Around a certain age one's tolerance for such bullshit goes to zero.
Discord, slack, et al would be doing the world a great service if their tools had notifications etc SWITCHED OFF BY DEFAULT so that they don't disturb other people in the same room as the user. Such notifications are designed to break your concentration / get your attention, but they have the toxic side-effect of polluting the environment of other people physically around the user, by breaking their concentration / getting their attention.
Being in the same open-plan hellscape as people using Slack means having to wonder who the hell thinks it's ok to be using a tool which makes 'knock-knock-knock' noises, and having to be that guy who goes around asking people to silence their shit. Yes, this is a human problem, but don't tell me the product designers didn't consider this. Either they did, and chose to leave it on by default or they didn't. Both betray a certain contempt for the user.
Another point for working from home is that one cannot easily distract others.
> Discord, slack, et al would be doing the world a great service if their tools had notifications etc SWITCHED OFF BY DEFAULT so that they don't disturb other people in the same room as the user.
This is a fun one. What if the new hire doesn’t know Slack? They’ll miss all the messages until figure out how to configure their notifications. Or we leave them on by default and then still tell them how to configure their notifications. There’s no magical way to determine the users preferred setting. You also can’t do something like leave it on for mentions only, as sometimes you need to be in a conversation you were tagged in.
A better solution is to use a hammer on their volume buttons. Or buy a nice pair of noise canceling headphones.
Many of us have tried for many years to complain our way out of open plan offices, with no luck.
> What if the new hire doesn’t know Slack? They’ll miss all the messages until figure out how to configure their notifications
In my experience, the "new hires" are overwhelmed by Slack notifications, turn them off, and I have to remind them later, after they failed to respond to semi-urgent public @ and direct messages, that they can configure Slack to be notify only on @ and direct messages, and they won't be bothered by regular chit-chatter on public channels. It's happened to me with at least 4 people it can't be a coincidence.
For what it's worth, I'm even younger but completely agree with GP.
I now only use Discord for voice with two or three friends in a specific "channel" (or is it room?) but even then I would gladly use Teamspeak instead if possible.
I find it even more interesting that people want notifications from arbitrary webapps as well. It’s bad enough the amount of notifications received from installed apps, and we want random websites we go to to have the same ability?
