
Basecamp’s chat sucks, and I like it - spatten
https://heavymelon.blog/2019/11/21/basecamp-chat-sucks/
======
CraigJPerry
I’ve given up trying to use chat as chat. It’s just another inbox now. All
notifications disabled and instead its another “pull” mechanism. i’ll look in
on Slack or whatever when i’m doing my rounds every couple of hours processing
all my inboxes - pull requests, emails, blog notifications etc. Any chat
threads get treated with the same GTD process - delete it, delegate it, do it
or defer it.

I feel much more content controlling blocks of time to be productive instead
of trying to run that chat treadmill.

~~~
dvtrn
_I feel much more content controlling blocks of time to be productive instead
of trying to run that chat treadmill_

I too am guilty (conscientiously) of being a stochastic chat respondent, both
with work chat and social chats.

Especially when cohorts begin a chat message with "Hey." followed by a pause
and a wait for the message to be acknowledged in return, waiting for them
typing out what it is they need me for and then typing back a response.

It kills momentum of work _so_ much when people do this.

Much prefer "Hey. Need help with _______" just seems infinitely more efficient
for both parties. Can quickly type back a solution, a delegation point ("I
think _____ knows how that works") or a deferral ("Let me get back to you
after ____") or file it in my mind while coming to a stopping point on
whatever I'm working on if I need just a moment more to reach that point
before pivoting over to a reply.

~~~
silviogutierrez
I always link them to nohello.com

The full post explains how to avoid being rude.

~~~
dvtrn
It's funny you link that because as soon as my fingers hit reply on my first
comment, I began looking for blog posts to see if anyone had written about how
frustratingly distracting the 'naked hello' (as I call it to my office mate)
is.

Definitely putting this in my slack status right now. Thanks

------
athenot
> Not responding immediately or within a day could label you rude or non-
> collaborative. Even if you didn’t want others to feel like that, the
> receiving end of a chat message couldn’t help it. They felt they needed to
> respond immediately.

It really depends on the expectations of the team and the culture of the
company. I suspect this is the same attitude that would manifest itself in the
office as people randomly walking up and asking a question, thus disrupting
the thought process. Some companies fare better than others in respecting
people's time and concentration.

The author is organizing everything in Basecamp projects, and I'm glad that
works for them. Basecamp is a great tool. But a similar process is possible
with chat. We use Webex Teams (eating our own dogfood, by way of disclaimer)
and organize ourselves in teams (pun intended) where there are many rooms for
various topics. The general expectation is that participation is async unless
you're @-mentioned. If one requests some task to be done and it's not some
quick thing, the answer is usually "create a Jira ticket for me".

One of the limitation of chat systems such as Teams and Slack is when people
try to use them to keep track of work items. That creates stress. But for
ongoing topics that one can join or leave at will, it's rather useful. And if
the discussion becomes something that needs to be sychronous, being able to
instantly start a video call, hash it out then go back to other work is way
better than back-and-forth in text, be it in a chat room or project management
system.

The other point that the article touches on which is super important is
leadership happens is actively involved remotely. That prevents relegating
remote workers to second class status.

------
dmix
So it's not just chat, but how Basecamp combines chat with a message board,
allowing for a less pressing non-async alternative for certain types of
communication. The secondary effect is the async chat kinda sucks which pushes
people towards using the message board when they otherwise wouldn't?

This is interesting. Often constraints make for a good experience. But in
terms of solutions to apply more general to other companies it's difficult to
nail down here (besides of course adopting Basecamp).

As the author mentioned they tried having a sync backbone with Github Issues
but eventually everyone just started using Slack for everything. I'm curious
if a Slack company did a better job of directly integrating a sync message
board feature if it would be used. Or would it require totally rethinking the
product + a workplace culture/methodology.

------
yuters
_The fact that chat sucks in Basecamp has some downsides of course. I often
want to drop a code snippet and ask something. That’s difficult._

For a small team, we really don't have any downside really except this one.
All pings and project campfires are riddled with screenshots of small snippets
of code. I've tried moving my team to Mattermost or Slack, but chatting on
Basecamp is a hard habit to lose. If there's a better way to do this in
Basecamp I'd like to know.

