Is Slack Ruining Work?

Though Slack's web site promises that 'Slack is where work happens,' Vox argues instead that 'an increasing emphasis on new technology to moderate our workdays isn't necessarily making our work better or making us more productive. If wielded poorly, it can even make it worse.
Slack is one of numerous types of workplace software that companies are using to facilitate collaboration and communication in an increasingly digital world. Teams comes as part of Microsoft's pervasive Office offerings like Word and Excel. Google's G Suite includes Gmail, Hangouts Chat and Meet, and Calendar as well as its cloud-based document-sharing programs. And Facebook has entered the game, too, with Workplace, an attempt to get its 2.7 billion users to employ its products in more productive ways than sharing conspiracy theories...

Much like the ubiquitous open-floor plan, this type of software is meant to get different parts of a company working together, to break down hierarchies, to spark chance interactions and innovations. In practice it can be hell. The addition of yet another communications tool can result in a surfeit of information....

Keeping up with these conversations can seem like a full-time job. After a while, the software goes from helping you work to making it impossible to get work done. Also, workplace software doesn't seem to have supplanted the very thing it was supposed to fix: email. Most people use both... People now have the problem of too many emails, too many meetings, and too many messages. For them, workplace chat software has become just one more demand on their time.

One productivity analytics company even reports that at ten companies (with 500+ employees) they found more Slack channels than there were employees.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.