I’m not dogmatically opposed to chat, or helping people, or anything like that, and I’ve seen much the same dynamic at play. My problem is more with the culture that arises when conversations move from email to Slack, when interrupting people becomes the preferred mechanism over RTFM, and when I can’t do a goddamn thing without a chat app pinging me because someone @here’d a channel I’m in with something I can’t help with.
Basically, I miss long-form written communication. Slack and PowerPoint are tools that destroy that.
>> Basically, I miss long-form written communication. Slack and PowerPoint are tools that destroy that.
Only if your business allows them to be. We use Slack with specific reasons on how it should be used, with Basecamp as the documentation/project management layer. Slack is not meant to be abused like it is in the article, and the fact that people do it like that isn't a fault of the tool.
That sounds really nice from an idealistic perspective, and I guess Slack's business model isn't as dependent on them focusing on "engagement" over value added, but I still worry.
The problem with Slack and PowerPoint is that they're cheap and easy and you don't necessarily have an incentive to step up from there to full written literacy.
There is nothing idealistic about it. We use them like that, all the time. It works. It isn't hard. You just instruct your managers that this is how you are going to use it, and you are judged in reviews how well you manage people and projects. If you screw it up enough, you are fired.
You treat documentation and conversation like anything else in the company - not some esoteric thing that gets in the way / assists work. The documentation itself should be subject to performance review, and in our company, it is.
We get what we incentivize. Unsurprisingly, we have good documentation and good communication throughout.
You may have tried this / it may not help. We have dedicated help channels - a company-wide 'help' (for anything, but normally related to technical issues or looking for general advice on a topic where you don't know who could help), and product / team-specific help channels. There's no need to @here those channels, because there's already the intermediate-level flag of "this channel has new messages, meaning someone needs help" without going all all the way to "notify everyone".
There are enough people around that someone will take a look at the channel in the near future, and they can either answer or point you to a good person to ask, at which point you're back to non-slack-specific style comms i.e. "I want to contact person X, I can either interupt them or send them some async comms".
I probably get 1 or 0 notifications a day from channels as opposed to DMs - there's just no need to @here if you have specific channels for certain types of request.
> when interrupting people becomes the preferred mechanism over RTFM
Oh god, this is the bane of my existence. Slack, skype, even in-person. Some people will never read the docs. They will seek out people who "know" and disturb them. Earlier they would fire off an email. Now I'll get a message at 2am when I just want to get this last commit in and go to sleep.
Basically, I miss long-form written communication. Slack and PowerPoint are tools that destroy that.