
Slack is not for me - rishirishi
https://medium.com/@rishi.sharma/slack-is-not-for-me-6b21ff5b6234
======
jmadsen
I dunno. I use Slack for a couple of groups as well as my full-time remote
work.

I turn off all notifications & just check from time to time. I have a project
manager who tends to pester me with DMs a little too much, but if I'm trying
to concentrate I just turn it off.

I'm 50 years old & still "pre-internet" in much of my thinking, but I don't
have a smartphone, turn off ALL notifications and then turn them on one-by-one
on a need only basis, and still can't figure out why people have so much
trouble managing their internet lives.

It's not the tool that's causing your problems.

~~~
petters
I have a policy that if an app sends a single undesired notification, I
disable its notifications forever.

That even Google violates its own Android notification guidelines is annoying.

~~~
threatofrain
Some really good mainstream apps will violate at least once, and then you'll
have to ask whether following your rule or breaking it leads to better
futures.

------
yborg
It seems to be trendy to blame Slack for all the ills of modern civilization.
Is it the somewhat smug tone of all Slack's corporate communication? Maybe.
Other than that, it seems to me to be more or less the same general bucket of
telegrams, telephone calls, pages, texts, emails, etc. that each preceding
generation has blamed on their inability to focus. If you can't resist
distractions, whether it's Slack, or watching the ducks in the pond through
the window, yes, you should close the blinds. I don't know why this rated a
post on Medium...

~~~
ramzyo
Exactly, well said. As humans we’re excellent at blaming pretty much anything
else (Slack, email, telephone, telegram, anything really) for what is our own
and only our own inability to focus.

~~~
snarfy
All of these devices are built specifically to steal your focus with buzzers
and flashing lights. If anything it's an arms race.

~~~
ramzyo
I agree. Still our issue and our issue alone as individuals. Nobody’s forcing
anybody to use something designed to steal their attention. And if someone is
being forced to in a work environment, that sounds to me like a cultural
issue, not an issue with the attention stealing tool itself.

------
cocktailpeanuts
I agree with OP. Slack is like watercooler, on steroids.

I guess having occasional spontaneous watercooler conversations may be good
for getting to know your peers better, but in a lot of cases watercooler
conversations result in clique behaviors.

Slack takes this to whole new level. People hang around on slack channels
posting animated Gifs and chatting all day, on topics that have nothing to do
with work.

The problem with this is you have to keep up all day with the chatter or
otherwise you get left out as an "outsider" (the clique effect).

Sometimes I would see these people talk behind backs of people who they know
are not part of the group. This creates office politics. I know because I saw
it first hand.

Lastly, there's nothing worse than penalizing people for working hard and not
participating in meaningless gossip and chatter all day.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
If you want to work with robots then you were probably born a few decades too
early. I can't imagine a more depressing life than spending 8+ hours a day
with a group of people and being so determined not to make any friends (what
you describe as "cliques").

If people are "SLACKing" off so much work doesn't get done then that gets
escalated just like any other performance concern. If not, it feels a lot more
like sour grapes than anything else.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Like I mentioned in another comment below, I am not an anti-social guy. I
played the game, and I did just fine. Everybody at work liked me and I had no
issues.

But I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about how the system is messed up. I
didn't enjoy being unproductive. I didn't enjoy having to keep Slack open all
day to make sure I don't miss out on what people are up to. I do believe the
company lost a lot of talented developers because of the office politics.

And you know what? Everyone did just fine before they started using Slack.
Everybody was friendly to one another, we regularly had globally inclusive
face-to-face social gatherings, many of the team members ate lunch together,
the team was pretty social.

But with slack, everything became political. It didn't bring people closer
together in any way because people were already friendly enough before. What
it did do was create more politics and make everyone waste more time than they
used to.

Before slack, wasting time was a single player thing, you would maybe slack
off for a bit reading hacker news but quickly get back to work, but after
Slack, slacking off became a multiplayer thing, and just like any other
multiplayer architecture, Metcalfe's law applies here too, which means the
amount of wasted time grows exponentially.

~~~
yason
> I didn't enjoy having to keep Slack open all day to > make sure I don't miss
> out on what people are up to.

Why did you feel you had to keep it open all the day?

Just skim the channels for anything interesting and/or relevant and check for
new private messages occasionally when you're not in the zone. That could be
once a day or few times a day, depending on your rhythm.

For example, I tend to directly continue the work in the morning where I left
off the previous day for maximal productivity and it's not until my energy
begins to wear out after a few hours when I go check back email, Slack, and
other communications. Same for afternoon. I don't let email or instant
messages interrupt my flow because the flow is a precious thing that doesn't
simply come back when summoned. I always try to give the flow the priority and
email/slack/IM are not urgent enough to break that. I can always reply back to
messages in detail once the flow breaks down.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
I have experienced different types of communities using Slack in their own
ways, and for some it works, but for a lot it doesn't.

In my experience it works nicely for distributed organizations where people
can't physically get together.

My point is Slack does introduce more politics into workplace. This is
something you as a single user can't control.

Maybe you're doing fine there because your org doesn't have this problem, good
for you. But I've seen this happen with a lot of different teams, in a lot of
different ways, and that was what I was pointing out.

If you work at a company where there's office politics, you WILL miss out and
lose a lot of opportunities if you don't participate actively.

------
ravenstine
Slack is not hard to ignore. As I've mentioned in previous threads:

* Mute all channels.

* Take long periods of time to respond to people. Trust me, this isn't ever going to lead to any sense of shame.

* Set yourself to away most of the time.

* Disable gifs.

* Set notifications for keywords like "lunch" and "meeting".

* Disable the icon badge. (the red dot if you're using macOS)

Now you can be productive with Slack.

I know all these things are designed to grab our attention but, seriously,
have some agency in your life. Deciding to go "offline" is perfectly
legitimate, but I do think Slack can be easily used in a way that doesn't
waste time.

~~~
axaxs
The reasons a lot of people complain about are the same reasons I like slack.
First, if i'm intensely busy, I just ignore it. It stays backgrounded, and a
little blue or red dot sits there. That's it. When i'm in a general workday,
i'll usually try to check red dots, and relegate the others to 'as time
allows.' But that's its draw to me. I love seeing the goofy gifs, custom
emojis, etc that people come up with. It's a sort of comic relief from the
stressful days. In the end, it sounds like a lot of folks just have trouble
with self control, so blame a tool. You don't have to click the red/blue
dot...just let it be.

------
KKKKkkkk1
Do this at your own peril. The most important part of your job as an engineer
is politics, not engineering. You might think that blocking out pointless
meetings and other useless distractions will help you to focus on actual
engineering. What you'll find is that within mere weeks, others are taking
credit for your work. Before you know it, you will be sidelined and
marginalized, and no meaningful work will be assigned to you. Never turn your
back to your coworkers.

~~~
foepys
Where do you work that you have to constantly fight off others from
backstabbing you? That sounds like a really, really stressful and unhealthly
work environment.

~~~
harlanji
Not GP but I've had 5 jobs since coming to SF in 2014; walked off the last 2
within months. I was innocent and naive when I arrived, now I see how my late
brother receeded to him bedroom for the final years of his life. People are
horrible when they can get away with it. You can bet job quality goes down
with each notch. When I was at the top I told him to smile and try harder.
Back stabbing is fine, at least you feel that one and it ends. Once you're
down the spiral I don't know how to get up, but you're blessed to not
understand.

------
yason
I don't get that, really.

For at least a couple of decades there has generally been some internal
instant messaging system at whichever company I've worked for. Nerds used to
like plain local IRC server. In some places the expected tool was Windows
Messenger despite it sucked bad and kept disconnecting. Slack is just another
communication system: if you have problems with Slack you're likely to have
problems with any messaging system if you configure them to allow interrupting
your work.

The very reason I've personally always preferred online communications for
anything non-urgent at work is because nobody gets to interrupt me and I get
to check messages when I have an idle moment. The alternative is face-to-face
communication which means someone is interrupting you at your desk several
times a day which I ten times worse.

I currently use Slack over their irc gateway which works just fine. I have an
Slack-connected irc client running in one tmux window and when I have time I
can easily see if someone called for me or if the team channel has new
activity.

~~~
erikb
I think it's also possible to snooze Slack notifications for a few hours.

------
mattbillenstein
While this may be great for him, this is probably counter-productive for the
org -- and he's preparing to be left out of a lot of decisions and
conversation.

I've been in an org where there were stragglers who didn't want to use Slack
for whatever reason -- "I'm too old" for it was one I found particularly
retarded.

Communication is key -- get your whole team on one tool - silence
notifications if you have to, but you should aim to participate.

~~~
rishirishi
> ... he's preparing to be left out of a lot of decisions ...

I struggle to see how substantive decisions can be made legitimately through
group chat. How do you facilitate decision making such that it allows people
to prepare and participate?

~~~
mattbillenstein
It depends on the org and I guess how substantive you're referring to, but
there are a lot of small decisions that get made this way and those add up.

------
NiklasMort
I see lot of IRC channels move to Slack and I don't get it, Kubernetes being
one of them. Honestly why? I don't mind Slack for a small team but not for a
channel with a few thousand user, it's a mess. Furthermore, maybe it's somehow
because of my anti-ad addons but slack is generally slow and laggy for me.
Takes quite a while to open the channel, lot of features don't work under
Firefox.

~~~
snarfy
We've had IRC for so long that it makes me sad it hasn't succeeded more.

~~~
busterarm
I used Slack over IRC for a while. Other than group chats and downloads/gifs,
it worked pretty well. The private messages thing is solved if you have one
machine that stays connected to IRC 100% of the time and you connect to that.

------
ramzyo
The author (OP?) positions the article to blame Slack as the root cause of
productivity ills. However, multiple times it’s pointed out that Slack in and
of itself isn’t the problem, but can simply exacerbate other root cause issues
if misused.

>> Although Slack is positioned as a productivity tool, it becomes
counterproductive when misused.

The conclusion doesn’t follow the premise here. The author concludes that the
root cause of counterproducitivty is misuse of the tool, not the tool itself.
This doesn’t do anything to discredit the premise, as it’s easy to argue that
any tool can be counterproductive/dangerous/etc. when misused.

>> Organizations that find enough value in using Slack should introduce rules
of engagement.

So the OP admits organizations can find value in using Slack, but should
address the potential for misuse by introducing rules of engagement. Or
rather, that rules of engagement should be put in place to prevent other root
cause issues from being worsened by misuse of the tool. Again, the author is
arguing that Slack isn’t the problem here.

The article may strike a chord with those who don’t like Slack, but the
arguments presented are very sloppy. To me, this reads as a plug for a
particular work style the OP finds themselves more productive under. The Slack
attack is misplaced. The expectation of constant availability and immediate
responses sound like cultural issues, exacerbated by the communication
channels that Slack provides.

------
austenallred
Do people not realize how customizable Slack is? Everything that bugs OP can
be turned off, there’s do not disturb mode. away mode, you can mute every
alert with granularity, etc.

The idea that “I don’t use this communication channel that all my coworkers do
and everything is fine” seems risky at best.

~~~
michaelmrose
Are you actually saying not using slack is risky? Do people not talk in your
universe? Send emails? Text messages?

~~~
jstandard
I don't think that's Austen's point, no. It's more that completely disengaging
from a primary communication tool within your company is risky. It might work
out for you. There's also a big chance you'll be left out of important
conversations, decisions, and been seen as not a team player because the rest
of the organization now has to adapt around one person's communication
preferences.

Communication is tough. There are so many different, competing styles and
needs that you'll never build the perfect tool. It's more about building the
right habits and processes around your tools.

------
amix
Slack is a great product, but with a wrong communication model. We have for
the last three years developed Twist, which focuses on asynchronous
communication by default. It includes some of the best features of Slack and
email. We currently have about 1000 teams actively using it. Read more of our
reasoning here: “Why We’re Betting Against Real-Time Team Messaging”
[https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-
te...](https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-team-
messaging-521804a3da09)

~~~
halflings
Email. You just went back to email.

Like many of the people in the comments of your article, I am struggling to
see how this is any different from traditional emails. The only difference is
that these conversation threads are public/discoverable, and not only sent to
certain people... but most companies already have this (via groups/team
mailing lists/confluence/...).

~~~
amix
We still use email, but not for internal team communication. We have a help
article of why Twist is radically different than email
[https://twist.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003654589-Twi...](https://twist.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003654589-Twist-vs-Email-The-More-Organized-Way-to-Work)

~~~
halflings
I would strongly recommend reading this article:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/discussions-flat-or-
threaded/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/discussions-flat-or-threaded/)

Flat discussions make much more sense, especially for emails. Gmail and most
email clients are focusing on flat discussion threads, which are much easier
to follow.

------
lobotryas
Working with the kind of person that OP seems to be is a pain. Sometimes I
need your help, a code review, feedback or advice. Sometimes I even need it
ASAP because I am dealing with something time sensitive. I do my best to be
respectful of people's tome, but sometimes a distraction to help a colleague
is unavoidable.

I'll send an email when appropriate, but in most other cases I'll look for you
on Slack. If you're not there then that means I'll just have to walk over to
your desk to find you instead.

------
trts
Slack lowers the friction involved in communicating. Depending on the kind of
communication that it is, maybe that's bad or good.

In many corporate communications platforms, it is quite effortless to ask an
idle question, use an emoticon, paste a giphy image, write a bot to push
notifications into your team channel, express a witticism, or vent complaints.
It was my experience that Slack made it easier to do all of these things more
than any platform I'd previously used. I've been off of it for 3 months and
hope I never have to return. The worst problem seemed to be the number of ad-
hoc channels I could be automatically invited to, and it was not often clear
whether the information exchanged there was something I needed to pay
attention to (although in retrospect it is more so).

Different organizations will utilize it differently, and feature-wise Slack
seems to have gotten pretty far ahead of the competition. But if there's any
truth to the medium being the message, then I think that it can be inferred
from much of what transpires on Slack is that as a platform it is a big time
sink. There don't seem to be a lot of important degrees of urgency between an
email, a phone call, or a drop-by. For me about 90% of the value in corporate
messaging is pasting web links to resources, which doesn't require the other
bells and whistles.

------
perfectstorm
I agree with the author here but not for the reasons he stated. my biggest
gripe with Slack is that it results in less and less one-to-one conversation.

We used Slack at my last job but we were encouraged to stop by the person's
desk for any matter that requires immediate attention. I sat near our CTO and
sometimes I saw many engineers standing around his desk trying to debug a
production issue. This resulted in knowing other people's name/face (which I
realized after I joined my current company).

At my new company we use Slack for pretty much everything. If there's a
production bug you're encouraged to @here on the dedicated channel and someone
would take a look at it. There's no one-to-one interaction to debug it. We had
our holiday party last month where I introduced myself to some of my coworkers
and once we started talking we realized that we have chatted on Slack but
never saw each other even though we were all working in the same office. I
never associated the engineer's face to the name.

I do think Slack is a powerful tool in modern work environment but people
shouldn't be too dependent on it.

~~~
erikb
how do you figure out the solution to the bugs in a reasonable time without
having 1:1 sessions? If you just hand over the bug and the other guy has to
deal with it alone then that's really inefficient.

That's also why it's hard for me to imagine that it's true what you say. The
need for quick results will always create smaller meetings at this or that
guy's desk.

------
newscracker
I don't like any kind of IM/chat apps used like an endless meeting. They're
good for tackling one single issue with probably a handful of people at a
time. Even with @mentions, hashtags and channels, chat is still a single
stream that pretends to have context like email or forum posts do (with
subject lines and conversation threads).

As a habit, I don't use any chat group (be it Telegram or any other app or
platform) if there are more than five people. The explosion in the number of
messages and the frustration in not being able to catch up is too big a cost
on one's health and productivity. These tools don't enhance collaboration. On
the contrary, they provide a facade of "being busy".

We seem to keep trying to reinvent email and forum discussions (that have more
context and confine discussions by topic) again and again, but not achieving
better results.

------
ravitation
To be perfectly honest... It's hard for me to look at quitting Slack as
anything but deeply selfish. How much more time is someone now spending
writing you an email? Or waiting for you to answer one? How much more time are
they spending walking over to your desk? Or wondering if they even should,
since you're that one guy who refuses to use Slack?

If you need long periods of quiet time to work, locking yourself in a closet
is extremely effective, but that doesn't mean it also positively affects your
organization. Slack is an organizational productivity tool. Nearly every post
I read about people quitting Slack focuses on how much better _they_ are able
to work without it, not how much better their team or organization is without
them on Slack...

You're right, Slack isn't for you. It's for your team.

------
jedberg
Related question for the masses:

I run a fully remote startup. My goal is to make as much communication
asynchronous as possible, to facilitate people being in multiple time zones
and having different optimal work times and places.

We have slack right now, but for the most part people understand that it's an
async tool -- i.e. don't expect an instant response. Usually the only
"instant" convo is if we're having a video meeting and need to share links
(which of course we try to avoid since video meetings aren't async but are
sadly unavoidable).

My question is, as we grow, how to I keep Slack that way, and make sure it
doesn't turn into a huge distraction and just a bunch of gifs and watercooler
talk, without imposing rules about "the proper use of Slack"?

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
Make a room for "general posting" and collect all the gifs and watercooler
talk there. Gives everyone a space where they can go to decompress, doesn't
change your normal business use.

Im also of the opinion that having a dedicated space for more "real time"
communications can be really helpful as well. Team branded support room, for
example. Having a space that everyone at least casually keeps an eye on can
really save everyone a lot of time (especially when operating remotely) if a
team member comes across an issue.

~~~
iamdave
This is great advice; it's how our team functions, being 100% remote, but are
leasing space that we come to if a team ever wants to sit together in person.
It's available, but managers have made it clear it's by no means compulsory.

So, we have off-topic channels, a channel to plan social events (I Live in
Austin Texas and we have more than one musician who will post events, and
we've made company outings out of going to see a coworker perform), there's
one for movie chats, and even a "LFG" (Looking for games) channel for the
folks who like to play and discuss video games.

They're all as active and vibrant as our #devops and #product-discussions
channels.

~~~
anonemouse145
If you want to contain the nutters, build a nuthouse. Every message board
admin in the world learns you need dumping grounds and pressure relief valves
to keep the population in line.

My team has "General" for company wide announcements and "random" for dumping
gifs and whatnot.

There's also stuff like #sysadmin if something goes down or you spot a
security bulletin and want to make sure the admin team sees it. Keep those
rooms going as necessary. Low traffic, but the right people want an unread
marker on them.

------
anonemouse145
Most offices have bad cultures that don't foster good communication. The odds
of people blaming a tool because they don't have good communication is very
high.

I think the bit about "my team is starting to notice I'm offline" is very
telling. Oh you're so fancy, you special person who doesn't tell your team
when you're not available and you aren't checking your messages. You sure
showed them. I bet you're just the best facilitator of communication.

Personally, I tell my team how they can and can't expect to contact me when
I'm changing methods of communication. Call me crazy.

------
dingo_bat
I feel that emails and Outlook style meeting systems should be enough for all
day to day activities of a software developer. Rarely, there will be a
situation that needs immediate attention. In that case a phone call would be
sufficient. There is no need for a chat or instant messaging solution. However
I must say that Skype's desktop sharing has come in very useful at times, and
I don't know of a way to do that without having a chat client.

~~~
mrep
I find instant communication useful for quick "Am I doing this right?"
problems people have. Sending something like "I'm getting ssh connection
refused while trying to connect to this host. Can someone else try?". That can
quickly be answered by multiple people and people can chime in their quick
thoughts for what is likely the problem. Trying to communicate a bunch of
people with one line question/answers would be super annoying with the latency
that email has.

------
daveFNbuck
I've found exactly the opposite. People love to randomly interrupt me by
showing up at my desk with questions. I tell them to use Slack instead, as
this allows for asynchronous communication that doesn't interrupt my workflow.

I also push people to ask questions in a channel instead of directly to me, as
usually someone else will help them before I even see the question.

------
erikb
> Instant messaging applications enable communication that is online,
> synchronous and on-demand.

No. It's totally wrong. One needs to learn how to configure his chat tool that
it doesn't disturb one in productive times, but is easily available when free.
It's possible. I do it since ICQ. Unread chat messages will also still be
unread if you continue to work 4 hours on your current task.

> Without [instant messaging], days are calm, purpose-driven and productive.

How can days be purpose driven if you don't sync your own work with your
colleague's work any more? I'd argue that people who act like that are the
least productive because they only work on things that are not valuable for
the team at large.

~~~
rishirishi
> How can days be purpose driven if you don't sync your own work with your
> colleague's work any more?

Work does get synced. It gets discussed at our desks, usually in the mornings.
If the work presents blockers requiring a lengthy discussion then we hop into
a meeting room. I find we get better participation and arrive at a solution
with less friction.

------
arnarbi
We've had this kind of of posts as long as I remember. People blaming tools
because they can't figure out the most basic skills of work, communication,
planning, division and focusing of attention, etc. It's always a panacea to
turn something off completely.

But it's never about the tool. It's just the author learning how to operate
themselves. What they did has minimal relevance to others in general, except
perhaps for some validating "me too!"-s.

It's much more valuable to step back and think critically about how you
approach tasks and decisions, how you feel and what it tells you, and how much
you can actually control all of it.

------
Void_
Here's a nifty counter of Slack activations per day:
[http://focuslist.co/escape2/](http://focuslist.co/escape2/)

Kinda eye opening.

------
aembleton
I find it useful for asking 'has anyone changed x because I'm seeing this
stacktrace when I do abc?'. I don't expect an immediate result but when a
devleoper has some downtime then they can check and respond.

It's better than email because they can see the chat from other devs around
the issue.

The only thing I'd like to do is be able to stop auto-playing gifs and block
@here from certain people who abuse it.

------
amriksohata
I find it very useful for those who are quick to reply on slack, there are
some who check slack once a day and those for types it's easier to get up and
talk to them or email them. There is the downside which I find more common
amongst the younger users straight out of uni just using it as a social chat
mechanism

------
CodeSheikh
We were forced to move to Slack as well. Do not like it. It is more
distracting than making us productive.

I enjoyed HipChat
[[https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipchat](https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipchat)]

~~~
strictnein
Ugh... Hipchat. Relatively straightforward things that they don't seem to be
able to address:

You can't chat with more than 1 person without creating a private room. Slack
makes this effortless. It's been on Atlassian's radar for almost 1.5 years
with no movement: [https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Hipchat-questions/chat-
wi...](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Hipchat-questions/chat-with-two-or-
more-people-without-to-use-room/qaq-p/125060)

[https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/HCPUB-431](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/HCPUB-431)

And when you're in a private chat with someone, the jumping text you see when
the person you're chatting with is typing. Over 1.5 years and they can't fix
that? It's horribly distracting and just kinda sucks.

[https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/HCPUB-950](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/HCPUB-950)

Anyways, the whole thing feels dead and is very clearly a low priority for
Atlassian.

~~~
chrisco255
Atlassian employee here. We moved much of our development efforts to Stride,
our next gen team chat software. Be sure to check it out:
[https://www.stride.com](https://www.stride.com)

~~~
vesak
You guys oughta think about pricing. We just moved, a bit reluctantly, to
Microsoft Teams (essentially free because existing MS subscription) because
even Hipchat was way too expensive.

Does Stride really need to be $36/user/year, and double that if we need SAML?

~~~
chrisco255
That's half the price of Slack.

~~~
vesak
Slack's pricing is absurd.

------
Kluny
> Without it, days are calm, purpose-driven and productive.

Like you can't distract yourself with 40 other apps if not slack. Slack isn't
the problem, they're ALL the problem. Anyway, Slack is mandatory if you're
remote.

------
lwhi
Communication is necessary. Slack is one way of communicating .. by all means
get rid of it, but if you do .. make sure the replacement medium serves you
better.

I'd rather receive a DM than a phone call in most cases.

------
mcintyre1994
I find the "All Unread" view works really well to use Slack asynchronously.
You can just check it every so often, marking entire channels as read in one
click if a skim doesn't interest you.

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Bitcoin_McPonzi
For software developers, the best way to communicate is through the bug
database. Developers don't use "slack" at our company.

Of course, it may be different for sales and support people, etc.

~~~
erikb
I also used to think that way. But in my current team we have lots of
components that are maintainerless and attentionless since their maintainer
left the team for another job. When he hwas still active we all considered
this component important because many hours of work where flowing into it. Now
it's not maintained, receives nearly zero work, and still the impact to the
team and sales is not visible.

One could say finding out which components are critical should be someone
elses job, e.g. the manager's. All true, but still I wouldn't want to end up
spending the prime time of my day for multiple years on a piece of software
that nobody uses and nobody makes money with. So I'd argue that I as a dev
cannot interact with just the bug db. I need to see what sales is doing,
product management, join meetings, etc.

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jerrycabbage
Author would have a better point if he talked about how the widespread use of
memes/animated gifs is what makes such platforms into junk.

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mathgenius
Pretty sure I had some kind of slack PTSD after my last two dev jobs.

