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Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#651

Post by gregmac »

pc86 wrote: post #567
rjsw wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to cleanup a Git tree right now where people haven't put JIRA tags in their commit comments, it is impossible to find out why a change was made, it isn't a totally stupid requirement.

"It's impossible to find out why a change was made" is a completely separate issue. Either the code is documented or it's not, completely polluting your history with JIRA tags isn't the answer - not least of all because like a sibling commenter said you're now forever tied to JIRA, or if you ever move off of JIRA, now get to choose between bringing JIRA tag information into the new ticketing system, or rewriting your…

It's definitely a concern to rely on the ticket system, but the commit message and the comment can't (and shouldn't) contain every bit of info about a change.

Commit message: "Improved clarity and detail in error message"

Ok, that's obvious what's happening, and as a standalone change that's absolutely fine. But the question it doesn't answer is why did someone actually put that effort in?

If the commit message mentions a ticket, then you can go look that up, and now you can find out, for example: it was a ticket that was an unknown bug being experienced by one specific customer, and so the error message was being improved as part of tracking down the bug. You also see who the customer was, internally who reported/escalated it, how long this has been an issue for, and if the bug was found and eventually fixed or not.

I'd argue absolutely none of that belongs in comments in the code, and it's way too onerous for a dev to constantly put that level of detail into every commit message. It's a balance: it's only useful to lookup that info on a small fraction of commits; it takes a lot of time to figure it out when missing (especially if it was many months ago); and putting a ticket number in each commit message is very low effort.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#652

Post by w0m »

zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

While this is true - you have to look at the competitive space also (not just Slack). My previous employer forced us on a hosted HipChat. Absolute garbage. laggy; crashed often (sometime taking down my host) and worst of all randomly deleted chat history - so if someone sent you something (important) you may or may not be able to reference it later. Absolute garbage.

Left that company (a fortune 50) ~roughly when Teams began rolling out, and my coworkers complained to no end (Slack -> Teams migration happened roughly when i joined). I still complain about Teams - but outside of raw IRC Teams is by far the best messaging App I've used at work. (I do also run slack/discord for personal groups/projects, though nothing at crazy scale).

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#653

Post by prepend »

crystaln wrote: post #252
yawnxyz wrote: post #40

This happens because of how Microsoft approaches product development and design. On many product teams, PMs end up doing not only the product design decisions but even designs much of the products themselves. This works for them because it focuses product cycles on releasing what "matters" to the customer, but it ends up cutting craft and quality. This makes their products poor to use, but is also what drives revenue…

For the record, have you actually eaten at Olive Garden recently? Their food is actually pretty fantastic. Some of the best Chicken Parm. Definitely better than Teams. Please don’t insult Olive Garden like this.

No. No, this is not true. I think Olive Garden’s food is about parity with Stouffer’s chicken parm.

Any bad Italian restaurant microwaving stuff is better than Olive Garden.

I like their breadsticks but everything else should not be eaten by humans.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#654

Post by dr-detroit »

planede wrote: post #444
zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

Also "we are paying for O365 already, we get Teams for free*".

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#655

Post by wizofaus »

bluGill wrote: post #637
bko wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad answer. It's actually a non-answer. You can apply this to a lot of questions. Why does X ... Y (because X can get away with it). There are real resources behind Microsoft Teams and a lot of people want it to be good. They may not get much of a signal about how well their product is doing compared to competitors because lock-in effects, but I can guarantee you the product managers and executives at Micro…

I would assume Microsoft is using teams in house. They should get plenty of feedback - the people writing the software should see most of the issues and have motivation to fix them. The admins are just down the hall and can talk to the developers if there are problems. The executives can talk to the project manager about the priorities they need... They may not know how it works at my company, but it can't be that di…

> I would assume Microsoft is using teams in house

I wouldn't. But surely there's someone here that actually knows? It does seem hard to believe their own engineers would put up with all the issues it has.

Edit: the only evidence I could find you're right was at https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/new-microsoft-tea.... But whether it's the primary tool their devs use for communication I don't know.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#656

Post by thereddaikon »

zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

I think its unfair to say the real customers of IT are regulators and auditors. But meeting their requirements is legally mandated. You have to meet that standard. In an imperfect world with deadlines, overhead, and limited resources that's sometimes all you can hope for.

As for Teams being awful. It has problems. But all non native desktop apps do and that includes Slack and Discord. I use both Teams and Discord daily and they are about equal in frustration.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#657

Post by emrvb »

alrlroipsp wrote: post #539
gsich wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlassian is an asshole company for their stance against selfhosting it.

What stance? You simply purchase a license and selfhost it. See https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/compare-cloud-dat...

Newsflash: Jira Server end of sales was in februari 2021. Support will completely end in februari 2024.

You better start scheduling your migration.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#658

Post by packetlost »

dustedcodes wrote: post #513
zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

Someone should make job board where people can filter out companies that use Teams instead of Slack or Discord.

It's the first line on my LinkedIn bio. I've gotten no shortage of recruiter inboxes saying they don't use Teams.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#659

Post by irusensei »

Teams is corpocrapware.

Employer was using Skype for Business. I hated it. Had to install pipeline jobs to detect non-ascii crap that developers copy pasted from message chats. The text processor on Skype loves to convert quotes to curly quotes add some weird character that looks like a space but its some rich text aberration.

When company announced it was moving to Teams I was very happy. We could finally ```exchange some code``` right? I'm not happy right now. Its slow, it hangs all the time, it makes a mess with audio devices and behaves erratically when copy-pasting text. Sometimes it copies what you select but most of the time it copies the whole message along with the metadata.Some people can still use Skype. When you send messages to those people it flattens out everything into a single paragraph.

I suspect some of those issues might be caused by security crapware that the company implements on the locally installed Teams software. Doesn't change the fact that I kinda miss Skype now.

I'd blame Electrum but vscode is kinda ok. Not my choice for editor but still not as terrible as Teams.

Come on Microsoft. Discord which is a tool for gaming teenagers is miles ahead in usability and features. Slack lacks features but its a breeze to use. Even Element which is a company that probably has less than 5% of MS resources can output a decent product.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#660

Post by rchaud »

KerrAvon wrote: post #221
rchaud wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but despite it being coined by a former US President and WW2 Allied General, it is now taken to mean something akin to "defund the military".

In what circles does it mean that? I’ve never heard that one.

Among politicians. Military spending is the one thing that never sees top-line cuts, even among so-called fiscal conservatives in Congress that are otherwise happy to slash "wasteful" federal funding for social programs.

You can lobby all you want to cut other types of government 'pork', and you'll probably have some champions in Congress on the same page. Only the military is untouchable. It's un-American to even consider cuts in that sector.

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