I have seen several slack channels by now where a typical chat log, looks something like this:
xxx 11:01
short break
xxx 12:45
off to pick up the kids from school
xxx 12:54
going out to lunch
xxx 13:45
off for lunch as well
xxx 14:09
late lunch for me
xxx 14:18
back
xxx 16:26
back from lunch
xxx 17:38
taking longish break - will be back online later
I find this quite frustrating and I find myself always wanting to stop and ask the people there a simple question:
“Why?”
But social norms do not always allow this, nor do I always have the time to converse on the topic.
That’s why I’m writing this short post, to sum up my thoughts on the subject and use it as a point of reference.
With some luck, some other poor soul out there - that finds this equally frustrating - will find some ammunition here to stop this madness.
If it is a Bad Idea, Why Do People Still Do It?
I’ve heard the following arguments:
- Someone might be looking for me
- My boss needs to know when I’m working
- It helps my team to know we’re all working together
What Happens When You Send a Slack Message
But every time you send a message on a slack channel, other folks on that channel have to read it (or at the very least scroll past it).
It sounds obvious, but I think people often forget this.
NOTE: I am excluding #general / #random kind of channels, or community slack groups from this discussion.
It works like this:
- Most slack channels have a specific topic.
- People join those channels to receive messages related to that specific topic.
- People put a lot of effort in tuning their notifications according to the topic.
- Every time you are sending an off-topic message, you are breaking the contract on which people set those notifications settings. You are potentially notifying (i.e. interrupting) everyone, to tell them “you’re going out”
This is nothing new, or particular to slack by the way. Mailing lists also have specific topics and client inbox filters are also a way of tuning notifications, according to the mailing list topic. And this has been working like this for a long time (decades).
Maybe People Do This Because It Also Happens in the Office?
Not at all.
In an office, when you announce “I’m going out”, only the people who are actually in the room (and are actively listening) will receive that message. The message doesn’t persist, waiting patiently to be received by everyone when they next come into the office.
Also, if you had a secretary who would always keep track of your status and be responsible for answering to whomever asks on your whereabouts, all you had to do would be to update him as you were stepping out. No need for the announcement.
Update Your Secretary Slack Status
Don’t get me wrong! There is a very real need for your team / organization to know if you are available at some given time. People do need to know if you are available and can be reached for work. (The first argument above is valid.)
But if you are using slack, just like thousands of other teams are doing, you should know that the solution offered by Slack itself is the User Profile Status field.
If you take the time to update that (rather than send the message), everyone will know what you want them to.
Slack has even made it easier by adding a shortcut (cmd+shift+Y) on a mac.
Slack Doesn’t Announce Status Changes
Interestingly, though Slack does support updating your status, it doesn’t announce status changes on the channels you’re on. This is a feature, not a bug.
There’s Also Google Calendar
For scheduled time away from the keyboard - or for blocked time on your calendar for focus work - the google calendar slack plugin (if your team is using both of those), also takes care of updating your status, so you don’t have to.
In short: if you always make sure your availability is up-to-date in the one place where it should be (your calendar), then you shouldn’t really need to do much else…
Is it Ever Ok to Do This?
Yes! It’s perfectly fine if your team has explicitly decided they want to have a dedicated slack channel for availability updates.
It would then be clear that the sole purpose that people would join that channel would be to receive those kinds of availability updates.
It’s also perfectly fine - of course - to send these messages to your direct collaborators, e.g. on some tiny channel with 2-3 folks on it.
My problem is when people mix these messages with all sorts of other useful messages, in larger channels, significantly changing the signal-to-noise ratio in a particular channel. Because when that happens, you run the risk of losing useful messages amongst all that noise.
And What If My Boss Needs to Know When I’m Working?
I’d really like to ask them… why? : )
Is knowing when you’re at the keyboard, really the best way they have to track your contributions?
Wouldn’t it be better to focus on outcomes, not outputs?
Remote Work Is Asynchronous
This is a big topic - and probably warrants its own blog post - but I’m just leaving a short note here: remote work doesn’t scale when work always needs to happen synchronously, so - over time - your team needs to figure out how to work asynchronously. And when work is asynchronous - status updates like “going afk” make even less sense.
Conclusion
Some of these thoughts may seem a little controversial. Certainly, not everyone I’ve discussed this with in the past has agreed - or found the change easy. I would still invite you to give this a thought - and drop me a message on twitter @gsaslis, if you would like to discuss this further.
Thank you for taking the time to read this!