9 ms·

>No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. Not sure about that one. Teams is an abso

by xxs 6y ago

>No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. Not sure about that one. Teams is an absolute failure of a chat and audio/video calls app. I think, even if Microsoft tried they could not get it worse than it is currently.

blowski 6y ago
You’re spot on there. It’s all the little things that Slack and Discord get right but Teams gets wrong. For example, searching for messages, navigating between channels, showing which channels have unread messages. Also, Teams frequently has issues on Mac in a way that Slack and Discord don’t.
- corobo 6y ago
  Well it's also the big things like chat and video to be fair. The only saving grace Teams has is it so reliably overheats my MacBook Air that no meeting can be over an hour long
- sjg007 6y ago
  Slack's search is terrible....
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    But is it better than Teams'?
    - blowski 6y ago
      Much better. It's not perfect, but without mind-reading, I'm not sure what you would do to improve Slack's search. Teams, on the other hand... messages just seem to disappear entirely.
    - loudtieblahblah 6y ago
      Having cancer is better than Teams.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  Is Discord better than Teams? I can't tell, I'm still waiting for it to finish swapping and processing my input. Okay, this might be a (slight) exaggeration, but I just don't think a chat app should run much slower than any IDE. What is that thing doing all the time?
ginko 6y ago
Can't wait to have to use Discord for Business in a year or two..
- viraptor 6y ago
  I was going to make a sarcastic comment about "Lync for Gaming" soon. Not sure which is worse...
- orwin 6y ago
  I just joined a consultant company, we are using Signal and discord internally.
- sabas_ge 6y ago
  New Discord: now with Exchange interoperability!
viraptor 6y ago
MS succeeded in that they're selling Lync and Teams to businesses. They can make money that way even with every single user hates them. Discord would be a completely different territory of getting the users to join rather than their bosses.
solarkraft 6y ago
Please elaborate. Teams is the Microsoft product I hate the least. UI glitches and Electron problems aside, I find that at least some UX work has gone into it, there are relatively few things preventing me from working - the calls are pretty reliable too in my experience.
- xxs 6y ago
  In no particular order (top of my head and mostly considering the desktop Windows one) - The history (scroll up) takes a lot to load (this is on 300mbit up/down and fast processor) - html content in the chat totally hogs the processor - Attachments takes forever to open internally. Not so large files like 4-5MB of log pretty much wreck it - upload is hilariously slow (again 300mbit up/down) - loading in browser requires an explicit login to microsoft account to open, instead of a generated link that actually works (to add some salt, my company requires 2FA for the MS login) - audio quality issues, 'intelligent' (echo blocking algorithm kicks in wherever it wants), call drops. Esp. bad in group calls - 'teams' chat gotta be a joke with each post forming its own thread, and you'd need to click to answer the proper one. Close to unusable feature that bears the name of the product - Video sharing has a massive lag on screen sharing both on visual and startup time - Blurred background algorithm is a massive flicker and it really resents people with green (t-)shirts - Calling the phone, instead the desktop while working on the desktop. (Half of my team uses phone version as it's less buggy) - One more: if you don't login the phone app, it will remind you to login every 3hours - until it gets uninstalled.... I can rant for at least 45minutes about it... and it's the 'default' chat application the company uses for years (along with Lync/Skype for business before) and I use it as my 'main' chat application.
  - ddoeth 6y ago
    Some points to add: - As soon as I start a Videocall, the rest of the Application is almost completely unusable - The Application uses 500MB of RAM after it has been idling with one message received in the last hour
    - xxs 6y ago
toyg 6y ago
Look at it this way: they might be buying Discord precisely to get their devs to fix Teams.
ilikeerp 6y ago
Where's the failure exactly? I use teams to manage a very large and globally distributed consulting team. I'm not seeing anyone raise issues from within my organisations other than the engineering side of the business preferring slack.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Because the rest of the business comes from Skype/Lync! Which was somehow an even larger atrocity.
  - distances 6y ago
    Very true. I know a couple of people who like Teams, they work in healthcare and education. I think that mostly just speaks about the horrid quality of the software they usually have to face. Each and every tech worker I know loathes Teams with passion. On the upside it's like a common enemy so there's a small team building aspect to using it.
    - ilikeerp 6y ago
      Are you American? I tend to find tastes in tech differ across the pond. An American literally sent me a link to a google doc the other week - I couldn't believe anyone would send a final professional doc in anything other than Word - you can't even get proper section numbers without a poor plugin....
      - KptMarchewa 6y ago
        Every organisation in Poland I've worked at has used google docs and GSuite. On the other hand, we're mostly using it for few page design doc, and have no idea what "final professional doc" or what "proper section numbers" are and why would anyone care.
        ilikeerp 6y ago
        I am referring to section 2.3.1 of the strategy doc. But hard to point someone to the right place without decent numbering.
bacbilla 6y ago
I think I have to agree with OP here. To me, Teams is more of a failure of product management/design and corporate culture. It was more of a move to add value and subscribers to the Office365 platform than an attempt to build a world beating chat/conferencing platform. So many of its users simply use it because it's included in their Office365 subscription, whereas with Slack, Zoom, etc they'd be paying $8+ a month per user. While the development effort, skill, and time, that goes into building something like Discord is certainly significant, I feel it's certainly something Microsoft could have built given their resources and technical aptitude. What you can't buy is the inspiration, ideas, and culture that make something like Discord happen. If it follows the inspiration and ethos of tools like Github and VSCode, I'll be really happy. Given Microsoft's shift in attitude over the past few years, I really hope that's the case.
- varispeed 6y ago
  I think, at least for corporations, the selling point is security compliance: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-compliance-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-com... This always come first over user's convenience. But the user experience of this tech is abhorrent, so I could see that Microsoft would like to fortify Discord with security features and sell it as Teams 2.0. This actually could work if done right...
- killtimeatwork 6y ago
  Teams have integrations with other MS products (Outlook, Sharepoint). They are clunky and look like they were bolted on, but they're there which is better than not having them at all.
  - pwarner 6y ago
    The Slack integrations for SP and Outlook are arguably better than what MS did in Teams.
  - grep_name 6y ago
    > they're there which is better than not having them at all I disagree fervently. At my current job the department has strong pushes to use these features amongst the teams and if they weren't there we could explore real solutions. As it stands we're doing things like task tracking and taking meeting notes in teams and it's a terrible experience. I can't help but wonder what happens to that corporate data when teams eventually gets the axe
jollofricepeas 6y ago
Teams is a B2B product sold to corporate clients as a part of their O365 subscription & Azure services. It is widely used in this context and is highly profitable. The closest true competitor would be Google which lags far behind.
- extrememacaroni 6y ago
  It's because you need to keep going from Beer 2 Beer to be able to overlook Teams' issues.
  - jollofricepeas 6y ago
    While the CTO enjoys his expensive scotch and big bonus for reducing his companies IT expenditure and modernizing their software offering to employees ;)
polote 6y ago
Yes, but that doesn't change the point. The fact that MSFT has been able to build a product as good as slack is an anomaly. (and they apparently didnt succeed on the video/audio part as you said). Usually big corp like MSFT are not able to build an equivalent technology to someone else. Look at Google who tried in so many fields and never succeed, except mayble Hangout compared to zoom. So I agree with you on that. Nevertheless we know that the product is not that important. If all slack/zoom customers are migrated to Teams over night. The Teams product will keep most of its new users and will have a value for an acquisition, not because of its product, but because of its users. So even though I disagree that MSFT could build the chat application itself, I agree with OP that what is bought is not linked to the actual product
- criddell 6y ago
  Keep in mind that before Microsoft bought it, Skype could make direct P2P connections with outstanding fidelity. If they buy Discord, I wouldn't expect it to stay great.
  - xxs 6y ago
    >Skype could make direct P2P connections with outstanding fidelity I used to be absolutely in awe of the technology Skype had... got bought for $8+B back then and Microsoft managed to ruin the p2p part and stability/latency of the calls
ratsimihah 6y ago
To second that I think Discord's been publishing stuff about high scale concurrency so I'd think they spent quite some time and intelligence getting that right, and it's not trivial.

by xxs 6y ago

blowski 6y ago

You’re spot on there. It’s all the little things that Slack and Discord get right but Teams gets wrong. For example, searching for messages, navigating between channels, showing which channels have unread messages. Also, Teams frequently has issues on Mac in a way that Slack and Discord don’t.

corobo 6y ago
Well it's also the big things like chat and video to be fair. The only saving grace Teams has is it so reliably overheats my MacBook Air that no meeting can be over an hour long
sjg007 6y ago
Slack's search is terrible....
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  But is it better than Teams'?
  - blowski 6y ago
    Much better. It's not perfect, but without mind-reading, I'm not sure what you would do to improve Slack's search. Teams, on the other hand... messages just seem to disappear entirely.
  - loudtieblahblah 6y ago
    Having cancer is better than Teams.
alpaca128 6y ago
Is Discord better than Teams? I can't tell, I'm still waiting for it to finish swapping and processing my input. Okay, this might be a (slight) exaggeration, but I just don't think a chat app should run much slower than any IDE. What is that thing doing all the time?

ginko 6y ago

Can't wait to have to use Discord for Business in a year or two..

viraptor 6y ago
I was going to make a sarcastic comment about "Lync for Gaming" soon. Not sure which is worse...
orwin 6y ago
I just joined a consultant company, we are using Signal and discord internally.
sabas_ge 6y ago
New Discord: now with Exchange interoperability!

viraptor 6y ago

MS succeeded in that they're selling Lync and Teams to businesses. They can make money that way even with every single user hates them. Discord would be a completely different territory of getting the users to join rather than their bosses.

solarkraft 6y ago

Please elaborate. Teams is the Microsoft product I hate the least. UI glitches and Electron problems aside, I find that at least some UX work has gone into it, there are relatively few things preventing me from working - the calls are pretty reliable too in my experience.

xxs 6y ago
In no particular order (top of my head and mostly considering the desktop Windows one) - The history (scroll up) takes a lot to load (this is on 300mbit up/down and fast processor) - html content in the chat totally hogs the processor - Attachments takes forever to open internally. Not so large files like 4-5MB of log pretty much wreck it - upload is hilariously slow (again 300mbit up/down) - loading in browser requires an explicit login to microsoft account to open, instead of a generated link that actually works (to add some salt, my company requires 2FA for the MS login) - audio quality issues, 'intelligent' (echo blocking algorithm kicks in wherever it wants), call drops. Esp. bad in group calls - 'teams' chat gotta be a joke with each post forming its own thread, and you'd need to click to answer the proper one. Close to unusable feature that bears the name of the product - Video sharing has a massive lag on screen sharing both on visual and startup time - Blurred background algorithm is a massive flicker and it really resents people with green (t-)shirts - Calling the phone, instead the desktop while working on the desktop. (Half of my team uses phone version as it's less buggy) - One more: if you don't login the phone app, it will remind you to login every 3hours - until it gets uninstalled.... I can rant for at least 45minutes about it... and it's the 'default' chat application the company uses for years (along with Lync/Skype for business before) and I use it as my 'main' chat application.
- ddoeth 6y ago
  Some points to add: - As soon as I start a Videocall, the rest of the Application is almost completely unusable - The Application uses 500MB of RAM after it has been idling with one message received in the last hour
  - xxs 6y ago

toyg 6y ago

Look at it this way: they might be buying Discord precisely to get their devs to fix Teams.

ilikeerp 6y ago

Where's the failure exactly? I use teams to manage a very large and globally distributed consulting team. I'm not seeing anyone raise issues from within my organisations other than the engineering side of the business preferring slack.

Aeolun 6y ago
Because the rest of the business comes from Skype/Lync! Which was somehow an even larger atrocity.
- distances 6y ago
  Very true. I know a couple of people who like Teams, they work in healthcare and education. I think that mostly just speaks about the horrid quality of the software they usually have to face. Each and every tech worker I know loathes Teams with passion. On the upside it's like a common enemy so there's a small team building aspect to using it.
  - ilikeerp 6y ago
    Are you American? I tend to find tastes in tech differ across the pond. An American literally sent me a link to a google doc the other week - I couldn't believe anyone would send a final professional doc in anything other than Word - you can't even get proper section numbers without a poor plugin....
    - KptMarchewa 6y ago
      Every organisation in Poland I've worked at has used google docs and GSuite. On the other hand, we're mostly using it for few page design doc, and have no idea what "final professional doc" or what "proper section numbers" are and why would anyone care.
      - ilikeerp 6y ago
        I am referring to section 2.3.1 of the strategy doc. But hard to point someone to the right place without decent numbering.

bacbilla 6y ago

I think I have to agree with OP here. To me, Teams is more of a failure of product management/design and corporate culture. It was more of a move to add value and subscribers to the Office365 platform than an attempt to build a world beating chat/conferencing platform. So many of its users simply use it because it's included in their Office365 subscription, whereas with Slack, Zoom, etc they'd be paying $8+ a month per user. While the development effort, skill, and time, that goes into building something like Discord is certainly significant, I feel it's certainly something Microsoft could have built given their resources and technical aptitude. What you can't buy is the inspiration, ideas, and culture that make something like Discord happen. If it follows the inspiration and ethos of tools like Github and VSCode, I'll be really happy. Given Microsoft's shift in attitude over the past few years, I really hope that's the case.

varispeed 6y ago
I think, at least for corporations, the selling point is security compliance: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-compliance-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-com... This always come first over user's convenience. But the user experience of this tech is abhorrent, so I could see that Microsoft would like to fortify Discord with security features and sell it as Teams 2.0. This actually could work if done right...
killtimeatwork 6y ago
Teams have integrations with other MS products (Outlook, Sharepoint). They are clunky and look like they were bolted on, but they're there which is better than not having them at all.
- pwarner 6y ago
  The Slack integrations for SP and Outlook are arguably better than what MS did in Teams.
- grep_name 6y ago
  > they're there which is better than not having them at all I disagree fervently. At my current job the department has strong pushes to use these features amongst the teams and if they weren't there we could explore real solutions. As it stands we're doing things like task tracking and taking meeting notes in teams and it's a terrible experience. I can't help but wonder what happens to that corporate data when teams eventually gets the axe

jollofricepeas 6y ago

Teams is a B2B product sold to corporate clients as a part of their O365 subscription & Azure services. It is widely used in this context and is highly profitable. The closest true competitor would be Google which lags far behind.

extrememacaroni 6y ago
It's because you need to keep going from Beer 2 Beer to be able to overlook Teams' issues.
- jollofricepeas 6y ago
  While the CTO enjoys his expensive scotch and big bonus for reducing his companies IT expenditure and modernizing their software offering to employees ;)

polote 6y ago

Yes, but that doesn't change the point. The fact that MSFT has been able to build a product as good as slack is an anomaly. (and they apparently didnt succeed on the video/audio part as you said). Usually big corp like MSFT are not able to build an equivalent technology to someone else. Look at Google who tried in so many fields and never succeed, except mayble Hangout compared to zoom. So I agree with you on that. Nevertheless we know that the product is not that important. If all slack/zoom customers are migrated to Teams over night. The Teams product will keep most of its new users and will have a value for an acquisition, not because of its product, but because of its users. So even though I disagree that MSFT could build the chat application itself, I agree with OP that what is bought is not linked to the actual product

criddell 6y ago
Keep in mind that before Microsoft bought it, Skype could make direct P2P connections with outstanding fidelity. If they buy Discord, I wouldn't expect it to stay great.
- xxs 6y ago
  >Skype could make direct P2P connections with outstanding fidelity I used to be absolutely in awe of the technology Skype had... got bought for $8+B back then and Microsoft managed to ruin the p2p part and stability/latency of the calls

ratsimihah 6y ago

To second that I think Discord's been publishing stuff about high scale concurrency so I'd think they spent quite some time and intelligence getting that right, and it's not trivial.