Stop Slack from controlling your brain
HN, we talk a lot about how Slack has ruined our productivity (eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18320968, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16301508, etc.), but nobody has taken steps to fix this. I am building Oliv to take a stand. I am a software engineer turned manager. I am guilty of enthusiastically introducing Slack in my previous organization, only to realize how it killed the pockets of focus time that my engineers need to be productive. Once you introduce Slack in an organization, all communication becomes synchronous, even if only 10% of it…
Stop Slack from controlling your brain launched on December 20, 2018 with 32 votes, #637 of 2,148 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Oliv is a Slack bot that automatically manages user status and Do Not Disturb settings based on calendar availability. It sends auto-responses to incoming messages and escalates urgent communications when users are unavailable for extended periods. Designed for software engineers and knowledge workers, Oliv aims to protect focused work time by preventing Slack notifications from interrupting productivity, addressing the problem of synchronous communication dominating workplace interactions.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
HN, we talk a lot about how Slack has ruined our productivity (eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18320968, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16301508, etc.), but nobody has taken steps to fix this. I am building Oliv to take a stand. I am a software engineer turned manager. I…
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