Slack co-founder Stuart Butterfield, who led the company from 2009 to 2023, spoke about his criticism of an early version of the product. The company’s employees even printed out quotes from him and hung them around the office.
Slack co-founder Stuart Butterfield, who led the company from 2009 to 2023, spoke about his criticism of an early version of the product. The company’s employees even printed out quotes from him and hung them around the office.
More than 10 years ago, Butterfield gave an interview in which he called an early version of the product «terrible», writes Business Insider.
«I’m trying to instill that in the rest of the team, but I definitely think what we have now is just a huge pile of crap. It’s just awful, and we should be ashamed to offer it to the public. But not everyone finds it motivating», he told MIT Technology Review in 2014.
In a new podcast, he said that when he came to the office the next day, he saw that employees had printed this quote on 40 sheets of 8.5 by 11 paper and pasted it on the walls.
«For me, it was like, you should be ashamed of this. It should be a constant pursuit of improvement. You should never say, ‘Oh, this is great,’» the Slack co-founder explained.
He believes it’s okay to be proud of «individual achievements,» but overall, leaders should see only «nearly limitless opportunities for improvement.» Butterfield also said that «trying to be critical» and «trying to find improvements» can be useful tools.
«Not always, not with every person. But in most cases, with most people, you can get them to the point that that kind of direct criticism is actually motivational», he said.
Butterfield went on to run Slack, which became one of the most popular work messaging platforms, and eventually sold it to Salesforce for $27.7 billion.
In July of this year, it was announced that Slack had radically updated its pricing policy and added artificial intelligence to each of its paid plans. The changes also affected its integration with Salesforce — now all users of this CRM system get Slack for free.
