The Future of Communication Technology: Slack’s Rachael Nazzaro On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up How We Connect and Communicate With Each Other

You belong here. — To be fair, everyone did tell me that. But I needed to believe it. Tech is such a fast-paced, modern, and exciting industry to be working in. Coming from a beige cubicle in an extremely traditional workforce, feeling like I deserved to work at a company like Slack was a hard pill to swallow, despite how happy I was to have been hired. It took me a long time to acclimate to this understanding, but I found my way through the support of my peers, the work I’ve learned to do, and the leaders who make us feel like we are a part of something bigger.

The telephone totally revolutionized the way we could communicate with people all over the world. But then came email and took it to the next level. And then came text messaging. And then came video calls. And so on…What’s next? What’s just around the corner?

In this interview series, called ‘The Future Of Communication Technology’ we are interviewing leaders of tech or telecom companies who are helping to develop emerging communication technologies and the next generation of how we communicate and connect with each other.

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Rachael Nazzaro. Rachael Nazzaro is a Solutions Engineer at Slack, where she helps design custom solutions and business impact for her customers. Before starting as a Solutions Engineer, Rachael helped small businesses understand how to best leverage Slack on the Customer Experience team. She’s passionate about learning from her customers and showcasing the potential Slack presents to any line of business — big or small.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I’m a Solutions Engineer working at Slack from home in the Boston area with my wife, two dogs, and cat. I grew up with a parent in the military, so as you can imagine, I’m pretty thrilled to have a designated place to call home. I studied Anthropology at the University of South Carolina and graduated in 2011 with a lot of debt. I’ve worked my way up from the bottom — data entry, reviewing expense reports, answering the phones for a national customer support hotline, banking, teaching kids, telling people not to run at the City Museum in St. Louis, selling food to hotel chains and movie theaters — you name it! I landed my first job in tech in 2019 as a Customer Experience Agent at Slack, and it changed my entire life.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I’m desperately trying to think of something else, but honestly, the most “interesting” thing that’s happened to me since I began my career was navigating the pandemic. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I never stopped and thought once “Hmm, I wonder if I’ll live during a global pandemic?” I distinctly remember sitting at my desk in the Customer Experience alcove in the Denver Slack office and feeling a sense of panic — that this disease so new and far away was making its way closer to us. That same week, the shutdowns began. I never stepped foot in the office again. Navigating both my personal life and career during this time taught me the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn to date. The central of those is: I have no control of anything, anywhere in my life. The whole world was feeling that. I was uniquely positioned and privileged enough to work at a company that took care of its employees in a way that allowed them to come to work when they were ready to help solve a new global problem: How do we keep working? Working in Customer Experience at that time was both a challenging and inspiring experience. People from all over the world were learning how to use this tool called Slack that they heard about through the grapevine. Our team of seven or so had been offering consults to customers on a very small scale leading up to that moment, but once the pandemic hit, we took 1,500 live consult calls in just a few months, a service we didn’t even offer before the pandemic began. That was the scrappiest moment of my career, but I’m so proud of the way we handled it and the difference we made for workers around the world.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite life lesson quote, as overused as it is, will always be “this too shall pass.” My grandfather said this so often it became a common phrase for my extended family. I had a really beautiful relationship with my grandpa as a child. He’s a person with whom I have some of the fondest, richest memories: Watching birds with him, sitting in his basement office as he used a ham radio to communicate across the world, and jumping out of laundry baskets to spook him. As I was growing up, I always thought “this too shall pass” meant those hard moments will ultimately dissipate, and you’ll be able to move on. As a kid growing up with the privileges I did, my life revolved around a certain level of happiness, so I never paused to think about savoring the good moments. As I’ve gotten older and come to terms with the more challenging aspects of being a human, I’ve realized our experiences can be taken for granted. My grandfather’s simple words are now a gentle reminder that even the good times will pass too. It’s worth slowing down and enjoying them while you can be present with them.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are so many people who have helped me along the way, and I’m sure many more will in the years to come. From my mom, who supported me through some of the hardest parts of my life, to the guy who made this all possible by hiring me despite my talking far too fast in our interview: Jonny Fenton. But most of all, my wife Jen, who also works at Slack. She’s the person who told me about “this cool new tech company in Denver.” She supported me through creating a first-class application and, despite her sound sensitivity, encouraged me to scream into a pillow to get my nerves out pre-interview. She’s been by my side through all of the biggest changes in my life, and I feel incredibly grateful that my desk is right next to hers in our home office. Ultimately, I hope to give to others the amount of love and guidance that I have received throughout my career.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

As corny as it sounds, all I want to do with my time here is help people. Working in tech doesn’t sound like a breeding ground for that kind of sentimentality, but I feel incredibly fortunate to have been hired by a company in a little bubble of the universe that truly wants the same. Yes, I help people understand how to leverage a productivity platform 40 hours a week. But do you know what this platform can do? Have you seen the way a channel dedicated to people’s dogs can make someone laugh for the first time during a tough day? A place where a new hire can meet and make friends with their colleagues across the world — and those friends fly thousands of miles to come to their wedding even though they haven’t met them in person yet? Have you seen the sheer level of explosive pinging and emoji-slinging that happens when a teammate achieves a goal? In addition to the seemingly countless amounts of productivity gains and business momentum that is generated in this little tool, Slack brings people together to be the best versions of themselves. A place where the barriers of the digital world feel just a little thinner. If I can help people learn how to use this tool and feel confident in their approach to it, I think that creates a pretty neat rippling effect of good.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about the cutting-edge communication tech that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

At Slack, we’re revolutionizing the way people work. It’s our mission to make work simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. In addition to creating the first channel-based communication platform that allows people to work with their colleagues in a transparent, searchable, and interactive platform, we’re releasing a lot of exciting new updates on our upcoming roadmap. We’re looking forward to releasing canvas, a live document that lives in your channels and DMs, and Slack’s new platform (now available to developers in open beta), which is the new and improved foundation for Slack that’s going to blow the socks off of new and seasoned users alike. Ultimately, all of these shiny words point to one thing: Work should be productive and truly leverage all of the amazing people who work at your company. Slack helps people by allowing them to work together in a platform that was made for collaboration in real-time — in the office, at home, or even while walking your dog. Did I mention that there are tons of emojis too?

How do you think this might change the world?

I can tell you how it changed my world: I never used Slack before I got hired at Slack. I sent emails. Sometimes I got responses back. Sometimes I emailed the wrong person. Sometimes someone CC’d the entire company about their upcoming vet appointment. It truly wasn’t uncommon for me to perch my head over my beige cubicle in a dead quiet office and whisper-ask my colleague if they knew who I should speak with to solve a problem. Turns out, that person wasn’t the right person, but the 10th person I asked was. Maybe I’m working in email, and there’s a lull in activity. I head over to my Outlook Calendar, and 57 minutes later I’ve finished reading about how deep the ocean is on Wikipedia. If you have ever been this person, Slack will change your world. It will change the world.

Slack lets people sign into one platform first thing in the morning, watch a company announcement from the CEO in a vivid clip, and react to it with a series of emojis that reflect how they feel. They check channels that their teams are working in and immediately get all the updates their colleagues achieved while they were offline. When you’re stuck and don’t know who to ask, head to a #help channel or search “onboarding” and see a list of all the people at your organization who specialize in onboarding tasks with pictures, desk locations, and their direct reports. Get pinged on Slack on behalf of your calendar and join a video huddle without having to navigate away. These are the basics of Slack, and they changed my life on day one. And there’s so much more you can do.

For example, Expedia Group partners with Slack to build a digital-first culture that amplifies the diverse voices of its employees. Capital One uses Slack to drive automation and promote a culture of innovation that is key to their mission of reimagining the banking industry. Etsy relies on Slack to scale their customer experience organization. The possibilities of how to hack Slack to help people be more productive across industries and lines of business is endless.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I had to think long and hard about this question. Frankly, as a “Black Mirror” fan, the only plausible thing I could see happening — for those who use Slack in purely remote companies — would be that Slack allows for people to never leave their house again. This is similar to any kind of digital platform that calls our attention, making us feel so connected to people online that we forget how important it is to still connect with people in real life. In the “Black Mirror,” made-up dystopia of Slack, will people ever wear business-casual bottoms again? Will we all just be incredibly productive, unnecessary meeting-adverse, half-dressed humans for all eternity?

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

Personally, I absolutely loathed working from home when the offices shut down. For the first time in my life, I had a chic, exciting office to commute to on my bike every day. I loved going to work, and then it was all gone. If a breakthrough happened, it’s that over the past three years, I’ve learned to enjoy working from anywhere and have perhaps semi-forgotten how to be a normal, non-awkward person when I meet my colleagues in the real world.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

For Slack to have an even wider-spread adoption than it currently does, I think our biggest hurdle is appealing to small businesses. Yes, many hear that big brands use Slack. Slack itself is a big brand. Some may think it requires too much tech-savviness — that it’s a tool only designed for millennials or huge enterprise corporations — but that’s not true at all. One of my biggest goals as a Solution Engineer supporting growing businesses is showing people that Slack isn’t scary. I have scientifically backed data to prove this. Okay, maybe not scientifically backed, but I did conduct an experiment with my baby-boomer-era Mom to see how she would navigate Slack on her own with no pointers as a brand-new user. I wanted to see where she’d get stuck and what questions she’d want answered. I’m happy to report that she generally got it on her own, and with a few pointers from a friend or the colleague sitting next to you (or maybe your daughter), it’s even easier. Once you get the essentials, the rest comes in waves of excitement about the power of the tool and the engagement you’ll yield. Any size business can uplevel and scale with Slack and hack into productivity gains, whether it’s five employees or five thousand.

The pandemic has changed so many things about the way we behave. One of them of course is how we work and how we communicate in our work. How do you think your innovation might be able to address the new needs that have arisen as a result of the pandemic?

Slack was a tool made for the pandemic before the pandemic happened. When COVID-19 hit, I felt like we were in a unique position — that even amidst all the fear and suffering surrounding us, we could help people keep their businesses going. Email feels like you’re working behind a closed office door with a mail slot, while Slack feels like your peers and leaders are around you everywhere. Perhaps there’s a pane of glass between our groups, but that’s just to keep the noise down. We know they’re there and we know where to ask for help. Aside from the sheer volume of volunteer organizations — like the Covid Tracking Project — that leveraged Slack to help their communities organize support for others during the pandemic, the way Slack was built helped thousands of businesses bring their workers into the modern workplace, keep working, and miraculously still feel seen and supported.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

1. You belong here. To be fair, everyone did tell me that. But I needed to believe it. Tech is such a fast-paced, modern, and exciting industry to be working in. Coming from a beige cubicle in an extremely traditional workforce, feeling like I deserved to work at a company like Slack was a hard pill to swallow, despite how happy I was to have been hired. It took me a long time to acclimate to this understanding, but I found my way through the support of my peers, the work I’ve learned to do, and the leaders who make us feel like we are a part of something bigger.
2. It’s going to be even better than you think. I knew landing a job at Slack was going to change my life forever. I remember walking my dog around my neighborhood in Denver and feeling different. Yes, I expected to be working for a company that met my values in every way and provided exciting, world-changing work with some of the most intelligent and creative people in the industry. However, the depth to which my life has changed shocked even me. I’d tell myself, “You’re going to do work you’re deeply proud about. You’re going to make friends across the world, and they’re going to come to your wedding even though they’ve never met you in real life. You’re going to pay off your student loans and suddenly feel the inexplicable lightness of being unburdened by debt. You’re going to find your place in the world. You’re going to start a career you never envisioned for yourself, and it’s going to take you down paths you wouldn’t have been lucky enough to find without coming here. You’re going to wake up (pretty much) every day and look forward to work.”
3. No. Seriously. It really is fast-paced, and you will deal with a lot of ambiguity. I feel like ambiguity and being “fast-paced” are such buzzwords in job applications that people are like “yeah, I can do that.” And yes, I think most people can, whether skilled at it or not. Alas, we are humans, and adapting is the one thing we’re really good at. But a lot of things have changed since I was hired at Slack. I started in a rented co-working space. We then moved to the most beautiful office I had ever seen. We went public. We went through a pandemic. Salesforce acquired us. We’re going through a recession. We’re building an integrated product with a new tool. Working in tech requires you to be really flexible and open to change. Just think: When I started in 2019, sidebars didn’t even have Sections!
4. You will never know everything. In my pre-Slack careers, I felt like once I had a grasp on my role’s responsibilities, I was set. Never once — not as a Customer Experience Agent or a Solutions Engineer — did I feel like I knew everything about Slack. Perhaps that’s the nature of working in a fast-paced, innovative environment, but you’re wasting your time trying to achieve perfection or ultimate knowledge. Shift from valuing your worth based on residual knowledge and focus on your ability to learn new things constantly.
5. You will refuse to ever work for another company that doesn’t use Slack. Sorry, future prospective employers.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

LinkedIn

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.