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I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m

I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m quite anxious to click anything until all the loading spinners have stopped in case I click the wrong thing. Then I could be taken to a page or feature I’ve never seen before. Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but it starts editing the whole description field. EDIT - I'd also like to add that as a developer, once I finish my ticket I assign it to a QA. Then I can never get back to the ticket. I'd like a really easy way to see all of the tickets I've ever completed. But completed tickets aren't assigned to me, they're assigned to QA.

hkgjjgjfjfjfjf 4y ago
pydry 4y ago
It's such a bloated mess that it's hard to point to a specific thing.
nikanj 4y ago
It’s like trying to describe why a McDonalds $1.99 burger is bad, to someone who just lists ingredients and insists it has just the same mayo, cheese & patty as a $12.99 burger does. It’s not about any single feature being missing, it’s just terrible the same way Vista was terrible
daigoba66 4y ago
> I'd like a really easy way to see all of the tickets I've ever completed. Can be solved by creating a custom person field called “Developer”. Then you can customize the Status transition for your In Progress status to automatically set that field to the current user or maybe the issue assignee. For better or worse, Jira is quite powerful and flexible. But it’s not always simple to setup.
monkeybutton 4y ago
Everything turning into an edit action when I just want to click a link or copy a bit of text is super annoying! Also is thinking you're in a text field, typing out something and realizing you've done a whole bunch of random actions because of all the hotkeys.
- corrral 4y ago
  The #1 thing I want out of every project management thingy I've used is the ability to have direct links to a ticket/issue or list of tickets/issues load as a basic HTML page, that's either read-only or uses a "save" button rather than persisting edits instantly. Provide a link to the full-fat version of the page, on the off chance I want that. I just want tickets to load instantly (trivial, if you're not loading an "app" with it), not use hundreds of MB of memory and tons of background processor cycles (ditto) so I feel like I can't just leave it open, and not to have to worry I'll click in the wrong place or accidentally trigger some hotkey thing and screw something up. Let the PMs have their version of the site with live-edited everything and janky (because Web) drag & drop galore and a whole universe of hotkeys and combos. I just want a fucking web page with the info I need.
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
The hate is not for JIRA the tool, but JIRA the way of managing things.
- mnd999 4y ago
  No, the tool is shit too.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  Yes, but also Jira the tool with it's horrendous UX, janky markdown (which is also different from Confluence's wtf), memory foortprint, slow loading, slow everything, controls moving from under your cursor just as you're about to click them... Honestly, it's a horrendous piece of software however you look at it.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  This is true. I too would rejoice to see Jira die in a fire; but the fact is that if that happened, another tool would be used instead, and the same dysfunctional management processes would just re-emerge.
deathanatos 4y ago
- For a while, we had tickets in done states that just roll over to the next epic, like they were still open. Nobody knew why, and it went away with nobody making any fixes to anything. - For a while, the side pane when you open an issue would just be blank. - Setting a ticket's epic makes me want to tear my eyeballs out. The button has the tiniest hitbox, the suggestion list is always wrong. - Bulk operations are just a PITA - the search box is always description. I'm almost always filtering on other criteria, and so, have to suffer a page load. - and every page load is long and slow. Loading my backlog page is 186 requests, 4.4 MiB on the wire, and takes 9.4s. For one page. - UIs that have drag & drop, but don't support simultaneous scroll are annoying. I have to wait for the view to move at JIRA's speed, which is ofc., slow. - it encourages "sprints" and "agile", which in turn encourage "process" over just getting shit done.
- dfcowell 4y ago
  All valid criticisms, especially the slowness and heavy page sizes. Another perspective on 3 of your points though (and a free quality-of-life tip!) > For a while, we had tickets in done states that just roll over to the next epic, like they were still open. Nobody knew why, and it went away with nobody making any fixes to anything. I almost guarantee someone forgot to set the resolution field when creating a workflow transition, noticed and went back and fixed it. > Bulk operations are just a PITA Agreed that the UI is jank AF, but it works reliably on the order of tens of thousands of tickets at a time. > UIs that have drag & drop, but don't support simultaneous scroll are annoying. I have to wait for the view to move at JIRA's speed, which is ofc., slow. Almost every operation you want to do this for can also be done by right-clicking and “move to.” There’s “move to top of backlog”, “move to sprint x”, “move to top of column”, you can also ctrl/cmd click (or shift-click) to select multiple issues.
tacostakohashi 4y ago
> I'd also like to add that as a developer, once I finish my ticket I assign it to a QA. Then I can never get back to the ticket. That's not JIRA, that's your organization's crappy workflow/customization. That's the problem... JIRA is a tool that encourages setting up elaborate yet dysfunctional workflows. Regarding your actual problem, just create a tickets.txt in your home directory and store your list of completed JIRAs and whatever else is important to you there.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
Jira has JQL (Jira Query Language) https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/jql-the-most-flexible-way-to-search-jira-14 https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/jql-the-most-fl... you can search for a lot of different things, it is possible to construct queries for items you have touched in the past. on edit: once you have a query you like save it as a personal filter and it will show up somewhere in the UI, because Jira sucks who knows where (changes all the time), but you can of course also make personalized dashboards and place the filters you have made on to that dashboard with a widget that runs the filter. on second edit: evidently I earned someone's downvote by not being adequately anti-jira despite having put in that Jira sucks, but really the comment to which I'm replying ends with: " I'd also like to add that as a developer, once I finish my ticket I assign it to a QA. Then I can never get back to the ticket. I'd like a really easy way to see all of the tickets I've ever completed. But completed tickets aren't assigned to me, they're assigned to QA. " which, using JQL, is real easy.
outworlder 4y ago
> I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. I have a very specific complaint: the ease which all sorts of custom fields can be added for _everyone_. Sales will want to add a field to hold their contract status. Lo and behold, engineering now has it. It can be done in the proper way, but it seems that doing it at a global level is easier since that's how multiple Jira installations at multiple companies were configured. All I want is a ticket, with a title, description, assignee, the current status, an easy way to transition, and comments. That's it. Let my project _opt out_ of any global customization if making global stuff is unavoidable. Also, the newest Jira UX is... terrible. Tickets should not be THAT easy to edit. How often do we want to change a ticket's description, or title? I'd say, not often. If we do, there's really no harm in having an "edit" button. Old Jira versions had one.
- Buttons840 4y ago
  I had a similar thought: Jira is very customizable; if people hate something that is so customizable then part of what they're hating is the organizations customization of it. I've seen the same thing at multiple companies. Someone comes up with a Jira workflow, it doesn't match the needs of some people, but the company wants to standardize on that workflow, so now people are stuck using a stupid workflow that doesn't work for them. I've also seen a bunch of stupid custom fields on every single ticket. Is this Jira's fault or the organization's fault? You complain but the word from your immediate manager is that the team is already in hot water so escalating complaints about the Jira configuration isn't going to help, etc.
  - lmm 4y ago
    If only one organisation did that, it would be that organisation's fault. When every organisation using Jira does that, it's Jira's fault. Why does everyone standardize on a company-wide workflow that the developers can't change with a bunch of stupid mandatory fields? Because that's what Jira nudges you to do. Workflow editing is for managers only, fields are mandatory by default...
- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  > Tickets should not be THAT easy to edit. How often do we want to change a ticket's description, or title? I'd say, not often. If we do, there's really no harm in having an "edit" button. It's very useful for when the user submits a ticket with "My computer isn't working" as the title and "excel is broken" as the description.
cogman10 4y ago
What I hate about jira is it's flexibility. The biggest issue I have with jira is it's so dead simple for braindead process zombies to cram another field, another label, another required text box, 4 new transition states, 20 difference confusing priorities, etc. Then, require everyone to follow through with this (with 90% of the time putting some form of "not applicable" in the boxes they added). It is built for anal retentive "rule enforcers" to jump in and chastise you because you checked box 4a but didn't fill out sub box 3c. FFS, I have an easier time filling out my taxes than some project's jira setups. (And I live in the US).
- midasuni 4y ago
  Isn’t there problem the people cramming those things in? We use jira as a way to track ongoing tasks, we use subject, description, comments/attachments, and assigned to.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    > Isn’t there problem the people cramming those things in? Yes. However, the feedback loop for "that's a dumb mistake" both takes too long and is easily ignored. Even with CRs, spaghetti code still gets written. There's no CR for a Jira workflow change. Further, the people making such changes are frequently unimpacted by them (or they like them because they are the aforementioned anal retentive process zombies)
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31816715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31816715
    - midasuni 4y ago
      My organisation/team uses jira, we don’t do process, so the post is meaningless
Lammy 4y ago
The composer in general. I often have to intersperse log/code lines with prose, and there’s no telling what the Formatting menu will do. Some times selecting a formatting will apply to selected text, sometimes not. Sometimes it will apply when choosing a formatting then pasting text, some times not. Some times it seems to apply to a selection as well as everything after it. It does support Markdown with backticks for monospace, but that’s a lot of manual editing I would rather not do. I also get annoyed at the subtle ways the top-level Issue composer is different from the comment composer, most frequently with the top-level composer’s refusal to allow image embedding/positioning. You can only add images to a new Issue as file attachments displayed as a row of tiny thumbnails under all the Issue text, so I will frequently create a mostly blank Issue and then write what I want to say as the first comment where I can embed images and talk about them inline. In the interest of also saying something nice, I think it’s cute how the JIRA logo seems to be a Jera/“j” rune :) https://wac-cdn.atlassian.com/dam/jcr:e348b562-4152-4cdc-8a55-3d297e509cc8/Jira%20Software-blue.svg https://wac-cdn.atlassian.com/dam/jcr:e348b562-4152-4cdc-8a5... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%93ran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%93ran
- sefrost 4y ago
  Not being able to embed images in comments sucks. It's not always clear which images people are talking about when they all get dumped in to the "attachments" section.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    You can insert attached images into comments. It's in the menu of the "Visual" editing pane, or doable by inserting some magic [] or {} incantation in the "Text" pane. Sorry, I don't know it by heart. But you can do it visually first, then find and learn it by switching to the textual view. I do remember you can specify size by optional width and height parameters; without them, I think you get just a tiny thumbnail.
JackFr 4y ago
> Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but it starts editing the whole description field. +1. Absolute garbage interface.
ortusdux 4y ago
We are looking at switching vendors, but the fact that they EOL'ed the server version makes JIRA a non-starter for us. https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud
efortis 4y ago
How do I find an old story in Jira? *Without searching my email.
MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago
> For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m quite anxious to click anything until all the loading spinners have stopped in case I click the wrong thing. Then I could be taken to a page or feature I’ve never seen before. This is a common antipattern that doesn't get talked about enough. It's very common in the era of interactive ads, websites with 3rd party web UIs layered on top, lazy loading, and just "rich" UIs in general. A user needs to be able to trust what they are about to click. This is fundamental.
- macintux 4y ago
  The Vera functionality in Jira likes to move me ahead in a test sequence, so each time I touch something in a long test sequence I have to make sure I’m on the right test step. Absolutely trash.
- ectopod 4y ago
  This is something browsers should solve. If the thing you clicked on wasn't there 0.2s ago then you didn't intend to click on it, so just ignore the click. And add an API for twitch games to turn this off.
  - heretogetout 4y ago
    I'd probably support a page similar to the one used to warn you about certificate problems. "This page is using a user-hostile interface that may cause you to interact with unintended elements. Do you want to proceed?" But, you know, worded better.
heretogetout 4y ago
I can't help but wonder what PM tools Atlassian developers use. Surely it can't be JIRA? Maybe they have some browser extensions that make the interface less frustrating.
- joshgachnang 4y ago
  I assume they do use JIRA, hence the mess.
eftychis 4y ago
I have a hard time finding out things I like. I recall even wasting time ensuring that Jira recognized correctly that a PR was merged.

hkgjjgjfjfjfjf 4y ago

pydry 4y ago

It's such a bloated mess that it's hard to point to a specific thing.

nikanj 4y ago

It’s like trying to describe why a McDonalds $1.99 burger is bad, to someone who just lists ingredients and insists it has just the same mayo, cheese & patty as a $12.99 burger does. It’s not about any single feature being missing, it’s just terrible the same way Vista was terrible

daigoba66 4y ago

> I'd like a really easy way to see all of the tickets I've ever completed. Can be solved by creating a custom person field called “Developer”. Then you can customize the Status transition for your In Progress status to automatically set that field to the current user or maybe the issue assignee. For better or worse, Jira is quite powerful and flexible. But it’s not always simple to setup.

monkeybutton 4y ago

Everything turning into an edit action when I just want to click a link or copy a bit of text is super annoying! Also is thinking you're in a text field, typing out something and realizing you've done a whole bunch of random actions because of all the hotkeys.

corrral 4y ago
The #1 thing I want out of every project management thingy I've used is the ability to have direct links to a ticket/issue or list of tickets/issues load as a basic HTML page, that's either read-only or uses a "save" button rather than persisting edits instantly. Provide a link to the full-fat version of the page, on the off chance I want that. I just want tickets to load instantly (trivial, if you're not loading an "app" with it), not use hundreds of MB of memory and tons of background processor cycles (ditto) so I feel like I can't just leave it open, and not to have to worry I'll click in the wrong place or accidentally trigger some hotkey thing and screw something up. Let the PMs have their version of the site with live-edited everything and janky (because Web) drag & drop galore and a whole universe of hotkeys and combos. I just want a fucking web page with the info I need.

YetAnotherNick 4y ago

The hate is not for JIRA the tool, but JIRA the way of managing things.

mnd999 4y ago
No, the tool is shit too.
cassianoleal 4y ago
Yes, but also Jira the tool with it's horrendous UX, janky markdown (which is also different from Confluence's wtf), memory foortprint, slow loading, slow everything, controls moving from under your cursor just as you're about to click them... Honestly, it's a horrendous piece of software however you look at it.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
This is true. I too would rejoice to see Jira die in a fire; but the fact is that if that happened, another tool would be used instead, and the same dysfunctional management processes would just re-emerge.

deathanatos 4y ago

- For a while, we had tickets in done states that just roll over to the next epic, like they were still open. Nobody knew why, and it went away with nobody making any fixes to anything. - For a while, the side pane when you open an issue would just be blank. - Setting a ticket's epic makes me want to tear my eyeballs out. The button has the tiniest hitbox, the suggestion list is always wrong. - Bulk operations are just a PITA - the search box is always description. I'm almost always filtering on other criteria, and so, have to suffer a page load. - and every page load is long and slow. Loading my backlog page is 186 requests, 4.4 MiB on the wire, and takes 9.4s. For one page. - UIs that have drag & drop, but don't support simultaneous scroll are annoying. I have to wait for the view to move at JIRA's speed, which is ofc., slow. - it encourages "sprints" and "agile", which in turn encourage "process" over just getting shit done.

dfcowell 4y ago
All valid criticisms, especially the slowness and heavy page sizes. Another perspective on 3 of your points though (and a free quality-of-life tip!) > For a while, we had tickets in done states that just roll over to the next epic, like they were still open. Nobody knew why, and it went away with nobody making any fixes to anything. I almost guarantee someone forgot to set the resolution field when creating a workflow transition, noticed and went back and fixed it. > Bulk operations are just a PITA Agreed that the UI is jank AF, but it works reliably on the order of tens of thousands of tickets at a time. > UIs that have drag & drop, but don't support simultaneous scroll are annoying. I have to wait for the view to move at JIRA's speed, which is ofc., slow. Almost every operation you want to do this for can also be done by right-clicking and “move to.” There’s “move to top of backlog”, “move to sprint x”, “move to top of column”, you can also ctrl/cmd click (or shift-click) to select multiple issues.

tacostakohashi 4y ago

> I'd also like to add that as a developer, once I finish my ticket I assign it to a QA. Then I can never get back to the ticket. That's not JIRA, that's your organization's crappy workflow/customization. That's the problem... JIRA is a tool that encourages setting up elaborate yet dysfunctional workflows. Regarding your actual problem, just create a tickets.txt in your home directory and store your list of completed JIRAs and whatever else is important to you there.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

Jira has JQL (Jira Query Language) https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/jql-the-most-flexible-way-to-search-jira-14 https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/jql-the-most-fl... you can search for a lot of different things, it is possible to construct queries for items you have touched in the past. on edit: once you have a query you like save it as a personal filter and it will show up somewhere in the UI, because Jira sucks who knows where (changes all the time), but you can of course also make personalized dashboards and place the filters you have made on to that dashboard with a widget that runs the filter. on second edit: evidently I earned someone's downvote by not being adequately anti-jira despite having put in that Jira sucks, but really the comment to which I'm replying ends with: " I'd also like to add that as a developer, once I finish my ticket I assign it to a QA. Then I can never get back to the ticket. I'd like a really easy way to see all of the tickets I've ever completed. But completed tickets aren't assigned to me, they're assigned to QA. " which, using JQL, is real easy.

outworlder 4y ago

> I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. I have a very specific complaint: the ease which all sorts of custom fields can be added for _everyone_. Sales will want to add a field to hold their contract status. Lo and behold, engineering now has it. It can be done in the proper way, but it seems that doing it at a global level is easier since that's how multiple Jira installations at multiple companies were configured. All I want is a ticket, with a title, description, assignee, the current status, an easy way to transition, and comments. That's it. Let my project _opt out_ of any global customization if making global stuff is unavoidable. Also, the newest Jira UX is... terrible. Tickets should not be THAT easy to edit. How often do we want to change a ticket's description, or title? I'd say, not often. If we do, there's really no harm in having an "edit" button. Old Jira versions had one.

Buttons840 4y ago
I had a similar thought: Jira is very customizable; if people hate something that is so customizable then part of what they're hating is the organizations customization of it. I've seen the same thing at multiple companies. Someone comes up with a Jira workflow, it doesn't match the needs of some people, but the company wants to standardize on that workflow, so now people are stuck using a stupid workflow that doesn't work for them. I've also seen a bunch of stupid custom fields on every single ticket. Is this Jira's fault or the organization's fault? You complain but the word from your immediate manager is that the team is already in hot water so escalating complaints about the Jira configuration isn't going to help, etc.
- lmm 4y ago
  If only one organisation did that, it would be that organisation's fault. When every organisation using Jira does that, it's Jira's fault. Why does everyone standardize on a company-wide workflow that the developers can't change with a bunch of stupid mandatory fields? Because that's what Jira nudges you to do. Workflow editing is for managers only, fields are mandatory by default...
lp0_on_fire 4y ago
> Tickets should not be THAT easy to edit. How often do we want to change a ticket's description, or title? I'd say, not often. If we do, there's really no harm in having an "edit" button. It's very useful for when the user submits a ticket with "My computer isn't working" as the title and "excel is broken" as the description.

cogman10 4y ago

What I hate about jira is it's flexibility. The biggest issue I have with jira is it's so dead simple for braindead process zombies to cram another field, another label, another required text box, 4 new transition states, 20 difference confusing priorities, etc. Then, require everyone to follow through with this (with 90% of the time putting some form of "not applicable" in the boxes they added). It is built for anal retentive "rule enforcers" to jump in and chastise you because you checked box 4a but didn't fill out sub box 3c. FFS, I have an easier time filling out my taxes than some project's jira setups. (And I live in the US).

midasuni 4y ago
Isn’t there problem the people cramming those things in? We use jira as a way to track ongoing tasks, we use subject, description, comments/attachments, and assigned to.
- cogman10 4y ago
  > Isn’t there problem the people cramming those things in? Yes. However, the feedback loop for "that's a dumb mistake" both takes too long and is easily ignored. Even with CRs, spaghetti code still gets written. There's no CR for a Jira workflow change. Further, the people making such changes are frequently unimpacted by them (or they like them because they are the aforementioned anal retentive process zombies)
- CRConrad 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31816715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31816715
  - midasuni 4y ago
    My organisation/team uses jira, we don’t do process, so the post is meaningless

Lammy 4y ago

The composer in general. I often have to intersperse log/code lines with prose, and there’s no telling what the Formatting menu will do. Some times selecting a formatting will apply to selected text, sometimes not. Sometimes it will apply when choosing a formatting then pasting text, some times not. Some times it seems to apply to a selection as well as everything after it. It does support Markdown with backticks for monospace, but that’s a lot of manual editing I would rather not do. I also get annoyed at the subtle ways the top-level Issue composer is different from the comment composer, most frequently with the top-level composer’s refusal to allow image embedding/positioning. You can only add images to a new Issue as file attachments displayed as a row of tiny thumbnails under all the Issue text, so I will frequently create a mostly blank Issue and then write what I want to say as the first comment where I can embed images and talk about them inline. In the interest of also saying something nice, I think it’s cute how the JIRA logo seems to be a Jera/“j” rune :) https://wac-cdn.atlassian.com/dam/jcr:e348b562-4152-4cdc-8a55-3d297e509cc8/Jira%20Software-blue.svg https://wac-cdn.atlassian.com/dam/jcr:e348b562-4152-4cdc-8a5... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%93ran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%93ran

sefrost 4y ago
Not being able to embed images in comments sucks. It's not always clear which images people are talking about when they all get dumped in to the "attachments" section.
- CRConrad 4y ago
  You can insert attached images into comments. It's in the menu of the "Visual" editing pane, or doable by inserting some magic [] or {} incantation in the "Text" pane. Sorry, I don't know it by heart. But you can do it visually first, then find and learn it by switching to the textual view. I do remember you can specify size by optional width and height parameters; without them, I think you get just a tiny thumbnail.

JackFr 4y ago

> Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but it starts editing the whole description field. +1. Absolute garbage interface.

ortusdux 4y ago

We are looking at switching vendors, but the fact that they EOL'ed the server version makes JIRA a non-starter for us. https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud

efortis 4y ago

How do I find an old story in Jira? *Without searching my email.

MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago

> For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m quite anxious to click anything until all the loading spinners have stopped in case I click the wrong thing. Then I could be taken to a page or feature I’ve never seen before. This is a common antipattern that doesn't get talked about enough. It's very common in the era of interactive ads, websites with 3rd party web UIs layered on top, lazy loading, and just "rich" UIs in general. A user needs to be able to trust what they are about to click. This is fundamental.

macintux 4y ago
The Vera functionality in Jira likes to move me ahead in a test sequence, so each time I touch something in a long test sequence I have to make sure I’m on the right test step. Absolutely trash.
ectopod 4y ago
This is something browsers should solve. If the thing you clicked on wasn't there 0.2s ago then you didn't intend to click on it, so just ignore the click. And add an API for twitch games to turn this off.
- heretogetout 4y ago
  I'd probably support a page similar to the one used to warn you about certificate problems. "This page is using a user-hostile interface that may cause you to interact with unintended elements. Do you want to proceed?" But, you know, worded better.

heretogetout 4y ago

I can't help but wonder what PM tools Atlassian developers use. Surely it can't be JIRA? Maybe they have some browser extensions that make the interface less frustrating.

joshgachnang 4y ago
I assume they do use JIRA, hence the mess.

eftychis 4y ago

I have a hard time finding out things I like. I recall even wasting time ensuring that Jira recognized correctly that a PR was merged.