9 ms·

Saw the same pattern with 3 employers over the past 5 years. One killed Slack and all institutional knowledge in its search engine within a month. One replaced

by _cenw 3y ago

Saw the same pattern with 3 employers over the past 5 years. One killed Slack and all institutional knowledge in its search engine within a month. One replaced all remaining Intel Macs (not an insignificant amount) because Teams would being them to a standstill. The last one is currently happening and I'm wondering what unexpected cost will come to haunt this decision this time. Though one thing that always suffers in Teams is the ability to self-organize. Slack makes it very easy to let everyone write an automation or open a channel. Teams feels like it is imposing a culture that seems antithetical to most of the organisations that I saw adopt Teams, at least until they did.

loehnsberg 3y ago
To be fair, video calls on Slack were below par at the time when Teams came out, and little effort was made by Slack to improve the call feature in the months that followed.
Shrezzing 3y ago
I think Slack really dropped the ball in 2020, and that's ultimately why the inferior Teams and Zoom platforms have been able to solidify their market shares, and Discord was able to bastardise some of Slack's old market share. It took Slack nearly 2 years after the pandemic started to introduce features like Huddles - by which point, everyone who needed video conferencing software (which was basically every white-collar worker in the world) had adopted one of its competitors. Now, even at companies where Slack is used, they'll also have a Teams account where video calls happen. This is the case, even though Slack had a video call feature hidden in their UI all the way back in 2019. Although it's bad now, in Feb 2020 Teams was genuinely unusable hot garbage, chats didn't work, calls dropped often, files wouldn't attach to messages etc. Microsoft, for all their sins, recognised the imminent need for mass work-from-home tools relatively early, and made huge improvements to the platform before the end of March. By mid-April was in a usable state. Slack's better software, but better software's not going to be adopted if it's missing or hiding huge key features.
- 666satanhimself 3y ago
  [dead]
- leokennis 3y ago
  Also, Teams integrates with the other MS stuff. If I share files in a channel, in the background it is "just" a SharePoint which in turn I can add to my OneDrive. Meaning I can save a file in Word to that SharePoint and everyone in the channel can access it.
  - draugadrotten 3y ago
    Teams is a security nightmare, and Sharepoint as well. Access permissions are nearly impossible to grasp for normal users. The feature that all files dropped are shared instantly by everyone through sharepoint is a huge security risk. People in general have no understanding that they are sharing files with everyone that can join a Teams channel, meaning that confidential and sensitive information frequently gets added to Teams chats in "public" channels. Managing the correct permissions on thousands of Teams channels is hard to impossible, even with extra tools. Channel owners often adopt a "allow anyone who knocks" policy when they get permissions requests, because they are busy and do not really understand what they are doing. Sharing files needs to be more cordoned off for security reasons. Not harder or more difficult, just less integrated and not inheriting permissions.
    - EGreg 3y ago
      What if there was a free, open source alternative for Teams? I don’t mean Matrix or Mastodon. I mean something you could run on-prem and it would have chats, meetings, attach files etc. Do you know anything like this?
      - Arathorn 3y ago
        Why don't you mean Matrix? This is precisely what Element is, built on Matrix: https://element.io https://element.io
throwaway2990 3y ago
Slack is not a knowledge base. Stop trying to use it as a knowledge base.
- _cenw 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you expect everyone involved in such a culture to do, but the same disregard from executives that caused a lack of documentation (and runbooks for software I was on call for) caused the overnight Slack shutdown.
- AceyMan 3y ago
  My parent corp guaranteed no one would use it as a knowleldgebase by implementing a 30-day maximum retention period in Slack. (Same for Teams chats). Lots of our staff got caught out when all the channels got truncated. Oof.
  - esafak 3y ago
    Not sure if that counts as a success or a failure. More like a failure because you learn after wasting a whole month. And then everybody has to learn the same lesson.
    - tekla 3y ago
      Success. It got everyone to stop using slack as a knowledge base. It's like when sysadmins get confused when people use the recycle bin as storage and the user gets angry when the bin gets cleared.
impendia 3y ago
> Teams feels like it is imposing a culture that seems antithetical to most of the organisations My employer, a large university, has moved to Microsoft, and I've definitely noticed this in MS's software. It feels like the software is designed with certain office culture and workflow patterns in mind. For example, previously I was able to use standalone email software. Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features, which are not something I care to use. I've gotten an increasing number of meeting invitations through this calendar, and Outlook "helpfully" tells me whether I'm available or not. I'm in fact always "available", because I don't use Outlook to manage my schedule.
- reaperducer 3y ago
  Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features I've never understood Outlook being both email and calendar. Does no one at Microsoft ever want to read an email and reference their calendar at the same time, or vice versa?
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    No, people at Microsoft just didn't realize most users forgot how to work with multiple windows. You can have a separate calendar window if you care for it, you can even read individual e-mails in separate windows (that one is annoyingly bound to double-click...). That works on the web too - at least for people realizing you can have the same app open in two tabs, and then break them out into separate browser windows... Beyond that, maybe I'm thoroughly infused with corporate culture at this point, but I find this perfectly obvious and natural bundling. E-mail, calendars and TODO lists belong together.
    - impendia 3y ago
      My attitude -- and I acknowledge that this comes from a place of privilege -- is that I don't care to share my calendar with my employer. I'm a university professor; there's always pressure to join this or that initiative, to participate in more committees, and the like. But in the long term, success depends on maintaining much of my focus on my long-term research goals, which means saying no a lot. PG wrote about "makers' schedules vs managers' schedules" http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html and this feels similar to me. Outlook feels designed around the manager's schedule.
lost_tourist 3y ago
I don't use teams, but doesn't it have a web interface that runs on any platform? I have to say we use slack and the web version work just fine for me and I don't need anything fancy, chat/share files&code/threaded chats off to the side.
tracker1 3y ago
Not just teams on intel macs... running anything under Docker would do similarly... the Intel macbooks in particular would run against thermal thresholds all the time, and freeze sporatically to be nearly unusable. The last one I was issued was replaced with an M1 max after 3 months of being bottlenecked by the thing. And I couldn't underclock/volt it because it was locked down corporate hardware, I could do a lot, but not that. It was an i9 (10th? gen), and performed worse than a 4th gen i3 in practice.
trympet 3y ago
I've used Power Automate in the past to create bots. Worked fairly well.

by _cenw 3y ago

loehnsberg 3y ago

To be fair, video calls on Slack were below par at the time when Teams came out, and little effort was made by Slack to improve the call feature in the months that followed.

Shrezzing 3y ago

I think Slack really dropped the ball in 2020, and that's ultimately why the inferior Teams and Zoom platforms have been able to solidify their market shares, and Discord was able to bastardise some of Slack's old market share. It took Slack nearly 2 years after the pandemic started to introduce features like Huddles - by which point, everyone who needed video conferencing software (which was basically every white-collar worker in the world) had adopted one of its competitors. Now, even at companies where Slack is used, they'll also have a Teams account where video calls happen. This is the case, even though Slack had a video call feature hidden in their UI all the way back in 2019. Although it's bad now, in Feb 2020 Teams was genuinely unusable hot garbage, chats didn't work, calls dropped often, files wouldn't attach to messages etc. Microsoft, for all their sins, recognised the imminent need for mass work-from-home tools relatively early, and made huge improvements to the platform before the end of March. By mid-April was in a usable state. Slack's better software, but better software's not going to be adopted if it's missing or hiding huge key features.

666satanhimself 3y ago
[dead]
leokennis 3y ago
Also, Teams integrates with the other MS stuff. If I share files in a channel, in the background it is "just" a SharePoint which in turn I can add to my OneDrive. Meaning I can save a file in Word to that SharePoint and everyone in the channel can access it.
- draugadrotten 3y ago
  Teams is a security nightmare, and Sharepoint as well. Access permissions are nearly impossible to grasp for normal users. The feature that all files dropped are shared instantly by everyone through sharepoint is a huge security risk. People in general have no understanding that they are sharing files with everyone that can join a Teams channel, meaning that confidential and sensitive information frequently gets added to Teams chats in "public" channels. Managing the correct permissions on thousands of Teams channels is hard to impossible, even with extra tools. Channel owners often adopt a "allow anyone who knocks" policy when they get permissions requests, because they are busy and do not really understand what they are doing. Sharing files needs to be more cordoned off for security reasons. Not harder or more difficult, just less integrated and not inheriting permissions.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    What if there was a free, open source alternative for Teams? I don’t mean Matrix or Mastodon. I mean something you could run on-prem and it would have chats, meetings, attach files etc. Do you know anything like this?
    - Arathorn 3y ago
      Why don't you mean Matrix? This is precisely what Element is, built on Matrix: https://element.io https://element.io

throwaway2990 3y ago

Slack is not a knowledge base. Stop trying to use it as a knowledge base.

_cenw 3y ago
I'm not sure what you expect everyone involved in such a culture to do, but the same disregard from executives that caused a lack of documentation (and runbooks for software I was on call for) caused the overnight Slack shutdown.
AceyMan 3y ago
My parent corp guaranteed no one would use it as a knowleldgebase by implementing a 30-day maximum retention period in Slack. (Same for Teams chats). Lots of our staff got caught out when all the channels got truncated. Oof.
- esafak 3y ago
  Not sure if that counts as a success or a failure. More like a failure because you learn after wasting a whole month. And then everybody has to learn the same lesson.
  - tekla 3y ago
    Success. It got everyone to stop using slack as a knowledge base. It's like when sysadmins get confused when people use the recycle bin as storage and the user gets angry when the bin gets cleared.

impendia 3y ago

> Teams feels like it is imposing a culture that seems antithetical to most of the organisations My employer, a large university, has moved to Microsoft, and I've definitely noticed this in MS's software. It feels like the software is designed with certain office culture and workflow patterns in mind. For example, previously I was able to use standalone email software. Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features, which are not something I care to use. I've gotten an increasing number of meeting invitations through this calendar, and Outlook "helpfully" tells me whether I'm available or not. I'm in fact always "available", because I don't use Outlook to manage my schedule.

reaperducer 3y ago
Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features I've never understood Outlook being both email and calendar. Does no one at Microsoft ever want to read an email and reference their calendar at the same time, or vice versa?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  No, people at Microsoft just didn't realize most users forgot how to work with multiple windows. You can have a separate calendar window if you care for it, you can even read individual e-mails in separate windows (that one is annoyingly bound to double-click...). That works on the web too - at least for people realizing you can have the same app open in two tabs, and then break them out into separate browser windows... Beyond that, maybe I'm thoroughly infused with corporate culture at this point, but I find this perfectly obvious and natural bundling. E-mail, calendars and TODO lists belong together.
  - impendia 3y ago
    My attitude -- and I acknowledge that this comes from a place of privilege -- is that I don't care to share my calendar with my employer. I'm a university professor; there's always pressure to join this or that initiative, to participate in more committees, and the like. But in the long term, success depends on maintaining much of my focus on my long-term research goals, which means saying no a lot. PG wrote about "makers' schedules vs managers' schedules" http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html and this feels similar to me. Outlook feels designed around the manager's schedule.

lost_tourist 3y ago

I don't use teams, but doesn't it have a web interface that runs on any platform? I have to say we use slack and the web version work just fine for me and I don't need anything fancy, chat/share files&code/threaded chats off to the side.

tracker1 3y ago

Not just teams on intel macs... running anything under Docker would do similarly... the Intel macbooks in particular would run against thermal thresholds all the time, and freeze sporatically to be nearly unusable. The last one I was issued was replaced with an M1 max after 3 months of being bottlenecked by the thing. And I couldn't underclock/volt it because it was locked down corporate hardware, I could do a lot, but not that. It was an i9 (10th? gen), and performed worse than a 4th gen i3 in practice.

trympet 3y ago

I've used Power Automate in the past to create bots. Worked fairly well.