better understand . . . maybe I was missing something. In the end, note to self, short the stock.
20
Slack might have it's place but it won't replace email. Business can not be effectively conducted via an endless stream of Slack messages which all seem of equal importance and very distracting. Slack introduces a whole new level of organizational Attention Deficit Disorder. Squirrel!!
29
And what happens if someone searching those back logs finds that someone, somewhere said something politically unacceptable, or maybe made a not very funny joke, or used a forbidden word? Career over? Blackmail opportunity?
14
Gosh, it was like 20 years ago when Groove Networks and other collaboration tools got going on their quest to replace email, quickly got bought, and even quicker lost whatever traction they had and went who knows where? The biggest difference with Slack seems to be the valuation. If MSFT would simply fix outlook search function I’d be happy. And I was saying that 20 years ago too. That is what decades of defacto monopoly deliver. And now with dividends, or so I hear.
15
Slack is revolutionary for the company I work for. This is mostly because most of us work remotely. I can't imagine communicating with my remote coworkers day-to-day via email, it would slow us down to a halt. Balance should be made between video calls, Slack messaging, and email. Slack exists & is the future because remote workers are the future. This is simply a natural evolution in online work communication. Just like with anything, because Slack & emails are misused & abused does not mean they should not exist, or co-exists.
8
I really don't like slack. People use it for all nature of stuff in a plethora of groups. The important gets lost in the mundane. it makes of a mess of comms. In some cases, people slack changes in policy and practices in various slack channels. If you don't frequent the right channels, you likely miss the pronouncement. With all the chat rooms, slack is more like having dozens of email sources. As I told one impudent youngster, in my career, I have worked diligently to narrow my "in boxes" to one or two. Slack is just adding in boxes that I don't need. Just send me an email, or pick up the phone.
I don't like slack because I do not see the value it brings outside niche groups, like dev, who tend not to like actually speaking to people.
32
The always-on work culture is personally starting to affect my health and I know I cannot be alone.
My boss asked me why I don't install Slack on my (personal, 100% paid-for-by-me) phone so I can answer coworker's questions at all hours of the day. Even if I'm not going to answer them, why would I want to see my coworkers working all the time?
It was bad enough when we were expected to check email outside office hours and respond quickly. Now, we have Slack - an instant-message work chatroom - where your coworkers expect you to answer instantly. It means I am constantly expected to multi-task (not easy for a programmer who needs long periods of focus). It is destroying productivity, not ameliorating it.
These tools are making it harder to work, not easier.
127
Another ADD driven and ADD inducing software application.
51
I don't usually use the word "hate" but I hate this app. First, it's got a stupid name. Second, it seems like it's designed for people to announce to co-workers (who couldn't care less) every little task they've accomplished. Third, emojis. Fourth, passive aggressive people use it to send a note that likely will get overlooked on a mobile device.
It's inefficient.
I hate it.
63
I always get so amused by the hand-wringing over answering emails/texts/slack/whatever after hours.
Just don't. You're not at work. Don't even look at it. The end.
24
@Jennifer
A good friend of mine would not only turn his phone off when he got home, he would put it in a drawer...out of sight, out of mind.
On the other hand, he really wasn't satisfied with his overall work life and has left his industry.
5
@Jennifer And pretty soon... you wouldn't have to answer emails at all. Or even go in. Because you would be out of a job.
17
Once again, I discover my great good fortune to be over 60, adequately self-employed, and long working in semi-retirement. Life is good outside the corporate digital hive mind. Guess I was just born at the right time.
37
@RRI
Which is only an acceptable thing to say if you are commiserating with the younger folks for being at their boss' beck and call 24/7...and probably having to freelance
with no pension, too.
14
Slack is a great relationship destroyer between say Americans and Chinese or Japanese or Peruvians, etc. Each country has its own way of communication and expressing respect; international communications as such take a lot of time and effort - only then, and not sooner, express the issue at hand. Slack sounds more like a typical "today is Tuesday, this must be Belgium" with the "Ugly American" calling the shots starting of with "Hi Brother what's Cooken." A useless tool that Slack - insulting at best.
10
It's impossible to search for anything in Slack with any success. Until they resolve that, they are not replacing email.
19
The problem with Slack is that you can't block/mute people, so one rogue co-worker can make a channel completely unusable.
10
Sure sounds like it’s worth $7,000,000,000.00 to me, for sure.
10
I read the whole article and still don't understand how Slack could remail email. Absurd.
26
Slack seems to be an additional tool to facilitate certain goals such as collaboration on projects or discussion of certain matters. However, it doesn't replace email.
Most of my professional emails are external to my organization. They include requests for meetings, logistical arrangements for events including contracts and orders, updates to my dues paying membership, explanations of complicated issues to policymakers,
and specific inquiries sent to appropriate individuals.
Yes, the onslaught of emails can be annoying but it's a requirement of being a professional. Find ways to deal with it such as setting aside parts of the day to focus on emails instead of getting distracted by each one. Respond to those that require immediate attention regardless of time of day. Keep electronic notes about which pending emails need to be on your to do list. It is manageable.
Many of the worst practices such as massive reply-to-all messages have largely been eliminated long ago.
I believe that this whole aura around Slack that it replaces email needs to be strongly questioned and toned way down.
40
If there's a firewall from FOIA requests government agencies will be lining up around the block LOL
7
No way I would use this at work:
- if it’s work-related, you want a formal trace, which emails give you
-if it’s not work-related, you don’t want the possibility your employer will know you are spending time chatting, or worse, know what it is you are saying
41
Slack and all the others are essentially just group instant messaging platforms dressed up as schick savvy. They really have absolutely no value add from an efficiency stand point. Usually the opposite. Now employees can gossip from their desks rather than the water cooler.
In fact, almost every professional I know despises instant messaging platforms. One manager I know said flat out don't bother. Put your concern in my email queue and I'll get to it when I get to it. Another started blocking out fake meetings on his calendar so people wouldn't expect a response for several hours at the earliest. Sometimes days.
I can really only think of three scenarios where something like Slack is appropriate. The visual equivalent of a conference call. Live time coordination between engineers and technicians. And... Well... I'm struggling to think of a third example that is actually useful.
38
I've ben in application/software design & implementation for my whole career & Slack is w/o reservation the worst piece of software I've ever had to use. Thank the lord this company doesn't make cars or airplanes.
54
Great. More interruptions. More distractions. More “multi tasking”. What can go wrong?
63
"...conversations via Slack ended up taking much longer than a phone call would.”
This describes just about every chat and text conversation I've ever had.
87
So today's employees are really stupid enough to put all office gossip into "private rooms" to communicate with each other? Does no one read any of the polices your employer provides when you start your job? Great resource for managers with access to review and target people for layoffs. I have worked long enough to have encountered those type of managers. Someday when your laid off after great work performance, go back to chatting live and in person, it leaves no electronic trail. I am sure big corporations love this, after all they sold workers on being somehow more important because you are exempt from overtime, rather than the reality of hours and hours of unpaid work, which run the numbers may mean you are basically paid minimum wage as your hourly rate.
26
The sorts of people who might read this pitch from Slack …
As a result of the alignment teams and organizations are able to maintain while continuously adapting to respond in increasingly dynamic environments, less effort and energy is wasted and the human beings on those teams are able to fully utilize their intelligence and creativity in pursuit of the organization’s shared objectives.
… and think, “sounds great,” instead of, maybe, “uh-oh.”
What a graceful, polite (and deserved) takedown. I loved it! :)
19
So common in today's tech world. Everything can be "seen or heard" but very little can be measured. Value resides in the proof statement of increased productivity. "I like it", just won't cut it.
8
I'm so grateful to be retired in this age of digital apps replacing digital apps. I prefer email to chatting and to twitter and facebook, though the latter are okay for short issues. But in my volunteer positions, I find email still more useful than anything else to reach all on the team in a reasonable amount of time.
17
For longer form messages, email is still superior. For short, instant messaging, email has been replaced...with text messaging.
The only place I see slack actually being used in a meaningful way is as a private version of Twitter. For the once a year a group of employees all goes to the same conference, slack is useful. Inside the office, not so much.
13
BF waste of time, money and productivity, but such is the techno centric world in which we live where today's new and improved will become tomorrow's Edsel, sooner or later.
17
No. That’s not what we want. That’s what Slack wants.
22
Slack: Just like email except less organized and more interrupty.
144
You know what would have helped, here? Even a minimal description that Slack consists of virtual “rooms” and “channels.” Very unhelpful except for the cognoscenti (look THAT up!).
31
What Slack actually wants to do is keep the illusion of its value going longer than the 6-month lockup period so that a tidal wave of insiders and employees can sell at the first possible opportunity.
28
@Don L. Interestingly, Slack's doing a direct offering, letting current shareholders sell immediately instead of after 6 months. No need to sustain the illusion! http://fortune.com/2019/06/20/slack-stock-ipo-dpo-direct-listing/
2
Only if you are scared to get fired. Those of us who ain't, we got bosses who don't like us. Not the best sitch, but ya gotta be worth it to get the respect of someone who hates you.
4
Looks like someone’s going to earn billions for a new system to facilitate more organizational entropy. So glad I’m far out of this slack new world of blah blah blah.
24
Here's what I like about Slack - all the messages about a particular project or topic are in one place, and everyone can see what others are saying and doing in regards to the project without having to remember to 'reply all' or 'cc'. It avoids the problem of misleading or missing subject lines. It is very useful for things like producing a magazine issue or a brochure that requires input from people across departments. It's easy to set up and easy to use, even for 50+ workers like me. But in my view it doesn't replace email, and the idea of creating hundreds of channels in one workplace seems silly.
11
@Squidink, that’s an interesting take on it. In my old-fashioned email, I can created separate files for different conversation histories. But maybe on Slack you don’t have to scroll though separate exchanges like you do with email?
4
@Squidink
We've had lots of variations of online forums for many years now and they can do the same thing. The online courses I take mostly use BlackBoard which is pretty good at organizing threads, etc. around topic or however the people using it want to organize it. For one class a couple of years ago, we were required to use Slack. I hated it. For lots of reasons, not least of them being that, while my internet connection is plenty good for most forums, it wasn't good enough for Slack and I had to go find someplace with fast WiFi to even access Slack. Ugh.
2
Every time a new whiz-bang new communications technology comes along, I'm reminded of a lecture I heard back in 1979 about how the internet was going to change politics, for the better, by making everyone so well-informed.
48
For anyone who thinks about their replies and maybe does some look ups, expectations of fast and faster replies is obnoxious and produces haste errors. Using Slack for yes or no stuff or references to data to separate them from questions requiring thought could be useful.
Prediction: "Too much Slack" will be a common complaint.
12
@Saint999 I agree. I don't like any chat tool at work because I'm either being interrupted or being asked a question that will some time to ponder/research and answer.
12
The difference is that the Slack feed at work is filled with stupid GIFs.
If I wanted that I can always go to Twitter.
10
My supervisor introduced us, his 25-man group of executives, to Slack two months ago. After a few weeks, only two of us were using it including me. I would go check and he will have sent "Are you there??" 6 hours previously. We are now all back to mass emails. Hey, I was willing...but the other guys weren't, I guess. He can't fire us all. "Due to lack of interest, Slack has been cancelled." I say good, we don't need another way to be available instantly, that's no way to live and no way to work.
82
@Zellickson
" We are now all back to mass emails. "
...and with outlook, you have the option to "ignore this conversation." I knew one baboon who felt compelled to reply all to every "found a pair of sunglasses in the ladies room" or "am selling tickets to the ballet at face value" email with a "witty" retort.
I eventually figured out that I could block any email from him that was send company wide.
7
I see a lot of companies relying on slack and not email. This creates a lot of disorganization, it is so inefficient.
14
Herrman over focuses on Slack's *chat* functionality or dysfunctionality, when it purports to be a full-fledged, cloud based workspace that lets users integrate many third party apps, like Cisco Webex Meetings to video conference and Salesforce for customer support. But our experience is that Slack does not play well with its contracted apps, causing more chaos than it is worth.
For example, Slack lets users attach files from their Google Drives to their chat posts, for others to read. But the files remain attached to the posts, "disappearing" with them as the posts age. The only ways to find those files later is to either know in what channel they appeared, then manually scroll back in time in that channel until one finds them, or to search for them. But to search, one must know the exact file title, because the search feature is not "intelligent" enough to guess the title even if one is in the ballpark. The result is that Slack scatters files everywhere throughout time (when they were posted) and space (in what channel they were posted), so files are mainly irretrievable.
Our attempted workaround to use Google Drive as a static file library failed, because when Slack interfaces with Drive, rather than opening a normal Drive window showing the folder and file tree in it, it displays the contents in a randomly disordered list. Slack support admitted the problem, yet Slack continues to include Drive in its apps, and market itself as a comprehensive cloud based workspace.
21
I can tell you one environment where slack was incredibly useful, and that was in an online course (from O'Reilly Media). It allowed real-time questions and discussions among students who didn't know each other, didn't need to talk to each other after the class was over, and didn't want their privacy violated by having a bunch of email addresses distributed. Email would have been too slow anyway for the discussions that occurred during the multi-day class. It was my only experience with Slack.
17
Slack isn't bad, but needs a better division between doing work and chit-chatting to be viable. It's great for sharing ideas and getting announcements out, like a chat room. But not-so-much for project management. It also lacks the external communications capabilities of email. That's my attempt at silicon valley speak for "You can't email outside businesses or people with Slack."
I agree with others that the 24/hour work day needs to be changed. Implementing an office hours feature to the channels would be a practical feature. Instead of putting the onus of managing notifications on the user.
6
@afunnystory YES.
1
I work from home at a large high tech company. Having an internal chat mechanism is incredibly helpful in getting things done. If you have a quick question for a colleague, you can see whether they are available, send them a question, and have them answer you quickly. Email is much slower, and not as amenable to back and forth conversations (e.g. asking clarifying questions, sending a quick screenshot to clarify). One of our internal chat solutions (Cisco Jabber) is not persistent. When you close the app, the chats are gone. The other (Cisco Webex Teams) is persistent, which is helpful for keeping up with multi-way conversations that happen when you're not online.
Ultimately, encroachment into personal space comes down to the relationship between you and your management. If they expect you to answer stuff after hours, it really doesn't matter whether they email, phone, page, text, Slack-message or whatever you. The expectation is there. If that is not acceptable, you either need to demand better work life balance, or switch to a company that does respect it. Obviously this is easier said than done. But if companies become too overbearing, they will not continue to attract workers, at least not in this low-unemployment environment, when workers hold some power.
15
Just what companies need, a sanctioned way to Slack off.
6
I’m retired, so my opinion about anything in today’s workplace counts for little. But from the outside looking in, this sounds like a terrible hit to workers’ privacy. Every snit fit logged and searchable? Good grief. Everyone has a bad day. A mistake shouldn’t haunt a person forever.
Furthermore, this does not sound like an improvement over a clogged email inbox. It sounds more like the equivalent of multiple inboxes that one would have to juggle, and stay on top of, constantly.
I watch my still-working husband slog through his e-mail and messaging (even when we are on vacation) and wonder why anyone would ever want more of that.
22
@Passion for Peaches Some of us don't have snit-fits. Ever. One just doesn't do that. One is an adult, and one needs to take a deep breath. I've been in the same job 19 years and have never once had a snit-fit, nor can I think of anyone in my field that has, no matter the provocation or "Things not going your way" or plain old-fashioned "temper tantrum." Everyone needs to be a grownup at work and not a petulant child, just like at the grocery store, on the highway, at the football game and the list goes on.
3
@Zellickson You've never worked in BigLaw, I take it. Petulant tantrums are a daily occurrence.
10
@Passion for Peaches A person who calls himself "Passion for Peaches" is calling me out for using a "fake" name? Did the officer who pulled you over last month say "Do you know why I stopped you, Mr. Peaches?"
Passing through Penn Station and the NY Subways, I have seen countless ads for Slack, touting how it is "how work gets done", but none of the people in the ads are actually working, they are commenting on the coffee room or planning lunch.
While work is certainly a social activity, it does not need social media. Perhaps it is just the curmudgeon in me, but nothing productive is done with emojis.
44
Business owner here.
At my business, we do things. We make things and sell things. My employees aren't staring at screens 8 hours a day, nor do I want them to. Email is the correct balance of communicating: not necessarily instant, easy to archive, easy to follow discussions, and best of all, I own it!
62
First, the solution to "too much email" is not a tool that ostensibly replaces email by amplifying all its worst characteristics.
Second, there is a real and valid place for both synchronous and asynchronous communication. The way Slack blurs this is I think what gives many people pause. Today if I ping someone via a messaging tool it's because I need a response now - they know it and respond right away. If I don't need that I email them and they can respond at their leisure. I fail honestly to see what is gained by mixing those two up so you can't tell which is which.
Finally, the direction of Slate over the past 5 years, to the extent Slack had anything to do with it, is hardly a ringing endorsement.
64
@Sarah"Today if I ping someone via a messaging tool it's because I need a response now - they know it and respond right away. If I don't need that I email them and they can respond at their leisure. I fail honestly to see what is gained by mixing those two up so you can't tell which is which."
+1
Additionally, email lets you have conversations over time with a group of people who may not all be available immediately.
32
@Sarah, I’m so nervous about bothering people unnecessarily that I email almost exclusively. I will message in reply if someone messages me, but I rarely initiate those exchanges. I think those pings are a terrible intrusion.
11
I will pass thanks.
18
It's a trendy tool, and it has some appropriate use cases (especially among developers, from which it originated). But as a one size fits all, no. I think it's particularly poorly suited for people who work across and field requests from many groups vs. collaborating closely with a small group.
Hopefully this will sort itself out over time without too many people being forced to do this because it's the latest thing.
8
“Slack is where and how work gets done.”
This is unbiased journalism?
Sounds more like Slack marketing materials.
I guess I would call it Slack journalism.
105
NO THANKS, not interested. I'll pass.
18
“There’s a higher bar for sending an email than there is for sending a message on Slack...” This is why email sounds better than Slack. I've never used Slack, even though I'm a millenial, but it sounds like I would be flooded with inane chit chat or constant questions from people who don't feel confident enough to do their jobs without constant input from others.
108
One of my colleagues introduced Slack at my job. What a stupid idea that was to force everybody to be even more available to communicate off hours! Absolutely hate it.
107
Anyone wondering why this mishmash is called "Slack" need only read the following sentence, one of the very worst I have read this week.
"As a result of the alignment teams and organizations are able to maintain while continuously adapting to respond in increasingly dynamic environments, less effort and energy is wasted and the human beings on those teams are able to fully utilize their intelligence and creativity in pursuit of the organization’s shared objectives."
152
@Faria Oh definitely that sentence is Slack's fault. You'll never find gibberish like that in email, tweets, posted comments, press-releases, corporate documents. It was only with the advent of Slack that corporate mind turned into utter mush.
8
@Faria Can you please translate that into English?
4
@Faria, red pencil version:
Slack helps people work more effectively.
12
As a millennial, I really appreciate using Slack because of just how fun it can be. Shooting by boss a meme, and having him respond back to me with one, makes the day a lot more enjoyable and builds my morale. It adds a certain "energy" to the workplace that email just can't do, probably because email carries a more "serious" tone to it. While some things in the office are indeed serious and need to be treated as such, not everything has to be. Can't I have a bit of fun with my coworkers?
3
@Daniel
Just wait till one of your memes collides with somebody else's trigger. And don't expect the boss to have your back, either.
55
@Daedalus So true!
9
@Daniel You'll be gone after the first round of layoffs. :-(
11
Ugh. Yet another communication technology that will get foisted off onto the shoulders of the people who are tasked with actually getting the work out the door. It seems that every business now has e-mail, visual and text Skype, along with innumerable places to look for decisions and data on various cloud services that are over and above the traditional servers on the LANs and WANs.
All that's going to happen is that these Slack people will make their money and, if it doesn't catch on, they'll shut it down and try another startup. Maybe Microsoft or Facebook will buy it and shut it down, leaving the people who adopted it in the lurch.
49
I'm a big proponent of Slack.
Then again, I refer to Slack as the "ADD tool." Even in the midst of my workday, I get direct messages from my boss with a quick question. Regardless of whether or not I'd set Slack to unavailable. I might be head-down in a project. Maybe I'm on a client-facing phone call...maybe I'm leading a Webinar...no matter. The boss -- sometimes driven by the boss's boss -- wanted an answer. Now. That's in addition to others in my company with similar reasons to Slack me.
Unlike email, Slack seems to imply immediate responses to direct messaging.
12
As with all other tech, integrated or otherwise (Lotus Notes, anyone), it's only as good as the users. After seeing the misuse of Sharepoint ("please read Policy_XYZ_with_edits_from_Jack_and_Jill.doc"), Powerpoint ("Cake in the Cafeteria!", "First Floor Restrooms Closed for maintenance!"), and any e-mail ("Please welcome the new custodian in the Podunk office") I have zero confidence that Slack will not become another tool of idiocy and abuse.
I know it's hard for the smart people to appreciate just how dumb, abusive and entitled certain other people can be, but until that appreciation is there, you will always make the mistake of assuming that tech will solve your problems. It is more likely to create new ones.
82
I've been retired for about ten years and had stopped working in an office type environment long before that. So this entire idea of chat and Slack is almost gibberish to me. So, I guess, my only comment is that people are going to remain people. If they burden one another with email now, they will burden others with chat/Slack/notes written on paper or whatever, in the future. One can't escape human nature. Well, one can... but the family will miss you.
60
Some of us are on the + side of 50 and very much gainfully employed. Would someone please explain what Slack is, what it does, why is it better than e mail, and in particular what it would do for a professional services firms.
41
@John C
Your reply highlights a potential problem with Slack. Comments offered without sufficient thought are already a problem with email, and comments to the Times. How much worse will that be with mandatory instant communication?
As for the substance of aggrieved taxpayer's comment, as far as I'm concerned, reporters should try to make what they're writing comprehensible to readers who are uninformed concerning technicalities the reporter is writing about, without the readers having to look it up. Indeed this is simply a characteristic of good writing.
23
@aggrieved taxpayer On the other hand, some of us are nearing 60 and have no trouble comprehending this article. We also know how to find related articles and websites that answer the kinds of questions that confound you. Is the only purpose of your comment to make experienced workers look like trouble?
21
In my opinion, the single biggest problem with any workplace communications tool is that over time, even with the best search tools, it becomes far too time-consuming to find something from days, weeks, or months ago. Slack’s search tool is great, but that doesn’t help much if you type a word into the search box and get 56 pages of results. (And very few of us become masters of using search syntax.)
17
Farewell to corporate and institutional archives that document the communication, relationships, and decision-making if Slack replaces email. Email is tough enough to archive, Slack is a commercial product with no mandate for preservation (unless this is a premium option they build in the future.) Just try doing research in 20, 30 years or more and see what you can find when all important conversation happened via fleeting chats.
23
@B.--I still keep hard copies of every doc that's really important to me. I trust myself more than I trust "technology." This can still be done, at least at home, but it is also still possible to archive outside of the "cloud," and there should be people whose job it is to keep that history viable.
15
@ChesBay--Remembering the Library at Alexandria, I firmly believe that there will come a time when people will wish they had hard copies stashed away. Once its gone, its gone.
10
@B. VERY VERY good point about the ability to own
communications (emails) vs paying for the ability to access archived communications (Slack). Never saw things from that perspective.
7
Technical conversations often require (and benefit from) substantial pauses (1-5 minutes) while one party tries something, looks something up, retrieves something for sharing. In this sort of situation, Email is too clunky, cumbersome and polling-based; voice would be too frustrating. Slack provides the perfect balance. Just yesterday, I held 4 concurrent slack-chats with different colleagues at work at one point in the day. It was quite efficient. There are times in a slack-chat when one realizes that there is little in the way of looking up stuff that is needed and the rapid back-and-forth character of the chat would benefit from voice. The trick is to recognize that when it happens and switch to voice, either using Slack itself or that other pesky gizmo on your desk-- the telephone.
Phones, emails, Slack (and the like)-- the trick is in knowing when to use what, and what not to say where.
29
@David A.
In what way do you find email cumbersome, and what do you mean by "polling-based", and if you mean that it lends itself to a sampling of opinions (though that isn't an obligatory feature) in what way is Slack different?
The problem with voice, as far as I'm concerned, is that it doesn't give you time to think before you respond. The problem with email is that too many people too often don't use the time it gives them to think and that their unwise responses are then part of a permanent record. Wouldn't Slack, with its emphasis on immediate response make this problem worse?
Slack might be good for getting an immediate answer to a simple question where someone isn't answering their phone, but it isn't clear to me how it might be superior to email, and I can see ways in which it might magnify email's greatest fault, committing unwise comments to a permanent record.
7
@RG Slack and tools like it (because I decidedly do not wish to be a Slack evangelist, the author of the article is already doing that) are an intermediate form of communication between email and voice. Voice is synchronous. Email is asynchronous. Slack is in-between. Voice tends to be 2-way: conf calls are possibly but generally have to be planned with some conf keys and special #s etc. On Slack and the like, group chats can quickly form and disband. And then there is pasting small pix and text dynamically. These things are not the end-all and be-all but they're useful tools.
I suppose if I worked in a fascistic corporate environment Slack could be abused in a way that would make it despicable. But probably in that environment the same would be true of email and phone.
2
I have a work Slack group and several non-work groups open. They have proven quite useful for group discussions. I just silence notifications, which allows me to check out the channels when I feel like it. I have made it clear that anything requiring my attention must come by phone, text, or email. It’s a win-win.
18
I don't care what the technology is (email, slack, whatever comes next), as a society we need to do away with the expectation that all employees are on the job 24 hours a day. There is simply no reasonable basis for the vast majority of employees to be expected to respond to work related communications outside of work hours.
247
Ditto! The biggest problem with workplaces today is a mirror of our economic and environmental problems: there is simply too much, period. Workplaces need to understand that to follow the credo “do more or die” is unsustainable—death is the inevitable result.
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Germany has strict rules about after hours work, it would behoove workers in US to become more familiar with how those policies function. Unionize!
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