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The advantage Slack et al have over email is that the list of people who can reach me through them is limited. Any idiot on the internet can email me, only people we've specifically admitted can Slack me.

The author also seems to exist in a world where group chat is only used for chit chat and cat pictures. If that's the case, You're Doing It Wrong. For me, Slack is the place where we communicate project state, hash out ideas, etc. That's the value.

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The one vulnerability to this model is integrations. Spam filters have become good enough that I seldom see true spam in my email. It's all the ham - automated garbage, purchase confirmations, and newsletters that I've been opted into that clog up my box.

If Slack admins go crazy on integrations, you can still get a lot of low-value notifications. In our instance, we only run integrations into topic-specific channels (such as a channel for system notifications) so it's manageable.

But I can see that changing as the scope of integrations grow.

My other trick is to turn off basically all notifications. The only thing that bloops my devices is a DM or an @mention. Anything else, I pick up when I open the app to specifically look for it. Makes the Github notifications much easier to blast through.

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