Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
If you haven't heard of Slack, consider yourself lucky. First released in 2013, Slack describes itself as"a collaboration hub for work, no matter what work you do." Put more simply, it's a messaging platform, in the same way text or email are messaging platforms.
However, unlike other modes of communication, Slack is excruciatingly painful to use. Their motto "Where work happens" is laughably misleading, as the structure of their product almost guarantees that work will not happen, or at least not happen efficiently.
Already inundated by notifications, voicemails, texts, emails, and messages, we should be more choosy when it comes to adopting a new technology. Even though Slack boasts that they have over 10 million daily active users, and that 65 Fortune 100 companies use their services, I would argue that it's not worth the hassle.
Workspaces, Channels, and Threads...But Why?
Suppose that both your company and your volunteer group use Slack. First of all, my condolences. That means you will be a member of one workspace called "company" and another called "volunteering."
Within each workspace are "channels." More specifically, your "company" workspace may have different "channels," one called "general" that includes everyone at your company, where general announcements about all-hands meetings are posted, and one called "engineering" that only includes the engineers.
To complicate matters further, Slack also has a feature called "Threads." Remember the "engineering" channel in the "company" workspace? Suppose Susan and Jen are collaborating on a project. If Susan asks a question in the "engineering" channel instead of direct messaging Jen, Jen could start a thread to respond to Susan. Yes, that scenario confuses even me. The "thread" is still within the "engineering" channel, viewable to all those in the channel, but it is displayed as its own packaged unit.
If the complexity of workspaces, channels, and threads solved some issue not addressed by other platforms, I might support it, but Gmail allows for both small- and large-scale team communication, with mailing lists, filters for specific messages, and the CC capability to loop someone in to a conversation.
Missed Communications
I am a big proponent of "Inbox Zero," keeping your email inbox as close to empty as possible. Right when an email comes in, I get a notification, and if I can handle it on the spot, I do. This is made especially easy, because I get notifications on both my phone and laptop about these messages.
Slack is a little different. First of all, full disclosure: I do not have the app on my phone, but I do have the notifications turned on for the Slack app on my laptop. The problem is that notifications do not always appear, so I often have to open the app to ensure I haven't missed an important update.
If someone confirms a meeting time by reacting to a message with the thumbs-up emoji, I might not get a notification about this confirmation and assume the meeting isn't on.
There are also times when the creation of a thread--discussed earlier--from one of my messages does not result in notifications being pushed to me.
All of this uncertainty is resolved by Gmail, which boasts easy integration with Google Calendar and quick responses in the form of recommended "Smart Replies."
Should We Ever Cut them Slack?
In 2017, Fast Company published the article "Here’s When You Should Use Email Instead Of Slack." Under the headline "WHEN IS BEST FOR SLACK?," they detail two scenarios: quick questions and group brainstorms, explaining that a reply-all to a group email can lead to an endless stream of replies and notifications.
With the existing features in Gmail, though, I would say email is perfectly suited for both of these use cases. Smart Reply, mentioned above, can be deployed for quick responses to simple questions. As for group brainstorms, if you want to avoid being inundated by emails, you can make use of the filtering feature in email to sort emails as they come in. If you're curious about filtering, you can read more about it here.
The ideal messaging platform should fade into the background, making communication seamless when face-to-face discussion is not possible because of conflicting schedules or distance between individuals. Slack, with its confusing, cluttered setup and the seemingly random decisions of which notifications to push to users, is simply not seamless. Slack says that they "move work forward" and serve as a place for team decision-making. Well, I think I've made my decision. It's time to move on from Slack.