Ex-Slack engineer's 'eaten by the whale' essay explains why Slack barely evolved under Salesforce
Danhightower · x · 2026-10-25
The poster jokes that Slack hasn't evolved since AI arrived: asking Slackbot to find a 5-month-old conversation only surfaces the chat where you asked about it. The explanation comes from a former Slack engineer's "Building Slack" essay series, "What it's like being eaten by the whale" — a first-hand account of how Slack's tight-knit product culture collided with Salesforce bureaucracy after the acquisition, down to details like TechForce (IT support) only being open on Thursdays when he needed a keyboard. A candid post-mortem on how a big company absorbs a beloved product.
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