🔗 7 Slack hacks for engineers and managers

I love Slack. And I also hate it.

It’s definitely better than any alternative (yes, I’ve had the misfortune to use Microsoft Teams).

Still, we spend an average of 2 hours a day on Slack. A big percentage of that time is spent scrolling, rereading the same messages, and trying to keep up with countless channels and threads (seriously, why isn’t there an easy way to browse threads??).

This creates an endless loop:

• People don’t get the answers they need
• They schedule meetings
• Which leaves us even less time to respond on Slack

Async communication is hard, I don’t think it’s a ‘solvable’ problem - there will always be friction.

I believe that not enough Engineering Managers spend time on optimizing their async communication environments.

Today, I hope to cover simple tips on how I try to use Slack more effectively, hopefully saving you tens of hours a year (and reducing your mental load).

If you use another tool - try to find similar tricks!