Hacker News Reader

Comment by pgm8705 | Hacker News Reader

Similar thing with comments whenever a Slack related article ends up on HN. "I don't understand how a shitty IRC clone is worth billions of dollars!" or "Why would anyone use Slack when Matrix is free!" I often wonder if these folks haven't even bothered to actually use the software and realize how much more it does beyond sending messages back and forth and/or how much detail and thought goes into making it usable for the masses, not just software engineers.

View on HN

I think competency in the domain reduces friction, and without reflection folks generally don't seem to realize that their experiences are usually specialized. So yeah, I think it's a combo of not trying the new thing (because they already have a comfy work flow) and not honestly assessing how the knowledge they take for granted changes their experience. Not that it's that easy of course.

> these folks haven't even bothered to actually use the software and realize how much more it does beyond sending messages back and forth

Are you saying that sending messages back and forth involves a lot more complexity that you don't see or that Slack does a lot more than just messages?

That's kinda a "gotcha" question, because it's not clear what your definitions are. For example, is authentication (single sign-on, etc.) part of what you describe as "sending messages back and forth"? Are files, screen sharing, video calls, etc. still "just messages"?

I didn't intend it to be a gotcha question.

> Are files, screen sharing, video calls, etc. still "just messages"?

I wouldn't think any of those as messages that a basic message-only client would have.

I guess that's the distinction I was after - was the person I replied to talking about all the complexity of a basic message-only client, or were they talking about the complexity of all the stuff beyond that.

I suspect most people in the "Slack is a just a pretty IRC," are discounting the non-text-messaging features. Beyond both the items already mentioned and the ease of adoption, the major benefit to slack is the integration ecosystem.

SlackOps is a really big thing. Making slack the glue across variety of operational systems to coordinate the activity of a team and allowing that team to communicate about it, provides a ton of value. And importantly, allowing this to happen organically with non-IT staff creating their own workflows (in the way that people invent alls sorts of min-apps in spreadsheets) is pretty powerful.

We never used it for anything except messages. Now we're on Teams.

I'd be curious how many users were like us - messages only?

It's not a shitty irc clone, it has a lot of useful features (and some not so useful, looking at you threads).

Now the client on the other hand...

You don't like threads? I find them useful at times, that's part of what I like about Slack, it has enough potential for customization that you can bend it to your culture. For example, you can use bots that suit your workflows, use threads or not use them, use emoji reactions or not use them, use private threads or small channels, or always large channels..

> You don't like threads?

I would love them if it was actually noticeable when someone else creates a thread to which i'm supposed to contribute...

At my workplace, we tag people.

So no voluntary contributions from people you didn't ask ;)

Not exactly I mean people still see the thread root, just like if you didn’t use a thread it would see the message, So if the thread is interesting you look at it

I never see those. They get lost in the main channel noise. They should get pinned somewhere obvious to not get lost with the main chat scrolling.

Then you may not be using threads properly — in a fully threaded channel there is no way to get lost, since there isn’t really much scrolling to do. You just need to be diligent that there can’t be lots of messages between threads.

What, have a "main thread" for stuff concerning everyone/whoever is able to contribute?

No. It's over complicated. They need a better solution.

Perhaps you only use Slack as a followup to meetings/todo items. We use it for all communication and the workflow is about opposite: someone raises an issue, someone or everyone discusses it, someone takes ownership and it turns into their TODO item.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com