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Comment by tachyoff | Hacker News Reader

Which usability features are they? The 3 GB of RAM usage, the battery-draining, or the culture of “always-on” availability and interruptions?

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Your failure to set your coworker's expectations for your availability or the failures of organizational culture being projected onto the messaging tool are not the fault of the messaging tool.

This ignores the fact that if you don’t respond to people contacting you you’ll get fired. As a salary you have no voice.

The market simply optimizes for whatever is easiest for a ceo to install and maintain.

How is this Slack's fault, again? Or is the argument that messaging systems should be hard to install so they aren't misused?

Seriously, what even is this comment chain getting at? If you work somewhere where always-on is a hard requirement, it doesn't matter what messaging system is used. Any place that would fire you for muting notifications would just as easily fire you for turning off email notifications.

In short: Let's stop blaming the damn tool for something that is the fault of the humans using it.

I’m blaming both: I’m blaming the humans who expect it, and the billion-dollar blob of JavaScript that enables it to be so.

Probably because Slack makes it easier to establish an "always-on" culture.

Literally any other instant messaging program would have the same effect if the culture is toxic enough to allow it.

Slack is no different other than name recognition and size.

Other instant messenger are primarly (yes, some companies probably use Whatsapp and co for work stuff) for family and friends. "always-on" is different here.

Slack is focused on business.

I hate Slack too but the same could have been said for Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, or AIM...

In countries that have actual work laws that wouldn't happen so easily.

Not only do we shape our tools, but our tools also absolutely shape us.

Your corporate culture shapes use of the tool a lot more than the design of the tool, especially when that tool's essential components are identical across the entire set of competitors.

Slack doesn't have some voodoo set of features that make it more problematic than Hipchat or Teams or Stride or Mattermost or (nn programs elided).

If your org sucks, your communication within that org will suck too. Let's not burn down the concept of instant messaging in the name of sucky orgs.

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