[vhab]

> They managed to disturb millions of worker to an "attention driven" work culture in which everything needs to always be synchronous and immediate.

I see where you're coming from. But anecdote time.

The immediate communication fixed something for us which would previously be a more disruptive tap on the shoulder, or alternatively an only once a day processed e-mail. Slack gave our devs time to finish their thought, write out that line of code, before tabbing to Slack to see what's up.

Because you see, I love my team, but they're not perfect. Just like the vast majority of people they're imperfect beings working with imperfect information. And in order to get them to output quality code (as in, does what it needs to do, bug free, without incorrect assumptions about data) they need to communicate to each other and me. We can't wait until a PR to catch they didn't fully understand these data models setup by another guy. Nor can we wait until a PR to realize someone took the wrong approach trying to fix a problem.

Someone getting disrupted might mean someone else can progress with their task. What I'm trying to get at, I need my team to communicate and communicate often. We have plenty of issues, just like any team, but most of them come from the lack of communication. Slack, or any other similar platform allowed to strike somewhat of a happy medium where the barrier to communicate isn't too high nor too low. It's less formal and faster than an email. And keeps a better log than an in-person conversation would.

Added bonus, it also helps us to have a more liberal 'work from home' policy.

[anilakar]

What previously was a tap on the shoulder is now a message and a tap on the shoulder after three minutes if there is no reply.

Slack has become the worst possible amalgamation of email and telephone. When previously minor things were discussed asynchronously over mail, only major and immediate issues warranted a phone call. Now all kinds of noncritical correspondence gets pushed to an instant messenger application, where every issue has to be paid attention to immediately.

[ubercow13]

Do people really do that? Did the same ones not tap on shoulder a short while after sending an email too?

[mulmen]

None of this is unique to Slack, it's just a consequence of using a chat app, or email.

The only thing that allows you to have a liberal work from home policy is a healthy company/team/corporate culture.