(Work) Life without Slack is not worth living, but it can’t go on like this

A couple months ago, a friend in finance taught me what the investment world thinks about Slack, a workplace communications tool I’ve been using since 2016. Something like:

Stocks are not a meritocracy, I get it. In fact, I am writing this out of passionate distaste for the many horrible pieces of user-unfriendly business software that have a market cap in the 10's of billions and CEOs with yachts (plural). I won’t name names, but we the (info-tech) workers deserve better. Work doesn’t have to suck, which is where Slack comes in.

What the wall streeters seem to be missing is that there are two types of companies: those that have no choice but to use their chat platform because it’s bundled with their other enterprise stuff and those that bought Slack on purpose. I decided to write this article because recently, I was stuck without Slack for 6 months before returning to it. And I think it’s just a matter of time until everyone realizes (if they get the chance) that this is the future of work. But, in parallel, if Slack wants to break free from this undervalued state, some things have got to change.

Life without Slack is hard.

My goal is to avoid denigrating any other chat apps or companies (this article can do it for me)…