
How to make Slack less bad for you - hardmath123
http://robertheaton.com/2016/08/23/how-make-slack-slightly-less-bad-for-you/
======
apatters
Slack is good, notifications are bad, and this is a rant.

This post reads to me as another snowflake in the very justified avalanche of
"Internet is drowning me in pointless chatter" complaints that define our
time.

I use Slack this way with my team and it works wonderfully for me:

\- I disable all notifications

\- I tell people to PM me if they need me to act

\- I tell people to carry on discussion in the relevant project/topic channel
if they need to chat about said project/topic

These points are ordered by importance. The first is vastly more important
than the others and extends beyond Slack. I aggressively disable notifications
of all kinds from all things. If I can't disable them I at least disable their
ability to make sound or vibrate. I have one way to be immediately "notified"
and that is to call my mobile. I can count the people who know and use that
number on one hand. They're so close to me that they know if I truly need to
be informed of something now - in their respective sphere of family, friends,
or work - and they call me and I pick up.

The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and
crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending on
my bandwidth.

The other channels I read if and only if I have a justified need to know
what's going on with that project/topic. Or if I have downtime and am curious
about something. Grazing on info about what my team is up to in project X is a
nicer distraction than watching TV.

I am also that crazy guy who actually _uninstalled Facebook from his phone and
just goes to the website when he feels like catching up with friends._ So I'm
not subject to that megacorp's constant interruptions either. I don't feel
like my life has lost anything at all by doing this.

The problem isn't Slack, it isn't Facebook, it's _notifications,_ turn them
off and tell the world that if they want your attention they have to call you
_and they can 't have your number unless you love them._

~~~
Ntrails
> The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and
> crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending
> on my bandwidth.

At this point it sounds like slack is now just email at which point I question
the value it is adding. Assuming everyone else does the same things in the
same way you'll never have a responsive conversation over slack like this and
may as well skip it entirely.

~~~
apatters
The merits of a Slack PM over email are few and debatable, I agree. However
only a member of my team can PM me on Slack and anyone can email me, so my
Slack messages have a better signal to noise ratio.

Slack adds much more value in the area of project-oriented channels which do
get a lot of real-time conversation happening in them during business hours,
and also retain an email-like record for anyone who logs in later on and wants
to catch up.

------
ktamura
I cannot recommend using Slack via a browser enough. It achieves several
goals:

1\. It sandboxes resource usage, preventing Slack from being a permanent
resource hog. Is your Slack tab running hot on Chrome? Just kill it for now.
There are many browser extensions for managing resource usage per tab.

2\. Closing the Slack browser tab means no disruptive notifications. Sure, you
can snooze Slack @-mentions, etc., but that's too much of "working hard to
make the tool work."

3\. Better workflow (seriously) Perhaps this is just me (or my function as a
marketing person at a startup), but I work almost entirely inside the browser
(GMail, Google Docs, various sites for research, SaaS apps). Using Slack as a
standalone desktop app means I have to focus away from the browser. Using
Slack as a browser tab means I can treat it just one of several web apps I use
regularly.

4\. Bonus point: No need to update your Slack client =)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It just baffles me how many apps that would have been fundamentally doable on
a 486 with Windows 3.1 and 14.4 dial-up somehow manage to gulp resources on
modern machines.

(Although, for 1 and 2, it seems like temporarily closing the Slack app would
work just as well.)

~~~
shinymark
If Slack's desktop client was written in efficient C++ using platform specific
UI framworks it would likely be one to two orders of magnitude more efficient
across all important metrics. Unfortunately the desktop app is basically an
entire web browser instance running JavaScript code.

I can see the appeal, however. Write once run anywhere is a hell of a drug.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I can see the appeal, however. Write once run anywhere is a hell of a
> drug._

It's not just that. It's that you're not paid to write good code, nor
efficient code. You're paid to write any shit that works good enough to be
sold to users, and to write it as quickly as you can.

------
Stratoscope
He didn't mention one of my pet peeves: the "stratoscope, robertheaton, and
dang are typing" messages below the input window. They draw you in to
watching... nothing! I sit there slack-jawed (pun unintended, but I'll take
credit for it anyway) waiting to see what - if anything - will eventually show
up.

Even on #random. It seemed like such a good idea at the time - keep "water
cooler" chat out of the main channels. But what really happens is that all the
fun stuff goes on in #random, so you pay as much or more attention to it as
anything else. Who wants to be late for the party?

And there's the uncapitalized, unpunctuated, line-by-line stream of
consciousness writing style I ranted about some time ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614)

~~~
dang
Another is that they just started putting light-grey text "Message @channel"
by default in the text area. I am surprisingly stressed out by this. It feels
like a command or a nudge that insinuates itself into my thinking space, like
a half-finished message which a corporate entity 'helpfully' began for me, and
now it's my job to finish it, and as soon as I finish that one another will
begin. There's a bad dream in there somewhere...

I think the OP is right that a UI needs to be sensitive to the user's psyche
and not push them all the time toward using the product.

~~~
JasonSage
I'm actually more at ease with this change than if there was no default text.
There's that flicker of recognition when I look at the input area before I
start typing—"I'm messaging @channel." Call me paranoid, but I often flick
over to the sidebar to see which channel I'm in before I dive into some
conversations, just to make sure I'm not saying something in a public channel
I shouldn't—like scanning over the recipients before you send an email. This
proactively reassures me so I don't have to flit about making sure I'm doing
the right thing.

~~~
Stratoscope
That's a great point. Looking at it again, maybe it's just the wording of the
prompt that I don't like. For example, we have a #dev channel and it says:

    
    
      Message dev
    

It doesn't quite register for me that the word "dev" is referring to the
_channel name_ \- it's drowned out by the big word "Message".

And my first subconscious thought is that "Message" is being used as an
adjective: are we talking about the "Message dev"? Who is that?

I think it would be helpful if the prompt used the standard notation for
channel names:

    
    
      Message #dev
    

But if I had a prompt like this I'd probably spell it out in full to avoid any
confusion:

    
    
      Send a message to #dev

~~~
JasonSage
A private channel will look like

    
    
      Message dev
    

But an org-wide channel will look like

    
    
      Message #dev

~~~
Stratoscope
Mystery solved, thanks! I was looking at a private channel. I didn't realize
that private channels don't get #xyz shortcuts.

------
firewalkwithme
I am probably getting old. Having used irc as main communication channel for 8
years in a previous company, we now added slack on top of the mail and direct
messenger methods at my new workplace. I can not get used to it, at all. It is
nothing but a distraction of half wit and delayed misunderstandings. I even
dislike the ui. May be the staff is not ready, maybe just give it a little
time. Maybe I just got too used to email

~~~
tormeh
If you dislike Slack, have you seen Skype for Business? Its text chat function
disproves the existence of Cthulhu, since something so mind-bendingly horrible
would surely have awoken Him, if He existed. Imagine sending your colleagues
single-line Word documents and you're basically there.

~~~
fumplethumb
Couldn't agree more. We use Skype for Business and its lack of obvious
features is amazing. To give people an example, you cannot even send a link!

~~~
MichaelGG
Huh? I've only used Lync 2013 and before, but the IM client doesn't prevent
links. It's basically like MSN Messenger with some enhancements, for internal
use. At least it doesn't have the deliverability and ordering issues Skype
has.

Group chat isn't anything amazing with it but I haven't found it deficient.
Maybe I'm using it wrong.

~~~
flukus
You can send links, but it's copy/paste functionality is "quirky".

~~~
fumplethumb
How do I send a link!! Seriously would love to know. I paste it in and I think
it gets reformatted for the person on the other end. What is that??

------
untog
While the tone of the article is maybe a little hyperbolic, I agree with a lot
of it. The default setting to be alerted when absolutely anything happens is
crazy. And whenever I see someone talking about Slack replacing e-mail as if
it's a good thing, I recoil in horror. You can answer e-mails at your own
pace, while Slack prioritises instant replies.

~~~
edgan
I have to disagree. The problem with email is the signal to noise ratio is too
high, because it is globally accessible. Where as Slack is company only. Some
things need to be addressed now. With email that would be turning on
notifications, but then you get notifications for spam. Slack doesn't have the
spam problem. The closest it gets is messages from computers. Those can be
controlled or segregated to certain channels.

~~~
ryukafalz
I think this really just speaks to a need for better email clients - or just
better email client configurations.

A good email client for a business might filter all messages from other
members of your company into a given folder, and then only notify for messages
in that folder. Notifications for any other messages would just be blocked.
Heck, don't even show them in the unread count until the user looks for them
in particular.

------
ozten
It sounds like the cultural norm for how their team is using Slack is
synchronous.

I'd strongly suggest building a culture that Email and Slack are Asynchronous.

If something is time sensitive, take it to a synchronous channel which has
cultural expectations that it is okay to interrupt the other person.

~~~
RBerenguel
Our unwritten but seems to be more or less the rule at work is that unless you
get an @ (either in a general channel or in a 1-1 chat) anything that goes
into slack is as async as email. Maybe a little bit less, but the expectation
is that you will get to it at some point and that's it.

I don't find it specially disruptive this way. Way less than shouting from one
side of the office "hey, check the deploy!"

~~~
Bartweiss
This is exactly how we've handled Slack. It's sync (to within a minute or two)
for @ messages, which are used sparingly. It's async for everything else, and
it's faster than email only in that it's a bit more conversational.

Within that norm, all of the "Slack is an evil attention vampire" complaints
feel deeply unfamiliar to me. I find it less distracting than email because @
makes message priority clear at a glance.

------
oxguy3
Honestly, this is not my experience using Slack at all. Maybe it's because I'm
on such a small team, but I find that the amount of chatter on Slack isn't
overwhelming at all -- #random is pretty dead most of the time. And if someone
sends me a message and I'm busy, then I'll maybe glance at the notification
but probably just ignore it until I'm free.

My team uses Slack very asynchronously -- whenever you have something that
needs feedback or whatever, you just post it in the appropriate channel, and
expect responses to trickle in over maybe the next 24 hours. If someone sends
"hey no rush but", then I legitimately do not rush to answer it -- just a
different company culture I guess.

------
esseti
Since slack people will pass by here. Please, if i set not disturb then don't
disturb me: no notification, no badge icon (!!), nothing! (maybe just when the
people, after been warned that they may disturb still send the notification).
then when i remove the not disturb your nice slackbot can tell me what i
missed.

Why am I asking so? beacuse I use pomodoro and i've a script that sets slack
to "do not disturb" when i'm in the pomodoro and switch it off (to the pls
bother me mood) when i'm done.

~~~
GrinningFool
If you send it via /feedback you'll at least get a friendly, appreciative
reply.

The feature may never get implemented but the response is always nice...
:slightly_smiling_face:

~~~
esseti
i did, i got a friendly reminde but that's it. The not-disturb feature is
still disturbing :)

------
mmjjss
Less can certainly be more. However I feel like Slack's usefulness:distraction
ratio change greatly depending on the type of team or company using it. These
suggestions are good ones but every situation is different. Is your team
disciplined, focused, and/or collaborative and to what degree? The answer will
tell you how Slack may get used or abused.

~~~
a300600st
Yeah before Slack I was constantly getting interrupted with questions that
could have been answered any time and random co-workers just wanting to chat.
However, I agree with the analysis that Slack is good for immediate
communication and communication that doesn't really matter too much. Before
Slack we didn't really have a tool that fit that and so every communication
was a co-worker walking over and interrupting whatever you were doing.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Before Slack we didn't really have a tool that fit that and so every
> communication was a co-worker walking over and interrupting whatever you
> were doing.

I don't get it. Doesn't any popular chat client fit the bill? The thing Slack
adds is big persistent chat groups which doesn't help with the problem you're
describing.

~~~
Bartweiss
I think big persistent groups sometimes _do_ help with that. If you want to
know which client requested X, then messaging one person is slow, and walking
up to ask one person is disruptive. With Slack, you can ask 30 people and get
an answer from whoever looks first (and so presumably isn't disrupted).
Everyone else who's busy ignores things and skims things when they're not
occupied.

That's all contingent on a culture of async Slack usage, but I've found it
valuable.

------
z6
I'm not a fan of Slack. I think it's way more distracting than useful. The
biggest problem I think is that it doesn't really allow for async
communication. If I have a question that I want to ask someone, but it's not
urgent, there isn't really a way to do it. With the typical gmail setup, I
have 2 options. Send an email for non-urgent. Or send a hangout message for
urgent. Slack really needs something like this, a sort of silent direct
message that doesn't disrupt the recipient.

Also, I hate the <person> joined / left messages. There are team-related
channels that are so disruptive and useless that I'd like to silently leave
without being judged, but I can't.

Lastly, I've yet to be in a channel that isn't overrun by giphy spam. I know
this isn't directly Slack's fault and more a company culture issue, but Slack
sure makes it easy to use distracting features, whether that's integrations
like giphy, or reactions to messages, etc. I think the focus needs to be less
on making Slack 'fun' to use, and more on improving communication.

------
bhuga
I wrote an electron app to inject javascript and CSS into slack in an attempt
to turn off a lot of distraction and, more importantly, easily differentiate
between bots and people. I feel the author's pain, but the great part about
being a programmer is that if it's bad enough to write about, it's bad enough
to fix.

It allows per-team customizations, and if anyone cares to mess with it,
there's a link at [https://github.com/bhuga/hackable-slack-
client](https://github.com/bhuga/hackable-slack-client). OSX only, but it's
electron, so porting it would probably be easy.

Changing other people's applications' behavior is challenging but rewarding.
The hacks required make great stories for certain kinds of parties. I always
point people to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805380)
for a better introduction than I could give.

------
raesene9
One thing that's not mentioned in the article that I see as one of the main
drawbacks of slack is lack of threading, which makes it much harder to have an
async. conversation (especially across timezones).

The very very weird part to me about this is that slack say they've been
working on threading for at least 18 months now
([https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/535121236452732928](https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/535121236452732928))
and still can't provide a timeline for when it'll go live, which seems really
odd for such a well funded development team, given it's such an oft-requested
piece of functionality (there's even a twitter account dedicated to it
[https://twitter.com/slackThreadsYet](https://twitter.com/slackThreadsYet) )

------
perseusprime11
Is everyone forgetting the biggest benefit of Slack? It's the transparency
part. Important details are no longer privy to 1 or 2 individuals on the team
in their inboxes instead the whole team can see what's going on and can chime
in if they disagree

~~~
GrinningFool
If you're in the right channel.

If someone didn't make a new channel to discuss the idea more , and you missed
the single line of text that mentioned it two hours ago.

If you happen to be looking at the right channel at the right time.

If the pertinent bits aren't lost in back scroll.

I think your statement is true for a sufficiently small company with a limited
number of channels. Less so for larger companies, or even small ones with
dozens or hundreds of them.

~~~
ec109685
Slack search is really good and can let you recover missed bits of
information.

~~~
GrinningFool
But it's only helpful if you know what you need to search for. In the case of
a conversation that happened in the past that you wanted to have input into -
and either never learned about it, or only learned after a decision was
reached - it doesn't help so much.

------
bitL
Is there any way to turn off those "motivational" start up messages such as
"we like you"? It always irritates me; I want to use Slack for work not for
getting the feel I am in a kindergarten and "special".

~~~
jordanrobinson
You can replace them, so assumedly you could replace the "motivational"
messages with things such as "Work harder" or "You are not special" or "You
are an easily replaceable cog".

~~~
bitL
"" would work perfectly, by default.

------
welder
If you have more than a few teams, Slack becomes unusable. This alternative
client doesn't freeze up like Slack:

[http://meetfranz.com/](http://meetfranz.com/)

~~~
esseti
This isn't very fair. If i've many team in slack, and slack app becomes
unstable, you don't solve the problem, don't you?

------
nkantar
My main issue with Slack is that with sane-ish notification defaults (only for
my name), group direct messages default to that as well.

They're fundamentally perceived by everyone (in my experience) as an extension
of individual direct messages, which _do_ trigger notifications, and yet I
find myself missing these for minutes/hours at a time, sometimes when it's
important, all because I've finally trained myself to ignore the non-numeric
notification badge.

I've contacted the support about this and was basically told to go away. :/

------
Hexigonz
I'm on a small team (14-15) and honestly I love Slack. Have never had any
issues with it and I think it's an awesome team messaging system. We use
growbot to give props and get a kick out of it. We just switched from skype to
slack calls and it was a gamechanger. I have been on teams that used GroupMe
in the past and it was terrible. I don't read group me messages because
they're off topic and annoying. Slack's channel system changed that for me.

------
ihuman
I don't understand the part about "permanent do not disturb". Can't you just
turn off all notifications, or quit the app?

~~~
daenney
You can set Do Not Disturb for a team too from the same start to end time.

------
iza
Surprised this doesn't mention the mute feature. I just mute the noisy
channels (#random, etc).

[https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/204411433-Muting-a-...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/204411433-Muting-a-channel)

~~~
ilyanep
Muting a channel doesn't prevent it from showing unread message indicators
when your coworkers use @here and @channel indiscriminately. This is probably
my current biggest pet peeve with Slack, an app that I otherwise love (at
least more than some other alternatives we've tried).

------
chubs
I see a common theme here is resource usage by Slack on the desktop. I also
share this concern, and proposed a Kickstarter to build a native app:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-
fas...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fast-
beautiful-macos-native-slack-app)

Unfortunately it didn't get the traction that I wanted. This is OK, the main
purpose of the kickstarter was 'market/idea validation' to see if enough
people were dissatisfied with Slack's resource usage/performance to justify
building it.

If enough people here are interested though, i'd be willing to resurrect the
project - please let me know.

------
notJim
Honestly I find the gripey-ness of this pretty off-putting. We get it, you
hate Slack, congratulations.

------
Falkon1313
Slack has a powerful Do Not Disturb feature - that little X in the upper
corner of the window. Same as any other program, close it when you don't want
it running, open it when you do. Why go to such great lengths to complicate
that?

------
mverwijs
To reduce noise, I always get the admins to turn on XMPP and IRC support. That
way I can pick my client of choice, and limit notifications that way.

------
taytus
I can't be the only one who think Slack is another super hyped company...

~~~
nilved
Nope, that's what everything thinks. Some people even think it's over-hyped.

------
feistyGrub
Slack is of utmost importance.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Conspi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Conspiracy_and_.22Slack.22)

Get it while you can.

Hail Eris

~~~
mtraven
Somebody awhile back pointed out that Slack the app is about the most anti-
Slack thing ever produced.

------
jomamaxx
Folks, I suggest that while Slack may have some mechanical advantages over
e-mail, the 'problem of too many emails' will absolutely not be solved by
Slack, or almost anything else.

'Communication discipline' is the key issue, and it's a social issue regarding
how organizations work. Some people, in some jobs, are simply rewarded for
broadcasting BS. It's their job to do that. Sadly.

It's funny how much time we waste communication, and how, most often, there is
very little guidance on how we should do that. Very few 'rules'.

Like typing, or 'interviewing' \- there should be some effort to control this.

If you think about it - isn't it absurd that someone from some group can do
something that possibly interrupts dozens of other people?

Would you allow them to shout loudly in a room?

In the Army they call it 'radio discipline'. There are specific ways to
communicate. Entirely inappropriate for corporate life, at the same time, we
also don't want to quash the serendipitous opportunity that sometimes arises
from great chats ...

But still.

Perversely ... because Email clients usually offer finer control ... maybe
email with tight discipline is the way.

I feel dirty for saying that :)

------
ycombinatorMan
Honestly, this is not a problem at all.

