When Becky Kane began her internship at a productivity software company in 2014, she experienced a rite of passage in the workplace: drowning in Slack messages.
The company, Doist, had always been remote, so Slack, the ubiquitous business communications platform, was the main way to connect with its new partners. Mrs. Kane lives in Minneapolis, but Doist employees work all over the world.
“I definitely have an addictive personality,” says Ms. Kane, 29. Slack, with his exclusive mix of 24-hour jokes, GIFs, updates on serious work projects and small talks, took his life. “It was so tempting to be there all the time,” he says.
In 2015 he moved from internship to full-time marketing in 2015 and the messages continued to arrive until 2016. That’s when his company left Slack. Her workday improved dramatically, she says. Currently, you usually log in to Doist’s internal message board in the morning to check for project updates, log out, and write and edit until lunch with few distractions.
The years since Slack debuted in 2009 helped consolidate instant messaging as an essential part of white-collar work. But many harassed workers found it replacing email, never a beloved technology in itself, with something even more distracting.