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GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

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Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#501
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting you say this. I've always felt my flexibility was a strength and quite enjoy being asked to use new tools and software. To be honest I tend to look quite poorly on people unwilling to provide flexibility on the tools they work with. In my experience it can be quite disruptive when you have one highly opinionated team member who will refuse to work with a new tool because of a personal preference. I g…

Before we lose ourselves in abstract generalities that don't mean anything, let's focus on the thread: communication applications. If you're comfortable working at a place that mandates Teams because it makes management's life easier, then you shouldn't have any problem adapting to new tools. You also shouldn't expect management to tolerate risky ventures; they have already signaled they do not tolerate non-compliant…

I agree with this. I think we might be talking about different things?

I was specifically referring to highly opinionated team members who refuse to work with anything but their preferred tools and software. I'm talking about the kind of people who refuse to use a Mac like everyone else on the team because they prefer Linux, or the kind of person who doesn't reply to their emails because they only use Slack. I find those people disruptive when the rest of the team agree to in work a certain way.

You seem to be talking more about a company which is forcing its employees to adopt various tools they're not happy with and I think that's different – and I'd agree that's not a company I'd want to work for and something that should be pushed back on. But I don't think that's what the commenter I replied to was saying. The way I read their comment was that it didn't really matter if it was a top down decision from a manager or a team decision, if they couldn't use their preferred tools, they don't want to work there.

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#502
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if those who complain about Teams actually use it. They might not. My company forces us to use Google Chat. I would take Teams any day.

I am forced to use it and it is hot garbage. It is a productivity killing anti-app.

It's got the most confusing, designed-to-lose-stuff UI I've ever seen. And that includes major social media sites, Atlassian's whole... pile of stuff, and (its closest competitor I've come across) a very "advanced" set of Asana projects and workflows.

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#503

Regardless of what you think of Teams -- I myself have had nothing but poor experiences over 2.5 years of using it daily -- it's telling that Microsoft has to require folks to use Teams. I'm sure this is just Microsoft unifying everyone on the same comms platform, but seriously, I don't know anyone who chooses Teams. I know non-tech folks who chose Outlook 365 because of familiarity and then end up on Teams because i…

Shameless plug: that's why we started FossTeams [1].

As most of us are forced to work with this thing, the least we can do is to find a workaround for the problem somehow...

[1]: https://github.com/fossteams

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply don't understand this at all. I've used in 3 of my last workplaces. Two exclusively and one in addition to slack. No particular complaints for having internal meetings of any size. I literally do not know what you are talking about and feel like I am missing something.

I feel like a lot of it comes down to which system & client people use. If you're on PC or macOS and using the desktop client, you're probably having a good experience (as long as you only have one account). If you're on Linux or use the web version, you're probably going to have a bad time.

The web client has been far more stable and useable than the desktop client. Someone can correct me, but the desktop client doesn’t even seem like it’s fully native even on Windows.

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#505
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will be blunt. Teams is an awful user experience; I have been using online collaboration tools since the BBS days, and while I appreciate and understand why and what they are trying to build, it is bad software. Every single experience I have had as a teams user in professional settings, interacting with communities, and being required to use it for interactions with my childrens schools since the 2020 shutdowns ha…

What is the specific complaint against it? Better yet can you come up with tools that you use instead of Teams? Is it xoom? Slack? Discord? MS is not my favorite company but my MS Teams experience has been relatively smooth.

I am starting to fear that I am missing out on something major, because we've used Teams for years now and it works fine (on macOS) for what we do - basic chat, multiplayer powerpoint, some video calling, etc.

Maybe it's a team size thing, and Teams just blows monkey chunks when you're one of fifty thousand employees at a company?

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#506
post #196

To everyone at GitHub: I’m so sorry. I don’t mean this in a clever way, either. Teams is awful and it will make your lives worse to one degree or another.

I wonder if those who complain about Teams actually use it. They might not. My company forces us to use Google Chat. I would take Teams any day.

I use it and hate it for chat. For video calls it's better than WebEx but how much is that really saying? (Disclaimer: I haven't used WebEx in years, things may be better now)

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#507
post #116
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team has issues is the understatement of the year. A simple feature like screen freeze has been requested per use in the thread below hundreds of times... "Between different messaging boards (including the link above) this feature has been requested over 2000 times (1044 times as of this writing on the link above alone). Could Microsoft chime in to let us know if this is going to be on the roadmap? Thanks." https://a…

Stagnant feature requests are the least of Teams' problems. It's a slow buggy resource hog that crashes frequently. Features keep getting added but until they address the fundamentals, all they're doing is polishing a turd.

I suspect that it’s a resource hog because it’s not fully native. Someone may correct me though.

Have you tried the web version of Teams? It’s not ideal, but I have found it to be more stable than the desktop version.

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#508
post #491

Regardless of what you think of Teams -- I myself have had nothing but poor experiences over 2.5 years of using it daily -- it's telling that Microsoft has to require folks to use Teams. I'm sure this is just Microsoft unifying everyone on the same comms platform, but seriously, I don't know anyone who chooses Teams. I know non-tech folks who chose Outlook 365 because of familiarity and then end up on Teams because i…

On a regular basis I use Teams, Zoom, and Jitsi for video conferencing. Teams isn't the most troublesome of the set. > I'm sure this is just Microsoft unifying everyone on the same comms platform, but seriously, I don't know anyone who chooses Teams. In big companies like GitHub people don't typically choose their own video conference platform. It's picked for them. For Microsoft I can see a huge benefit to using Tea…

Curious now, which one would you say is the most troublesome in your experience out of those three then? And why…

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the quote it appears the goal is to save money. From the numbers I found, GitHub could be paying upwards of $35k/month in licensing for Slack users. In a climate where companies are trying to shed expenses, wouldn't it make sense to bring that expense in-house?

To people only focused on short term dollars, perhaps. But what impact will it have? Certainly an impact on productivity in short term, perhaps longer? Are there equivalent replacements for all the slack hooks people have in place now? How long will it take to become 'just as' productive in Teams? 1 month? 3 months? $35k... that's... under $500k/year in licensing they're paying? Will they take more than a $500k hit i…

Long term, it will likely result in the improvement of Teams due to dog fooding. It may not be instant, but it will happen.

Re: GitHub staff are required to use Teams by Sep 1, 2023

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange to associate open source and discord. I tend to dismiss any open source project that uses it.

I'm excited for Linen[0] to potentially replace Discord for our use case because unfortunately it doesn't feel like there is another tool that we could use besides Discord or Slack. (We were on Slack for a long time but we just couldn't get people to use it, and we've had a lot more success building a community since swapping to Discord.) What other tools do you recommend for Open Source communities to use? 0: https:…

Sounded interesting but I'm immediately turned off by the wall of channels in their screenshot. They can't even show 3 letters worth of alphabetic searching in a full screen of text. I think discord has it's faults but they're working to reduce the wild growth of new channels and seem to cope with large communities in a somewhat decent manner.
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