Because the people making enterprise deals are doing it face-to-face (probably at a nice dinner sponsored by MS.) They don't use tools like this and they're more interested in "checking the box" than analyzing what would improve people's work life (missing that it would probably improve efficiency.) If you're still having your administrative assistant print out all your emails - and dictating your responses back to them - then it's time to retire and let a digital native fix things in ways you can't even imagine!
Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
121–130 of 814 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#122It's the iPhone effect: If you use Teams, and something goes wrong, everybody is patient and sympathetic. If you use something else, then it's your fault for being "weird" or "cheap." In my case, my computer came from IT, pre-loaded with Teams, and it runs nearly flawlessly. But I've noticed something else about computers and software. You can have two people with similar jobs, similar computers, similar software, et…
> One person will have crashes and problems all the time, and the other person, smooth sailing. Nobody knows why.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Q/quantum-bogodynamics.html
In all seriousness, it probably has to do in large part with gestures broadly global state. Registry, configuration, what else is running on the system, how up to date it is. There are so many possible different settings, parameters, processes doing weird api calls, that it's a combinatoric explosion.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#123I remember when teams dropped - I was so excited for a Slack alternative.
Slack is still the best thing for work and man I hate that fact. I'm so ready to jump ship - someone please!
[Follow up] At the end of the day I want something as snappy and reliable as Whatsapp for work. I have my gripes about it, but it absolutely excels at one thing - getting my message to the other end.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#124I can only throw out a series of ideas:
1) It's built on top of Sharepoint ... somehow.
2) It is a "Me, too" product without any kind of compelling vision, which usually leads to a mentality of "survey existing competitors in that 'space' and nab their features."
3) Because it is free, they feel the need to push it everywhere, even if isn't appropriate for most people. Go to your File Explorer and stare at that "3D Objects" Folder, marvel at the concept that so many people would have 3D printers that of COURSE you are going to need a 3D objects folder, the same way you have one for Music. Wait...
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#125[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#126It seems to be mainly the work of barely-passing programmers on a platform (the web-app-everything) that strongly popularises form over function, quantity over quality, and from a company that increasingly prioritises (controversial opinion) DEI over competence. That said, MS has not always been like this; those who remember MSN Messenger, and perhaps even Skype for Business, may realise that despite all the various…
I remember messenger being mediocre at best and Skype not much better by the time MS got a hold of it. Teams doesn’t strike me as being significantly better or worse.
After a few decades the pattern doesn’t seem any different than before: some products get worse, sometimes they do something interesting, some products that got worse are then improved, over and over.
Any appearance of a recent declining trend, much less due to sociocultural issues like DEI, are simply due to looking at too-short a time period or only subsets of their ecosystem.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#127I have been using teams for 3+ years on mac and windows and I have never had any issues. Perhaps you are a linux user? If so, they recommend the PWA app. I have used zoom and plenty others but nothing comes close to Teams for me.
Perhaps, having used Teams' predecessor "skype for business" I am just grateful the torment is over.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suggest that Teams only gets used because it’s included in the enormous license that companies buy for Exchange and/or Office and the most popular alternative has its own fees. Large companies don’t want to fork over another licensing fee in the tens of thousands of dollars for Slack when they’re getting Teams “free.”
right and it’s integrated with Sharepoint, Outlook and OneDrive.
And those are in the same boat as Teams: it came with the bundle. (well, one could argue that plenty of people enjoy Outlook, but OneDrive is nothing special and SharePoint is just a bad Wiki going the SAP integration hell route)
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#129Long ago Microsoft had MSN Messenger, which was one of the leading messaging apps. It worked well, and many 'normal' users were using it. Then Microsoft dissolved the team behind it and screwed up the product so bad with bloatware and ads that everyone moved to WhatsApp (except in the US where people went back to texting). Then Microsoft came out with Communicator, renamed it to Lync, which was a corporate messenger/…
Those messenger programs were ahead of their time.
Even today they feel modern.
I still remember the jingle : " ta-dat-dat " with the screen shaking.
The tube monitors with that square screens, that could heat a whole room.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
#130Everyone saying teams is garbage. It’s not. It’s like you’re complaining about the kid who got a C in class. Guess what? They passed the exam. Microsoft brutalised Slack with a C grade app that was “bundled for free”. For 80% of people, teams is just fine.
Agreed. I use both apps simultaneously (I have them both open right now). Admittedly, Teams uses a lot more RAM, but I have a lot of RAM. I would never know this unless I checked it.
On Linux, the official teams application crashes constantly and most often doesn't work at all for video or audio. Fine, I'll use the browser version then. Except the browser version won't load 50% of the time, brings my laptop to an absolute crawl as soon as you start a video call using up 100% cpu, and frequently will crash any other teams or outlook tabs, or often times the browser entirely.
It's borderline unusable on Linux, and I've reverted to using it on my android tablet where it is only marginally better and still has issues constantly with audio, as well as crashing when starting up, or "updating" and somehow running two simultaneous instances of the app with only one visible. Also the notifications for when someone calls has never once worked on the tablet, while simultaneously I'll get nonstop repeating notifications for meeting chat messages from a week ago.
I'm sure for many people it works just fine, but for many others that aren't exactly on the Microsoft happy path, it's a nightmare.