hfauq

Great thoughts. Remote companies are async by nature, and Slack goes against that. It means that people need to be always on to get the benefits of Slack - which is silly, you'd rather focus on actual work and let people get back to you when they're ready to.

> A good alternative to Slack would be a Reddit-like interface with threads and an asynchronous model.

You're describing Twist -- twistapp.com.

The online presence indicator is one of the problems created by Slack. Using real-time chat is the actual problem, whether it's Slack or Hipchat, or anything alike. Real-time is great sometime, but I don't think you should use it all the time: - Real-time chat happens quickly — one line at a time — discouraging full, thoughtful conversations. - Topics are all jumbled together in a channel so it’s nearly impossible to piece together the full conversation. - Important team knowledge — like what decision did we make and why? — gets buried and lost within hours (even with powerful search). - The real-time nature of communication excludes anyone who’s not there in the moment it takes place. - Constant notifications eat into your time and attention. - Even if you’ve turned off notifications, the fear of missing out on something important keeps pulling you back into the app. - It slowly creates a culture that prioritizes being available over doing good work.