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Microsoft has no chance in the tech/startup world where workers have enough power to reject garbage solutions. Their market is big legacy companies where tools

Microsoft has no chance in the tech/startup world where workers have enough power to reject garbage solutions. Their market is big legacy companies where tools aren't chosen based on merit (instead chosen on buzzwords, kickbacks or money under the table) and where the day-to-day users of those tools don't have the power to demand change.

soundnote 4y ago
Their tools are legitimately good, IME - esp. Teams is mainly just heavy, not bad. Ben Thompson of Stratechery puts it well: This is where Teams thrives: if you fully commit to the Microsoft ecosystem, one app combines your contacts, conversations, phone calls, access to files, 3rd-party applications, in a way that “just works”; I explained my personal experience with Teams in a December 2018 Daily Update: "Here’s the thing, though: Dropbox absolutely is better than One Drive. Google Apps are better at collaboration than Microsoft’s Office apps. Asana is better than Planner. And, to be very clear, Slack is massively better than Teams at chat. Using all of them together, though, well, it sucks: the user experience that matters for me is not any one app but all of them at once, and for the way I want to work, having everything organized in one single place is simply better (and that’s even with the normal spate of maddening Microsoft UI oddities!). In this Teams is less a chat app than it is a file explorer for the cloud generally, and Stratechery LLC specifically." This is what Slack — and Silicon Valley, generally — failed to understand about Microsoft’s competitive advantage: the company doesn’t win just because it bundles, or because it has a superior ground game. By virtue of doing everything, even if mediocrely, the company is providing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, particularly for the non-tech workers that are in fact most of the market. Slack may have infused its chat client with love, but chatting is a means to an end, and Microsoft often seems like the only enterprise company that understands that. It's been my experience, too. M365 really actually just works and Teams and Outlook (for the web) are a pleasure to use.
- bobolino123 4y ago
  The chat is really bad (compared to Discord) and the indicators don't refresh sometimes.
  - mablopoule 4y ago
    Are you using it on linux ? Because I too experience the indicator that won't refresh, but only through ArchLinux/Firefox. No problem whatsoever on Windows 10.
  - soundnote 4y ago
    It's not great for direct chat, no. But it's good enough, and the "company file browser effect" really does carry a lot of weight. The actual chat module is easily among the weakest parts of Teams. The threaded chat in Teams workspaces functions well, but the UI design looks too much like normal chat (they're thankfully redesigning it) for something that isn't meant to be used the same way. It's more team workspaces + calls where the value is, IME.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > particularly for the non-tech workers that are in fact most of the market I would say the real reason it "works" for non-tech workers is because they don't have enough bargaining power to reject crap such as Teams and similar Microsoft software, and/or haven't had the chance to try out anything else and don't know what an actually good experience is, while tech workers generally do and reject it as a result (that's why this garbage is non-existent in startups and tech-centric companies). Spinning it as a tool for non-tech workers is a nice cop-out from the truth which is that non-tech workers merely lack the political power needed to reject this shit (and similar - Windows, etc) just like the vast majority of tech workers do. If those non-tech workers were given a choice, Microsoft's marketshare would significantly shrink overnight.
  - sfifs 4y ago
    I actually have tried and unfortunately nothing beats Excel - PowerPoint. OneDrive added a killer feature a few years ago in auto Documents and Desktop backup which makes transitioning computers or using temp laptops painless - no more "re-imaging" and massive workload reduction for Tech suppprt. I assume you could now do this in DropBox as well but it wasn't so before OneDrive made this the default. Outlook client is also the only polished desktop mail client (ie. some mail is actally stored offline on laptop and you can pull up old emails on a flight or when you have poor connectivity) and I understand the server makes compliance easier. Enterprises don't go Microsoft Suite because they are primarily good enough. In some categories, there is virtually no competiton and in others, the good enough is tolerable.
  - znpy 4y ago
    > I would say the real reason it "works" for non-tech workers is because they don't have enough bargaining power to reject crap such as Teams and similar Microsoft software Do you really think that if non-tech workers had enough bargaining power they would really waste their time with Slack vs Teams instead of, say, better wages ? > If those non-tech workers were given a choice, Microsoft's marketshare would significantly shrink overnight. X doubt. Most people (rightfully so) use their work computer just to work.
    - 4y ago
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  That’s from 2018. At that time Office 365 was really janky for collaboration. It works well now though.
  - soundnote 4y ago
    Yep, but it just makes the point stronger.
znpy 4y ago
> Their market is big legacy companies where tools aren't chosen based on merit the thing that most people don't understand is that Microsoft doesn't make only slack, and their other software is usually pretty good. Excel for example is a marvel of software engineering, Word is pretty great too. Outlook works well in an enterprise setting (though i wouldn't use it for personal needs). And their groupware works remarkably well. And their ActiveDirectory (Domain controller + LDAP/Kerberos) is fairly good. And guess what? If you're a 10-people company sure, you can do without Excel/Outlook/Word/ActiveDirectory/etc. But when your company gets bigger it's just the choice that makes the most sense. Oh and guess what: most of the software in named is native software and works offline too. So basically your company is not buying Teams... Your company is buying an office suite and gets Teams for free. Also... People (developers mostly, I must say) tend to forget they're not the only people on the planet. People from the accounting/hr/logistics/marketing departments are probably just fine with Teams.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > their other software is usually pretty good Agreed, though I would say that whatever "good" is there is mostly a relic they seem hell-bent on destroying. I say that as someone who happily switched to Windows 7 after almost a decade of Linux, and then took refuge in Apple-land when Microsoft took a turn for the worst and started churning out shit. Since then the shit stream only increased unfortunately. Their Office suite on Windows is indeed unparalleled (assuming you need that, which not all companies - or at least not all employees - need). Likewise for Active Directory - it's something Apple still hasn't caught up on, and don't even get me started on Linux. But all that is no good if you constantly have to fight it, which is increasing more and more. Windows + Active Directory is supposed to make managing a fleet of workstations easier so that end-users can do their work efficiently. If the admin (or end-users) now have to fight with literal adware being introduced into the OS every few updates, the value proposition falls apart. Same if the chat client can't effectively paste text without fighting you on formatting, or max out the CPU on a video call so that your machine slows down to a crawl and is no longer an effective tool to get work done. > People from the accounting/hr/logistics/marketing departments are probably just fine with Teams. Go back to my previous posts - I'd argue they are "fine" with it because they're used to terrible tooling and never had a chance to discover how good tooling can be. You could say the same about healthcare workers being "happy" with healthcare software even though it's often awful by any technical person's standards, but since they do not have those skills they accept the mediocrity thinking there's some unsolvable technical reason why the software they are using is bad, rather than incompetence/mismanagement on the suppliers' part.
roflyear 4y ago
Microsoft has like a thousand or several thousand depending how you count product offerings not including their APIs for all of them which are generally good. They have systems that allow you to convert 200+ document types to pdf that aren't even a product just part of another product. Many of those thousands of products are actually pretty good.

soundnote 4y ago

Their tools are legitimately good, IME - esp. Teams is mainly just heavy, not bad. Ben Thompson of Stratechery puts it well: This is where Teams thrives: if you fully commit to the Microsoft ecosystem, one app combines your contacts, conversations, phone calls, access to files, 3rd-party applications, in a way that “just works”; I explained my personal experience with Teams in a December 2018 Daily Update: "Here’s the thing, though: Dropbox absolutely is better than One Drive. Google Apps are better at collaboration than Microsoft’s Office apps. Asana is better than Planner. And, to be very clear, Slack is massively better than Teams at chat. Using all of them together, though, well, it sucks: the user experience that matters for me is not any one app but all of them at once, and for the way I want to work, having everything organized in one single place is simply better (and that’s even with the normal spate of maddening Microsoft UI oddities!). In this Teams is less a chat app than it is a file explorer for the cloud generally, and Stratechery LLC specifically." This is what Slack — and Silicon Valley, generally — failed to understand about Microsoft’s competitive advantage: the company doesn’t win just because it bundles, or because it has a superior ground game. By virtue of doing everything, even if mediocrely, the company is providing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, particularly for the non-tech workers that are in fact most of the market. Slack may have infused its chat client with love, but chatting is a means to an end, and Microsoft often seems like the only enterprise company that understands that. It's been my experience, too. M365 really actually just works and Teams and Outlook (for the web) are a pleasure to use.

bobolino123 4y ago
The chat is really bad (compared to Discord) and the indicators don't refresh sometimes.
- mablopoule 4y ago
  Are you using it on linux ? Because I too experience the indicator that won't refresh, but only through ArchLinux/Firefox. No problem whatsoever on Windows 10.
- soundnote 4y ago
  It's not great for direct chat, no. But it's good enough, and the "company file browser effect" really does carry a lot of weight. The actual chat module is easily among the weakest parts of Teams. The threaded chat in Teams workspaces functions well, but the UI design looks too much like normal chat (they're thankfully redesigning it) for something that isn't meant to be used the same way. It's more team workspaces + calls where the value is, IME.
Nextgrid 4y ago
> particularly for the non-tech workers that are in fact most of the market I would say the real reason it "works" for non-tech workers is because they don't have enough bargaining power to reject crap such as Teams and similar Microsoft software, and/or haven't had the chance to try out anything else and don't know what an actually good experience is, while tech workers generally do and reject it as a result (that's why this garbage is non-existent in startups and tech-centric companies). Spinning it as a tool for non-tech workers is a nice cop-out from the truth which is that non-tech workers merely lack the political power needed to reject this shit (and similar - Windows, etc) just like the vast majority of tech workers do. If those non-tech workers were given a choice, Microsoft's marketshare would significantly shrink overnight.
- sfifs 4y ago
  I actually have tried and unfortunately nothing beats Excel - PowerPoint. OneDrive added a killer feature a few years ago in auto Documents and Desktop backup which makes transitioning computers or using temp laptops painless - no more "re-imaging" and massive workload reduction for Tech suppprt. I assume you could now do this in DropBox as well but it wasn't so before OneDrive made this the default. Outlook client is also the only polished desktop mail client (ie. some mail is actally stored offline on laptop and you can pull up old emails on a flight or when you have poor connectivity) and I understand the server makes compliance easier. Enterprises don't go Microsoft Suite because they are primarily good enough. In some categories, there is virtually no competiton and in others, the good enough is tolerable.
- znpy 4y ago
  > I would say the real reason it "works" for non-tech workers is because they don't have enough bargaining power to reject crap such as Teams and similar Microsoft software Do you really think that if non-tech workers had enough bargaining power they would really waste their time with Slack vs Teams instead of, say, better wages ? > If those non-tech workers were given a choice, Microsoft's marketshare would significantly shrink overnight. X doubt. Most people (rightfully so) use their work computer just to work.
  - 4y ago
johnwalkr 4y ago
That’s from 2018. At that time Office 365 was really janky for collaboration. It works well now though.
- soundnote 4y ago
  Yep, but it just makes the point stronger.

znpy 4y ago

> Their market is big legacy companies where tools aren't chosen based on merit the thing that most people don't understand is that Microsoft doesn't make only slack, and their other software is usually pretty good. Excel for example is a marvel of software engineering, Word is pretty great too. Outlook works well in an enterprise setting (though i wouldn't use it for personal needs). And their groupware works remarkably well. And their ActiveDirectory (Domain controller + LDAP/Kerberos) is fairly good. And guess what? If you're a 10-people company sure, you can do without Excel/Outlook/Word/ActiveDirectory/etc. But when your company gets bigger it's just the choice that makes the most sense. Oh and guess what: most of the software in named is native software and works offline too. So basically your company is not buying Teams... Your company is buying an office suite and gets Teams for free. Also... People (developers mostly, I must say) tend to forget they're not the only people on the planet. People from the accounting/hr/logistics/marketing departments are probably just fine with Teams.

Nextgrid 4y ago
> their other software is usually pretty good Agreed, though I would say that whatever "good" is there is mostly a relic they seem hell-bent on destroying. I say that as someone who happily switched to Windows 7 after almost a decade of Linux, and then took refuge in Apple-land when Microsoft took a turn for the worst and started churning out shit. Since then the shit stream only increased unfortunately. Their Office suite on Windows is indeed unparalleled (assuming you need that, which not all companies - or at least not all employees - need). Likewise for Active Directory - it's something Apple still hasn't caught up on, and don't even get me started on Linux. But all that is no good if you constantly have to fight it, which is increasing more and more. Windows + Active Directory is supposed to make managing a fleet of workstations easier so that end-users can do their work efficiently. If the admin (or end-users) now have to fight with literal adware being introduced into the OS every few updates, the value proposition falls apart. Same if the chat client can't effectively paste text without fighting you on formatting, or max out the CPU on a video call so that your machine slows down to a crawl and is no longer an effective tool to get work done. > People from the accounting/hr/logistics/marketing departments are probably just fine with Teams. Go back to my previous posts - I'd argue they are "fine" with it because they're used to terrible tooling and never had a chance to discover how good tooling can be. You could say the same about healthcare workers being "happy" with healthcare software even though it's often awful by any technical person's standards, but since they do not have those skills they accept the mediocrity thinking there's some unsolvable technical reason why the software they are using is bad, rather than incompetence/mismanagement on the suppliers' part.

roflyear 4y ago

Microsoft has like a thousand or several thousand depending how you count product offerings not including their APIs for all of them which are generally good. They have systems that allow you to convert 200+ document types to pdf that aren't even a product just part of another product. Many of those thousands of products are actually pretty good.