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Slack is the epicenter of all manner of communication problems where I work, and sadly, we have not yet figured out how to solve the problems. We have no remote employees, yet the 30 of us, who all sit right near each other, spend all day Slacking. I believe about 85% of messages are Direct Messages. It's extremely frustrating.

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This x 1000. I constantly remind my team to favor face to face communication where possible. We have peopl hipchat each other sometimes literally sitting across the desk from each other. It creates such a frustrating "i spend half my day in chat" culture i just cant imagine the productivity drain.

>to favor face to face communication where possible. We have peopl hipchat each other sometimes literally sitting across the desk from each other

I understand your preference for face-to-face but one reason some prefer text chat is to minimize the ambient noise level in the office so as to not disturb others.

For me, one problem with face-to-face (and voice calls) is I often end up having to take notes and transcribe what the person is saying to me. Instead, if you just send me a text chat or email, it saves me the step of being your secretary to type in what you just told me.

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