undefined | Better HN

0 pointsceronman5y ago0 comments

Workplace from Facebook.

The company I work for uses this for internal communication. Workplace is basically the same Facebook and Messenger, but tweaked for a private group of people.

The problem is that, because this is basically the same Facebook, it is designed to keep you "engaged". It uses all kinds of patterns to keep you addicted to your timeline and search for attention. Rather keeping you informed with the important topics, it distracts you with a lot of irrelevant stuff. The algorithm will always show you something that keeps you scrolling. Huge time waste.

The motto of this software is "Bring your company together". And it works exactly as Facebook's motto, "Bring the world closer together", in the sense that it does exactly the opposite. The software has all sorts of mechanisms to generate controversy. Because controversy is what ultimately drives more engagement. Reactions, memes, notifications. It makes you fight with your colleagues about silly things, and it makes it really easy to derail any sort of constructive conversation.

Imagine having to try a technical conversation in this platform and then people are allowed to "react" with an angry face or a silly animated GIF. No argumentation required. And those reactions will bring more reactions. And in those rare cases when some meaningful discussion actually happens, then the thread is quickly buried by the constant stream of new things.

If your company is considering this, avoid it like the plague.

0 comments

sawyerjhood5y ago

+1 to this. I worked at FB for a few years and Workplace is just Facebook re-skinned. My big gripe with Workplace is similar to what ceronman says, it is essentially engineered to create meta-work. People end up using it to self-promote every little thing that they do to get visibility and this leads to it being incredibly noisy and really filled with information that isn't relevant and important things get buried under all of the filler. The only real upside to workplace is that I think it is better for Q/A groups than something like Slack is, at least for larger companies.

krick5y ago

I cannot express, how much I hate it. I mean, I don't really see how the last line of your comment is relevant, since it was never up to me what the company I work in would choose as the internal tool for communication, and I was pretty vocal about my disdain for it from the day 1, but that software is just trash.

And I don't even see the need to delve into all that "philosophy of communication" and "culture" you are talking about, the chat itself is just the most inferior one of all I've seen since early 2000's, and I have to use it for daily communication, it's maddening. It lacks the most basic functionality you could expect from a messenger in 2020.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse