At least with emails, you’re forced to think through an entire problem before bothering other people. I’m constantly pinged with half thoughts or ideas that are time consuming and distracting. There’s an expectation to respond to everything creating so much noise you can’t hear yourself think.
@OP can you take a look at the above 200 message thread and tell me what you think?
Why don’t you take the time to summarize your conversation and ask a specific question?
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Once upon a time I liked Slack. Initially it fixed the problem of spammy email lists and managing membership. However it's now become something I hate.
Two things that made it worse. First is when the whole company started using it instead of Skype for Business. Now ever rando in the world has a direct line to bug you. Additionally, if you were not logged in on Skype, people wouldn't bug you or they would email.
The second thing is WFH. D-mb or poorly thought out questions would normally be filtered through people sitting nearby or maybe a manager down the hall. Now it's "how do I do this?" with a mention in a 500 person channel. Nothing will stop this d-mb question, no pinned items, bookmarks, or channel automated greetings will stop them. Even if the same question was asked/answered an hour earlier, it won't stop
Sort of.
If you have good employees it’s a great tool for automatically documenting tribal knowledge. As long as conversations are happening in public channels everything is searchable.
The problem is we’ve bought heavily into a low-trust face-saving workforce in recent years. They only want to use DMs and they don’t care about your time, so they’re not going to use Slack the way it was intended.
Slack is nothing more than another inbox to manage and maintain.
Pick a lane.
“Worst aspect of slack is getting the same questions from the same people or teams over & over again.”
That’s the cheap contracting. Why bother learning when you’ll be gone in 6 months. What incentive is there to take ownership then?
Especially when Nike is trying to get away with paying some country’s contractors 1/4 what we pay anyone else.
Slack has some of the best search functionality on the market. You need to start replying “I put your question in the search bar, here’s a link to an older thread.”
There isn’t a more polite way to say “Do your own ducking job.”
If they still don’t learn after another dozen times you can also tag their manager in the reply and ask them to coordinate a Slack training session with their team.
Low effort contractors will walk all over you and wring you out. Portland’s brand of polite helpfulness isn’t effective in Nike’s current hiring climate.
Slack within a team is fine, but is bad across teams because it prioritizes the urgent (the now) over the important. Is good for the person asking, not for the one answering. If you’re an SME type you’re not stop hounded by people and teams not willing to go research, learn and document on their own. Worst aspect of slack is getting the same questions from the same people or teams over & over again. At least with email you can forward back to them the last time they asked the same question. This goes beyond Slack as a tool though, culturally folks no longer take pride in knowing how their own ‘house’ works, or keeping their own house clean. Is now culturally acceptable to dump cr-p on your neighbors constantly because nobody is accountable for the costs to the enterprise or to our Customers and Business partners. SME’s are now all over worked and over stressed po---r scoopers, cleaning up mess after mess after mess because there is ZERO accountability.
Slack is here to stay, Box on the otherhand...writing is on the wall
Slack will be going away in favor of teams in FY25. I think Box, too, is going away. Love live Microsoft!
Offshoring or contractors are not the issue. Issue is lack of leadership.
I’ve come to appreciate some multiculturalism.
If someone messages me only “hi” or “do you have a moment to talk on zoom” I know I can ignore the request for a day, and when I finally reply they’ll no longer need my help.
When the company is filled with under qualified contractors you have to learn how to not get tricked into doing their job.
Can't help but agree with some of the comments here. Slack is a nice-to-have. I might respond to you 2 minutes. I might be busy and respond to you in 5 hours.
I have meetings, and committed work to do. I'm not giving any priority to a Slack message. My away message reads "reach me over email if you need me"
Any expectation is silly and you shouldn't so much as entertain that notion.
There's no requirement to use or respond over Slack. Literally. You're choosing to do this to yourself.
Who works off a random message anyway? Trust me, just leave it off entirely and feel better. I haven't had Slack on for a few years and I have no problem getting my work done, or fielding legitimate requests without it.
Slack took a corporate culture already addicted to instant gratification and make it 1000x worse. Sure it has cool uses, but like everything else here it has turned into a sprawling wasteland of poor practices and bad habits. But don't worry, Teams will be back soon ;)
More symptoms of our terrible offshoring.
@here @channel @hey-any-of-you-10000-people-here-I-Cant-do-my-job-please-earn-my-salary-for-me @wakeup! @i-need-to-look-like-im-working