Building a 50+ person business without Slack

As a founder & CTO who has scaled an organization from zero to >100 employees: My next company will be “Slack free”, for many of the reasons you wrote about.

With just one caveat: “…initially.”

My regret is not enforcing “async first” among the early hires — those first 20 or so culture-setters, many of whom become influential senior old timers of/when you’re lucky. In the back of my mind I think outright banning slack might be tough, given how much the workforce is used to it (plus, I’m a chatops zealot). But I’d be much more comfortable bringing “quick hit” Slack into an organization that already understands how and when to use other tools.

Say something nice to karlhughes…

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As a founder & CTO who has scaled an organization from zero to >100 employees: My next company will be “Slack free”, for many of the reasons you wrote about.

With just one caveat: “…initially.”

My regret is not enforcing “async first” among the early hires — those first 20 or so culture-setters, many of whom become influential senior old timers of/when you’re lucky. In the back of my mind I think outright banning slack might be tough, given how much the workforce is used to it (plus, I’m a chatops zealot). But I’d be much more comfortable bringing “quick hit” Slack into an organization that already understands how and when to use other tools.

spikeytown

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5 years ago
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  I think that's fair. It could be that people demand some kind of real-time chat tool eventually. I'm not necessarily opposed, but like you said, setting the culture early on that people don't always drop everything to respond is important to me too.
  
  Karl Hughes
  
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  5 years ago
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