Slack Dev Theater: When Smart Teams Talk Themselves Into Stagnation
How a well-intentioned founder relationship quietly turned into a pattern — and why I built a detector for it.
How This Pattern Shows Up
This article isn’t about one bad client or one bad founder. It’s about a pattern I’ve now seen enough times that I can recognize it early.
The most recent version of it happened with a founder I was working with. Smart. Curious. Thoughtful. Deeply engaged.
Slack was always active. Threads were long. Ideas were interesting. Everyone was collaborating.
And yet — very little shipped.
The Early Signals
At first, nothing feels wrong.
- Questions are thoughtful
- Edge cases are explored
- Alternatives are discussed
- Everyone wants to “get it right”
But slowly, execution begins to defer to discussion. Decisions get postponed. Ownership becomes fuzzy.
None of these are unreasonable in isolation. Together, they form a trap.
The Core Problem Isn’t Slack
Slack is just the medium. The real issue is what happens when:
- No one is clearly empowered to decide
- Every decision invites group consensus
- Discussion becomes the work
- Shipping requires agreement, not ownership
I call this Slack Dev Theater.
It looks like productivity. It feels collaborative. But it quietly replaces forward motion.
What Made This One Different
With this founder, the pattern became obvious when the same topics resurfaced — architecture choices, scope boundaries, implementation details — even after they’d already been discussed.
The system didn’t lack intelligence. It lacked decision finality.
At some point, the work shifted from building a system to endlessly justifying why it should be built a certain way.
Why This Is So Common With Founders
Founders are trained to explore uncertainty. Engineers are trained to collapse it.
When those two instincts aren’t clearly separated by role and authority, you get a tug-of-war:
- The founder keeps exploring
- The engineer keeps trying to converge
- Neither feels fully satisfied
Over time, this creates exhaustion on both sides.
Why “More Alignment” Makes It Worse
The instinctive fix is usually:
But alignment does not substitute for ownership. In fact, excessive alignment often hides the absence of it.
Teams don’t stall because they lack intelligence. They stall because no one is allowed to decide and move on.
Why I Built the Slack Dev Theater Detector
After seeing this pattern enough times, I realized I could diagnose it structurally.
Not by judging people. Not by blaming effort. But by looking at signals:
- How many channels per feature
- How long threads get
- How often decisions are documented
- How frequently work ships without debate
- How many alignment meetings exist
That became the Slack Dev Theater Detector.
What Actually Fixes This
The solution is not better tools. It’s not fewer messages. It’s not smarter people.
The solution is:
- Clear decision ownership
- Explicit authority boundaries
- Acceptance that some decisions are irreversible
- A bias toward shipping over discussing
Good teams talk. Great teams decide.
Final Thought
Slack Dev Theater doesn’t mean anyone is failing. It means the system is misconfigured.
If this story feels familiar, it’s because it’s common — especially in early-stage products where roles blur.
The fix isn’t more collaboration. It’s clearer ownership.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Want help fixing this in your team or product?
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