So, a certain high up at a company that may or may not be mine has decided that Slack threads aren’t good. Apparently, we (read, the high up) lose track of updates and don’t know what they are about. Related, we…I mean some company… have stopped using campaign specific channels and now have area channels (i.e social media/ SEO).

So, now there can be two people asking about two different projects/articles and responses where you just have to guess which project it’s about. Plus you have to scroll through every single response even if it’s about something you’re not working on.

I get that this is easier for a manager.

You need to go through everything and check all the action items, if you miss a comment or two then it can be a real pain. But there’s a better solution to this: Comments next to tasks.

We have project management systems, including ones that show who needs to take action and add tasks only once the previous one is completed. We can even discuss issues in these projects. BUT, then we see the comments rather than them disappearing off into the infinite scroll ether of Slack.

So of course we don’t use them.

The biggest irony in this whole situation is that by trying to make things easier to manage, they’re actually harder to manage and keep track of…in this hypothetical company.