
Ask HN: Why do people love Slack? - gruglife
I use Slack on a daily basis and view it as just another chat app.  I don&#x27;t understand why people love it.  Can someone please explain this to me?  Not looking to smear it but want to understand to see if I am missing any functionality.
======
hullsean
Slack is a huge time waster. It is a constant distraction. As as it becomes
standardized it’s assumed you will be on it all the tome. Through the workday
and even after. The only time can get work done without distractions is after
hours.

With slack the world becomes one big long meeting. Lol

Also as a consultant it is a problem. With email I have paper trails of
conversations. But with slack when engagement is ending I lose all that
discussion & history. It forces me to double up my note taking (more lost
time) and try to hack a backup of some of that stuff as an engagement ends.

Yes I get the advantages but those have long since been buried by all it’s
problems

~~~
Tagbert
We use slack but there is no expectation that someone will respond after
hours. Your time is your time. If you’re in a meeting or just working on
something, I don’t expect you to respond. I’m just dropping a message to you.
Respond when you have some free time. If we are both free and can chat
interactively that great and we can resolve this right away.

If you are currently on-call, I would expect that you check for slack messages
on a regular basis.

BTW I don’t have any notifications turned on for Slack. I periodically check
for new message flags. For most channels, I keep them on mute unless it is a
channel that I am personally active in.

I treat email the same way. Not notifications. It drives me crazed when I’m
talking to someone at their desk and they are constantly getting pop ups
telling that they got an email or a slack message. Stop that shit! Get it
under control. Push back.

~~~
pacifika
Because people can respond to Slack messages immediately it enforces the
expectation of quick back and forth dialogue, and anxiety on the part of those
who want focus time and mute their channels and notifications. This is why
it's more like IRC and less like a forum.

When I quit Slack I still feel the expectation of others at work for me to
respond to messages in a timely manner and thus feel I have to check Slack
periodically. This then enforces the implied importance of Slack in the
workplace. Considering this, perhaps people do not love Slack but rather feel
subject to it.

I wish Slack would have the option on a slack to make UI changes to make it a
bit harder to post, and encourage full thoughts over quick one liners. In the
meantime, we can try and reject writing quick responses ourselves.

In another Slack with a group of friends, there is no expectation to respond
and therefore there is not the anxiety.

------
reilly3000
Slack is hard to leave. I work on a 100% remote team- it is our office. Few of
us have met in person, there just isn't budget for travel. Therefore all of
our emotional connections with each, all of our work-life are built atop the
Slack (and Zoom) UI. That's a hard thing to replatform.

Slack also almost never falls down. Its remarkably fast, the search is fast
and faceted, and they manage cross-device notification state better than...
well Apple for one. That truly 'instant' messaging experience across devices
is why they are superior to IRC and decentralized alternatives. 'Instant'
editing and deleting your malformed message is a killer app.

Its a safe social network. I'd much rather post memes in Slack than on
Facebook or Twitter, which is a persistent battlefield. If I slip up in front
of my colleagues, it happens in context and can be sorted out among the tribe,
but if I do so on a public social network, it could invite angry mobs or end
my career, now or years into the future.

That said, I don't love Slack. I hate how it dominates my day. I hate how I
find myself checking it in the car. I hate how I get into it while I'm running
a build, post something funny and suck everybody's attention. I truly despise
how their DM and notification read system means that have to check everything
at all times to feel up to date. I'm in a half dozen public channels, and the
blue alert in my tray shows that I have something to look at.

I want control of the UI. Its my workplace, but Slack can change it to their
liking, not me to mine. Sometimes if we're lucky we'll get a feature flag,
otherwise, its all up to them. There are a million Hacker News clients, but
only one for Slack.

I want more nuanced prioritization.

I want my life back.

~~~
hiccuphippo
There's another, unofficial, client for slack that I know of but I've never
tried it: [https://volt-app.com/](https://volt-app.com/)

~~~
ThePowerOfFuet
> What language is Volt written in? V. It's a new language I created to
> develop Volt. You can read about it here.

What could possibly go wrong.

------
ralusek
Because it's good enough, has nice integrations, and is better than email.
Convincing non-technical parts of my team to use a chat application is
impossible if it can't go on their phones and is basically one single step to
get going. Slack fits that criteria.

That being said, their notification logic. I remember seeing this insane
flowchart demonstrating how complicated slack's logic was when determining
whether to do a push notification. I wonder why it never occurred to them that
one of the primary considerations should be that if you've sent me over 3
notifications in the past 5 minutes, and I haven't checked, please fucking
stop.

~~~
secabeen
> I wonder why it never occurred to them that one of the primary
> considerations should be that if you've sent me over 3 notifications in the
> past 5 minutes, and I haven't checked, please fucking stop.

Because sometimes reading the notification is enough to get the information I
need, and I want to keep watching the notifications, but I don't need to
respond to any of them.

~~~
sethammons
This is an increasing problem with email too. If you don't open the email, you
did not engage, so you can get removed from lists or, much worse, gmail will
think something is spam. But gmail shows me most of the email in the UI next
to the subject, so I don't need to open it. :sigh:

------
BoysenberryPi
Every time someone ask this question I think people are forgetting that Slack
was the first of these SaaS chat programs to find major success. Discord,
Teams, and everything else came riding on the heels of Slack's success. While
it might just be "another chat app" now, at the time Slack was an easy to
setup tool with tons of integrations.

~~~
meagher
And before Slack, HipChat was quite good.

~~~
oweiler
So good that Atlassian sold it.

~~~
redis_mlc
I used the Hipchat web client for a year. It worked perfectly.

I heard from others that the native app didn't.

I had a chance to talk to one of the Hipchat PMs. Atlassian didn't seem too
attached to operating it for some reason.

------
smclaughlin
If you don’t understand why people love Slack, then you don’t understand what
usable enterprise software means or why people love it.

Imagine how many people never used a chat app in a business context before.
Maybe this is hard, as you can’t imagine who they could be — or you don’t
remember a time _before_ the ubiquity of chat apps in the workplace. But trust
me those people are a majority of the workforce.

Now imagine you are an enterprise user who has no control over how they work,
and they’re told to use “something new to increase productivity”. They sigh
because it is probably bullshit and they’re being forced to use it by the
“decision maker”.

But lo and behold, Slack is actually useful and usable! Because in large part
the value of any chat app is how well it is adopted by one’s (relatively non
techy) teammates!

Slack is a masterclass in commercializing enterprise software through ease of
adoption and use. The core tech is completely undifferentiated, but the
understanding of enterprise environments and workplace psychology is second to
maybe only Microsoft.

~~~
buboard
Slack didnt invent messaging. Skype was and is ubiquitous. Apparently slack is
an incremental improvement

~~~
ThePowerOfFuet
Skype was revolutionary, but has since devolved into a hot mess.

------
HacklesRaised
Hey look at me, I am communicating, I am being seen to communicate. As I am
being seen to communicate, people who matter will notice my industry and
reward me; never mind that I am actually a net loss to the productivity of the
organization. That's slack, that is.

------
someonehere
I like the shared workspaces feature.

If your company works with customers directly (a project for example or sales
support), it’s easy to create a new channel, create a share link, and send it
to an admin on the other side. Now you’ve connected two Slack instances of
invited users to a channel. Cuts down on email threads and phone calls. Life
saver for where I work.

~~~
NZ_Matt
I get this, but often it results in 10+ messages back and forward when really
what I want is one nice succinct email with only what's important and no
pressure for me drop everything and reply immediately.

I haven't looked, but is it possible to change your online status on a room by
room basis?

~~~
netsharc
Probably not, Slack is even more obnoxious than that, I installed the app on
my phone, but didn't want my phone buzzing all the time, so I snoozed
notifications on it. Guess what it did? It snoozed notifications on the
desktop client too...

~~~
ThePowerOfFuet
So disable notifications on the device for that app, not in the app.

------
elwesties
I suspect much of the hate for slack is from two types of people. Those who
are too young to know the tyranny of email and those who used to ignore their
email. As to why it’s so popular, it was the first good business chat solution
that went mainstream. And I still haven’t seen another that matches it’s
quality

~~~
x2f10
Slack prevents deep work.

I respond to e-mails 2-4 times a day during task transitions. The sender does
not anticipate an immediate response so the 1-2 hours delay is OK.

Compare this to Slack which requires constant monitoring where senders
anticipate an immediate response. Not to mention the increase in casual "water
cooler" conversations.

The find the same people that recommend Slack are the same people that
recommend 3-hour meetings. It's procrastination veiled as productivity.

~~~
elwesties
If you think that Slack requires constant monitoring then I think you are
using it wrong. I believe there is zero difference in the reply expectations
of Slack and email. As per my initial comment, you are someone who doesn't
check email and that's ok, in my engineering manager role I receive over 200
emails a day. Most of these could be 3 - 10 word slack messages but they
arrive in my inbox with the same urgency as every other message requiring the
same level of triage as a very important contract.

~~~
x2f10
I check (and respond to) e-mails multiple times a day. I said that in the
comment you're replying to. Your replies make it clear that you do not have
experience at scale. Replying to e-mails in 2-3 hours is not "someone who
doesn't check email" and receiving 200+ e-mails where most could "be 3 - 10
work slack messages" is not effective nor efficient leadership.

------
boublepop
Dear gruglife,

I write this comment as a response to your inquiry about the reasons for why
people like slack.

Now personally I mostly use Teams, but the system is similar.

The reason I like to use Teams as opposed to e-mail is mostly just the
expected process around it.

Please note that I’ve cc’ed your manager, as I talked to him just before and
he told me to add him. I’m not trying to seem passive aggressive or cause
issues in communication.

Anyways, please come by my desk so we can repeat this entire discussion once
again since you likely tuned out after the first paragraph anyway.

And yes IRC does the same, but trying to get an organization to use IRC is
like trying to replace word with vim.

Kind regards and all the best, Boublepop

~~~
Kinrany
Is this a parody of something related to Slack? I don't get the joke.

~~~
muzani
It's a parody of how tiresome emailing is in real world applications.

In an ideal world, you ask someone to do something, they ask you for details,
you give them details, it's done.

In a less ideal world, you have busy people, lazy people, and people who have
been given unreasonable schedules.

They drop emails, overlook, glance it over. They dread the back and forth long
email threads, so they sit and think and procrastinate for an hour before
sending a short email like the above.

And what let's say there's three teams involved. One person drops the ball or
ignores an email. What next?

That's why you have to cc them. I once had an issue with this guy who I just
kept giving him instructions, having meetings, and he still did the wrong
things. I brought it up to the boss and he yelled at me and told me I don't
know how to work in a team -- I never cc'ed him in these emails.

And I quickly learned that whenever an email cc-ed the boss, things moved, and
when it didn't, they'll say okay, but the work would disappear.

Then the obvious solution is to cc every time right? But because of this,
every time you cc someone, it implies that you don't trust them to get it
done.

Something like Slack just automates this process. You post something in a team
channel, it gives a slight-but-not-passive-aggressive pressure. You can send a
document and it doesn't get lost (and you can't blame someone for not sending
you the documents).

------
codegeek
My CTO asks me this everyday. I guess the answer is they marketed it well as a
comprehensive tool for teams/companies. Everyone knows about it. A lot of ppl
use it. It has integrations built in. No need to install anything. Does the
job.

There are things we don't like about it but it does the job well enough that
the opportunity cost of trying to replace it too high for us at the moment. So
we keep going with it.

------
Kaze404
I don't love it. On my time being forced to use it I hated pretty much every
aspect of it that wasn't its text features (threads, custom emojis) or ready
made integrations. Everything else, from the technical aspects to their API
gave me nothing but headaches. And even then it's still better than Discord.

------
aaron695
> I use Slack on a daily basis and view it as just another chat app.

Can you edit a message once sent in Facebook messenger?

Once you understand why that's important, you'll start to get it.

Slack actually cared what the users wanted. Not what managers or IT teams
cargo culting current message apps thought workers should have.

This is upside down .

People secretly installed Slack at workplaces (there are old articles on this)
and the managers had to get it. The rest is history.

Last month Signal got a Thumbs up and Thumbs down icons, after how many
years.... The IT teams are partly to blame here on top of the managers.

------
downerending
Because we've tried Teams?

Seriously, though, I don't love any chat app that much. They're useful in some
circumstances, but they can easily devolve into a horrific time-suck. People
use them for important info that ought to go in emails, for example. Or hammer
channels with loads of chaff and the occasional critical wheat kernel, so that
you have to waste time on them looking for the latter.

These days, I check mine once a day. I guess that's equivalent to having
someone xerox a website for me, but I get a lot more done that way.

~~~
JohnFen
> Because we've tried Teams?

That scans. I hate chat apps, personally, but we are required to use Teams at
my workplace. Teams is truly horrendous. I would strongly prefer that we used
Slack.

~~~
ruffrey
Microsoft Teams really is horrendous.

I've used a lot of chat apps over decades. Teams might be the first one that
manages to be _confusing_ - a feat I'd never seen in a chat app - because of
the way it rearranges new threads, yet hides the recent part of the thread.
Plus various other half-implemented features. The wiki and sharepoint/file
integration doesn't work very well. There's no wiki search. It's super easy to
delete an entire wiki. I've lost notifications on entire channels for > 1
month without realizing it. Just a ton of little stuff like that; my team will
never go back.

Slack is "fine" \- it mostly works, and has a lot of app integrations.

~~~
free652
Teams is ok, it's just too much functionality. I have problem finding the
correct chat room for the voice call right away, I always have to double check
if I am in the correct chat.

~~~
JohnFen
My problem with Teams really boils down to the absolutely terrible desktop
user interface. It's fiddly, hard to work with, and hard to figure out how to
do a lot of things. You can't make the window smaller than a certain (way too
large) size, and you can't have more than one window. It's just painful,
intrusive, and unpleasant.

------
system2
Service providers such as IT or Marketing companies, for long projects slack
is amazing. Every company has its own workplace. We don't email or call. They
drop us a message, we add the task to asana if needed, if not, answer briefly
and move on.

It is not for everyone in my opinion. Very small companies will waste time
(under 20 employees) or very large companies will waste resources instead of
using project management systems.

It has a very niche use, I don't think everyone is using it the right way.

------
tracker1
There are positives and negatives to them all. I'm relatively partial to MS
Teams (now that it works well in Linux), since it has decent integration with
Outlook and group chat/meetings, integrations are on par.

That said slack and the like are better mostly because of integration which is
smoother than custom IRC bots and clients by contrast... Some obsess over
security, groups, etc... other features are just that features.

On the flip side, they all suck... MS Teams' wikis aren't in markdown and
can't be edited outside of the teams client, other sharing is actually
integrated into Sharepoint, and those integrations with system syncing breaks
a lot and sucks worse.

I haven't used slack but very little for one project I'm on in a few years...
it now has a lot of the features I was missing before. I think Google's
Hangouts had a _lot_ of potential before they shifted gears into their client
of the month and started breaking the UX.

In the end, what will be around in 5+ years, who knows. Things shift around
and change... Things get re-invented in better and worse ways.

------
rm445
People love Slack because IRC is loveable. People _use_ Slack because its
advantages over IRC are in areas that favour it being installed in corporate
environments, while benefits of IRC (such as being free and open, simple and
extensible, running in a shell) are neutral or even negatives for that
environment.

------
sethammons
I have a few features I want in a work chat app:

Room topic with link support, private rooms, the ability to add more people to
that room, direct messaging, phone notifications (and proper sync and the
ability to set do-not-disturb), and emoji/gifs. I know some folks don't like
those, but I think they are fun and help convey emotion that is otherwise lost
in text.

Nice to haves: Search, pinned items, api for bot integration. Color themes.
Limited markdown support.

What I never want: link expander: seriously, I don't like it - it takes up
space for no value. WYSIWYG editor: I don't think rich text beyond simple
markdown is useful.

Hipchat was ok. Slack is ok. I think Slack is a bit better as Hipchat had
regular outages.

------
nineteen999
I don't love it at all, haven't used it since the last Web 1.9 SaaS company I
worked in, and hopefully never will again. I found the SNR to be too low, but
perhaps that reflects more on that particular company than Slack itself.

------
copperfitting1
What inevitably happens with laws that create such a drastic power imbalance
between your average citizen and the governing entity is that those with power
and status are exempt.

------
boltzmannbrain
Related: "Slack is the opposite of organizational memory"

[https://abe-winter.github.io/plea's/help/2018/02/11/slack.ht...](https://abe-
winter.github.io/plea's/help/2018/02/11/slack.html)

------
bvandewalle
In a lot of places being busy is a proxy of being productive and Slack allows
you to display how busy you are by constantly chatting in channels. They also
added some dopamine based notifications.

At the end of the day it probably makes you lose more productivity than you
gain but that's difficult to measure.

------
janee
Personally I'd say it's a combination of traction and API for me.

It's pretty useful to have a ubiquitous comms tool that integrates with most
saas infra out the box...I do loathe its shoddy audio/video/screenshare

~~~
andrekandre
personally i find the ux of slack to be pretty appalling, from the newly added
“visual formatting” to the weird dichotomy of left/right split of chat and
thread (to say nothing about the lack of back button for the right-hand-side
drilldown), downloads covering the right hand side chat, the lack of multiple
windows, inability to drag and drop attachments to the “threads” channel...
etc etc

BUT the plethora of integrations is what really makes it almost worth it to me
personally, and i suspect very much so for my workplace as well

------
merfrei
I hate Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp and all of this new shit. I was very happy
with just my email and Pidgin ;) Slack is just business, making money with
stupid people, it's the new/old mode.

------
pjmlp
I don't, it was imposed on me as part of my daily job tooling.

------
Antoninus
I like that I don't have to stand up and ask my colleague something.

------
virken
don't feel bad - i don't get it either - doesn't add material value over email
or texts, or skype, or any of the other tools we have - i think it may just be
a millenial thang...

------
kixiQu
I suspect it has to do also with the culture of places that use it well.

------
0xdeadb00f
This post reminded me to check Slack :^)

------
thechhaya
because everyone and their mom is on it so its a readymade community.

