6 ms·

I suggest that Teams only gets used because it’s included in the enormous license that companies buy for Exchange and/or Office and the most popular alternative

I suggest that Teams only gets used because it’s included in the enormous license that companies buy for Exchange and/or Office and the most popular alternative has its own fees. Large companies don’t want to fork over another licensing fee in the tens of thousands of dollars for Slack when they’re getting Teams “free.”

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
Exactly. Nobody likes it. We use it because we have to. We have to because it was already paid for.
- analog31 4y ago
  Also, most users haven't ever experienced software that's any better, with a few rare exceptions such as Excel. We programmers have it so good. "How can people put up with such bad software" is a recurring theme, and not unique to Teams or even Microsoft.
  - ragebol 4y ago
    The managers that force this horseshit on they employees never used anything else before the pandemic. Suddenly they also had to use something with that function, already had Teams and now forced everyone to use it as a lowest common denominator. At least, that's my hypothesis. It's the preinstalled browser debacle all over again.
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    Everybody I know has used Zoom at this point, and has thus seen what dead-simple and "just works" telecom software can be (not to mention FaceTime, which seems to revel in "your never-owned-a-computer grandparent is happy to use this").
    - mijoharas 4y ago
      If you think zoom "just works" I'm guessing you haven't seen the quagmire of poor decisions masquerading as code that is zoom on the Linux desktop. Still better than teams though. (With the caveat that it's only useable on Chrome).
      - anakaine 4y ago
        I use Teams in enterprise, and Zoom for college. At this point I pretty firmly believe Zoom is hot garbage. Teams syncs with Outlook, and basically every org I interacts with uses Outlook and has Office365 at this point. Teams hasn't been crashy, is responsive, doesn't eat memory, etc. At this point I personally cannot point to why there is so much hate for Teams. Either that or my organisation is doing something well to make it work well.
        tom_ 4y ago
        It works pretty well for us in these respects too. The chat is fucking useless though. We use Slack for that.
    - matwood 4y ago
      Dead simple is something like Meet. Click a link and you're on a video call with nothing to install. On iOS, FaceTime is also great. Zoom is a dumpster fire.
      - prepend 4y ago
        I’ve had lots of small annoying problems with Meet and find that the only people who use it are Googlers.
encryptluks2 4y ago
I think it also has to do with how much money Microsoft is kicking back to the right people in those companies to evangelize Microsoft despite knowing that it sucks.
- Qem 4y ago
  In Africa they even fired a employee that discovered a kickback scheme, when he tried to scale the matter up to Satya Nadella: https://www.engadget.com/whistleblower-says-microsoft-spent-millions-on-bribes-in-africa-and-the-middle-east-002428556.html https://www.engadget.com/whistleblower-says-microsoft-spent-...
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    I've known about it and seen it happen but rarely do you get enough evidence to do anything about it. It appears when you do then Microsoft will just fire you and put out a public statement pretending that something will change.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
It's not only the cost, but it's having to deal with another vendor and maintain another system, interoperability, security, access, etc.
twobitshifter 4y ago
right and it’s integrated with Sharepoint, Outlook and OneDrive.
- oneplane 4y ago
  And those are in the same boat as Teams: it came with the bundle. (well, one could argue that plenty of people enjoy Outlook, but OneDrive is nothing special and SharePoint is just a bad Wiki going the SAP integration hell route)
  - BuckRogers 4y ago
    I use OneDrive as my cloud storage provider. To me cloud storage from the top-tier vendors seem to work well enough at this point. I probably would’ve used Google Drive, but once I learned they take it out of your Gmail storage space I declined. To Microsoft’s credit, your OneDrive storage space does not come out of your app Outlook email storage.
    - oneplane 4y ago
      Yeah, they are all pretty similar. The storage usage is probably due to Google's gigantic user base, or perhaps due to their tenancy model (i.e. you get a 'google account' that also contains 'storage' instead of the other way around). While some features like versioning and sharing and mail integration vary, nearly all of the 'big' ones do the same thing (OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, even box.com and MEGA to some extent). Ironically, this sameness might actually be a good thing, as it makes it a bit more interchangeable (well, if we ignore the variety in native integrations), it would be pretty bad if there were significant missing features between them.
      - BuckRogers 4y ago
        I do still keep my Dropbox because it has better sharing features. But I only use that with my wife and we haven’t used it to collaborate since she finished her Masters degree. If anyone has the edge with features, it probably is them. Some of the lesser known names I have accounts worth as well, but they’ve had sketchier history with storage issues. OneDrive simply gave me the most space for free, and I usually pimp myself out to the highest bidder.
SkyPuncher 4y ago
I think it goes beyond just the licensing fee. It makes compliance/on-boarding significantly easier to have everything bundled. If you're using Exchange/Office, you've already vetted Microsoft for your use case.
Fomite 4y ago
This. We asked about non-Teams alternatives, and were told we'd be responsible for hosting and maintaining anything else we chose by our IT department, and that was the end of that conversation.
cyberge99 4y ago
I think Teams also offers more capabilities to Enterprise users. I’ve been on a few teams calls with people on the call that are not visible in the attendee list.
- lancebeet 4y ago
  I have also experienced this but I'm quite sure that it was a bug in my cases. Is this actually a service they offer?
tlrobinson 4y ago
Good summary of this on the All In Podcast last week (in the context of Adobe buying Figma) https://youtu.be/_UpczzfeAFA?t=1162 https://youtu.be/_UpczzfeAFA?t=1162
c4ptnjack 4y ago
I work for an outsourced tech company supporting a large system of hospitals in the NE USA. In my team of 50+ people, the last 2 years since starting this contract have been steady transition to using Teams for all communications. They are now moving to use it for scheduling as well with it being integrated with the rest of the Office suite. Moreover, the entire hospital system uses it as the defacto means of communication. This makes it incredibly easy to connect with any of the thousands of employees we have immediately in a lot ways. I don't like Teams or the office suite whatsoever. However, I think the real secret to their sauce is simple: > Ecosystem integration > Cram every feature possible into each product Those two things alone can makeup for all the deficiencies in Microsoft's products within the marketplace. Their software may be clunky, buggy, and terrible to use but if you have those two factors it will stay dominant imo.
shafyy 4y ago
Bingo. That's the simple and real answer. They invest heavily in sales and lock in big corporates into their ecosystem. Now, they don't have any incentive than to go the extra mile for somehting like Teams. I think it will hurt them in the long run, but in the short term, it's quite profitable probably.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

Exactly. Nobody likes it. We use it because we have to. We have to because it was already paid for.

analog31 4y ago
Also, most users haven't ever experienced software that's any better, with a few rare exceptions such as Excel. We programmers have it so good. "How can people put up with such bad software" is a recurring theme, and not unique to Teams or even Microsoft.
- ragebol 4y ago
  The managers that force this horseshit on they employees never used anything else before the pandemic. Suddenly they also had to use something with that function, already had Teams and now forced everyone to use it as a lowest common denominator. At least, that's my hypothesis. It's the preinstalled browser debacle all over again.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  Everybody I know has used Zoom at this point, and has thus seen what dead-simple and "just works" telecom software can be (not to mention FaceTime, which seems to revel in "your never-owned-a-computer grandparent is happy to use this").
  - mijoharas 4y ago
    If you think zoom "just works" I'm guessing you haven't seen the quagmire of poor decisions masquerading as code that is zoom on the Linux desktop. Still better than teams though. (With the caveat that it's only useable on Chrome).
    - anakaine 4y ago
      I use Teams in enterprise, and Zoom for college. At this point I pretty firmly believe Zoom is hot garbage. Teams syncs with Outlook, and basically every org I interacts with uses Outlook and has Office365 at this point. Teams hasn't been crashy, is responsive, doesn't eat memory, etc. At this point I personally cannot point to why there is so much hate for Teams. Either that or my organisation is doing something well to make it work well.
      - tom_ 4y ago
        It works pretty well for us in these respects too. The chat is fucking useless though. We use Slack for that.
  - matwood 4y ago
    Dead simple is something like Meet. Click a link and you're on a video call with nothing to install. On iOS, FaceTime is also great. Zoom is a dumpster fire.
    - prepend 4y ago
      I’ve had lots of small annoying problems with Meet and find that the only people who use it are Googlers.

encryptluks2 4y ago

I think it also has to do with how much money Microsoft is kicking back to the right people in those companies to evangelize Microsoft despite knowing that it sucks.

Qem 4y ago
In Africa they even fired a employee that discovered a kickback scheme, when he tried to scale the matter up to Satya Nadella: https://www.engadget.com/whistleblower-says-microsoft-spent-millions-on-bribes-in-africa-and-the-middle-east-002428556.html https://www.engadget.com/whistleblower-says-microsoft-spent-...
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  I've known about it and seen it happen but rarely do you get enough evidence to do anything about it. It appears when you do then Microsoft will just fire you and put out a public statement pretending that something will change.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

It's not only the cost, but it's having to deal with another vendor and maintain another system, interoperability, security, access, etc.

twobitshifter 4y ago

right and it’s integrated with Sharepoint, Outlook and OneDrive.

oneplane 4y ago
And those are in the same boat as Teams: it came with the bundle. (well, one could argue that plenty of people enjoy Outlook, but OneDrive is nothing special and SharePoint is just a bad Wiki going the SAP integration hell route)
- BuckRogers 4y ago
  I use OneDrive as my cloud storage provider. To me cloud storage from the top-tier vendors seem to work well enough at this point. I probably would’ve used Google Drive, but once I learned they take it out of your Gmail storage space I declined. To Microsoft’s credit, your OneDrive storage space does not come out of your app Outlook email storage.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    Yeah, they are all pretty similar. The storage usage is probably due to Google's gigantic user base, or perhaps due to their tenancy model (i.e. you get a 'google account' that also contains 'storage' instead of the other way around). While some features like versioning and sharing and mail integration vary, nearly all of the 'big' ones do the same thing (OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, even box.com and MEGA to some extent). Ironically, this sameness might actually be a good thing, as it makes it a bit more interchangeable (well, if we ignore the variety in native integrations), it would be pretty bad if there were significant missing features between them.
    - BuckRogers 4y ago
      I do still keep my Dropbox because it has better sharing features. But I only use that with my wife and we haven’t used it to collaborate since she finished her Masters degree. If anyone has the edge with features, it probably is them. Some of the lesser known names I have accounts worth as well, but they’ve had sketchier history with storage issues. OneDrive simply gave me the most space for free, and I usually pimp myself out to the highest bidder.

SkyPuncher 4y ago

I think it goes beyond just the licensing fee. It makes compliance/on-boarding significantly easier to have everything bundled. If you're using Exchange/Office, you've already vetted Microsoft for your use case.

Fomite 4y ago

This. We asked about non-Teams alternatives, and were told we'd be responsible for hosting and maintaining anything else we chose by our IT department, and that was the end of that conversation.

cyberge99 4y ago

I think Teams also offers more capabilities to Enterprise users. I’ve been on a few teams calls with people on the call that are not visible in the attendee list.

lancebeet 4y ago
I have also experienced this but I'm quite sure that it was a bug in my cases. Is this actually a service they offer?

tlrobinson 4y ago

Good summary of this on the All In Podcast last week (in the context of Adobe buying Figma) https://youtu.be/_UpczzfeAFA?t=1162 https://youtu.be/_UpczzfeAFA?t=1162

c4ptnjack 4y ago

I work for an outsourced tech company supporting a large system of hospitals in the NE USA. In my team of 50+ people, the last 2 years since starting this contract have been steady transition to using Teams for all communications. They are now moving to use it for scheduling as well with it being integrated with the rest of the Office suite. Moreover, the entire hospital system uses it as the defacto means of communication. This makes it incredibly easy to connect with any of the thousands of employees we have immediately in a lot ways. I don't like Teams or the office suite whatsoever. However, I think the real secret to their sauce is simple: > Ecosystem integration > Cram every feature possible into each product Those two things alone can makeup for all the deficiencies in Microsoft's products within the marketplace. Their software may be clunky, buggy, and terrible to use but if you have those two factors it will stay dominant imo.

shafyy 4y ago

Bingo. That's the simple and real answer. They invest heavily in sales and lock in big corporates into their ecosystem. Now, they don't have any incentive than to go the extra mile for somehting like Teams. I think it will hurt them in the long run, but in the short term, it's quite profitable probably.