Anduril COO breaks down his method for catching up on Slack messages
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- Anduril COO Matt Grimm said that he sorts for the most recent unread Slack messages.
- The strategy isn't foolproof, Grimm said, but "it works enough to get the pulse of what's going on."
- He said he can't read every Slack message, as Anduril has 7,000 employees across 14 time zones.
How to weed through Slack's never-ending parade of pings? Anduril's COO has some advice.
Matt Grimm has overseen the defense technology company since its starting days. He cofounded Anduril with Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, and Joseph Chen. Before Anduril, Grimm worked at Palantir.
In a walkaround interview with Sourcery, Grimm said that he often popped into Slack channels where employees didn't expect to see him.
"They will see me chirp in on some random thread in some random channel," Grimm said. "People will be like, 'How the hell did you see this?'"
Grimm said he sorts his Slack messages by both unread and most recent. When he's between meetings, walking between buildings, or has five minutes to spare, he said he'll read the messages in that order.
The strategy isn't "foolproof," he said, and with about 7,000 employees at Anduril, he said he can't read every message. This method is for reading through channels. If something really needs his attention, Grimm said he trusts that he'll receive a direct message.
"It works enough to get the pulse of what's going on," he said.
Other corporate leaders have their own Slack strategy. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sends long-form Slack essays that fuel debate.
"You can go back and read all the past ones, and it tells the history of Anthropic," said Sholto Douglas, a Member of the Technical Staff at the AI firm.
Others intentionally set a distance. Canva CEO Melanie Perkins doesn't have Slack on her phone, so she can "actually tune out" when she shuts her laptop. If there's an emergency, someone will call her, she said.
Slack cofounder Cal Henderson told Business Insider that his three biggest tips for using the workplace communications app are ranking channels, setting strict response hours, and experimenting with video clips to replace meetings.
As 2025 comes to a close, Slack users can also receive their own form of Wrapped by checking who sent the most messages in their workspace.
In the Sourcery interview, Grimm acknowledged that it was impossible to read every single Slack message sent across Anduril's channels.
"We're in like 14 time zones," Grimm said. "They're just all day, every day, all the time."