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Comment by elwesties | Hacker News Reader

I suspect much of the hate for slack is from two types of people. Those who are too young to know the tyranny of email and those who used to ignore their email. As to why it’s so popular, it was the first good business chat solution that went mainstream. And I still haven’t seen another that matches it’s quality

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Why is email more of a tyranny than Slack (or any chat app)? I'd say it's less of a tyranny, because there's less of an expectation of real-time response.

Slack prevents deep work.

I respond to e-mails 2-4 times a day during task transitions. The sender does not anticipate an immediate response so the 1-2 hours delay is OK.

Compare this to Slack which requires constant monitoring where senders anticipate an immediate response. Not to mention the increase in casual "water cooler" conversations.

The find the same people that recommend Slack are the same people that recommend 3-hour meetings. It's procrastination veiled as productivity.

If you think that Slack requires constant monitoring then I think you are using it wrong. I believe there is zero difference in the reply expectations of Slack and email. As per my initial comment, you are someone who doesn't check email and that's ok, in my engineering manager role I receive over 200 emails a day. Most of these could be 3 - 10 word slack messages but they arrive in my inbox with the same urgency as every other message requiring the same level of triage as a very important contract.

I check (and respond to) e-mails multiple times a day. I said that in the comment you're replying to. Your replies make it clear that you do not have experience at scale. Replying to e-mails in 2-3 hours is not "someone who doesn't check email" and receiving 200+ e-mails where most could "be 3 - 10 work slack messages" is not effective nor efficient leadership.

This seems more a problem with the culture. Where I've worked, messaging and emails are used for non-urgent, handle this when you're available type notices. If something was urgent, we walk up to their desk and tell them. Slack actually cuts down on desk-related interruptions; we'd literally just Slack each other even though we're sitting across.

Water cooler conversations are a kind of stress dissipation response for some people. It's great for some, bad for others. Slack means that it stays in a channel instead of at the water cooler when all you want is a drink, not a chat.

Most software development companies of any size, even small companies, have some mixture of people in office, working from home, remote workers, separate offices etc.

I disable Slack notifications, and approach the replies just like I do with email.

The only exception are meetings and escalations when something is on fire.

Is there a benefit to using Slack and e-mail if there's no distinction in the use case? Perhaps that's where I'm differing from others here.

We are a smallish B2B SAAS company where new clients (whales) can add 5% to our revenue and enough load to our servers to need to monitor and add resources.

The first few weeks before and after a major go live, especially if there is new functionality, management will expect their team leads/single responsible individuals to respond immediately. Even if they don’t say it. The CxO’s, sales, and implementations folks will send you an email then immediately send you a Teams message asking you did you get the email and if they don’t hear from you, call you on Teams.

On the other hand, most days if it isn’t a major client issue, it’s mostly like you said, there isn’t a real expectation of an immediate response.

I don't use slack but what 's wrong with email? Slow , long form responses is a feature, not a bug in our lines of business. Maybe customer service people do need an instant messengers, but the rest?

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