Do people enjoy using Slack? I hate Slack and I think that Slack has bad ergonomics. I’m in about 10 channels and logging into them is horrible. There is no voice chat. I’m not getting notifications (and I fret the thought of setting them up correctly—I just assume that if someone really wanted to get in touch with me immediately, they will find a way) I’m pretty sure it would be hard to create a tool better than Slack (I’m sure one could create a much better tool for a narrower use case, but would find it hard to cover all the Slack’s features) but let’s assume I could. Is it worth it? Do you people find Slack awful as well or is it only me?
Have you tried Discord? Discord seems absurdly casual for any kind of business or serious use, but that’s more about Discord’s aesthetics, brand, and reputation than its actual functionality.
My impression when Discord came out was that it copied Slack pretty directly. But Slack was a product for teams at companies to talk to each other and Discord was a tool to make it easier for friends or online communities to play video games together.
Slack is still designed for businesses and Discord is still designed primarily for gamers. But Discord has been adopted by many other types of people for many other purposes.
Discord has voice chat and makes it super easy to switch between servers. Back when people were using Slack as a meeting place for online communities (whereas today they all use Discord), one of my frustrations was switching between teams, as you described.
I think Discord is functionally much better than Slack for many use cases, but asking people to use Discord in a business context or a serious context feels absurd, like holding a company meeting over Xbox Live. If you can get over using a gaming app with a cartoon mascot, then it might be the best solution.
I’m a huge fan of self-hosting and even better writing simple and ugly apps, in my dream world every org would have its resident IT guy who would just code an app that would have all the features they need.
Do people enjoy using Slack? I hate Slack and I think that Slack has bad ergonomics. I’m in about 10 channels and logging into them is horrible. There is no voice chat. I’m not getting notifications (and I fret the thought of setting them up correctly—I just assume that if someone really wanted to get in touch with me immediately, they will find a way) I’m pretty sure it would be hard to create a tool better than Slack (I’m sure one could create a much better tool for a narrower use case, but would find it hard to cover all the Slack’s features) but let’s assume I could. Is it worth it? Do you people find Slack awful as well or is it only me?
Have you tried Discord? Discord seems absurdly casual for any kind of business or serious use, but that’s more about Discord’s aesthetics, brand, and reputation than its actual functionality.
My impression when Discord came out was that it copied Slack pretty directly. But Slack was a product for teams at companies to talk to each other and Discord was a tool to make it easier for friends or online communities to play video games together.
Slack is still designed for businesses and Discord is still designed primarily for gamers. But Discord has been adopted by many other types of people for many other purposes.
Discord has voice chat and makes it super easy to switch between servers. Back when people were using Slack as a meeting place for online communities (whereas today they all use Discord), one of my frustrations was switching between teams, as you described.
I think Discord is functionally much better than Slack for many use cases, but asking people to use Discord in a business context or a serious context feels absurd, like holding a company meeting over Xbox Live. If you can get over using a gaming app with a cartoon mascot, then it might be the best solution.
I’m a huge fan of self-hosting and even better writing simple and ugly apps, in my dream world every org would have its resident IT guy who would just code an app that would have all the features they need.