Agreed! Tools almost always reflect the flaws of their users — but it’s not to say that the flaws of the tool proper can’t harm a user too. In Slack’s case, I think their notification settings (and the defaults in particular) encourage an always-on culture that can be hard for some corporate cultures to resist.
Regarding public communications — I think that only aggravates the noise/always-on issue, but if that’s your think, you can of course do that on email. See examples from Stripe [0] and Buffer [1]. (Not sure if/how that scales though! Was there a follow-up from these companies?)
I agree, the defaults in Slack are too chatty. I think the web interface also does not differentiate as well between messages directed at you and message in a channel you're a part of.
My public communications preference I have based on Buffer and Stripe. It's not that everyone has to respond, but that I think that the more information everyone has the quicker they can respond to problems in the right manner.
The cure to Slack: Do NOT install slack on your phone. And if it is, remove it.
It's the hell to get notifications all day, before you're at work, after you left work. The slack dev didn't bother putting a button to stop beeping on incoming message or to stop receiving messages at all.
Regarding public communications — I think that only aggravates the noise/always-on issue, but if that’s your think, you can of course do that on email. See examples from Stripe [0] and Buffer [1]. (Not sure if/how that scales though! Was there a follow-up from these companies?)
[0]: https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency
[1]: http://joel.is/how-we-handle-team-emails-at-our-startup-defa...