The productivity pit: Work communication software like Teams, Slack, and Workplace were supposed to make us more productive. They haven’t.

slate has a mildly tongue-in-cheek response to this piece which, ironically, is composed entirely of a modified slack chat excerpt.

Vox coming out with a bad take.

Keeping up with these conversations can seem like a full-time job

As a project manager, keeping up with conversations literally IS my full-time job.

I can see how an organization that's mostly writers, developers, and data analysts might find it annoying. Those are all jobs that benefit from long stretches of uninterrupted focus. But for many of the rest of us, smooth and seamless communication is a major productivity booster. My own company is pretty quick on the uptake of new communication technologies, but many of the client sites I work on are the kinds of places where emails and phone calls are the only ways things get done. I vastly prefer the Slack model. You still need to talk the other ways, but all communication revolves around peoples' availability and calendars which just replaces the hassle of having to concentrate with the hassle of having to keep track of everyone's comings and goings.

If you maintain an organizational culture around how to escalate communications it works out fine. We have some channels that are for important work-stuff only and we require people to have notifications on for it. The trade off is that you get yelled at if you fill it with idle chatter. Channels that are for idle chatter you just turn notifications off and only check in on breaks. The only hard part is making sure everyone is on the same page WRT the rules.

28 percent of the workweek managing email and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks

I find this absolutely absurd. No, people don't spend 1/3rd of their time at work "managing email". Do they spend 1/3rd writing and replying and conducting work via email? Sure I'll believe that. But 1/3rd of their time purely on the management of communication? You'd be fired if you really did that.

W.r.t. the talk on e-mail and spam there, is it so hard to set up an intranet e-mail? Then it would be free, would work without internet, and would be more secure and private.