[firewalkwithme]

I am probably getting old. Having used irc as main communication channel for 8 years in a previous company, we now added slack on top of the mail and direct messenger methods at my new workplace. I can not get used to it, at all. It is nothing but a distraction of half wit and delayed misunderstandings. I even dislike the ui. May be the staff is not ready, maybe just give it a little time. Maybe I just got too used to email

[tormeh]

If you dislike Slack, have you seen Skype for Business? Its text chat function disproves the existence of Cthulhu, since something so mind-bendingly horrible would surely have awoken Him, if He existed. Imagine sending your colleagues single-line Word documents and you're basically there.

[fumplethumb]

Couldn't agree more. We use Skype for Business and its lack of obvious features is amazing. To give people an example, you cannot even send a link!

[criddell]

Skype for Business is one of those terrible products that makes me want to speak to someone that helped build it and ask "what happened?"

[MichaelGG]

Huh? I've only used Lync 2013 and before, but the IM client doesn't prevent links. It's basically like MSN Messenger with some enhancements, for internal use. At least it doesn't have the deliverability and ordering issues Skype has.

Group chat isn't anything amazing with it but I haven't found it deficient. Maybe I'm using it wrong.

[flukus]

You can send links, but it's copy/paste functionality is "quirky".

[fumplethumb]

How do I send a link!! Seriously would love to know. I paste it in and I think it gets reformatted for the person on the other end. What is that??

[frandroid]

How 1994!

[fiveoak]

Using Slack is like a dream compared to Skype for Business. Sure Slack may have some dumb default settings but Skype for Business finds a way to somehow sabotage 5-10 mins of most meetings with some sort of technology issue.

[erentz]

Out of curiosity is this on a Mac?

I've recently joined a new company where everybody loves to complain about Skype/Lync stating similar things to this. But I have zero issues, and had near zero issues at my prior company where it was widely used and improved remote working considerably. The only difference I can see is in this new company everybody is using MacOS (and admittedly when I tried it on Mac it was terrible).

[adzm]

Skype for Business was bad enough I had to create Serious Business Cats in order to embed images...

https://github.com/adzm/BusinessCats

[rekoros]

By the way: we make a Skype for Business [Server] <> Slack bridge, if anyone is interested (see https://cdn.sameroom.io/enterprise-admins.pdf).

The current solution requires persistent rooms to be enabled, a new AD account, and a VM running our proxy.

Once set up though, you can do 2-way, real-time sync between Slack channels and SfB rooms (https://vimeo.com/174265102).

[sotojuan]

You're not old! I'm 22 and still love IRC. I don't mind Slack for work but I do strongly dislike when open source organizations use it. It's really awkward to have to get invited and sign in to everything when you just need some quick help. Also, Slacks with a sizable amount of users are super slow for me.

Even when running IRC in the browser with IRCCloud it's snappy.

[ultramancool]

I really dislike Slack for work too. A workplace shouldn't be using "cloud" services with company chat which is likely to include private details, financial, server ops, etc. It's just asking to get it plastered all over the internet. A private XMPP or IRC server is a much better option.

Mattermost is trivial to self-host so that's probably not a bad option if you're looking for something closer to slack (I think?).

This way all the private stuff can stay inside the network and behind VPN if needed. Security 101 really.

[munin]

> A private XMPP or IRC server is a much better option.

the slack servers probably get a lot more security attention than your private XMPP or IRC server that probably sees a few minutes a year of attention from some engineer to run "apt-get dist-upgrade" or something.

[TeMPOraL]

But it runs over your Intranet and so is generally as secure for outside access as your VPN is, which presumably gets more attention.

Also, Slack is a much bigger and juicier target for attack.

Ultimately it's a tradeoff. You may need to pay more attention to security in-house, but in exchange you're no longer tying the critical aspects of your business to some random SV web startup that is here today, but may get acquihired tomorrow and kill the product overnight.

[Florin_Andrei]

I'm also an older IRC user.

I think of Slack as "IRC for yuppies". Seen this way, it makes sense. It doesn't have the low-level features of IRC, but it follows you around easily, when juggling multiple clients. For that, it's pretty good.

I don't love it, I don't hate it. It works, kinda. It's loud and attention-grabby, for sure.

[nicksergeant]

If you used WeeChat as your IRC client, I have been using this wee-slack script (authored by a Slack employee) and it has been phenomenally good: https://github.com/rawdigits/wee-slack.

[chris11]

Out of curiosity, why do you think the content is worse than IRC. Slack seems to me to be the same type of instantaneous communication as IRC.

[titanomachy]

Have you tried using your IRC client to access Slack? I've heard it's supported, but I don't know anyone who uses it.

[stealthascope]

I use it with an IRC client. There are some things I take issue with (mainly stripping out IRC color control characters), but it works really nicely as a client. I use Irssi so if I need to ignore it, I can tuck it nicely away in a screen session somewhere and put my focus elsewhere.

[benjiweber]

I use it with irssi. I wouldn't use the official slack client, it's terrible at so many things - notifications, switching windows, multiple accounts. But as a hosted IRC it works really well.