VMware's in court again. Customer relationships rarely go this wrong

At least VMware isn't user-facing and it can be removed without riots. Imagine trying to tell someone they don't need Excel. I try to maintain at least plausible flexibility to go tell vendors to shove it, but if you have some enthusiastic fans of Microsoft Teams (they exist, who knew?)... Teams is one of those things that is inescapably tied to an incredibly deep well of platform lock-in.

Really? Teams?? We went teams abd microsoft ecosystem fully because we needed extra windows management stuff as we have grown and users had software that required windows and excel and the biggest pain point has been teams. As near as i can tell it tries to do everythibg wrong and the things that are so blindingly obvious that it can't do them wrong, it finds a way to do them suboptimally

I would never invent a lie as implausible as this. Yes, there are fans of Microsoft Teams. They're out there and they make decisions.

I... I like Teams...

So, in the spirit of intellectual curiousity, and I will avoid making any judgements in any of my responses, I have 5 questions:

1) Have you ever been exposed to alternative communicators?

2) What features do you enjoy about teams

3) What platform are you using it from (Windows Desktop / Laptop? What spec)

4) Have you ever written a bot or integration?

5) Can you take me through a very brief working day for you, with a focus on collaborating with others.. (file sharing, online chats, IRL chats, meetings?)

I'll give my own interpretation. Not that I love Teams, but the alternative in a dinosaur corporation is basically email.

1) WebEx and the open source chat that Oracle appropriated. Fortunately Zoom came and went too quickly.

2) Searching the Exchange corporate directory. BASIC features: status, embedding pictures, attaching files that Outlook would block. Sharing links that aren't obfuscated.

3) Can you even run Teams from Apple / Linux?

4) Ha! Imagine the nightmares for the person linking Atlassian and Teams.

5) Group texts, file shares, voice calls, recorded meetings. Meetings with groups from other companies is almost painless.

The only way you could be a fan of teams is if you've only ever had to use stuff like cisco connect or lotus notes chat. It really is just terrible. Teams on my window laptop makes the fan go more than running a pretty massive compute cluster, its crazy how non performant it is.

I’ve got users rioting over the fact that we might remove Mattermost and move them to Skype/Teams. Note that I am in airgap and can’t use Slack. I am looking at Rocket.Chat though since MM is $$$$$!

You didn't really say much of what does it do wrong or right, you seem to just try to convey a for-granted idea.

I've been an msft employee for a couple of years and teams... Was ok. I prefer slack, but meetings, video, messaging, formatting, etc. was just fine in teams.

> 1) WebEx and the open source chat that Oracle appropriated. Fortunately Zoom came and went too quickly.

Ok, then I can see why Teams ranks among them. I would invite you to try something like Zulip or Mattermost but I think ignorance is bliss and you should avoid knowing about anything that could be better. Your mind might do this for you (rejection) but best not to tempt fate.

> 2) Searching the Exchange corporate directory. BASIC features: status, embedding pictures, attaching files that Outlook would block. Sharing links that aren't obfuscated.

Appreciate the list, the only one of these that's Teams specific is searching a corp directory. Do you use the "Teams" functionality, or do you use the chat exclusively?

> 3) Can you even run Teams from Apple / Linux?

Yes, it's very slow. It's also very slow from laptops, the best "Teams experience" I've ever seen has been in GameDev where we all ran Windows 7 on dodecacore CPUs with 128-256G of DDR4.

It was still slower than Slack on my macbook air though.

> 4) Ha! Imagine the nightmares for the person linking Atlassian and Teams.

Yeah, people do. People also use Excel from within Teams.

Writing bots for Teams is a special nightmare, but webhooks can work.

> 5) Group texts, file shares, voice calls, recorded meetings. Meetings with groups from other companies is almost painless.

Do you spend a lot of your day face-to-face or more of your day in Teams?

Do you find yourself arranging meetings to sync rather than using the chat functionality?

Do you find that people have to ask around a lot to get an answer and then ask again later when it's forgotten, or can they find their answer in history?

> 3) Can you even run Teams from Apple

Unfortunately. Teams is just as performant on MacOS/iOS as it is on Windows.

Is native Teams on Linux still a thing? I had it installed but the package disappeared from the MS repository. I currently use the web version.

Quite right, it seems that Teams for Linux is discontinued.

Guess this means I wont' get to run Teams in the company I'm joining, which is doing all its security attestation via Microsoft;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32678839

> someone they don't need Excel

well I have news for you ;=)

I pity the people who have to deliver news like that from time to time.

Someone patiently explained and introduced the "Teams" feature of "Teams" to me. It's easy to ignore. Here's a tough one: ever used a Microsoft Loop component?

My preference is text chat but we do a lot of unscheduled voice chats when screen-sharing is involved. In-person meetings are nice when possible, it's been easy enough to connect a Teams meeting from a conference room phone.

Before Teams I set up a Mattermost instance, and I think RocketChat integrated to GitLab? Nobody used those. As we all know the value in these things comes from network effects; with Teams corporate IT can set Teams as a startup app by Domain policy, now everyone in your company has to be online. That's the real killer feature.

You don't need Excel. Have not used it in over 10 years.

Teams, that application IT is forcing me to use because they are a "Microsoft" house. Same application currently stating I'm on the _Calendar_ screen on the Task bar but actually in the _Chat_ screen; _Calendar_ bloatware feature and others have been removed and will always. Even when _Microsoft_ screws the user and force a reinstall of features after a Teams update.

Microsoft is a trillion dollar company that rejects quality user experience, QA, and is great at producing crap-ware. There is not a single product sell that I will spend a penny on. Still waiting on that 7+ year request to destroy | delete dangling pull request in Azure.

Teams is a React App. Teams classic uses Electron - so perf was identical. The New Teams uses native platform web-view, so mileage may slightly vary. Still a React App, though. sighs.

There is a PWA you can install, with it's own icon and everything. Yes, it's a not-even-glorified-web-browser, but meh, it works (for some definition of works).

The web version runs fine in a chromium based browser.

Teams works better in a browser window in Linux where if it hogs too much CPU Cromium pulls the plug.

That's how I run it.

> You don't need Excel

This is the kind of thing that gets tech people a bad reputation. YOU don't need Excel. I don't need excel - but that guy? You have no idea what he needs and if the people he's supporting need (or just want) Excel to get their jobs done it is incredibly arrogant to tell him what he does or doesn't need.

Now, I've loathed Microsoft since the 90s, but that makes me a weird and special little petal - it doesn't count for squat in business.

It also refuses to run well in non-Chromium-based browsers.

Yet more vendor lock-in.

> Fortunately Zoom came and went too quickly.

I've used both Teams and Zoom (and others). Honestly, I'd rather use Zoom instead of Teams.

> BASIC features: status, embedding pictures, attaching files that Outlook would block. Sharing links that aren't obfuscated.

Status is settable by just about any competitor to Teams. Slack and Zoom both can set your current status.

Embedding pictures and files is also not unique to Teams.

Obfuscated links? Just a matter of time before Microsoft changes that to some microsoft link for a "vulnerability scanner" and then charges the company for the privilege to block random things it doesn't understand how to scan.

> Can you even run Teams from Apple / Linux?

Yes / technically yes (not supported any more)

> Group texts, file shares, voice calls, recorded meetings. Meetings with groups from other companies is almost painless.

Slack and Zoom are better at all of these.

i agree. teams is "ok", for my purposes at least. don't really understand the hate it gets in certain forums

Teams is fine, especially as others are so expensive for small non-US shops

We already have to bite the bullet and pay for office, at least we get free chat

I wish Teams integrated better with Github Issues/PR, but it works well as a company-wide chat

No, Teams is not fine.

If cost is your concern: SaaS Zulip is free.

Right, and even "that guy" might not need Excel but the second he opens up Libreoffice or Google Sheets and something doesn't work the way he's used to, he will say it's broken. He's not interested in learning how LibreOffice or Google does it, he's just trying to close a $5m deal. And he's not wrong.

Yeah, it's fine. It's apps in a browser. It basically works. It's as good as anything else I've tried.

Teams brings back a sense of adventure into boring online meetings since you never know what works subtly different than id did last week and who will be made to act the clown due to strange glitches.

Poor mac users.

I thought it was “intellectual curiosity” but it turns out it was a segway into insisting with your own preferences and eventually when being contradicted by others with their own needs and preferences, becoming plain insulting. Will leave your words here for reference:

> I think ignorance is bliss and you should avoid knowing about anything that could be better. Your mind might do this for you (rejection) but best not to tempt fate.

There’s nothing intellectual about fake curiosity, passive aggressive remarks, or insistently pushing your opinion just for the sake of sounding smarter than the next guy.

Honestly, these alternatives just don't stack up against Excel. Even setting aside the advanced stuff like complex data analysis and macros that some organizations rely on, Excel is simply more robust and user-friendly. Google Sheets feels like a toy in comparison.

And a toy is all most users need. BUT (as has been the case with me at various points in my career), some need a lot more.

> Can you even run Teams from Apple / Linux?

I can tell you I've successfully been in Teams video conferences from my Linux desktop, in the browser. I was surprised too.

Something is misconfigured on your machine or you have corporate spyware like Carbon Black driving up processor load.

Theres definitely corpo spyware. Id never use windows on my own machines. Using windows and wsl is just path of least resistance right now.

There is a native Teams package in the AUR which worked well when I had to use it. I assume it will get outdated eventually from lack of MS support. Web works of course.

There's a bunch of annoyances in teams. The text editor is awful if you try to paste/send code for one. The screen sharing is shit by default and only lets one person share at a time for no good reason. It's fairly slow. And it doesn't have a global fucking hot key for push to talk/muting. Despite being integrated with the damn task bar(which is broken if you're on hold in one call and active in another, then it's too stupid to figure out that the mute button is intended to mute my active call, not the one that's on hold...). Also the teams feature gets out of your way, which is an issue if you're trying to use it like you would channels in discord or slack. Would be nice to at least have a notification pip there.

Indeed, or in my case where I don't need Excel, but can't tell someone else they don't. Telling me in this discussion I don't need Excel is very much misreading the conversation.

Zoom FTW, big-time.

Imagine an accounting person telling you: You don't need version control, have not used it in 10 years. This is a _shockingly_ arrogant and ignorant comment and if you actually believe this I fear for any organization in which you have significant power

I find that MS Teams works pretty well if you don't put too many channels in a team, or at least don't use the extra features in the sub-channels. Nothing like having wiki/files spread across multiple channels under a team as opposed to a directory structure.

To me, what I really don't like is that you can present the files and wiki via network file share, but the format of the wiki is read-only in that mode... it would be significantly better as user editable markdown with front-matter. It's some strange quasi-html extensions that you aren't going to be able to really even use.

I don't like that they separated the chat channels out... you now have unread, channels, chats, meeting chats... going between them is now a mess as I'm usually in a combination of meeting chats and 1:1 chats mostly.

While I do appreciate the integration of outlook's calendar, I really don't want meeting notifications for anything more than a couple days out... it can wait until I check my mail.

The real time video chat is okay... I think Zoom and Slack both have lightly better video quality and features though. I don't like Zoom's chat/discussion features nearly as much... I like Slack overall slightly better, but don't think some of the externalized integrations are as good as Teams.

Overall, it's "okay"... I don't love it as I think it's gotten worse over time while Slack is getting better, slowly. I'm not vocal enough to raise hell one way or another for/against it. I've used it on Linux without much issue... so it works well enough.

I was curious about why someone would have a preference, what does Teams serve that alternatives do not.

But you blanket claimed its fine, its not fine.

I won’t work in a company that forces me to use Teams- its a good proxy for how they think about internal communications and how they feel about staff.

You can claim what you want, I was curious, but don’t come in here telling people its ok to use teams- we’ve established that his options were fucking WebEx- which is also not fine.

I wouldn’t say Zoom is better to be honest with you, for just meetings the UX of Teams is pretty bad but the UX of Zoom is almost as bad; there’s not much in it.

Last time I checked Zoom was a pig on resources and required a weird background worker- and you couldn't even send files.

Some of us deal with the 95% of users who don't give a steaming crap what some condescending IT droog thinks about Microsoft. Excel is not optional out here in the real world with the unwashed masses.

Controversial choice (UX isn’t super pretty) but I recommend Zulip wholeheartedly.

Messaging is not fine. There are 15 million group DMs and zero way to organize them outside of a giant list and a favorites. That's where Slack shines.

And uhh you don’t need visual studio or pycharm. Just open notepad and learn how it works. It writes code.

Maybe, but teams is really, really, really non-performant. Its actually kind of impressive of dog shit slow it is.

To be fair, zoom is somewhat slow too. Not to start up, but joining a meeting is like 5-10 second delay. Lord help you if you turn on your webcam.

The text editor is hilariously broken. Copy/paste eats formatting for breakfast... Unless it's Word, but only sometimes. But who the fuck is pasting a WORD document into teams?? Don't do that!

Seriously, it's outlook levels of broken. Markdown doesn't work, I don't know what markdown engine they use but it's certainly not compliant to any sort of standard. Copying whitespace is just unbelievably fucked, your code becomes unreadable.

Which would be fine... If we could bulk indent. But do you know what highlight + tab does? Not indent, no, it selects the send button.

Teams, fuck you.

> And it doesn't have a global fucking hot key for push to talk/muting.

It's control-space. It is global on Windows as far as I know. Unfortunately you can't change it because I would love to have a single key I don't normally use assigned to it. I use a Mac keyboard with 19 function keys so there's plenty that I would never touch.

I agree with all the other criticism by the way, it's a messy slow clusterf*k.

I hate to be like this, but no it's not(at least not on my windows 10/11 work laptop). It is not active globally, the Teams window containing the call has to be active(on my system).

And it would be a problem if it was, as ctrl shift is the default binding for show suggestions in IntelliJ and Rider.

All of the following you've already mentioned but I forgot you mentioning them in my rage at MS. Figuring out if I'm holding it wrong or not revealed another silly issue however: the push to talk button is hard coded to ctrl space, unlike other keybinds it doesn't show up in the keybinds dialog.

> you blanket claimed its fine

You’re talking to different people and didn’t even care. This is not fine.

> which is also not fine

You act like your word is law. Which is also not fine. You shouldn’t need someone on the internet reminding you of this.

My word doesn’t have to be law, however anyone who has touched any system outside of Teams is universally stating that Teams is bad.

That is an important consideration to have if you’re going to be telling people that its fine to inflict it on your workforce. You used cost as a reason but:

1) Teams is a seperate paid license now (since it was anti-competitive- the only way they could have grown such a market share with such a terrible product).

2) There are superior free alternatives.

Don’t come up in here, (in a thread where I am asking, genuinely, about what makes Teams a viable and active preference for people) saying its fine without any fucking follow up on why and then get bent out of shape when challenged.

Teams is not fine, if you’re working on the product or you have inflicted it on your workforce you should be better- I won’t pretend its ok so that you feel better.