Daniel Saner
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Context switching in Slack is awful. Teams and channels are so unflexible that we have to set up multiple teams for a single project. One for the core development team, one for the UI developers and a select few main developers who work with them, one that includes some customers. Since there’s not even anything as a simple multi-recipient direct message, I constantly have to consider which team I need to sign into to post this message or that question, and of course everybody gets it wrong several times a day. It’s like creating and signing up to a new Facebook everytime you want to talk to a different group of contacts.

What is the hype about? I’ve seen practically all of Slack’s features, and many more, done at least as well on different IM networks in the 90s. And that included fast searching and drill-down of full logs. The Slack clients have a nice skin, but under the hood, it might be the most poorly developed IM solution I’ve used in 25 years. And that’s saying something, considering I’ve been forced to use Skype for many of those years. It makes my work more complicated instead of simpler, no other system makes me waste so much time into find what I’m looking for, or find the correct way to say what I’m trying to say. Luckily, I think I’ll be in good company when it gets to the point of voting against adding Slack to our workflow. For some reason, I read all the good things about Slack on websites and blogs, but don’t hear a lot of positive about it when talking to people in real-world.

    Daniel Saner

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