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by meowface 2889 days ago
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.

2 comments

> 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...

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?
Sure, but it's not like a software dev wouldn't send a similar email, just discussing something development-related instead of revenue-related.
I am in complete agreement on this point.
Sorry about that, seems my eyes skipped over the first line of your previous reply.