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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?

#471

Post by prmoustache »

hooby wrote: post #341

- MSN Messenger - Windows Live Messenger - Microsoft Office Communications - Microsoft V-Chat - Microsoft Lync - Skype - Skype for Business (completely different piece of software than skype) - Microsoft Classroom - Microsoft Teams (no guarantee of completeness) Some of these did better than others, but in the end they all went down the drain. That makes me suspect that it's not the software itself, but some corporat…

Wasn't Skype for Business just a rebranding Lync after the Skype purchase ?

This one was painful with your smartphone and computer not necessarily receiving the same messages. Also I never understood how and why my status was changing/not changing automatically.

I think Teams still suffers from similar issues. It happens that sometimes I open a second teams in a separate browser to have a full chat window while videoconferencing and both chats are not always in sync, sometimes I see a message has been sent from the notification window but if I try to see the full message it never appears on that window while it does on another one.

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

#472

Post by kylen »

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…

Yup. It might even be that while the engineering team is aware of the faults, the MS exec team considers Teams to be brilliant.

At the senior level the role becomes a sales role - you are continuously selling your output, team, product, vision, etc internally to the other execs, board, etc. It's important therefore to present whatever you are producing as exceptional. So you look for indicators that support your pitch. Sales and forecasts are far more important than product. Product is only as important as far as it directly impacts these numbers. And with channels / vertical integration / brand like MS, a core tool like Teams is almost a guaranteed success on these metrics as long as the product kinda works.

And then it's very easy to fall into the trap of buying into your own pitch. When you are continuously repeating how great the product is you begin believe it and ignore criticism, including public opinion. "What matters is the markets opinion not the publics opinion and Teams has huge market share".

So MS execs likely believe Teams to be brilliant, which is probably partly why there isn't the internal urgency to fix the issues.

Also - its a golden goose! Its good enough, generates tons of revenue and fills a strategic product gap. Why take a big risk and refactor it? This could be a disaster.

Takes a very brave, product focused leader to push on despite the above.

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

#473

Post by prmoustache »

happymellon wrote: post #389

One thing that has been referenced but not really talked about is that Teams doesn't want to be a tool, but the complete solution. With the built in SharePoint, and Office editors you can see that it is designed for a very particular use case. The problem is that most people on Hacker News are not just document sharing and editing. Most people are not doing this, and especially not in the half baked Office online too…

It could still be much more efficient and less buggy. A sort of Zulip + Office 365 and external apps integration.

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

#474

Post by lordnacho »

edejong wrote: post #453
nl wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF is it with this weird "things were better in the old days" nostalgia? They really, really weren't! > Original skype would probably work better than zoom does today with a few tweaks When it came out, Skype was amazing because it let you get video calls on your computer. The audio was flaky (I paid for a number for a work line and yeah - wasn't good!), the video broke up all the time, and it dropped out a lot. But…

Totally not my experience. I had long, uninterrupted conversations with my (now) wife. Daily. During my studies I organized group meetings with dozens of participants without many problems. Skypes original decentralized network design was genius.

Same here. To me Skype should have been the last mover in this space. Everything just worked. I actually had an investment meeting with a Skype competitor who took us through the whole infrastructure of why Skype worked and what he was going to do.

Now a few years later there's a zillion ways to do a video call, and Skype itself doesn't seem to be as good as it once was. I really wonder what on earth happened.

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

#475

Post by stoobs »

ajkjk wrote: post #260
rvense wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Technically, reddit and Discourse is more like forums, but a lot of things that would have been a forum 15 years ago are now Discord "servers".

True, they were just Reddit or FB groups in the meantime.

Yup, FB Groups was really the nail in the coffin for a lot of forums. Source - Me, ex large-ish forum admin.

Reddit and Discord piled the dirt on top and added the headstone.

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

#476

Post by classified »

Maarten88 wrote: post #85

Long 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/…

Once the beancounters discover that you can make money with a piece of software, the game is over.

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

#477

Post by prmoustache »

jimnotgym wrote: post #350

This is a regular comment on hn. It doesn't chime with my experience. I have used Teams every day for 3 years. It is a memory hog, it sometimes takes a moment from connection to hearing people...but I never once had it 'crash'. I swap from phone to screen fairly regularly with no problem. I wonder, do people who pay for Teams as an organisation get better service? We pay and I have no problems with it.

On the last 2 companies I have been hired we have been paying for teams and still the experience is crappy. I have not seen crashes but however I have seen teams window being totally unresponsive, people complaining about having to reboot their computer because their teams window was unresponsive/laggy during videocall. I mean not just sound and video stuttering like it would with a bad internet connection but the complete window being unreactive. This on all OSes: windows, Mac and Linux. Also the struggle is real when pairing / connecting different headsets/speakers, especially bluetooth ones after the app/browser is started. The device might not appear as selectable, sometimes the sound is coming from one audio device although it is another one that is selected (same with microphone), this is a total shit show.

On a personnal note it is much better for me since I stopped using the app on Linux. I installed microsoft-edge that is now dedicated to it and other Office365 stuff. I still experienced bugs, issues with messages synchronisation between teams running on more than one device or more than one browser. And the mobile app is a complete resource and battery hog, I refuse to install it on my new smartphone.

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

#478

Post by justsomehnguy »

prmoustache wrote: post #471
hooby wrote: post #341

- MSN Messenger - Windows Live Messenger - Microsoft Office Communications - Microsoft V-Chat - Microsoft Lync - Skype - Skype for Business (completely different piece of software than skype) - Microsoft Classroom - Microsoft Teams (no guarantee of completeness) Some of these did better than others, but in the end they all went down the drain. That makes me suspect that it's not the software itself, but some corporat…

Wasn't Skype for Business just a rebranding Lync after the Skype purchase ? This one was painful with your smartphone and computer not necessarily receiving the same messages. Also I never understood how and why my status was changing/not changing automatically. I think Teams still suffers from similar issues. It happens that sometimes I open a second teams in a separate browser to have a full chat window while video…

> just a rebranding Lync

OCS, Lync and Skype for Business are all the same (quite shitty) product.

Like in 2014 you couldn't send a message with more than 800 chars. Now imagine troubleshooting something which requires sending logs? AND this is not confirable AND the client actively bitch at you AND you can't even the know the char limit from the client.

[0] https://techslaves.org/2015/06/03/lyncskype-for-business-mes...

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

#479

Post by flakeoil »

kareemsabri wrote: post #135
midoridensha wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the problem. Orkut was successful, but that doesn't stop Google from shutting down services. Trusting a Google service to be around long-term is folly unless it's Maps or Gmail.

I don't think Orkut was successful for Google, where success in measured in annual revenue in billions.

I guess that's what the parent comment meant.

Google tries many new products (in-house developed or acquired). If it does not reach a user base of several 100 million users (or 10's of billions of revenue) after a few years then they will scrap it.

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

#480

Post by jtvjan »

4ggr0 wrote: post #433
OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #231

On linux, Microsoft teams will change your system sound settings to match its preference. This includes Bluetooth headphones no longer being available to the system. Then, it decides the system settings are beneath it and will only use its own device settings. And it will decide now that your fancy Bluetooth headset is gone, there is also no need for that crappy internal microphone either, so enjoy not having any mic…

The funniest thing on my Linux laptop is that when I check the OS-menu where I can control every Applications volume, MS Teams is diplayed as "Skype"... I use the official Microsoft Teams Preview for Linux or whatever its called, no idea why they decided to call it Skype in the Application Settings. Can't even really be legacy stuff, as far as I know a Skype for Linux Application never even existed.

Skype has always had a Linux client. It was a nice Qt app that looked like the old Windows client. Unfortunately, it was replaced with an Electron app in 2017.
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