Around the world, people are returning to work after their Christmas break this week. And Slack went down just in time to welcome everyone back to the office.
In the very early hours of Tuesday morning, reports flooded in that workplace messaging system Slack was experiencing a worldwide outage. Users reported not being able to connect to their Slack workplace and couldn’t load any channels or messages. Slack support immediately began working on the issue but it was a problem for quite a few hours.
Customers may be experiencing issues connecting and using Slack at this time. Our team is currently investigating and we’re sorry for any troubles this may be causing. Please see https://t.co/hlhV4Z15g6 for updates.
— Slack (@SlackHQ) January 4, 2021
A whole lot of businesses rely on Slack to communicate, particularly now that many have transitioned to the work from home life.
The outage began around 1:00 AM on Tuesday morning and was largely resolved by 6:00 AM. Here in Australia, we didn’t even realise it was happening until opening Twitter this morning.
how i be right now, in bed, in australia, while my work mates from the other side of the world be dealing with slack being down https://t.co/ZJt4vKwTYz pic.twitter.com/e6XZ2E69Nq
— ???????????????????????????? (@melissadotcomm) January 4, 2021
It was a typical case of a worldwide outage that Australia didn’t even notice. You can still relive the experience through the memes though.
The best reactions to the Slack outage
While some panicked about the status of their work for the day, many rejoiced at the prospect that Slack being down meant a day off. After all, work can’t possibly be done if you’re not on Slack to tell anyone about it, right?
Startups and tech teams in the U.S. this morning when Slack goes down.#slackdown #slackoutage pic.twitter.com/610XCnssmB
— .River (@RelentlessRiver) January 4, 2021
Everyone: Oh, no! A Slack outage?!
Me: pic.twitter.com/h8lwCiRj7h
— Derrick Reyes, MA-HDSI (they) (@QueerlyDerrick) January 4, 2021
Stages of Slack Going Offline Grief:
1. lol Slack is down
2. haha Slack is still down but I have work to do ha ha
3. are they ever gonna fix this or
4. (full-blown panic)
5. fuck Slack is back online— Scott Wampler™ (@ScottWamplerBMD) January 4, 2021
For our friends in the US, this was also the first working day of the year, and what a way to start 2021. Does this say something about our productivity prospects this year?
Workers: Vacation is done, Monday is here, back to work ????
Slack: Vacation is over when I say it’s over ???????? #slackdown pic.twitter.com/QL2dboVdHG
— Catalie ☃️ (@Cataliexo) January 4, 2021
No reason has been given for the outage, but Slack HQ mentioned jokingly in a reply that it could be to do with the massive amount of people returning to work.
Too many people returning from holiday break. ???? Sincere apologies! Thanks for hanging tight while we work on it.
— Slack (@SlackHQ) January 4, 2021
People tend to lose their shit when an online service goes down. So, naturally, a few people struggled to remain calm during the Slack outage, as devs worked frantically behind the scenes to get things back up and running.
We understand Kathy! We’re struggling to but we hope to have this resolved as soon as we can!
— Slack (@SlackHQ) January 4, 2021
I really feel for the Slack workers who returned to the office today and had to deal with this hellfire.
slack woke up today and said pic.twitter.com/21RtJQCpiJ
— Jill Gutowitz (@jillboard) January 4, 2021
Everything seems to be working as normal now so props to the team at Slack, particularly for resolving this issue in time for it to be of no consequence here in Australia.