[mkolodny]

While "remote workers are more productive" is in the article's title, I disagree that the author is suggesting that working remotely is a necessary part of the solution. The article's subtitle is "Async isn’t just for remote teams".

I think the post makes it clear to that office workers could benefit a ton from async communication. And I agree completely. Sync communication at my previous job was such a drain on my productivity. For me, Slack made communication easier, but it made focus more difficult and work more stressful.

I think you're right that software tools can make a big difference. The author seems to be promoting its product - Twist - as a great Slack alternative. And I think it looks solid.

[rgacote]

Switched from Slack to Twist six months ago and have not looked back. Slack is great if you need your focus to be online and immediate response. However, as a developer, I found Slack to be nothing but constant interruptions and needing to dig back through long threads wondering if I missed something important. Life is much saner (and productive) after switching to Twist.

[UserIsUnused]

Yup, the article is advertising Async, not remote. This is a company blog post, so it's always about advertising, even when it's not explicit.

They promote Async, because they also claim that their coloboration tool (email/slack alternative) is the right option for async.

[cbzbc]

Slack can be used as a asynchronous mechanism - but too many teams develop into using direct IMs/convos as a preferred communications style.

[kasey_junk]

It can be but nothing about it makes that the default or even easy.

I’d love to see companies abandon chat in favor of discussion threads.

For “water cooler” conversations video is almost always better.

[chrisweekly]

Yeah, cultural norms are what matter here (vs the tool per se).

Slack usage covers the whole gamut, from one extreme [proper (ie, consistent) use of channels, status / DND, and notification settings, making it a very effective, developer-friendly and management-helping async-oriented system] to the other [flowstate-killing, nonsense-generating chaos of interrupts and noise].

[eeZah7Ux]

Slack is entirely designed to encourage casual chat-like conversation with emoticons, reactions & so on.

Want meaningful async communication? Think of the UIs of usenet clients or even email clients.