Unified Cross-Platform Performance Metrics
Article Summary
Slack's engineering team faced a classic scale problem: three platforms, three definitions of 'app launch,' and zero ability to compare performance meaningfully.
Staff Engineer Liang Shi breaks down how Slack unified performance metrics across Desktop, iOS, and Android. The 2018 article (updated 2020) tackles the messy reality of cross-platform measurement at scale.
Key Takeaways
- Defined two core metrics: Time to Visible (cached content) and Time to Usable (server content)
- Used Thrift for language-neutral specification with strongly typed metadata across platforms
- Built real-time debugging tools instead of waiting weeks for production data
- Worked backward from mock dashboards to define proper data formats first
- Tracked edge cases: cold vs warm launches, notifications, upgrades, user interruptions
Critical Insight
Unified metrics became foundational infrastructure for automated testing and regression detection across all Slack platforms.
