I had trouble getting through this one, but I think it's worth digging in a bit.
> In just a few short years, Slack has gone on to become an indispensable work tool in our always-on often mobile work life.
For you maybe? For many companies maybe? It feels a lot like the "we have no choice here" when the reality is "this is the easy path". Surprise, the easy path has huge costs!
But I'd argue that what's happened here, in most cases (and whether they believe it or not) companies have relinquished control over their distributed/remote/online/collaborative culture to Slack's definition of "what works". In my opinion Slack's vision of the future is broken because it's not truly designed to help you or your team succeed. It's designed to keep you on Slack as much as possible.
This relates in no small way to the question about corp SWE being performative that was on the front page when I puked up this comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475871)
If you can't tell that I loathe Slack and all its ilk, let me be clear, absolutely I do. It's a terrible way for *most* teams to work. Without a huge (and I do mean huge) about of effort to enforce and reinforce specific behaviours, Slack will push your new hires (who are less connected to the company culture than insert smaller team who came before here) to bend to Slack, and stop trying to bend Slack to the needs of the company.
This gets worse as employees now exist in a place where they can move from company to company and Slack (along with their personal Slack baggage) moves with them. A stint at four tech-companies of significant size and Slack was there, helping destroy whatever positive culture existed before.
It's not Slack's fault per se; this article illustrates one of the pillars that makes Slack at scale hard to live with: it's a noise machine. It slowly increases the noise floor until you're the frog, the water's boiling, and you're dead.
I've had folks attempt to argue about this, but they're often (not always) already boiled and don't realize it. "It just sorta happened."
Slack's perspective: "relax and just let it happen, it'll feel great."
PS - One of my interview loops from a fairly well known OSS company involved an inane question about how one might develop a product to use Slack to improve employee connection in a remote work environment. I should have read it for the very real warning that it was. But I, too, am all too happy to fool myself into believing "this time will be different".
davidee•1h ago
> In just a few short years, Slack has gone on to become an indispensable work tool in our always-on often mobile work life.
For you maybe? For many companies maybe? It feels a lot like the "we have no choice here" when the reality is "this is the easy path". Surprise, the easy path has huge costs!
But I'd argue that what's happened here, in most cases (and whether they believe it or not) companies have relinquished control over their distributed/remote/online/collaborative culture to Slack's definition of "what works". In my opinion Slack's vision of the future is broken because it's not truly designed to help you or your team succeed. It's designed to keep you on Slack as much as possible.
This relates in no small way to the question about corp SWE being performative that was on the front page when I puked up this comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475871)
If you can't tell that I loathe Slack and all its ilk, let me be clear, absolutely I do. It's a terrible way for *most* teams to work. Without a huge (and I do mean huge) about of effort to enforce and reinforce specific behaviours, Slack will push your new hires (who are less connected to the company culture than insert smaller team who came before here) to bend to Slack, and stop trying to bend Slack to the needs of the company.
This gets worse as employees now exist in a place where they can move from company to company and Slack (along with their personal Slack baggage) moves with them. A stint at four tech-companies of significant size and Slack was there, helping destroy whatever positive culture existed before.
It's not Slack's fault per se; this article illustrates one of the pillars that makes Slack at scale hard to live with: it's a noise machine. It slowly increases the noise floor until you're the frog, the water's boiling, and you're dead.
I've had folks attempt to argue about this, but they're often (not always) already boiled and don't realize it. "It just sorta happened."
Slack's perspective: "relax and just let it happen, it'll feel great."
PS - One of my interview loops from a fairly well known OSS company involved an inane question about how one might develop a product to use Slack to improve employee connection in a remote work environment. I should have read it for the very real warning that it was. But I, too, am all too happy to fool myself into believing "this time will be different".