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Teams is designed for a world where the problem that Slack solves is viewed as a feature. Looking at them as comparable instant messaging tools is to completel

Teams is designed for a world where the problem that Slack solves is viewed as a feature. Looking at them as comparable instant messaging tools is to completely miss the point. The underlying philosophy with Teams is top-down control: the assumption is that the organisation structure can adequately predict what communication patterns between its members should be allowed. The underlying assumption with Slack is that the organisation members should be able to set up productive communication patterns without needing top-down control, and that having to impose that control is a bug. The Slack approach requires discovery and working in the open, to a certain degree, so that what the research calls "weak links" can form between individuals in disconnected parts of the organisation. Teams (at least, wherever I've seen it) is actively hostile to this: you have to invite, to be invited, to already know who to speak to. Slack - when done right - radically changes how the organisation integrates with itself. I have, of course, seen it done very wrong: if you come from a Teams world you'll likely want to lock Slack down so that it can't provide its main benefits; the instance I'm on right now blocks public channel creation, which is bonkers if you understand the problem area. If your org is small enough and has enough of a mixing function outside the digital tooling that it doesn't need a helping hand, then there's not much in it, but past a certain size and it's not even close.

esperent 3y ago
> the instance I'm on right now blocks public channel creation, which is bonkers if you understand the problem area. If I was working with a team of tech savvy developers, I'd completely agree with you, and we'd probably be using Slack, or maybe Zulip. I'm not - I work at a bakery and I'm the only technical person at our company. Most people don't even own a laptop. Every day is a surprise to me as I get a tech support call about something so basic like not checking if something is plugged in. If you've ever watched The IT Crowd, and thought the tech support calls were satire - they are not. Everything has to be locked down and simplified to the extreme, otherwise I will be called to fix or explain it over and over again. The thought of allowing everyone to create a channel whenever they want is giving me nightmares, honestly. It's already a daily frustration to get idea of channels across at all. Actually scratch that, even getting people to stop using Zalo (local version of Whatsapp) was a struggle and I'm pretty sure it's still happening behind our backs. Thinking about allowing everyone to create channels ad-hoc. It wouldn't work, it would turn our communications into a mess. We have total of about six channels and already get complaints that it's too confusing.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
Arguably, those differences come from size of the core/target market. Slack targeted small companies and startup. Teams targets corporations. A lot of its design decisions make sense in this context: for example, the reason "you have to invite, to be invited, to already know who to speak to" in Teams is that because you can't exactly fit 10 000 employees and an unbounded number of contractors and external parties in a vertical list, and tell the users to scroll through it. At this size, you need some discovery / matching process to even figure out who to write. This also drives many of the "barriers" in Teams - you can't expose everyone to everyone else by default, because the CPU (and the notification counter) would have trouble keeping up. Instead, with everything being need-to-know by default, a new employee is going to start in a small, cozy team space, and gradually expand their list of contacts and team memberships. However, they're not actually isolated - the megacorp is still there, thousands of teams, tens of thousands of people, all accessible through that unassuming search bar at the top.
- regularfry 3y ago
  > all accessible through that unassuming search bar at the top. And there's the problem. Slack also has that search bar, but it also has public activity so you have a chance of knowing what to search for. The discovery process is the public conversations. > This also drives many of the "barriers" in Teams - you can't expose everyone to everyone else by default, because the CPU (and the notification counter) would have trouble keeping up. This is just not a problem. If you've got notifications on by default for busy public channels, you're going to have a bad time.

esperent 3y ago

> the instance I'm on right now blocks public channel creation, which is bonkers if you understand the problem area. If I was working with a team of tech savvy developers, I'd completely agree with you, and we'd probably be using Slack, or maybe Zulip. I'm not - I work at a bakery and I'm the only technical person at our company. Most people don't even own a laptop. Every day is a surprise to me as I get a tech support call about something so basic like not checking if something is plugged in. If you've ever watched The IT Crowd, and thought the tech support calls were satire - they are not. Everything has to be locked down and simplified to the extreme, otherwise I will be called to fix or explain it over and over again. The thought of allowing everyone to create a channel whenever they want is giving me nightmares, honestly. It's already a daily frustration to get idea of channels across at all. Actually scratch that, even getting people to stop using Zalo (local version of Whatsapp) was a struggle and I'm pretty sure it's still happening behind our backs. Thinking about allowing everyone to create channels ad-hoc. It wouldn't work, it would turn our communications into a mess. We have total of about six channels and already get complaints that it's too confusing.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

Arguably, those differences come from size of the core/target market. Slack targeted small companies and startup. Teams targets corporations. A lot of its design decisions make sense in this context: for example, the reason "you have to invite, to be invited, to already know who to speak to" in Teams is that because you can't exactly fit 10 000 employees and an unbounded number of contractors and external parties in a vertical list, and tell the users to scroll through it. At this size, you need some discovery / matching process to even figure out who to write. This also drives many of the "barriers" in Teams - you can't expose everyone to everyone else by default, because the CPU (and the notification counter) would have trouble keeping up. Instead, with everything being need-to-know by default, a new employee is going to start in a small, cozy team space, and gradually expand their list of contacts and team memberships. However, they're not actually isolated - the megacorp is still there, thousands of teams, tens of thousands of people, all accessible through that unassuming search bar at the top.

regularfry 3y ago
> all accessible through that unassuming search bar at the top. And there's the problem. Slack also has that search bar, but it also has public activity so you have a chance of knowing what to search for. The discovery process is the public conversations. > This also drives many of the "barriers" in Teams - you can't expose everyone to everyone else by default, because the CPU (and the notification counter) would have trouble keeping up. This is just not a problem. If you've got notifications on by default for busy public channels, you're going to have a bad time.