4 ms·

One of the most awful pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure to use. It's decent for calls, that's the only positive I can name. The chat experience

One of the most awful pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure to use. It's decent for calls, that's the only positive I can name. The chat experience is by far the worst I've ever had to deal with: - My sidebar is riddled with old meetings chats nobody cares about anymore. Makes it hard to find actual important direct conversations with people. - The text editor is absolute jank, I've yet to figure out how to get out of a quote after starting one, lists constantly glitch out, it keeps "bold/italic" state like office but with no easy way to remove it. - Because it connects to sharepoint you get to enjoy all the lovely permission bullshit when trying to share a simple freaking file. Half the time I post a picture it glitches out for me and I can no longer see it. Or I can see it but not if I make it fullscreen. Honestly the abysmal performance is just the cherry on top...

calmoo 5y ago
Teams was a not-insignificant reason for leaving my last company. My day to day stress levels immediately plummeted after going back to using Slack. People say Slack is terrible, but I tell them go to use Teams and then come back to me. It is by far the biggest dumpster fire software I've had the displeasure of using. It's the only software that has made me consistently angry. All of the issues you described I have experienced. One of the most plaguing issues was actually viewing new messages. When clicking a channel to view new messages, 50% of the time the screen would be blank and I would have to click away and back to render the chat.
- sirwhinesalot 5y ago
  That blank screen issue has happened to me as well. The pandemic massively increased how much I needed to interact with Microsoft Teams, and let me tell you, it did not make me happy. Not one bit. Perhaps it's a giant ploy by Microsoft to try and get people to hate remote work. How do you screw up a chat program this badly?
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Another neat blank screen issue is sometimes people video doesn't work on a call, but it can be fixed by disabling the network card in device manager for a few seconds then re-enabling the network .. at which point the video works. Mindboggling
  - tanseydavid 5y ago
    >> "How do you screw up a chat program this badly?" By having the highest-level-goal be: make it look like the competition and give it away for free. Whether it actually works like the competition was deferred until some later date. If the competition perishes in the meantime, well, then there's no need to fix.
- c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  Whether a company uses the Microsoft suite is definitely a factor when I look for jobs. I simply won't put up with Teams or Windows - not unless the salary is at least 2x what I can get elsewhere. I know I'm not alone in this. Developers want to work with good software. I've had to put up with it before and I won't do it again. I can almost feel my cortisol levels rising just thinking about it.
  - calmoo 5y ago
    Yep, I get the same stressed out feeling even thinking about Teams. I 100% would not work for another company that uses anything more than Outlook from the Microsoft suite. Life is just too short.
  - anm89 5y ago
    100% true for me as well.
globular-toast 5y ago
The chat is so bad people end up @ing the whole team in the team channel just to get people to see it. It fails at its most basic purpose. There are seemingly countless different ways to start a chat. You could start a thread in a channel (or is it team?), or just start a new channel/team, or invite people to a group chat. There ends up being a forever growing list of chats/rooms/whatever because people can't find the previous one so just make a new one. People are forever accidentally starting a new thread instead of replying to the current thread. Most stupid UI ever. I find 99% of the time people just want flat chat and find whatever the easiest way to get that is. And why the hell do you need to give me a top level notification that won't go away when someone "reacts" to the thing I've just said in the chat I'm still viewing?! Oh, and the random breakages. It seems every other week they break code pasting. Currently viewing images is broken for me. I just have to keep retrying until on the tenth time it finally works.
- Herodotus38 5y ago
  The reacts are my biggest pet peeve. Someone just simply wants to register they received my message/instructions and it created 4 additional clicks for me to address.
sideshowb 5y ago
+1 there's no way to mark all chat as read is there. I dread the day I miss an important message because it's hidden amid junk I don't want to open.
wiredfool 5y ago
I have an external monitor with USB audio, but no volume in macos there because reasons. It's hooked up to a hardware amp with a real hardware volume control. Every. Single. Teams. Call has a dialog box saying I might not be able to hear because I'm at 0 volume. And it comes back every single time the window maximizes. If I share a window on one screen, the teams call carefully placed on the other monitor helpfully minimizes to a floating window in front of what I'm trying to share. So then I have to re-maximize because I sometimes like to see the reactions when I'm sharing stuff. One person I call, I can't. He has to call me back. Every Time. It's not the worst video chat I've used. That's either skype or any of the pre-facetime real-video things that never really worked. But it's not good either.
rk06 5y ago
I hate the text editor. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work, so I don’t rely on it for advanced WYSIWYG features. Worst of all, it will open all links in edge, unless you configure Edge to Not do it. WTF? Why is this even possible?
- IiydAbITMvJkqKf 5y ago
  Someone got a nice bonus for the edge feature.
thewhitetulip 5y ago
I randomly miss out alerts of notif and calls The stuoid thing keeps ringing denoting that I am getting a call but I can't see who is calling u less I have their chat window open then it shows a Join button Legitimately irritating as it happens several times a day Root cause? Their notification is generated but we can't see it unless we do alt tab
andrei_says_ 5y ago
Why do companies use Teams? At all? What is the promise of that software? To me it looks like another failed attempt to solve communication without really giving it a good thought - resulting in an incomprehensible mess.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  > Why do companies use Teams? At all? It’s included and integrated with Office.

calmoo 5y ago

Teams was a not-insignificant reason for leaving my last company. My day to day stress levels immediately plummeted after going back to using Slack. People say Slack is terrible, but I tell them go to use Teams and then come back to me. It is by far the biggest dumpster fire software I've had the displeasure of using. It's the only software that has made me consistently angry. All of the issues you described I have experienced. One of the most plaguing issues was actually viewing new messages. When clicking a channel to view new messages, 50% of the time the screen would be blank and I would have to click away and back to render the chat.

sirwhinesalot 5y ago
That blank screen issue has happened to me as well. The pandemic massively increased how much I needed to interact with Microsoft Teams, and let me tell you, it did not make me happy. Not one bit. Perhaps it's a giant ploy by Microsoft to try and get people to hate remote work. How do you screw up a chat program this badly?
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Another neat blank screen issue is sometimes people video doesn't work on a call, but it can be fixed by disabling the network card in device manager for a few seconds then re-enabling the network .. at which point the video works. Mindboggling
- tanseydavid 5y ago
  >> "How do you screw up a chat program this badly?" By having the highest-level-goal be: make it look like the competition and give it away for free. Whether it actually works like the competition was deferred until some later date. If the competition perishes in the meantime, well, then there's no need to fix.
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
Whether a company uses the Microsoft suite is definitely a factor when I look for jobs. I simply won't put up with Teams or Windows - not unless the salary is at least 2x what I can get elsewhere. I know I'm not alone in this. Developers want to work with good software. I've had to put up with it before and I won't do it again. I can almost feel my cortisol levels rising just thinking about it.
- calmoo 5y ago
  Yep, I get the same stressed out feeling even thinking about Teams. I 100% would not work for another company that uses anything more than Outlook from the Microsoft suite. Life is just too short.
- anm89 5y ago
  100% true for me as well.

globular-toast 5y ago

The chat is so bad people end up @ing the whole team in the team channel just to get people to see it. It fails at its most basic purpose. There are seemingly countless different ways to start a chat. You could start a thread in a channel (or is it team?), or just start a new channel/team, or invite people to a group chat. There ends up being a forever growing list of chats/rooms/whatever because people can't find the previous one so just make a new one. People are forever accidentally starting a new thread instead of replying to the current thread. Most stupid UI ever. I find 99% of the time people just want flat chat and find whatever the easiest way to get that is. And why the hell do you need to give me a top level notification that won't go away when someone "reacts" to the thing I've just said in the chat I'm still viewing?! Oh, and the random breakages. It seems every other week they break code pasting. Currently viewing images is broken for me. I just have to keep retrying until on the tenth time it finally works.

Herodotus38 5y ago
The reacts are my biggest pet peeve. Someone just simply wants to register they received my message/instructions and it created 4 additional clicks for me to address.

sideshowb 5y ago

+1 there's no way to mark all chat as read is there. I dread the day I miss an important message because it's hidden amid junk I don't want to open.

wiredfool 5y ago

I have an external monitor with USB audio, but no volume in macos there because reasons. It's hooked up to a hardware amp with a real hardware volume control. Every. Single. Teams. Call has a dialog box saying I might not be able to hear because I'm at 0 volume. And it comes back every single time the window maximizes. If I share a window on one screen, the teams call carefully placed on the other monitor helpfully minimizes to a floating window in front of what I'm trying to share. So then I have to re-maximize because I sometimes like to see the reactions when I'm sharing stuff. One person I call, I can't. He has to call me back. Every Time. It's not the worst video chat I've used. That's either skype or any of the pre-facetime real-video things that never really worked. But it's not good either.

rk06 5y ago

I hate the text editor. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work, so I don’t rely on it for advanced WYSIWYG features. Worst of all, it will open all links in edge, unless you configure Edge to Not do it. WTF? Why is this even possible?

IiydAbITMvJkqKf 5y ago
Someone got a nice bonus for the edge feature.

thewhitetulip 5y ago

I randomly miss out alerts of notif and calls The stuoid thing keeps ringing denoting that I am getting a call but I can't see who is calling u less I have their chat window open then it shows a Join button Legitimately irritating as it happens several times a day Root cause? Their notification is generated but we can't see it unless we do alt tab

andrei_says_ 5y ago

Why do companies use Teams? At all? What is the promise of that software? To me it looks like another failed attempt to solve communication without really giving it a good thought - resulting in an incomprehensible mess.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
> Why do companies use Teams? At all? It’s included and integrated with Office.