Slack! duh de duh duh duh: what is it good for?

Post date: 2022-01-21 15:13:51

I'm 50ish business type person in tech and education. Had a conversation with a person similar demographics to me but in medicine. Conversation could be summed up as "I hate Slack, but everyone wants me to use it".

I (person A) have been invited to Slack but never used it. Person B had it as a work requirement and ended up being "not invited to keep the job" due to "not being responsive".

Person B says that's a fair complaint, but that every other person her age also hates Slack.

Slack (the software) may be fine, but the conversation was more about "how do you interact at work"? Topics that came up:

* they expect us all to be gig workers, which means we work for 10 companies.
* OK, I'm a gig worker working for 10 companies. Now each company has their own Document Management System (DMS Google Docs, O365, SharePoint, Slack, Teams, etc...)
* every DMS sucks
* Wasn't emailing DOC or PDF files a reasonable workflow in the before times?
* Slack (etc.) have an "always on" workflow - too much fucking information, no context, and no sense of "I need to work now, bugger off" - expectations of instant reply.
* this is probably all made worse by competing factors: COVID and Medicine's rush to telemedicine.

I suggested that she and I, though awesome people, are old, and the youngins found our weakness.

Maybe we just suck at Jobs 3.0?

Looking for anecdotes from people who (A) like Slack (etc.) as a business workflow (bonus points if you are teh olds) and also (B) don't like it for reasons.

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