But everyone seems to ignore them in Slack. Apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams have some way to tell others that we’re “away,” unavailable, leave me alone. Back in May, I wrote a rant in WIRED about how we need to revisit Away Messages, the kind born of AOL Instant Messenger back in the 1990s and early 2000s.

We were talking about Away Messages, those modern-day versions of out-to-lunch signs that tell people, even if you’re still online, that you’re not available. And nothing has been normal about the past few years, during which a crushing pandemic ended up being a boon for companies that make remote-work software.īut Rayl and I weren’t meeting to discuss Slack’s ginormous valuation. This is a typical Silicon Valley turducken: Tiny gaming company pivots to sticky, real-time messaging app, then gets acquired by sales-tracking software behemoth for nearly $28 billion. Rayl and I met up in San Francisco just a few weeks before Slack was set to reveal new features at the giant Dreamforce conference, which is hosted by Salesforce, which now owns Slack. She’s been at the workplace software company since the early days, back when it was a bitsy gaming company called Tiny Speck. Rayl is the senior vice president of product at Slack. That’s the green dot in Slack, the one that signals to everyone in your workspace that you’re available. Ali Rayl has her qualms about the green dot.

Slack status icons