
Why I hate Slack and you should too - kornish
https://bitquabit.com/post/i-hate-slack-and-you-should-too/?utm_content=buffer128b3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
dpkonofa
I fail to see the point of the post. In the situation that OP describes, Slack
would only really replace IRC in his equation and maybe the phone calls since
people can interrupt you by calling now. You can definitely snooze
notifications and, if you're missing critical to-dos and tasks because they're
getting lost in Slack chats, then you and your coworkers are not using Slack
correctly (or, at the very least, you're not good at communicating urgency
and/or priorities). He's/she's complaining about a human problem and blaming
it on a piece of technology.

~~~
threatofrain
If you have soda and water within reach on the same shelf, and children choose
soda over water, should we blame the results on the children or the
arrangement of soda and water on the same shelf?

It's possible to modify the interface or situation to accommodate the person,
rather than asking the person to change to the interface.

------
dlwdlw
What slack is to me is a disruption of the traditional methods of
communication which often comes with a disruption of ideas of sacredness and
profanity.

There's always room for better tools but what I think Slack allows is leaving
behind asynchronous email (which often devolves into real time chat) and
instead embracing a stream of real time information.

One thing it very much leaves behind though is contextual information since
that can often be interspaced with lots of garbage information. (Fun) perhaps
a smart bot that can quickly summarize a weeks worth of info for you.

Regardless of slacks actual efficacy amongst people with varying expectations
to work communication I think it draws attention to a need to improve our
tools for communication for new work methodologies.

------
s73ver
"So sometimes Slack notifications are totally not time-sensitive [snip] , and
sometimes they require an immediate action [snip] and until I’ve read the
message, I have absolutely no idea whether it deserves my immediate
attention."

Isn't that the same problem with the other communications media they listed,
at least with email and IRC?

------
0xbear
Missing from the list: it encourages group conversation and therefore
pointless (and often damaging) flame wars where opinions differ. At one point
or another some otherwise decent human being starts using it as a platform to
spread their particular brand of BS, be it opinions about programming
languages / frameworks, past employers, social issues, their favorite (or
disfavored) political candidate, and so on and so forth. Those being hot
issues, people find it difficult to stay away, and it inevitably ends in
tears. Signal to noise ratio ends up being abysmal, and the "productivity"
tool ends up being very counterproductive.

That's why I turned off Slack at one point and told people that we're in the
same building, and if they need to urgently talk to me, they can just stop by
my desk, and if things can wait for a few hours, send me an email. Easy.

~~~
s73ver
If that kind of thing is routinely happening in your office, it was probably
happening without Slack as well. And that company probably has some bigger
issues to address.

~~~
0xbear
Not really, no. Once you give up Slack it's a much better place to work at.
Thankfully the use of Slack is not mandatory here.

------
dilly_li
I agree with the informal and non-archival nature of Slack. Whenever a
serious/word-related decision has been made or somebody drafted a summary for
a slack discussion, it should be posted to Trello or some other platform which
makes it easier for latecomers to glance through. 1500+ unread msgs after
vacation is not fun. Do I miss anything important and work-related? Or just
some random cat pictures and movie critics?

In addition, it's hard to track progress with Slack. It's multi-channel,
multi-topic, multi-project, and etc. I mean, Slack is great for quick
discussion, but terrible at keeping records.

------
joobus
I have no problem with Slack and I use it at work everyday. It's a lot better
than the jabber/aim/Skype/salesforce combo the company was using before Slack.

~~~
mjevans
That's like saying a root canal is better than extraction with a set of
differently sized pliers.

I mean it is... but it's still not ideal.

------
liquidise
I have said this a few times, but slack's biggest miss is the failure to offer
a concise digest of what you missed while you were away. They could design the
feature based on channels i'm in, @mentions, or even topics of discussion
based on keywords used commonly in convo's i take part in.

Such a feature would remove much of the catchup FOMO people suffer from,
whether you were signed out for an couple of hours, the evening or even a long
vacation.

~~~
empath75
[https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/226410907-View-
all-...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/226410907-View-all-your-
unread-messages)

------
t0mbstone
My overwhelming experience has been that the people who hate Slack are people
who don't know how to use it:

1\. Learn how to mute channels.

2\. Learn how to use the /channel action to bypass mutes (but only use when
absolutely necessary)

3\. Create channels for different topics, and for different groups of people.
Create a "#random" channel where people can post silly crap without cluttering
the main channels, for example.

4\. Create channels for important announcements (with rules to keep these
channels clear of random conversation).

5\. Allow people to join and/or mute the channels that make sense for them.

6\. Use threaded conversations instead of cluttering the main feed.

These simple mechanisms, once spread throughout your organization and used by
everyone, will make Slack your friend. You will only get notifications for the
things you want to see and/or things that are very important.

------
mach5
yes, i know im old and quaint, but most of these problems are completely
solved by connecting to slack via an IRC client. they do a good job with the
compatibility, snippets are just links, they echo your own msgs back to you if
you use the app, etc. this way, you are only getting notifications like @here
when you are using your computer, aka, working. i like to use smuxi, with a
headless remote server configuration, this way i have slack, gchat, irc, and
twitter all in one window that sync with all my other computers.

------
dancole
Seams like Automattic went the right way with using WordPress and their P2
Theme for internal use. [0] Departments, groups, or people can have their own
"boards". Within that you can write posts or comment, mention people. The P2
theme is great for one liners to walls of text and pictures. Plenty of plugins
to expand as need desire...

[0] [https://ma.tt/2009/05/how-p2-changed-
automattic/](https://ma.tt/2009/05/how-p2-changed-automattic/)

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
they use slack.

------
nunez
I think the OP fails to realize that Slack has custom and flexible
notifications. I'm hardly ever notified on my team's Slack (and boy howdy do
they love using it), and the messages I do get notified about are important.

It is definitely hardcore lock in though, but what isn't these days?

------
cocktailpeanuts
Why I hate "Why I ___ and you should too" posts and you should too:

It reeks of attention seeking so from right off the bat I don't even want to
read. It doesn't sound genuine. Also you don't get to tell me what to do or
what not to do. Just share your experience modestly.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
While I agree in principal, in practice this type of post gets far, far more
attention. The more controversial / edgy you can be on social networks (and
yes that even includes HN) the more hits and comments you can get.

The bad behavior gets reinforced and continues. Not sure what can be done to
minimize it either.

------
ajdlinux
I'd like to see some kind of client that combines a Slack-like real-time
communications tool with an email client.

I don't know what I'd actually like this client to do, but I feel like there
would be room for some interesting things there.

(Bring back Google Wave!)

~~~
revanthc
Hello! Allow me to introduce Zoho Mail to you. Full disclosure - I work for
Zoho Mail. But that aside, I believe we have the perfect client for your
requirements.

Zoho Mail is designed for teams and works better if you're using it for your
entire company. We've built a tool inside the inbox called Streams, which is a
real-time communication tool around your email.

Streams help you talk to your team around an email. You can make a stream and
@mention anyone on your team, then send a quick message to them. It's a bit
like team chat or a company Facebook—a simple way to discuss things with
colleagues without having to make a full email with a title and signature. You
can read all about Streams here -
[https://www.zoho.com/mail/streams.html](https://www.zoho.com/mail/streams.html)

Zoho Mail is free for 25 users, so I recommend you sign up for our free plan
and give it a try. If you like what you see, you can always then upgrade to
one of our paid plans.
[https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html)

------
bitwize
Ditto HipChat.

------
partiallypro
I just wish Slack had read receipts.

~~~
jonathanoliver
Or the ability to recall messages like Microsoft Exchange?

~~~
copperx
Can't you just erase them?

------
clearlyDurrr
Hey, you want some cheese with that whine?

------
andreasgonewild
Snackis offers an open, safe and distributed alternative; and as an added
bonus, it has a plain old responsive GTK+ UI and the executable is 1.7Mb:

[https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis](https://github.com/andreas-
gone-wild/snackis)

~~~
sgarman
Besides the obvious "lock in" point from the article in what ways does this
software address the other points made?

~~~
andreasgonewild
It's different enough to encourage different patterns of behavior; being based
on email means that it's not very practical for nonsense chat-traffic. Snackis
isn't aiming to rule the world, there are no incentives to fuck users over for
profit. It has basic project/tasks built-in, so that separates that
information from the feeds. And it can be set up for offline use, where it
doesn't touch the network unless you ask for it. And it doesn't eat all your
disk and ram space.

