For Tech Worker With Slack Addiction, Still Long Road Ahead
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — For tech worker Allison Ryan, temptation lurks around every corner. Or, more accurately, on every screen. After being released from rehab, Ms. Ryan still struggles with the lingering effects of her Slack addiction.
It all started when Ms. Ryan, an operations associate at a local startup, began to work with an offshore team. “During the day, I had to use Slack to answer questions from my coworkers in California,” she said. “On nights and weekends, I was getting bombarded by messages from the team in Pakistan.”
Her friends and family quickly noticed that she was increasingly glued to Slack 24/7. At times, she would be engaging in conversation with someone as she furiously tapped out replies to a group conversation on her phone. Other times, she would put away her phone only to immediately reach for it again when it pulsed with an incoming message notification.
Ms. Ryan’s mother eventually decided to send her to rehab after an alarming moment where Mr. Ryan was separated from her technological devices. “She became extremely anxious that she might be missing out on some important message that she couldn’t read. She wouldn’t eat and she couldn’t think about anything other than getting back on Slack. That was when I realized she was dependent on that app.”
Ms. Ryan is not the only tech worker to suffer from addiction from the popular enterprise chat app. While white collar workers have had to answer email for decades, the advent of Slack allows coworkers to message each other with the expectation being answered within minutes instead of hours. Combined with desktop notifications, mobile phones, and vibrating smartwatches, techies are instantly aware when a coworker requests their attention.
For Ms. Ryan, going to rehab was only the start of a long journey to independence from Slack. The rehab program took place in a remote Buddhist monastery in Marin where attendees were cut off from technological devices and meditated daily from dawn to dusk. On her third day at rehab, she was discovered in a bathroom trying to access Slack with a Raspberry Pi and a cellular modem that she had smuggled into the monastery.
Now, after exiting rehab after 3 months of intense meditation, Ms. Ryan resides in a halfway house for techies recovering from addiction. “Sometimes I reach for my pocket because I think my phone’s vibrating,” said Ms. Ryan. “And then I do a double take and realize that I haven’t had my phone on me in months.”
Ms. Ryan has enrolled in a program in the halfway house that introduces its residents to less addictive apps in order to reduce her symptoms of Slack withdrawal and improve her quality of life. “One of my coworkers told me about this app called Blind, so I thought I would try it out,” Ms. Ryan told us, a hopeful look in her eyes.
