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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?

#631

Post by dmichulke »

bko wrote: post #619
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…

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…

Following your reasoning I'd say your answer is a non-answer as well because

> executives at Microsoft want the product to work well.

IMO, everyone wants the product to work well (except probably competitors).

So why doesn't it?

I'm aware this is not an answer either :-)

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

#632

Post by pydry »

hackeraccount wrote: post #623
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…

Do you think that helps Teams or not? I mean, if you can make a shitty product and know that it will sell, why make a good one? If you know you have to make a good product to get sales then that's what you'll do. Shouldn't there be a level where some people will find the pain of the shittiness so great that they'll step outside of the Microsoft ecosystem whereas other people will accept the shit in exchange for the e…

>Shouldn't there be a level where some people will find the pain of the shittiness so great that they'll step outside of the Microsoft ecosystem whereas other people will accept the shit in exchange for the ease of staying inside the Microsoft ecosystem.

This happened at a company I worked at. There was practically a war between IT support trying desperately to force people to use Teams and the people who had picked up Zoom and quite liked it trying to stay using it.

After a grace period where IT pleaded, whinged and begged, the Windows laptops were ultimately locked down such that zoom couldn't be installed or run at all and everybody was finally shifted on to Teams.

This was all done in the name of security, citing such high profile transgressions "Zoom's end to end encryption isn't working as advertised!" and "omg zoombombing sometimes happens if you don't password protect your room!" were cited. Stories like this were circling the news at that time.

Later on when Teams was bludgeoned by several zero days that were orders of magnitude worse, nobody batted an eye of course, and that story didn't get much airtime.

Microsoft had its claws deep into that company. I suspect they have a pretty good PR team as well.

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

#633

Post by solardev »

kimi wrote: post #337
solardev wrote: post #255

Microsoft's entire business model is holding corporate IT hostage. All their apps suck, except maybe VS Code. There's no reason to choose the Microsoft stack over Google Workplace or Zoho except, well, inertia. And there's a lot of that...

BUT... it's so easy for corporate IT dept to buy into. Each different vendor is a different nightmare - but with MS you have only one. And they have it all. And it's maybe not best in class, but good enough. You can see why they are so successful.

The thing I don't get about Microsoft is that with just a LITTLE more effort -- slightly better UX, slightly better implementation, slightly better design, slightly better iterations, whatever -- they could easily be best-in-class. Like all their desktop and consumer web products get 70% there, I don't know why they never just go the remaining 30%. It's like they aim for mediocrity, get there, and then just sustain it for ten years because... why? Nobody's looking that hard?

Maybe it's cuz they're one of those companies that sell to management instead of users. Maybe the pitch isn't "your users will love us" but "we simplify IT fleet management for you, and your users... well, they don't have a choice, so don't worry about them."

Could they really not have bothered just going that extra mile to do both...? None of their products HAVE to be terrible... they just need love and focus :(

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

#634

Post by brightball »

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…

Along the same lines, Googles Chat and Spaces are really close to becoming “good enough” that you don’t need Slack. Their threading setup is awful and they desperately need to let admins set sane defaults for notification sounds, do not disturb hours, etc.

But aside from that it’s really close to being a good enough chat option that Slack doesn’t feel necessary.

Google Meet is already good. Gmail is excellent and the calendaring system is best in class.

They fix the chat UX issues and it’s going to be interesting.

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

#635

Post by alanwreath »

denysvitali wrote: post #569
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is worse than Teams, no thanks.

I've used both. IMHO Teams is by far worse than Slack. This doesn't mean that Slack is better than anything else, it's just better than Teams. Truth be told, even sending a letter by mail is better than Teams.

My company uses both. That doesn’t improve things much but it does give me a good view of both.

- slack great for - huddle collaboration - chat threads - searching chats - focused chat layout

- teams great for - sharing video of eachother - taking control of screen share (no need to futz with asking someone to stop sharing when they already vocally told you to share, most sharers aren’t trying to steal the screen from you as devs) - reactions / emojis when you want to react silently

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

#636

Post by gregmac »

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #525
jupp0r wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throw JIRA into the mix while you're on it.

Wait, what's wrong with JIRA?

There's lots, but I think it comes down to two main things: It has bad defaults, and it can be customized to have really draconian workflow rules.

If you configure it to be reasonable -- keep the workflows very simple with few to no validation rules -- it can be fine to use. The temptation seems to be locking down admin access to managers, and then the admins going crazy building workflows like "these 19 custom fields must be filled out to start" "items must go through a QA step" "QA users are the only people that can approve that step" and "PMs are the only ones that can close a ticket". This quickly gets out of hand and makes it horrible to use.

It also depends on the people using it -- garbage in garbage out, as they say. If people write good tickets (concise titles, format the body, remove irrelevant crap, and properly fill out meta fields like fixVersion) it is much more useful. JQL is awesome, and embedding tickets and JQL queries of tickets into Confluence is awesome (hint: easy way to make release notes) -- but both of these require non-garbage ticket content.

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

#637

Post by bluGill »

bko wrote: post #619
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…

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 different.

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

#638

Post by vel0city »

ajot wrote: post #284
Kostic wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also start/stop the modem on your phone whenever you need it? For the majority of people it makes sense to have a comms app always running as they come to expect that from the smartphones. Granted, there should be an easy way to configure this behavior for advanced users.

Although a smartphone is a computer (and a pretty powerful one while we are at it), I see it as a communication device. It's main purpose for me is to chat and talk with other people, so I want the modem working as much as it can, or I could miss a call from my granma. Even though I can watch videos (and you could say broadcasting/streaming is a form of communication, just a simplex one) or browse the Web[0], I ident…

With Teams, my laptop is also my phone. Really, my old DID for my desk phone is now my Teams number.

Same thing with Signal. I routinely take/place calls with friends and family through the desktop client. If I'm on my computer and I've got my computer headset on, I might as well take the call on the computer instead of taking off the headset and using yet another device.

As my computer is a general purpose device, one of its many purposes is also a communications device.

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

#639

Post by petejansson »

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #525
jupp0r wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throw JIRA into the mix while you're on it.

Wait, what's wrong with JIRA?

JIRA implementations I've seen don't help people see what's ahead; they focus on what's been done to date. If you're on a single, small team that has minimal dependencies on other teams, that can work, but if the project has any significant dependencies on other teams, it becomes very hard for anyone to understand how things are going.

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

#640

Post by balefrost »

> God forbid you try to change the audio device from speakers to headphones in the middle of a call.

I've been using it for a couple of years, and I have never had this issue. I can switch between my built-in soundcard and my USB headset without any problems. On Windows FWIW.

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