Working from home? Bet you’re using Slack

ORLANDO, Fla. – The current pandemic has changed what being part of the U.S. workforce looks like.

These days, it’s a lot of Zoom calls, text messages and -- for millions -- Slack threads.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said he’s seen a surge in simultaneously connected users. He noticed a correlation of people turning to the organizational platform almost just as quickly as the number of coronavirus cases climbed across the nation, he writes on Twitter.

For reference, Slack defines simultaneously connected users as the number of people who are active on Slack at one time.

The CEO wrote multiple threads about how the pandemic affected the company in recent weeks. March 10, the platform hit 10 million simultaneously connected users-- a major milestone as the company hit a million last October.

Eventually, he posted a cute helpful graphic to show how users swarmed to Slack in just days.

Butterfield attributes this growth to a massive increase of demand as states like New York, California and Washington issued stay-at-home orders. With only some essential workers allowed to head to the office, millions of people had to quickly figure out how to work from home.

We mean millions. Just take a look at some more fancy charts tweeted by Butterfield and awe at how Slack somehow didn’t break the internet.

On Monday, 12 million users were using Slack at the same time, which means a lot of people were getting work done.

So as a CEO, of course, Butterfield is proud of the success of his app. According to his thread, his team had to quickly learn to deal with this surge of demand remotely too, and they were able to manage growth while working from home too (bet they used Slack to get it).

He ended his thread thanking people for making the app successful and added that for those on the frontline of the pandemic, Slack can help you out for free -- just email covid@slack.com.