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I know I'm in the minority here, but I choose Teams over Slack any day. I much prefer thread-based chat than message based chat. Teams forces people to use top

by agilob 4y ago

I know I'm in the minority here, but I choose Teams over Slack any day. I much prefer thread-based chat than message based chat. Teams forces people to use top message as a topic, then respond to messages under that topic. Slack message is just a message. You want to search something on Teams, you get full threads, chat is part of documentation. You want to find something on Slack, you need to click on date of the related message and hope no one wrote any off-topic messages underneath. I often felt like Teams could replace unofficial documentation and most Confluence pages. Screen sharing, reminders about meetings are also better in Teams. Ability to add people to "direct message channels" is definitely lacking in Slack. No I don't want to convert this chat with 3 people into a channel, FO. I want to add 3rd person.

aliqot 4y ago
teams search is ass.
barbazoo 4y ago
> I much prefer thread-based chat than message based chat. Teams forces people to use top message as a topic, then respond to messages under that topic. Slack message is just a message. Slack has threads: https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-threads-to-organize-discussions- https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-threads-to-...
- dijit 4y ago
  I tried Zulip with the rust community and it completely ruined slacks “threads” for me. Its the equivalent between a pot noodle and a steak dinner. Zulip has a lot of other issues though, the app and on-boarding… but I really struggle to enjoy slack now. teams, however, is a total dumpster fire for serious communication outside of video meetings and some minor ad-hoc 1:1 interactions.
  - radicalbyte 4y ago
    Crashing constantly and being a resource hog killed Slack for me. That and DMs being visible to whoever pays.
    - alluro2 4y ago
      Teams, specifically on Mac and Linux, has been a shit-show of instability, weird one-off behavior, blank screens on start, login loops etc for my team. With how amazingly well Microsoft did with Visual Studio Code, it's a bummer how it seems that none of that expertise can be translated to other teams (in this case, the Teams one) as well...
      - radicalbyte 4y ago
        Teams crashes my 5950x in video calls. Otherwise no issues but I can't claim to have used it much. Discord is by far the best of the bunch combined with Jitsi.
savanaly 4y ago
I'm quite confused because almost all conversation in my company's slack happens in threads. Maybe your impression of Slack was formed in a time when they didn't have threads?
- c54 4y ago
  I think they’re just saying that teams forces you into using a thread, and make a choice to create a new one if that’s what you want. In slack by default you’re writing a top level message (ie creating a new thread)
  - brazzledazzle 4y ago
    Pedantic perhaps but maybe it's worth pointing out that Teams doesn't force you to use a thread. It just makes it the obvious choice since each top level message has a reply button directly on it so it's a single step process. Also when we're talking about Teams there's a big distinction between a Teams/Teams/Channel vs a Teams/Chat which is its own annoyance. They don't even support the same formatting capabilities (e.g. markdown) which is weird.
  - mortenjorck 4y ago
    Indeed, never underestimate the power of defaults. There’s a tendency on HN to say “well, everyone should just use threads on Slack then.” There is, of course, a way Slack could make that happen: make it the default. (For what it’s worth, I much prefer Slack for communicating, but when I have to find something, I wish I were looking for it in Teams.)
- brookst 4y ago
  I'm also confused because almost all of my company's Teams usage happens in unthreaded chats.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > I'm also confused because almost all of my company's Teams usage happens in unthreaded chats. Yeah, having a feature doesn't mean people use the feature.
make3 4y ago
i think you're confusing slack and discord, everything is in threads in slack
shp0ngle 4y ago
in my experience, the threads in Teams suck so much that everyone just moves chat to private groups that are still un-threaded. in my company, we moved from slack to teams, and EVERYTHING just moved to giant private chats.
nunez 4y ago
I'm with you. I only hate Teams because of how resource-intensive it is. It would be my preferred experience otherwise. Microsoft is seriously investing in it, and everyone uses it.
dathinab 4y ago
I agree that Slack chat is pretty bad for "technical" (or other detailed) discussions and in my experience the video chat is more likely to not work well.
terpimost 4y ago
If you guys really like threads I suggest to use Zulip which is open source thread based team chat
ghshephard 4y ago
I'm guessing you have a different experience with slack than I have - because important channels are frequently set to "Alert" - it's extraordinarily bad behavior (to the point at which you are chastised and coached by your manager) - to ever respond to a message in a channel without threading. We have a broad array of "THREAD-PLEASE" Emoji's that you get hit with in the first week or two when you onboard if you do that. We've taken it next level here - whenever there is an incident - not only don't you respond as a message in the channel, you get a new channel (created by a Bot when IMOC declares an incident) per incident, so all of the activity for that incident is self-contained (can be many, many thousands of messages) - and, of course, even in that split out channel (which is only talking about a single incident) - even there you need to respond on threads, never as a new message.
Hackbraten 4y ago
Have you tried sending code snippets via Teams using ```-fenced code blocks? The result looks normal. But once the recipient tries to actually use the code, it breaks horribly, because Teams has a habit of sprinkling it with non-breaking spaces. This issue has been going on for years. I feel it makes Teams utterly unusable in software development teams.

by agilob 4y ago

aliqot 4y ago

teams search is ass.

barbazoo 4y ago

> I much prefer thread-based chat than message based chat. Teams forces people to use top message as a topic, then respond to messages under that topic. Slack message is just a message. Slack has threads: https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-threads-to-organize-discussions- https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-threads-to-...

dijit 4y ago
I tried Zulip with the rust community and it completely ruined slacks “threads” for me. Its the equivalent between a pot noodle and a steak dinner. Zulip has a lot of other issues though, the app and on-boarding… but I really struggle to enjoy slack now. teams, however, is a total dumpster fire for serious communication outside of video meetings and some minor ad-hoc 1:1 interactions.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  Crashing constantly and being a resource hog killed Slack for me. That and DMs being visible to whoever pays.
  - alluro2 4y ago
    Teams, specifically on Mac and Linux, has been a shit-show of instability, weird one-off behavior, blank screens on start, login loops etc for my team. With how amazingly well Microsoft did with Visual Studio Code, it's a bummer how it seems that none of that expertise can be translated to other teams (in this case, the Teams one) as well...
    - radicalbyte 4y ago
      Teams crashes my 5950x in video calls. Otherwise no issues but I can't claim to have used it much. Discord is by far the best of the bunch combined with Jitsi.

savanaly 4y ago

I'm quite confused because almost all conversation in my company's slack happens in threads. Maybe your impression of Slack was formed in a time when they didn't have threads?

c54 4y ago
I think they’re just saying that teams forces you into using a thread, and make a choice to create a new one if that’s what you want. In slack by default you’re writing a top level message (ie creating a new thread)
- brazzledazzle 4y ago
  Pedantic perhaps but maybe it's worth pointing out that Teams doesn't force you to use a thread. It just makes it the obvious choice since each top level message has a reply button directly on it so it's a single step process. Also when we're talking about Teams there's a big distinction between a Teams/Teams/Channel vs a Teams/Chat which is its own annoyance. They don't even support the same formatting capabilities (e.g. markdown) which is weird.
- mortenjorck 4y ago
  Indeed, never underestimate the power of defaults. There’s a tendency on HN to say “well, everyone should just use threads on Slack then.” There is, of course, a way Slack could make that happen: make it the default. (For what it’s worth, I much prefer Slack for communicating, but when I have to find something, I wish I were looking for it in Teams.)
brookst 4y ago
I'm also confused because almost all of my company's Teams usage happens in unthreaded chats.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I'm also confused because almost all of my company's Teams usage happens in unthreaded chats. Yeah, having a feature doesn't mean people use the feature.

make3 4y ago

i think you're confusing slack and discord, everything is in threads in slack

shp0ngle 4y ago

in my experience, the threads in Teams suck so much that everyone just moves chat to private groups that are still un-threaded. in my company, we moved from slack to teams, and EVERYTHING just moved to giant private chats.

nunez 4y ago

I'm with you. I only hate Teams because of how resource-intensive it is. It would be my preferred experience otherwise. Microsoft is seriously investing in it, and everyone uses it.

dathinab 4y ago

I agree that Slack chat is pretty bad for "technical" (or other detailed) discussions and in my experience the video chat is more likely to not work well.

terpimost 4y ago

If you guys really like threads I suggest to use Zulip which is open source thread based team chat

ghshephard 4y ago

I'm guessing you have a different experience with slack than I have - because important channels are frequently set to "Alert" - it's extraordinarily bad behavior (to the point at which you are chastised and coached by your manager) - to ever respond to a message in a channel without threading. We have a broad array of "THREAD-PLEASE" Emoji's that you get hit with in the first week or two when you onboard if you do that. We've taken it next level here - whenever there is an incident - not only don't you respond as a message in the channel, you get a new channel (created by a Bot when IMOC declares an incident) per incident, so all of the activity for that incident is self-contained (can be many, many thousands of messages) - and, of course, even in that split out channel (which is only talking about a single incident) - even there you need to respond on threads, never as a new message.

Hackbraten 4y ago

Have you tried sending code snippets via Teams using ```-fenced code blocks? The result looks normal. But once the recipient tries to actually use the code, it breaks horribly, because Teams has a habit of sprinkling it with non-breaking spaces. This issue has been going on for years. I feel it makes Teams utterly unusable in software development teams.