Tell HN: As a dev, Slack has ruined my life
However, it has taken a significant and largely unseen toll on my mental health.
I am not sure why, I'm still trying to figure it out, but I have made one key observation. And I'd welcome either confirmation or denial from this crowd if you've experienced the same.
For context, we have shifted largely to using Slack, video call, and email for communication. Slack is the biggest culprit in the whole mess. My biggest takeaway is that text is not lossless compression for communication. Or put another way, text doesn't capture the vocal inflection and nuances that communicating by voice does. And also, for some reason, I tend to interpret a written message in a much worse way than I do a message that is communicated verbally.
One message on its own is not a huge deal, but across the 100+ channels I belong to and the probably hundreds of messages that come my way in a day, it adds up to a lot of added psychological burden. I think email already had this drawback, but with slack because people are empowered to just fire away a message, less thought goes into it, the frequency goes up, and the psychological toll increases.
Does anyone feel the same?
Do you have any tips to deal with this?
Sometimes I think I'm a snowflake for thinking this way, and I've definitely had to learn to toughen up during this pandemic working a very stressful job at a FAANG. But it is one of the things I think has made the largest change, as far as a psychological toll goes.
Thanks for reading.
109 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadSome colleagues of mine have always just "batched" their messages, and have timeboxed reading/replying to slack messages on a schedule, just so they can focus.
I haven't tried this yet, as it feels rude, but that's the drawback of always online IM in a workplace.
1. Disconnect the community workspaces that you don't really need or rarely, if ever, participate in. You can always reconnect periodically to get caught up. 2. Leave channels that you never participate in or waste time - like joke and water cooler channels. 3. Mute channels that you rarely participate in, but don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by leaving. 4. Stay out of most conversations that aren't directly related to your work. 5. Use threads and encourage others to use threads so no one has to scroll through conversations that don't pertain to them. 6. Mark yourself as away when you need to be heads down. 7. (Maybe better) Close Slack when you need to be heads down. 8. Don't respond to channel communication immediately, unless something really requires your immediate attention. 9. Don't respond immediately to every DM, unless it's important.
Essentially, do self care and set reasonable boundaries.
An extra couple grand isn't worth the mental health blow of either 1) having to be visibly "online" or 2) going dark and wondering if that's the wrong move.
I don't like having to reply to threads just to show I'm still alive and kicking, without having anything of substance to communicate.
I love email. It's async and you know I'm online when I'm replying to your emails or sending you questions or sending calendar invites for screenshare.
No Slack = no qualms about working when I'm working and not when I'm not.
I don't have many tips, but I would give one piece of advice: don't bury your feelings because you think others would call you "too sensitive" or a "snowflake".
However, text communication online is definitely more negatively perceived than intended - there probably are some studies about this. And the volume of communication can be a bit distracting, especially when people expect that others will respond to instant messages instantly.
But all in all, things like Slack, Teams or Discord are definitely better than not having them to my mind, even if they are imperfect.
Aside from the downsides, i appreciate that you have everything said in the chat written down and searchable.
One tip: don't install slack on your phone unless you're on call. I would check my work slack habitually and it wouldn't lead to good engagement. Read the messages when you're at your desk and you can compose a thoughtful reply.
Another tip: slack lets you organize channels into groups, use that feature heavily. I had groups for: org, sev (incident specific channels), projects etc. You can then hide them so you only engage with the unreads when you have the time to.
We’re only in 100 channels because there are deeper issues with how information moves around the organization.
Those problems may or may not be solvable, but if you can create proper interfaces for information you should be able to leave all the excess channels.
The best way I've found to deal with this is try to avoid talking about anything other than pure code outside of Zoom calls.
But also, note that it's a mistake to call people for 1:1 meetings to discuss something. That's the way to madness.
For me, it is just email, but with 100x (literally) less internal spam and bot traffic.
You'd be amazed how little Slack bothers a team once you establish that such behavior is normal and expected.
Work doesn’t happen in Slack.
Something I started doing with $JOB-1 was to write a “Working with rufius” document and share it with the broader org (in slack profile or intranet profile). One of the things I provide is an SLA on responding to communication. It roughly looks like:
- phone call - synchronous
- email - if I am directly on to-line, response by end of next business day
- slack/teams - hours to never
I basically only answer slack if I’m paying attention to it for whatever reason. My typical work schedule has me open it 3 times a day - once in the morning, once after lunch, and once about 30 mins before I end my work day.
The other thing I note is I don’t make decisions in slack. Decisions happen in documents or worst case, email. Something durable.
That “Working with” doc has done wonders for setting expectations with coworkers. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from coworkers as well that they appreciate it and have created their own.
My "working with" would be almost the exact opposite of what you list (I like that idea though!). I tell people emails may get checked daily at best. We don't have a phone culture, we use huddles or video calls for synchronous conversations, but they do suffer from lack of documentation or note sometimes.
Yup I see the issue.
1. Unplug from slack for 20-30 minute intervals (set a timer) and get some work done.
2. Go back to the office (minimum 2-3 days a week). Get some face to face conversation.
3. In your free time away from the "office" join a charitable organization. Church, Food Bank, Homeless Shelter, Lions, Kiwannas, etc...
4. When you relax. Go out to eat, a football or basketball game, Mall (remember those?), hiking in the woods, walk in the park, etc...
Have Fun!
There doesn't seem to be many responses that address this part of what you wrote, so I hope this reaches you well. Let me try to rephrase it to see if I'm understanding it. It's that you feel like the absence of vocal inflection and non-verbal cues lead you to interpreting Slack messages in a more negative light than you feel you should be? And this is adding up, yes?
If I'm in the ballpark, I might suggest chatting with a therapist. You sound like you've identified the distal cause, but understanding the root of the issue is going to be instrumental to identifying the necessary changes to get you on the right track. While I believe the responses you have received are well-intentioned, it's my belief that you'll likely make great strides by talking with someone who can engage you with real conversation and have a back and forth and cooperative approach to figuring this out.
I hope that no matter the path you follow, you end up working it out. It sounds like it's impacting your life in a pretty big way. Take care
I've observed others have difficulty adjusting to WFH for the same reason; they have a hard time assuming the best intentions of their coworkers when only ever dealing with them asynchronously. Therapy, or at least mentally acknowledging where the disconnect is, could make a huge difference I think.
One way to test this is to just not respond to a slack message for say 5mins, then 10mins, then an hour, then say half a day and then a day. You will train the folks to ping you less and you will learn that nobody cares if you respond. And the benefit will be that you trained them to go elsewhere.
If anyone asks, say you were focused on a specific task (which you probably are) and muted slack or something. Remember your job is to produce dev stuff and not mediate slack or serve as an information conduit for folks. Those interactions should take place in a meeting.
Most likely your anxiety will increase at each interval but then dissipate when no negative consequences arrive. You then increase your tolerance and so forth.
People often forget to use basic manners and niceties online. Or they leave them out intentionally because it seems superfluous, or because they want to mimic the tone they see.
But this has a cost. It's human nature to want to be acknowledged, and to be surrounded by kindness rather than coldness.
It's amazing how far a simple gesture like a "thanks" or a "nice job" can go.
My only advice would be to pay attention to your own communication style. You may be able to influence others by communicating in the same way that you appreciate.
Therapy is worthwhile.
Originally the inspiration came from a consultant I worked with pre-pandemic who was very liberal with emoji. At first I wasn’t a fan but after a while he wore me down
It’s a simply way to add that missing tone back into a non-verbal message and given the changes in work environment that we’ve all been through, plus a younger generation coming through, emoji usage is definitely “professional” enough for the workplace.
I agree with the parent that speaking to a professional is probably a good idea, but you could also try to jazz up your comms. It can be fun!
"I have no idea what I'm doing... :D"
and
"I have no idea what I'm doing... :("
is a large one, and having that to communicate it is quite handy.
THAT SAID, to @ccakes -- while I agree with your statement, it unfortunately doesn't help the OP. They specifically said that they have a problem with INTERPRETING comments in the worst possible light. The solution for that will not be to use more emojis themselves -- they would need their coworkers to do so.
I always use conventional comments (https://conventionalcomments.org) because of a similar issue, and whenever I join a new team, I find other people start doing it too, without even explicitly pushing it.
Another thing to try to get mgmt to set up slack etiquette.
Another thing to do is to train your colleagues by only reinforcing positive behavior and ignoring things they can figure out on their own.
Honestly a slack bot gpt-3 thing that learns from a background of corp docs isn't a bad idea. Basically Anton from SV.
First, I don't have very good verbal skills and second, I find certain contorted forms of language to communicate simple things disingenuous. So I'd rather say "please do X" instead of "oh there is no rush, I wanted to just give you a friendly nudge to blah blah and then circle back blah blah". It all sounds passive aggressive in the latter form IMO.
That said, you want to meet the people you talk to over a video call or even better in person in order to establish a good understanding and trust. Overall written format has a much lower bandwidth than the verbal communication. gifs and emojis do help a little communicate the tone though.
[0] https://snat-s.github.io/pages/blog/digital_anxiety.html
One important thing to realize is that you are ultimately working with humans. There isn't and never will be magical tool that will shield you from this.
You can either establish clear boundaries acceptable for both sides and configure notifications accordingly or change your group of humans to another, which will accept your pattern of communication.
If neither is possible, then yes - it's your problem not theirs or the tool's.