Ask HN: Do you slack comments make people upset? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you slack comments make people upset?

2 pointswuming5 comments

Hi folks. Recently I've had a minor issue where occasionally a comment I make in Slack will ruffle some feathers. From my point of view I'm just being direct, for example: asking for clarity about a process or pointing out a comms failure. But sometimes, apparently, other things are being read into my comments, like I'm accusing a team or a developer of a process failure, and I end up making people upset.

The solution to this is easy: try to add more context/tone hints to my comments if I have to make them, or just talk to my manager first. But I am curious, is anyone else having this problem?

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It is hard to express tone through text, even between people who know each other well. Situations worsen depressingly quickly, it's too easy to feel offended.

From experience, I refrain from giving any negative feedback through Slack and go speak face to face. I also watch out for any misunderstanding lasting longer than a few minutes, even if it's between others people.

Hedonic index increased tremendously at work in a few weeks when co-workers started doing the same.

Doesn't work for immigrants -- language (or is it cultural?) barrier, even a tiny one, makes face-to-face feedback to be accepted way too negatively, because those subtle tone hints are really hard to master.

I think writing would be worse, especially in case of communication issues, since it would hide the misunderstanding.

In that case I would start by explaining very clearly that is the intensity of the words to be used, whether they express low/medium/high scale. And I would also explain even more clearly what's the level of intensity for me, so that the person understands what is at stake. In fact, I do it even with native speakers, clarity is godsend.

That really depends on the other person. The more STEM-y they are, the easier it is for them to abstract off personalities and focus on content.

The problem is never the communication medium. More often than not the problem is the way a person chooses to communicate.

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