[fishtoaster]

I feel this is a key thing that makes chat work really well for some remote workers and terribly for others: what's the expectation of responsiveness to chat?

For example, if you feel you need to respond to any DM (either implicitly due to company culture or explicitly because your boss has brought it up as a complaint about you), then slack is a huge interruption. You probably feel the need to have intrusive notifications enabled and/or a bouncing dock icon indicating new messages.

On the other hand, if the norm at your company is "slack is async so expect a response in 2-3 business hours," then yeah - it's rarely, if ever, interrupting.