Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

bloomberg.com

161–170 of 436 posts

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's widespread speculation that they moved away from P2P because it made it harder for the NSA to wiretap, which the NSA gained the ability to do right before the acquisition[0]. Keep in mind I did say speculation, but the NSA definitely seems to have gained increase ease at wiretapping Skype in early 2011 which is also when Microsoft was negotiating/purchasing Skype. From [0]: > "Sustained Skype collection began…

Direct connections for audio or video calls are a patented ‘invention’ that is why the major vendors like Microsoft and also Apple changed to server based communication.

Good grief. Direct connect audio calls were invented over a century ago. It was called the "telephone"

Switched calls were invented decades ago.

How can a patent still be valid?

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#162
post #120
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the CADT development model is surprisingly good at explaining most software engineering trainwrecks these days: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

jwz.org links are banned at HackerNews. Please remove.

> are banned

what's the story behind that? (i'm not familiar with that domain.)

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#163
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how software can get this much worse. Having done absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape than what we have now. What did they do with it? Do they not regression test? Are they letting each new intern add a new feature while nobody really cares about quality? Did they just replace the old software with a new bug-riddled software that's getting pushed out the door without quality…

Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". What do you…

Amusing, but the issues with Enterprise Software are far more complex than that. Having spent my career working with Enterprises of one sort or another, here are a few off the top of my head:

1. You are not the customer.

With ad-driven products, we have painfully realized that if we aren't paying, we aren't the customer, and when something seems awful to us, the explanation often lies in the fact that the thing that is awful to us benefits the real customer, or perhaps that the thing that benefits us is of little value to the real customer compared to things that do not benefit us.

The same is true of Enterprise Software. Most users are not the software's customer, and therefore their needs are subordinate to the needs of the individuals and departments who are actually paying for it.

2. Pricing-Driven Development

As Spolsky famously pointed out, Enterprises forcibly impose an insane cost-of-sales on software vendors. When you have to employ expensive salespeople, prepare proposals, apocryphally play golf with clients, or whatever, vendors must build those costs into the cost of the product.

Then they must justify those costs with features that sound like they produce big values. Typically these are not going to be things that make users' lives easier, they are going to be things that users may never see, like analytics and back-office integrations.

Like the "you are not the customer" problem above, this tends to create the illusion that the software sucks and that the vendor isn't improving it. In actual fact, the vendor is locked into a Red Queen's Race with competing vendors, and is improving the software constantly. It's just that users never benefit from the improvements, because UX improvements are not thought to "move the needle."

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#164
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". That had to be the most succinct description of the corporate work environment I've ever encountered. I'm shamelessly stealing that. Well said.

no problem, CC-BY-SA.

You want people to note the differences from the version you wrote?

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#165
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them act "professional". What do you…

I couldn't agree with this more! What really characterizes 'enterprise software' is that the people selecting and buying it are different people than the people who have to use it . 'enterprise software' is sold to stove-pipe organizations. It can be all sorts of awful for the people who actually have to use it, as long as the people making the purchasing decision come out of the deal looking good. The software vendo…

Exactly.

There is a similar phenomenon with hotels. Some hotels cater to people who pay with their own money, others to people on expense accounts.

The hotels that cater to people on expense accounts often have what appears to be terrible customer service, but that's only because the "guests" are not the customer, the accounts payable and event management groups are the customers.

Those users get great features they care about, like unified billing across multiple groups in multiple locations, &c &c.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#167
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're not using Windows, in which case it functionally doesn't exist. Seriously. I have never successfully connected a single call with it. (Understood that the same criticism can be levelled at Facetime etc -- which I also don't use.)

I use Linux as my native OS at my current shop and thought "Well they use Skype for Business and there's a new Skype for Linux client" .. but nope. Just as stated in this thread, it's a totally different protocol that's part of their Lync product. I ended up getting a license for Sky, a 3rd party commercial Skype for Business client for Linux. It's pretty decent for what it is, but I could have just installed a Windo…

On Linux Google Meet using Chrome is really good in my experience.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype for Business is actually being deprecated and replaced with Microsoft Teams[0]. Microsoft Teams is impressive that it actually manages to have a worse desktop client than Skype for Business, and the web site is barely any better. If people on O365 haven't used it, they should since Microsoft will force it on you sooner or later. It is like Microsoft wanted to clone a bunch of popular services (e.g. Slack) and j…

I feel compelled reiterate to the world how astonishingly bad Teams is. We've been using it since its release and some days I'm convinced that there must be some internal management issue causing employees to deliberately sabotage the product.

Honestly I've found Teams to be preferential to Skype. The Screen Share features works heads over heels better than Skypes. Though It'd be 10x better with the standard Unicode Emoji set and having URLs to Online Meeting's like Skype.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#169
post #4

Um.. I'm not sure the article author is familiar with the fact that "Skype for business" (the "complex" one) is actually home grown and was just rebranded from Lync. This is not at all the same as the consumer Skype, which actually tries to be a weird mixup between Snapchat and whatnot at the moment (failing utterly of course). Skype for Business (+ PSTN calling) is actually pretty great on Office 365 tbh...

I do not understand why a software company who has long made money in the enterprise with Office, SQL Server, etc cannot make an integrated chat program that works well in a corporate environment. This Lync Skype beast is so buggy and it doesn't even have code paste one tenth as decent as what Sametime had a decade ago, and MS makes TOOLS FOR DEVELOPERS! Do they not use Lync/Skype in-house? Dog-folding should make it…

i think that at this level, what ultimately matters is that a) "it's Microsoft" and b) can the MS sales person/marketing materials convince some manager to sign off.

business-wise, making things better is only worth pursuing insofar as it helps maintain or advance market position. hopefully they'll see it that way at some point.

Re: Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand

#170
post #5

"Since acquiring Skype from private equity investors, Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market, a change that has made Skype less intuitive and harder to use ..." This is absolutely not the bulk of the problem: simply put, the call quality is horrendous and dropping calls in the middle of the meeting is quite common. Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to…

Lol, I had an issue like this Skyping with one person in particular. For some reason, after exactly 5 minutes and 10 seconds, the call dropped. Every single time we called each other. I use google meet now and it’s way better.

I had a call that (asymmetrically) crashed every 15min. I eventually figured out that was when they rotated the ads.
Post reply on HN