Speaker 1: Welcome to game Plan, this show about our lives at work.
Speaker 1: I'm Francesca Leavie, editor of the game Plan section at Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: and I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter at Bloomberg, where I
Speaker 1: cover workplace culture. This week, how group chat platforms like
Speaker 1: Slack are changing the way we communicate at work. Coming
Speaker 1: up in a little bit, we'll talk to Dana Evans,
Speaker 1: a reporter at New York Magazine who has a complicated
Speaker 1: relationship with Slack and group chat that she's written about extensively.
Speaker 1: She's going to explain to us how it is that
Speaker 1: an enterprise workplace software affected her life so much she
Speaker 1: wrote a personal essay about it. But first of all,
Speaker 1: let's let's get out of the way what group chat is, Becca,
Speaker 1: you want to give the basic description. Slack is group chat,
Speaker 1: and just from now on. There are lots of different
Speaker 1: group chats, but I think we're just going to use
Speaker 1: Slack a shorthand for all of them, because it's a
Speaker 1: really popular, notable one. But yeah, there are others like
Speaker 1: hip chat and campfire, and all of them basically are
Speaker 1: just chat rooms where you hang out with your coworkers
Speaker 1: all day and it's kind of a primary way of
Speaker 1: communicating with coworkers, and it's work sanctioned, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like your work email, but chat right and you
Speaker 1: can email people one on one, or message people one
Speaker 1: on one through this app, or talk to them in
Speaker 1: special rooms that are divided by department or by team,
Speaker 1: or by project you're working on, or by anything you
Speaker 1: make up right, Like you can make a slack room
Speaker 1: for I don't know, talking about the Real Housewives of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Is that a one of those? Yeah, that's that is
Speaker 1: one of the housewives and probably a really popular slack room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd say, I don't know what. I don't know how
Speaker 1: it rates against the other Real Housewives. I mean, it
Speaker 1: depends on your taste. But you know, a girl, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm like an O C. I don't watch the Real Housewives. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean either um so. But anyway, so what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, on its face, doesn't sound that unusual
Speaker 1: or new, right, Like it's chat rooms have been around
Speaker 1: since basically the dawn of the consumer Internet, Like when
Speaker 1: the Internet was sort of commercialized in the mid early
Speaker 1: mid nineties, that's how people communicated on like a O
Speaker 1: L chat rooms. Yeah, I think the only thing I
Speaker 1: did online as a young young kid online was check
Speaker 1: my email for I don't know what and then go
Speaker 1: to A O L chat rooms and pretend to be
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, which is really, how old were you really?
Speaker 1: I was probably I don't know what. What year do
Speaker 1: you think this was? Like? So yeah, I was really
Speaker 1: I was like six to eight. Wow, you're pretending to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what that says about,
Speaker 1: like society, But so yeah, these chat rooms are similar
Speaker 1: in form to the A O L chat rooms, different
Speaker 1: and function I would say, So nobody's asking a s
Speaker 1: L because you know everybody and age, sex location, right
Speaker 1: a popular query on a L chat rooms. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they are different than AMIL chat rooms because it's very
Speaker 1: work related. I mean, it was made specifically for offices
Speaker 1: for work, so a lot of the conversations are about work.
Speaker 1: But then there are also a lot of conversations that
Speaker 1: aren't about work, which is kind of why it's gotten
Speaker 1: so popular and my people like using it so much. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like all of these companies came into this space kind
Speaker 1: of at a time when the modern office was ripe
Speaker 1: for a new way of communicating. Would you say, I
Speaker 1: think the word you're looking for is disruption. No, I
Speaker 1: wasn't looking for it, but it found found you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like everyone hates email. It's like a thing
Speaker 1: people love to hate. H Let's talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit, because I feel like the idea of an
Speaker 1: enterprise workplace chat room feels new or had such room
Speaker 1: to take off. The way it has is because we've
Speaker 1: reached a tipping point with how much seem to hate email,
Speaker 1: which once was supposed to be the solution to all
Speaker 1: our problems. Right before email, We don't before email. We
Speaker 1: just grunted at each other before email. Obviously that we're
Speaker 1: plugged into walls. Yeah, people spend more and more of
Speaker 1: their time at work at email. One stat I found
Speaker 1: was that people spent thirteen hours a week out of
Speaker 1: their forty hour work week answering emails. It's like, not
Speaker 1: very fun. That's a shocking number of hours to spend.
Speaker 1: That's like all of the waking hours in one day.
Speaker 1: So if you spend five days at work a week,
Speaker 1: one of those is consumed by email. Maybe if we
Speaker 1: had no email at work, we could argue for a
Speaker 1: four day work week, since we spend a whole day
Speaker 1: answering email. Maybe, but then how would we communicate with
Speaker 1: all of our colleagues who work from home or in
Speaker 1: office is abroad Slack No, But yeah, so email is
Speaker 1: just I don't think that I have a troubled relationship
Speaker 1: with email. I again, have that I am not. You're
Speaker 1: not troubled by not responding to email, right, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm rude. I just don't answer emails. I just I
Speaker 1: use it kind of like how you know, I use
Speaker 1: it for what I want to use it for. I
Speaker 1: have a troubled relationship with email, and I also don't
Speaker 1: answer emails. But then I'm plagued with guilt about it,
Speaker 1: and that must be hard. Yeah, Slack kind of came
Speaker 1: along and was like, here's a much more casual way
Speaker 1: to communicate with your coworkers. The conversations tend to be
Speaker 1: way more casual. It's a lot easier. There's some fun
Speaker 1: integrated into slack. There's like a very simple command for
Speaker 1: putting in gifts or gifts whatever you prefer is correct,
Speaker 1: and so that kind of makes the conversations very informal.
Speaker 1: It replaces a lot of annoying type of email. I
Speaker 1: think like it doesn't replace email completely, but kind of
Speaker 1: the annoying like just checking in on something email, which
Speaker 1: is can be like an annoyance and turn into a
Speaker 1: monster very quickly. And then also because it's way more
Speaker 1: fun than an email, which has kind of become a
Speaker 1: very formalized form of communication, people really gravitated, right, Like
Speaker 1: when we talk about it being fun compared to email,
Speaker 1: I think if you've never never worked on a chat
Speaker 1: platform at work or on Slack, you might not know
Speaker 1: what we mean. But it it's sort of like designed
Speaker 1: in the language of the Internet, Like it's just kind
Speaker 1: of easier to communicate in the way that you might
Speaker 1: normally like send somebody a text or tweet something. In
Speaker 1: the interfering, it's more like talking. And that's another thing
Speaker 1: about Slack. It has also in addition to being a
Speaker 1: sort of email replacement, it's a kind of a meeting replacement,
Speaker 1: another like much hated part of office life, Like people
Speaker 1: hate going to pointless meetings where everybody is just kind
Speaker 1: of performing. So now you have a lot of these
Speaker 1: conversations on Slack, So give me a sense of the growth,
Speaker 1: because we're not now talking about something that's really even
Speaker 1: that niche anymore. Yeah, no, it It grew from a
Speaker 1: hundred twenty thousand years years two years ago to like
Speaker 1: millions of people logging in today. I see tons of
Speaker 1: people on their phones using slack out and about in
Speaker 1: New York City all the time. And it isn't just
Speaker 1: it's not just a couple of industries using it. Now
Speaker 1: it's spreading so mainstream right tech media startups. NASA's jet
Speaker 1: propulsion laboratory is on slack that it's been reported slack
Speaker 1: slack chapters. Yeah, no slack, I mean slack loves championing
Speaker 1: this great get for them because it shows like like,
Speaker 1: this isn't just something for like a bunch of young
Speaker 1: tech bros. This is something that's useful for office life
Speaker 1: of any kind. So it's a real phenomenon. And it
Speaker 1: came about as a way of solving a lot of
Speaker 1: the efficients, a lot of the efficiency and communication problems
Speaker 1: that everybody was having at work. And has it done that?
Speaker 1: So obviously not. There is a slack lash that has started.
Speaker 1: Slacklash being a term that you coined, I believe, so
Speaker 1: I believe I coined it, and I wrote a piece
Speaker 1: back in January that was titled You're about to hate
Speaker 1: Slack as much as you hate email, and just kind
Speaker 1: of made the point that this communication at work is
Speaker 1: fraught and stressful and and it's starting to stress people out.
Speaker 1: I find it very stressful posting in these group platforms
Speaker 1: all the time. Like I have a lot of like
Speaker 1: social anxiety about what I post inside a Slack chat
Speaker 1: room and like who's responding and who's not, and like
Speaker 1: I don't really want to have to think about that
Speaker 1: at work when I have a million other things going on,
Speaker 1: Like that is a productivity suck. My anxiety is sucking
Speaker 1: up my productivity. And there's another downside, which is that
Speaker 1: you can forget because it's so easy to type in
Speaker 1: a Slack message or a stupid joke that you might
Speaker 1: not make in a more polished context. It's easy to
Speaker 1: forget that everything that you write is on the record
Speaker 1: and your employer knows about it, and it's going to
Speaker 1: live forever, even if it feels really temporal. And actually,
Speaker 1: if you don't believe me, let's listen to an example
Speaker 1: of kind of the worst case scenario of that, and
Speaker 1: what is a campfire? Transferred campfire is a chat tool,
Speaker 1: And then if we go down just giving the middle
Speaker 1: sections and entry. I can't be it, says you, guys
Speaker 1: don't even know how good this whole Cogan shape is
Speaker 1: f Megan Fox. And then Max Are replies, whole Cogan
Speaker 1: fuc k is Megan Fox. Sorry, I don't really like
Speaker 1: to say that. The works on the record, um, and
Speaker 1: then k WSAs she wishes. He gets really tender at
Speaker 1: the end, a really tender like drop. Do you know
Speaker 1: what that's a reference to. It's the extension of a
Speaker 1: joke about um. The joke is I can manager. Okay.
Speaker 1: So what you just heard was the an editor at
Speaker 1: the website Gawker explaining to a lawyer who appears to
Speaker 1: have very little sense of humor what he meant and
Speaker 1: his colleagues meant months or even years earlier, when they
Speaker 1: were discussing on Campfire, one of these group chat platforms,
Speaker 1: a sex tape that they were about to release featuring
Speaker 1: a former professional wrestler, Hulk Hogan. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: a court case, highly publicized court case, where the Hulk
Speaker 1: was suing Gawker for releasing the sex tape. And I
Speaker 1: don't think any of the people who were making these
Speaker 1: blue jokes in Campfire ever expected to hear them mentioned again,
Speaker 1: let alone read aloud in open court by their editor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you I saw. I've read the transcripts of their
Speaker 1: chats because they're part of evidence, and it's just like
Speaker 1: all jokes left and right, jokes. Everybody is just joking
Speaker 1: about Hulk Coogan's penis and the tender leg drop joke,
Speaker 1: and yeah, using a lot of slang, and it's very
Speaker 1: clear that, I mean, for most people, this wouldn't even
Speaker 1: look like an appropriate workplace conversation, right. I think Gawker
Speaker 1: is kind of known for an edgy or style, and
Speaker 1: I think probably even in the newsroom it's employees speak
Speaker 1: a little more freely than some others, and this is
Speaker 1: like obviously like the most casual form of their communications.
Speaker 1: And like you said, there's no way they thought they'd
Speaker 1: ever see those again. I think in these chat platforms,
Speaker 1: you feel like it's like disappears once you type it,
Speaker 1: like because it's like literally a feed that like scrolls up,
Speaker 1: it's gone, but it's obviously not. Yes, you are supposed
Speaker 1: to never I've been told by lawyers, never type in anything,
Speaker 1: type or write anything you wouldn't want on the front
Speaker 1: page of the New York Times, which I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a dated like guidelines, like maybe
Speaker 1: it's on the front page of Gawker or like a
Speaker 1: viral tweet, like, but that's the thing, Like it seems
Speaker 1: like we have to relearn this with every new technology.
Speaker 1: Like most people are pretty savvy about incorporating that advice
Speaker 1: when it comes to sending an email. You wouldn't. If
Speaker 1: you have to have a conversation that's kind of sensitive,
Speaker 1: you know, you should probably have it over the phone
Speaker 1: or in person and not over email. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: because lack is new, because it feels kind of off
Speaker 1: the grid or fun or social, people just don't have
Speaker 1: the same relationship to it that they do with email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: email used to be fun when it first entered offices,
Speaker 1: people gossipped and made jokes. And then when I think
Speaker 1: people started getting in trouble for these things and it
Speaker 1: became more like formalized in the workplace, it became this
Speaker 1: more formal, boring, strictly work related tool. Part of why
Speaker 1: we hate it so much. And but slack is so
Speaker 1: new and that behaviors seems so casual. It's like something
Speaker 1: has to have been publicly subpoenaed in a hundred court
Speaker 1: cases before, Like we've all heard of court cases that
Speaker 1: feature email transcripts, and our presidential campaign, one of the
Speaker 1: main issues swirling around that is Hillary Clinton's emails and
Speaker 1: what they say and to whom they were sent. And
Speaker 1: you know the idea that I mean, yes, of course
Speaker 1: people keep making mistakes on emails, but it's like, this
Speaker 1: is the first example of the sort of clinical examination
Speaker 1: of a group chat, of the campfire transcript that we're
Speaker 1: kind of used to seeing. This is the first high
Speaker 1: profile example of that kind of treatment of a group
Speaker 1: chat transcript. Then, you know, with government agencies now starting
Speaker 1: to use slack like their stuff can be foiad this
Speaker 1: is it's work, it's work chat. But all of us
Speaker 1: are so guilty. You know, it's like we're talking to
Speaker 1: our friends, right, And that kind of confusion between how
Speaker 1: to treat slack, whether it's a work thing or a
Speaker 1: personal thing, is something that is very much on the
Speaker 1: mind of our guest. So I think it's a great
Speaker 1: time to introduce her. Dana Evans. She's a writer for
Speaker 1: New York Magazine, and back in January she wrote an
Speaker 1: article called are my Coworkers slacking off without me, Dana,
Speaker 1: We're very happy to have you here. What do you
Speaker 1: think of how we described slack? Did we basically get
Speaker 1: it right? Yeah? I mean I think that that really
Speaker 1: covers it. That's the basis of the article is like
Speaker 1: it makes work seem fun, which I think is good
Speaker 1: and bad. What is your current relationship status with slack?
Speaker 1: I'd say it's complicated. I try now, I think for
Speaker 1: a while. You know, I started New York Magazine almost
Speaker 1: a year ago now, and I think that when you
Speaker 1: first start, it's sort of a process of like getting
Speaker 1: to know how a company uses it and feeling comfortable
Speaker 1: because it's I think it varies at every place that
Speaker 1: you work, so it's kind of like knowing what the
Speaker 1: company politics are. And I think now our slack channel,
Speaker 1: especially at the Cut, which is where I work at
Speaker 1: New York Magazine, we have kind of two separate channels,
Speaker 1: one specifically for like very straightforward work stuff, and then
Speaker 1: a second one that is only fun. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like knowing where to balance, Like you know how
Speaker 1: much time you spend in the fund slack and how
Speaker 1: much time you spend in the work slack, and also
Speaker 1: how much time you spend completely away from it, which
Speaker 1: I think is really valuable. Do you feel like group
Speaker 1: chat reveals kind of the people who are having a
Speaker 1: little bit too m fun Like just like there's a
Speaker 1: person who like spends too much time hanging out talking
Speaker 1: to people, there's like probably the person who spends way
Speaker 1: too much time in the fun cut. Yeah. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: think that that's that's like what's funny about it though,
Speaker 1: because I think it also varies like over you know,
Speaker 1: it changes over time. There's definitely always going to be
Speaker 1: the person who like is really good at multitasking and
Speaker 1: can be slacking all day and also working or that's
Speaker 1: what you think is going on anyway. But and then
Speaker 1: there's the people who never come into the conversation at all.
Speaker 1: But there's always the one person who's just like does
Speaker 1: this person do anything oday at all? Or they just
Speaker 1: like constantly talking, So how how are you splitting your time? Like?
Speaker 1: What how are you using slack for me? I think,
Speaker 1: especially my old job, I was really adamant about having
Speaker 1: one day where I didn't go into slack at all
Speaker 1: because I feel like, especially in writing, it's so distracting
Speaker 1: to constantly having notifications coming up and now I kind
Speaker 1: of I'm a little bit more like self monitoring. So
Speaker 1: I try to have you know, mornings off from it
Speaker 1: if I can possibly, like if I can you know,
Speaker 1: focus on writing stuff. But in general, I keep it minimized,
Speaker 1: and my notifications aren't like you know, they don't pop up.
Speaker 1: It's so it's like I have to actually go in
Speaker 1: and check it to see if something is you know, happening.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like the fun stuff, it's hard
Speaker 1: to say, like some days you just wake up and
Speaker 1: you really don't feel like being a productive person, I guess,
Speaker 1: and it's so easy to just kind of give into
Speaker 1: the the available fun chat, I guess, And so on
Speaker 1: those days, I try to like remember it, this is
Speaker 1: also a job, and I have to actually do things
Speaker 1: for my job. So yeah, it's interesting that you bring
Speaker 1: up that you have to monitor your slack behavior because
Speaker 1: we've been talking about how much people love slack, but
Speaker 1: those obviously this darker side. And again it's almost as
Speaker 1: if Slack has made our work lives a little bit
Speaker 1: more complicated, like there's now just like another way to
Speaker 1: communicate with people. And before we get into some of
Speaker 1: those more complicated feelings on Slack. We're going to hear
Speaker 1: from some other office workers about their feelings with office chat.
Speaker 1: Slack sucks. I love slack, but I also hate slack.
Speaker 1: I'm distracted a lot by it. I enjoy using Slack,
Speaker 1: it might actually encourage negative vices for me, So it
Speaker 1: can be a little bit distracting at times because you
Speaker 1: kind of want to be able to catch up on
Speaker 1: every single channel, but you generally can't if you're busy
Speaker 1: working on projects. Like when you're in a Slack group,
Speaker 1: everything is very instant, which I feel like I'm part
Speaker 1: of a conversation as opposed to an email thread that
Speaker 1: kind of will come out of order or it will
Speaker 1: not reply to the most recent one, but are applied
Speaker 1: to four behind. So you're kind of pulling together threads
Speaker 1: of information from different threads of emails when there was
Speaker 1: just too many notifications and being part of too many
Speaker 1: channels and setting those notications to like always notified me
Speaker 1: no matter what a So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what slack fomo is exactly. Can you define
Speaker 1: it a bit for us, Dana, Yeah, I think because
Speaker 1: like I said, like slack makes work seem fun on
Speaker 1: days off, or like like I said, I have these
Speaker 1: days where I tried to really bunker down and focus
Speaker 1: on one piece and not being slack at all. You
Speaker 1: sort of miss the goofy conversations you're having with your coworkers.
Speaker 1: Even if you're not particularly close with your coworkers. It's
Speaker 1: just fun to like be talking about personal stuff that
Speaker 1: you probably would never actually broached with a lot of
Speaker 1: people that you work with. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the fomo aspect comes in when you realize, oh, like
Speaker 1: I took the afternoon off and maybe Beyonce's record came
Speaker 1: out or whatever it is like that you would normally
Speaker 1: be talking about, and it's like you weren't there for
Speaker 1: any of that conversation, and you feel kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: my friends had a really fun day. I wasn't there
Speaker 1: for it, even though it's literally work and that's essentibly
Speaker 1: what the product is for. Do you think you're kind
Speaker 1: of upset about missing out because part of having fun
Speaker 1: at work is part of my job. Job? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think slack makes you a little bit delusional about what
Speaker 1: work is. And I think that inevitably, you know you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be using this tool for productivity, but Oftentimes
Speaker 1: I find myself in these conversations where it's like we're
Speaker 1: having so much fun talking about this thing that like
Speaker 1: no work happens for like an hour. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is the thing that you end up missing
Speaker 1: because you're maybe you're gone to do actual work. You're
Speaker 1: right in your piece. Slack, on the other hand, makes
Speaker 1: a simple d M from your boss at nine pm
Speaker 1: and others to seem less threatening. Oh I'll just answer
Speaker 1: her question now, you think so she believes I'm still
Speaker 1: at this party though I left a long time ago
Speaker 1: for a different, better one. The different better party is
Speaker 1: subsequently your real life exactly. I mean, I've just it's
Speaker 1: so hard for me to imagine any other context where
Speaker 1: we would talk about work, where we would use a
Speaker 1: party as a metaphor for work. Right, yeah, absolutely, But
Speaker 1: I think that even that, like the sort of the
Speaker 1: d M aspect of it, and hearing from your editors
Speaker 1: and your bosses all the time, I think is like
Speaker 1: it really it makes everything seems so normalized, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I would respond to this thing, and like
Speaker 1: I said, you know, nine pm or whatever, But you
Speaker 1: forget that this is an actual work transaction that's happening,
Speaker 1: and and sometimes that like, you know, when I do
Speaker 1: get dms like that, maybe I'm at a bar, maybe
Speaker 1: i'm you know, I'm doing something that like probably I
Speaker 1: should take some time to think about responding before I
Speaker 1: just shoot something off. But I think it's it makes
Speaker 1: everything so casual that it seems like, oh, it's not
Speaker 1: a big deal to respond to how I wanted, So
Speaker 1: you'd be less likely to send an email to your
Speaker 1: boss from a bar thing, Yeah, exactly right, because it
Speaker 1: just seems so impersonal just to be like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is you know, chat, I'm just talking to her as
Speaker 1: if I'm talking to in person. But it seems like
Speaker 1: you you, even though you know it's wrong, at that
Speaker 1: d M at nine pm, you seem to be okay
Speaker 1: with it in some ways. But there are some people
Speaker 1: who I think are a little bit angry about that,
Speaker 1: and there's been a little bit of a slack lash
Speaker 1: building In the last six months. There have been a
Speaker 1: bunch of articles people talking about notification overload that actually
Speaker 1: it's worse than email because you can send these messages
Speaker 1: all the time, all day. But you seem to have
Speaker 1: a pretty good relationship, a good balance, I would say
Speaker 1: I try. I don't know if I definitely adhere to
Speaker 1: the things that I'm saying that I actually take time
Speaker 1: away from it. But I think, you know, especially with
Speaker 1: this sort of like all day aspect, it really makes
Speaker 1: you feel like you work twenty four hours a day
Speaker 1: and you're sort of available twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: And I think actually remembering because I think I'm self
Speaker 1: limiting because I know I have terrible a d D.
Speaker 1: And like, if I actually pay attention to those notifications
Speaker 1: all day, I will get nothing done. So it's I
Speaker 1: think the way I manage it is being able to
Speaker 1: have a block of time where I know that I'm
Speaker 1: not allowed even to say anything in slack work or
Speaker 1: not work. Yeah, that's really impressive. Thank you. So to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of all this, Dana slack, is
Speaker 1: it the end of productivity at work? Or is it
Speaker 1: the answer to all our problems? That's I feel like
Speaker 1: we're not there yet. I think that what will happen
Speaker 1: at least in the next year or so, as as
Speaker 1: you know it grows astronomically as it had is people
Speaker 1: will really start to figure are out how do you
Speaker 1: slack to their advantage? Whereas right now it's stick total
Speaker 1: free for all I feel, and I think that companies
Speaker 1: are going to start doing, you know, with the Gawker
Speaker 1: Hogan trial, it was like, oh, this is actually we
Speaker 1: need to be thinking about how we're using this this platform,
Speaker 1: and I think it will start to get to a
Speaker 1: point where there's going to be a lot more slimming
Speaker 1: down of how we use it. We'll still use it
Speaker 1: as a chat platform, and it will allow us to
Speaker 1: to speak more freely with our coworkers, but I think
Speaker 1: in a way that is a little bit more professional.
Speaker 1: I guess if that's the right word to use. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if you can use that word with Slack,
Speaker 1: but feeling like it's a place where it's actually aiding
Speaker 1: us as opposed to setting us back, that's that's a
Speaker 1: good point. We tend to blame technology for all of
Speaker 1: our work problems and productivity issues, but like, we really
Speaker 1: need to figure out how to use these things to
Speaker 1: our advantage. And you know, even Slack recognizes that it
Speaker 1: has a long way to go and released this winter.
Speaker 1: I do not disturb feature so that when people shouldn't
Speaker 1: be on Slack, or when they don't really want to
Speaker 1: be on slack. They can just kind of turn it
Speaker 1: off and not get the notifications, which is just like
Speaker 1: one tiny step towards like not being connected all the time.
Speaker 1: So slack is recognizing human nature. We're basically always going
Speaker 1: to find a way to goof off if there is one. Amen,
Speaker 1: Thanks for talking to us about slack, Dana. Before we go,
Speaker 1: we're gonna dig into the archives. Here's an excerpt from
Speaker 1: an article. The manager is hunched over his terminal, squinting
Speaker 1: at the screen. Then comes a little chuckle, a rapid
Speaker 1: fire series of key strokes. He hits the sent button
Speaker 1: and the scene is repeated by another manager across the room.
Speaker 1: The exchange is quick and utterly invisible. It is part
Speaker 1: of a system that is quietly damaging many corporate enterprises
Speaker 1: from within. Well, that is clearly an article about group
Speaker 1: chat within the past year or so, right, So those
Speaker 1: articles from the Washington Post, and the writer is talking
Speaker 1: about the problem he talks about is instantaneous email. It's
Speaker 1: a great time waster, after all, he says, it is
Speaker 1: fun to share secrets, tell jokes, flirt, complain about fellow
Speaker 1: workers Peckett Dillows, especially if you can't get caught, which
Speaker 1: is just exactly what people do on grip chat now.
Speaker 1: But it's really great to see how people thought about
Speaker 1: email when it first came out. People obviously workers thought
Speaker 1: it was fun. Probably the biggest difference is that that
Speaker 1: last bit, especially if you can't get caught, the lack
Speaker 1: of awareness of people probably had about how easy it
Speaker 1: was to, you know, or would become for your employer
Speaker 1: to peek in at what you're doing, or for you know,
Speaker 1: opposing counsel to depose the records of what you said.
Speaker 1: I wonder what kind of crazy things were said if
Speaker 1: there really were an atmosphere where people thought, like, no
Speaker 1: one has any way of knowing what I said in
Speaker 1: this email, where even now, like there's some voice in
Speaker 1: the back of our head when we're typing some totally
Speaker 1: not work appropriate thing into slack that's telling us someone
Speaker 1: could probably read this. But even it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this guy says, emails ruining the office, but none of
Speaker 1: us could live our work lives at every right. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder maybe this is naive, But what what was
Speaker 1: it like before email then? Like what would you do
Speaker 1: just talk in person the entire time? And I mean
Speaker 1: I think work got done within a much smaller sphere.
Speaker 1: I think that. I mean, it's a conversation about globalization
Speaker 1: and everything else, but you just worked with a smaller
Speaker 1: group of people. You work with the people who are
Speaker 1: around you, you either talk to them in person or
Speaker 1: you you know, made a long distance phone call. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And some of the other old articles I was looking
Speaker 1: at they talk about phones the way we now talk
Speaker 1: about email, where like the phone was work life but
Speaker 1: now you know we rarely pick up the phone and
Speaker 1: hate email, and slack is the future. Why can't you
Speaker 1: just slack me the answer to my simple question? Yeah? Great, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today on game Plan. Dana,
Speaker 1: thank you for and you guys can read more of
Speaker 1: our work life coverage over at Bloomberg dot com and
Speaker 1: check us out on Twitter. I'm at rs Greenfield, I'm
Speaker 1: at Francesca today and Dana is at Dana d A
Speaker 1: y n A Evans Underscore. See you next week. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: g fun times USA. Ready, Okay,