<story><title>Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-26/slack-and-atlassian-team-up-to-take-on-microsoft-in-chat-software</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>munificent</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re confusing communication throughput with latency.&lt;p&gt;I also don&amp;#x27;t like using chat at work. It&amp;#x27;s not because I want less &lt;i&gt;interaction&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s because I want less &lt;i&gt;interruption&lt;/i&gt;. Email has a norm of asynchrony where I can respond to email when I reach a good point in my current task. With chat, the other party is presumed to be sitting staring at the screen waiting for my reply, so I have to drop what I&amp;#x27;m doing to respond.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the latter is good for my overall productivity.</text></item><item><author>eganist</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re in the mute-everything-non-critical class, which is a good practice regardless of the client. If they really need you, they&amp;#x27;ll ring&amp;#x2F;call&amp;#x2F;DM. Otherwise, you can check it whenever you&amp;#x27;re ready.</text></item><item><author>emodendroket</author><text>It seems he is in a different camp, specifically the one where you aren&amp;#x27;t on a chat application all day</text></item><item><author>mmanfrin</author><text>There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. You fall in to the former, and I would bet that a lot of people here fall in to the former.&lt;p&gt;However, many people fall in to the latter, and Slack handily beats the competition there. There is also an element of having nice and polished features baked in that appeals to many people. Want it on your phone? There&amp;#x27;s an app. Want to search? Baked in. Want convenient chat bots? Click a button.&lt;p&gt;To be sure, all these things are possible in IRC and other lo-fi chat protocols, but getting them set up is &lt;i&gt;easy&lt;/i&gt; on Slack. I see this as similar to the argument of Linux vs. OSX. Linux can do practically anything OSX can, but it requires tweaking and setting up. It&amp;#x27;s a battle of pick-and-choose vs having it all baked in.</text></item><item><author>ironjunkie</author><text>When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago.&lt;p&gt;This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again.&lt;p&gt;Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it is more disruptive than helpful. It fosters a &amp;quot;Always on&amp;quot; culture, where irrelevant chats are exchanged publicly to advertise how much work is being done. If you shut down Slack and appear as Offline people assume you are not working.&lt;p&gt;It also seems to me that now that Slack became the norm for communication, I almost don&amp;#x27;t receive well written emails with well-argued technical discussions anymore. Everything is now a &amp;quot;Chat&amp;quot; that dilutes the technical discussion because it needs to be responded &amp;quot;directly&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I would expect 2018 to be the year where people start questioning the utility of &amp;quot;Slack everywhere&amp;quot; and not blindly jump on the Slack bandwagon because that&amp;#x27;s what great startups do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karmelapple</author><text>I have never expected that the other party is sitting and staring at the screen in any Slack or chat I’ve used. An @mention will change the expectation of interrupting or not, but as someone who has used various chat programs for 24 years of my life, this ha never been an expectation I’ve had, nor one I’ve seen too frequently expressed.&lt;p&gt;What do you think has caused that expectation in your mind? Do you wish that for the people you’re chatting with? Have you worked with people who do expect that? Honestly curious.&lt;p&gt;I wonder how my growing up with it, and in chat rooms with mostly tech-savvy folks, has affected my use and expectations of it, too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-26/slack-and-atlassian-team-up-to-take-on-microsoft-in-chat-software</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>munificent</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re confusing communication throughput with latency.&lt;p&gt;I also don&amp;#x27;t like using chat at work. It&amp;#x27;s not because I want less &lt;i&gt;interaction&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s because I want less &lt;i&gt;interruption&lt;/i&gt;. Email has a norm of asynchrony where I can respond to email when I reach a good point in my current task. With chat, the other party is presumed to be sitting staring at the screen waiting for my reply, so I have to drop what I&amp;#x27;m doing to respond.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the latter is good for my overall productivity.</text></item><item><author>eganist</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re in the mute-everything-non-critical class, which is a good practice regardless of the client. If they really need you, they&amp;#x27;ll ring&amp;#x2F;call&amp;#x2F;DM. Otherwise, you can check it whenever you&amp;#x27;re ready.</text></item><item><author>emodendroket</author><text>It seems he is in a different camp, specifically the one where you aren&amp;#x27;t on a chat application all day</text></item><item><author>mmanfrin</author><text>There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. You fall in to the former, and I would bet that a lot of people here fall in to the former.&lt;p&gt;However, many people fall in to the latter, and Slack handily beats the competition there. There is also an element of having nice and polished features baked in that appeals to many people. Want it on your phone? There&amp;#x27;s an app. Want to search? Baked in. Want convenient chat bots? Click a button.&lt;p&gt;To be sure, all these things are possible in IRC and other lo-fi chat protocols, but getting them set up is &lt;i&gt;easy&lt;/i&gt; on Slack. I see this as similar to the argument of Linux vs. OSX. Linux can do practically anything OSX can, but it requires tweaking and setting up. It&amp;#x27;s a battle of pick-and-choose vs having it all baked in.</text></item><item><author>ironjunkie</author><text>When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago.&lt;p&gt;This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again.&lt;p&gt;Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it is more disruptive than helpful. It fosters a &amp;quot;Always on&amp;quot; culture, where irrelevant chats are exchanged publicly to advertise how much work is being done. If you shut down Slack and appear as Offline people assume you are not working.&lt;p&gt;It also seems to me that now that Slack became the norm for communication, I almost don&amp;#x27;t receive well written emails with well-argued technical discussions anymore. Everything is now a &amp;quot;Chat&amp;quot; that dilutes the technical discussion because it needs to be responded &amp;quot;directly&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I would expect 2018 to be the year where people start questioning the utility of &amp;quot;Slack everywhere&amp;quot; and not blindly jump on the Slack bandwagon because that&amp;#x27;s what great startups do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Benjamin_Dobell</author><text>I find clients tend to call to ask &amp;quot;a quick question&amp;quot;, this is very disruptive. My experience is if they can&amp;#x27;t be bothered putting it in writing, then it&amp;#x27;s probably not very important.</text></comment>