[twobyfour]

Huh, I've never found following concurrent conversations in Slack particularly challenging, but then I spent a lot of time a handful of years back in fast-moving chats that often had several unrelated discussions going on at once. Maybe it's a learned skill.

That said, in 3 years at Slack-heavy companies, the level of interleaved conversation I've encountered is almost nil. Maybe that's cultural (though the consistency across multiple companies and teams suggests not). Maybe company or team size is a factor. Maybe it's a matter of breaking it out into enough channels that if there are multiple topics to discuss at once they're usually happening in separate channels anyway.

Sure, Slack could probably improve the threads UI. (Though I happen to think that threaded display and real-time discussion are in some ways conflicting goals.) As it stands, however, they're a black hole. My team has actually banned the use of threads (and no, it wasn't even my suggestion).