You Can't Have That Many Secrets

My manager dug up some Slack statistics for our company in honor of the approaching new year and posted selected highlights on a public channel, such as the people who sent the most messages and the most popular channels.

One of the statistics described message types: how many messages were sent to public channels (readable by any employee), private channels (readable by any channel member), and direct messages (readable only by the recipient(s)).

Direct messages accounted for about 85% of all messages. And that’s a problem.

The War Against DMs

I’ve been in open warfare against direct messages for years now. I repeatedly tell colleagues who reach out to me that this topic should be discussed on some public channel, so others can get the information too and transparency is maintained.

Often, when someone sends me a question via DM, I respond on a public channel. I especially try to always ask my dumbest questions—and there are many—on public channels, because it creates a sense of safety for others too: here you can ask stupid questions.

I always say that if you find yourself about to send a DM, ask yourself: what’s secret about this message? If there really is something confidential (people’s personal matters, health information, trade secrets, etc.), the message’s privacy is justified. Otherwise, it can be posted on a public channel.

So What’s Wrong with DMs?

Generally speaking, direct messages are mostly:

1. unnecessary
2. inefficient

They’re unnecessary because the message often contains nothing private. Surprisingly often, it contains quite a lot of general information, and everyone would have benefited from having the conversation opened on a channel where everyone has the opportunity to read and, if they wish, participate.

DMs are inefficient in many ways:

• they create a broken telephone effect: often someone asks something via DM that the recipient has to clarify through another DM or even several, and then report back to the original DM
• they’re not searchable across the organization: only conversation participants can search DMs, so information shared once remains hidden from others
• they’re not in a logical place: if you vaguely remember receiving advice about, say, Linux configuration last week but don’t remember from whom, you could go to your company’s #linux channel on Slack and be fairly confident the information is there
• they fragment multiple people’s conversations into silos, making it laborious to verify information afterward
• they don’t foster an open and conversational culture

Why Are DMs So Popular?

DMs are easy because they carry few risks:

• the sender doesn’t expose themselves to criticism from a larger group
• no need to consider whether this is the right channel for this message (though in my opinion, a DM is almost always the wrong channel, so…)
• no need to think as much about message formatting

I understand all these perspectives, and because of them, we all need to more actively encourage and demand a more transparent and open communication culture, and do our part to create a sense of safety on our communication platforms.

The Greatest Possible Sin

The biggest sin in the Slack world is group DMs, where you can send a direct message to, say, three or seven or nine hundred people. Besides being mostly unnecessary and stupid for the reasons mentioned above, due to Slack’s technical design, it’s pretty close to workplace harassment.

Slack group DMs remain stuck in your sidebar essentially forever, because in many Slack environments you can’t leave them at all. If you’re added to a group DM where the topic doesn’t concern you whatsoever, you can’t do anything except close the conversation, and it reappears as soon as someone writes to the group. Unlike channels, you can’t remove others from group DMs. Once created, the group lives its own life.

Won’t We Drown in Information Overload If Everything Is Public?

A commonly heard counter-argument to public posting is that if all conversations happen on public channels, we’ll drown in information and important messages will pass us by. This isn’t a credible argument because:

• if you think someone needs to notice this message, you can tag them
• most conversations happen in message threads anyway, so the volume hitting the channel isn’t particularly large
• if you repeatedly see content irrelevant to you, that’s an excellent sign it’s time to leave the channel—extra hang-arounds who don’t participate in discussions weaken the channel’s sense of safety and coziness with their presence anyway
• you’re a knowledge worker; you should be able to filter relevant content from a reasonable mass of text

”This Isn’t Relevant to Others!”

A staggeringly common argument in favor of DMs is that this information is meaningful only to this person I’m sending it to.

Do you often find yourself making decisions on behalf of others—in large companies, even strangers—about what’s relevant to them and what isn’t? You might want to take a moment to consider whether you’re really the right person to make these decisions on others’ behalf.

Especially if everyone knows your Slack usage guidelines, conversation is divided with appropriate granularity into topic-based channels, and only those people hang out on channels who, in principle, consider everything on that channel relevant.

And especially when you need to ask a “stupid” question, remember that a public channel is the only right place for it, even if you know only one person will answer. Others might be wondering the same thing, and even if they aren’t, your willingness to put yourself on display with all your stupid questions makes you human in your colleagues’ eyes and significantly increases others’ sense of safety.

Can I Never Use DMs?

DMs definitely have their place, but it’s limited:

• salary and health information and other clearly private matters
• conflict resolution and other situations where public discussion could worsen things before improving them
• personal feedback

I should note, though, that for all of these, face-to-face conversation is probably a better option, although I understand it’s not always possible for everyone.

Do I Have to Handle This Too?

I wouldn’t want to push this improvement onto individuals’ responsibility either, but partly I have to: we all need to change so we can improve the situation. Still, let it be said that managers and channel “owners” bear particular responsibility here: you must demand that discussions around the channel’s topic happen on the channel instead of in DMs, and that the channel includes (and hopefully hears from) the relevant people, not others.

I’ve also considered that this could surely be addressed with a technical solution, for example:

• DMs have a daily/weekly limit, after which the only option is to write on channels
• DM delivery has a several-hour delay, making them less attractive to use

In Summary

When you find yourself writing a DM in your company’s Slack, ask yourself: “what’s secret about this message?” If you can’t credibly answer anything other than “nothing,” use a shared channel, not a DM.