How Slack Uses Slack

It’s a fairly uncontroversial statement that Slack has changed the workplace communication space. Over 12 million daily active users can attest to the value of the product and the paradigm shift that it has introduced.

I was lucky enough to chat with Bear Douglas, Director of Developer Relations in order to get a look into how Slack functions internally, both in terms of how they think about meetings and communication — including how Slack uses Slack.

Bear’s team has an interesting setup for managing Slack communications, where different use cases and discussions are split out into independent channels instead of throwing everything into the same chat.

The Developer Relations team uses the following channels:

• Public channel, #team-devrel, for a company-wide interface with their team.
• Private team-only channel (#devrel-only) for the team to socialize and share internal issues or topics they don’t necessarily want to publish or discuss more widely with the company.
• Intake channel (#plz-devrel) where other teams in the company can make specific requests to the Developer Relations team, which can be triaged and managed.
• Reviews channel (#devrel-reviews) where the team members post content or material that require review by other team members.
• Status channel (#devrel-updates) for status updates and news. The leadership models and encourages updates that aren’t strictly work-related, for example, if people are dealing with stress due to their environment or if they did something fun over the weekend.

In addition to these communications, Bear sends up a weekly roundup in the public channel with 3 items that shipped, 3 upcoming releases, and links on other activities going on within the team.

🔥 If you enjoyed this post, you can find more tips from Bear in the full interview or subscribe to Future of Teamwork for more case studies.