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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

it is definitely great to meet in person, to shake hands, grab a coffee together, etc. but what is the value, professionally speaking?

Years of socialization training stemming from childhood to gauge whether it's really worth interrupting people. I do enjoy the opportunity to do remote work, but even in the office, I'm finding an unstated expectation that I should always have a second pair of eyes on my slack notifications. It's not really consistent to praise the elusive "in the zone" state where developers get their most productive work done, and simultaneously expect that they should break what they're doing to bucket the importance of every little IM. The need to walk over to another person when you have something important to say, and use your human senses to determine whether this person should really be distracted for what you think is important at the moment puts the onus and effort of distraction on the asker where I think it best belongs.

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Also, make sure that this "expectation" to respond to pings immediately isn't in your head. I work at Automattic and I usually respond within 15 minutes, but sometimes up to an hour or 5 hours. For remote to make sense, you have to embrace the asynchronous communication as well.

That's a very important point. I have a number of friends who pull out their phones the moment it pings them, and nine out of ten times it's not important. And, usually, the tenth time where they say 'I have to answer this call/message' it's not in the least time-sensitive enough that they can't wait 10-15 minutes.

I'm still not sure how to deal with this, because everyone does it so I'm the weird one for finding it rude and disruptive to the conversation. The only thing I've come up with is to politely ask the people I interact with regularly and the people close to me to not check their phone during a conversation we're having.

(interestingly enough this usually sparks a conversation where they also express a dislike of constant interruption...)

Unlike in real life where someone can come and distract your full attention, IM gives you the ability to set your status to 'Busy'. Seems far better at dealing with interruptions to me.

Slack doesn't, unless I'm not finding that feature after a year+ of using it.

It totally does and I use it heavily, although if urgent a co-worker can have the option to force the notification through. Usually doesn't happen as people realise you'll get back to it soon.

https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/214908388-Do-Not-Di...

One can set their status to "Away" in slack.

Yeah, but "away" and "busy" are two different statuses. "Away" seems to me to indicate "not working". "Busy" seems to indicate "working too hard to be interrupted."

You can set yourself to Do Not Disturb mode, which is kind of the same thing. Notifications are muted and the sender sees a 'Zzz' symbol next to your name.

If someone sends you a direct message they have the option to interrupt you if it's really important.

> Notifications are muted and the sender sees a 'Zzz' symbol next to your name.

That's a minor thing but 'Zzz' really sends the wrong signal to the sender: if you are not available, then you are sleeping (i.e. unproductive).

Agreed, and would probably go a bit beyond "minor".

Other chat systems offer the ability to attach a message to your AFK status, which can be pretty helpful for setting expectations about when you might be back. Last time I looked, Slack seemed kind-of resistant to doing anything like that.

> That's a minor thing but 'Zzz' really sends the wrong signal to the sender: if you are not available, then you are sleeping (i.e. unproductive).

Working remotely, is that a bad thing? If you are unavailable due to deep coding or a need for a nap does it matter?

Ideally, only results should matter. But 'Zzz' somehow reinforces the default assumption that a remote worker will try to be paid for slacking off. Now, I am going back to bed.

I mean, the product itself is named Slack...

Yes, it's terrible. How can I pretend to be working with such a name...

I work at a 100% remote office. We don't use Slack, or really anything other than Google hangouts. It is pretty easy to just say "Got a sec?", as you would in person. Then type, call, share screens, whatever, when you both have a moment.

It may seem different on the surface, but it really is the exact same communication as you would have in person... you just need to ask. And much of the time, real-time responses aren't truly necessary... so you can just IM someone a question, and know they'll get back to you when they can.

I like hangouts because the chat is indexed for search within gmail. So I don't need to remember whether I was chatting or emailing about a topic.

Google Hangouts is the worst. You can't open a named room with the same people as another room (it auto-merges) and the window constantly resizes itself. Not to mention the complete lack of useful (and wasteful) addons and bots.

Yeah, this is why I still prefer IRC over Slack and most other team chat systems. I hear a lot of people suggest them because of missing messages with IRC, but I actually think the missing messages is a feature. A ping on IRC to someone that isn't there is a bit like walking by someone's office and noticing that they aren't there.

I don't want my phone to notify me immediately every time a team chat message goes through. Direct hangouts messages have a higher "weight" and are useful sometimes, too, though.

Basically, this is just a cultural problem that needs to be worked out. Sort of like the (usually) understood idea that you shouldn't disturb a person wearing headphones and working.

> a bit like walking by someone's office and noticing that they aren't there.

No, it's absolutely not like that. The use case for "not dropping messages" is that you send a message and know they received it. You don't have to remember it manually, you don't have to introduce another chat system just to asynchronously remember to resend messages later. The other guy can respond at their convenience. Dropping messages would make the application a critical failure for any serious business uses. There are lots of features to mute notifications per room or for time durations.

Yes, it is absolutely like that. My "presence" is when I am in the room (not marked away or afk or anything like that). My non-presence is when I walk away (or leave the "office" for the day).

Having multiple chat systems is ok, if they actually serve multiple purposes.

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