Slack, mistakes, and remote team
1 min readApr 24, 2021
What?, When? and How? about the slack messages
Here are 9 mistakes you might be making on slack
- People know how I speak/sound: Nope. Please be explicitly nice, and don’t assume people will understand what you mean and how you mean it.
- My ____ is justified: Fill in the blank with rudeness, anger, or frustration. In absolutely no case be disrespectful to anyone. Rudeness or display of frustration is never justified anywhere(private/public channels).
- Criticize privately: Nobody benefits from reading a personal/targetted criticism in a public channel.
- Constructive criticism: Criticize in a way that people at the receiving end have something to take away.
- ELI5: Yes, please. Add as much information as possible and don’t wait for your teammates to ask you the obvious questions.
- DMs are ICU, please don’t sneeze and admit yourself there: Most people would agree that the maximum distraction when working remotely is caused by DMs. Things that anyone can answer should be asked/discussed in the public channel.
- No unlimited calls in this package: Calls should be chargeable unless they are for the greater good.
- Threads are unbreakable: 1000+ best wishes messages in a channel can only mean one thing, the team is trying to exhaust the plan quota for slack. Please use threads.
- Are you a night owl or an early bird: Either way, please don’t ping your teammates outside the working hours. Avoid if possible, or expect the conversation to be asynchronous.