[jchung]

> When is this overhype for Slack going to stop?

I challenge you to consider whether your perspective applies to the 99% of people who use Slack that are not developers writing software. For those people, email is often not a place where well-argued discussions happen. It's usually a place where chat-like communication happens, slowly, and in an ill-fitting interface. For non-developers, let's take a operations associate for example or a logistics manager, or someone else whose job is to coordinate and communicate frequently, Slack plays a very different role than it does for devs.

Unfortunately for you, and others like you who don't like Slack, if 99% of your company wants to use it, you'll almost certainly get pulled in. Unless your department or team explicitly opts-out, you'll get pulled into the same platform the rest of the company is using.

This isn't to say you're wrong -- just to say that we must not judge the hype around Slack, or it's clear successes, as a fad if we're only judging it based on the experiences of the kinds of people who frequent HN.

[meowface]

From my experience, in most office jobs, email is primarily used for serious and well-argued discussions concerning projects, business goals, technical details, etc. Software developers really don't use email any differently from IT support, accountants, HR managers, or salespeople. Non-developers generally reserve chit-chat for chat software, just like developers do.

Not sure what it is about HN assuming software devs are somehow intellectually and professionally superior to others.

[spookthesunset]

> Not sure what it is about HN assuming software devs are somehow intellectually and professionally superior to others.

Dunno but this thread is full of a bunch folks rather arrogantly assuming their way is the One True Way.

Slack (and hipchat) didn't get big for no reason. It's because it fulfills a pretty big need. Tons of people in my company use & love Slack... Last company was a big hipchat company...

[caf]

I agree that the "software dev" distinction here is not relevant.

However, it's definitely true that email is typically used both for "serious and well-argued discussions" and for chatty threads along the lines of

  Thanks.

  BTW How are we looking for this month's revenue target?
  
  >No idea, maybe the data load didn't run last night,
  >I'll look into it.
  >
  >>This report looks broken, the opportunity I closed
  >>yesterday isn't in there, what's up?

[meowface]

Sure, but it's not like a software dev wouldn't send a similar email, just discussing something development-related instead of revenue-related.

[caf]

I am in complete agreement on this point.

[meowface]

Sorry about that, seems my eyes skipped over the first line of your previous reply.