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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

#531

Post by bastardoperator »

generalk wrote: post #421

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…

"I don't know anyone who chooses Teams."

Easy, MSFT throws it in for free when you buy other products. That's why there is no incentive to make it better. If you eliminate slack or anything else, you get to say "See, by buying Microsoft we're getting our needs met and saving money". Same thing for GitHub, that's just a freebee depending on your spend at this point.

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

#532

Post by rexreed »

kimbernator wrote: post #72

How is it possible that Teams is still such a poor product? I really didn't like it when my job switched like 6 years ago, and I don't recall ever feeling that it improved in any meaningful way. I switched jobs to one using Slack and it's not perfect but it is a lot better. It's almost a meme at this point. In the presence of other clients that have gotten it "right" (or at least more "right" than teams) like Slack,…

How is it possible SAP is still such a poor product after almost 4 decades? Time does not cure all ills with software. The powers that purchase software are not swayed by arguments about user experience or even efficiency.

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

#533

Post by sundaeofshock »

epolanski wrote: post #520
mfer wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In big companies like GitHub people don't typically choose their own video conference platform. It's picked for them. Yes, for larger meetings that applies. Realistically, people will ping each other and video call on slack/hangouts/whatever if they don't like company's choice.

Big Company can make it very difficult to use an alternative to the preferred tool. Blocking network traffic or restrictions on what binaries can be installed on corporate computers can be very effective at keeping the team using the same chat client.

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

#534

Post by CyanLite2 »

epolanski wrote: post #521
jms703 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not willing to pay to another company for a product that's actually their competition. This. Companies are cutting costs. Teams may not be the best to use, but it doesn't make sense to have multiple chat solutions.

Hmm, GitHub has a gran total 2100 employees. Even if they were paying 10$ per user, it's basically the salary of one non-lower level engineer to have cross-company communication they are already used to.

It's the premise of paying your competitors money to do something that you already are doing. Someone manager probably got a bonus out of this move.

And corporate espionage is more prevalent than you may think. Can you absolutely guarantee 100% that the competitor, like Zoom in China, isn't sniffing their video traffic or recordings to some of their most sensitive internal business discussions?

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

#535

Post by ygjb »

TylerE wrote: post #293
javier123454321 wrote: post #289

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.

For meetings it's decent. It's the everything else that's the problem.

Decent isn't good enough though. It runs slowly, meetings lag periodically (at least on Mac), and the "everything else" is the part that is mandatory (accessing and reviewing assignments with my kids at school, accessing and collaborating on documents, etc).

I have lost track of the number of times we bailed on Teams for even meetings when interacting with teachers or the other organizations I work with (as a volunteer which makes the tooling issues even more frustrating), in favour of another service, or collaborating in a google doc instead.

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

#536

Post by xiwenc »

scott_w wrote: post #478
dbancajas wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The platform is slow > I regularly am confused by what I am meant to do, or how to resolve errors that occur; Just to provide two examples of specific complaints from the parent post.

Have the same experience:

- ms teams on my windows laptop turns it into a raging heater. While i dont even have my webcam on.

- ms teams is so multi-functional you can do anything with it. Office suite, create polls (that are very laggy). It is so bloated there’s clearly no straightforward UX flows. Buttons all over the place. Desktop UI feels terribly slow.

- typing in chat boxes is laggy as hell.

I’m not alone. My colleagues experience similar issues as me.

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

#537

Post by drakenot »

samiru wrote: post #196
revscat wrote: post #147

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’m fine with using Teams for the actual scheduled meeting video calls.

It isn’t amazing — but has been relatively reliable for me. The app takes up too much memory, but Slack video calls have had a lot of issues also (although Huddles has improved things a lot).

My contention with using teams would be for team text chat. No thank you, it is terrible. I’d rather use Slack or really any alternative.

When these forced teams migrations happen, what I’ve seen most people do is some core subset of the dev team has an unofficial Discord, free Slack, or Telegram channel that they use for chat instead.

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

#538

Post by vxNsr »

epolanski wrote: post #520
mfer wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In big companies like GitHub people don't typically choose their own video conference platform. It's picked for them. Yes, for larger meetings that applies. Realistically, people will ping each other and video call on slack/hangouts/whatever if they don't like company's choice.

I’m trying to understand a world where employees at a large org will install a random comms client instead of just using what’s already installed. I worked at a place that used IBM sametime until they migrated off lotus notes. No one used anything else, because why? You’d need to convince every other person you wanted to talk to use it too, was much easier to just use the existing app.

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

#539

Post by vxNsr »

denysvitali wrote: post #503
generalk wrote: post #421

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

You’ve mentioned this app before, last I checked there isn’t a usable client yet. Are you just hoping to get more FOSS devs on board or has something changed?

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

#540

Post by ygjb »

dbancajas wrote: post #470
ygjb wrote: 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 have no objections to Microsoft as a company, I primarily use Windows on my personal devices since I am an avid gamer, and I enjoy several of the tools Microsoft publishes (VS Code, Visual Studio, most of the office suite).

The software is confusing, and at least, in my experience, doesn't have a consistent user experience or do a good job of guiding the user in how to use it.

The way it is used varies significantly between the four main user accounts I interact with (son's secondary school account, daughters primary school account, one non-profit I work with, one business that I work with).

As an alternative, I frequently find myself using Google Drive for document collaboration and sharing, and use Zoom or virtually any other video conferencing software.

Don't get me wrong, I would like it to be better, but I have also had the luxury of spending at least two extended afternoons speaking with product/program managers involved in it during a social event, and they seemed pretty ambivalent to my feedback. It's not a tool designed for users of the software, it's designed for organizational owners to mandate specific policies or behaviours, and for business owners that's fine. I just happened to have spent too much of my career working on empowering and improving user-focused and user-centric tools to care about using those bad tools unless I absolutely have to.

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