5 ms·

Is Slack dead? unironically. Does it have a future? With Teams, etc. coming out, it seems most companies do not want to go the Slack route

aftbit 3y ago
Clearly no. Legacy inertia will carry it pretty far, even if literally nobody new tries to sign up for it. Our team is still using Slack and has no plans to migrate away at the moment.
robertlagrant 3y ago
Teams is doing well because it's often an IT department's simplest choice, but I don't find it's great for users.
- zo1 3y ago
  Why would I choose Slack for my employees when Teams integrates so nicely with everything else in the "stack". Teams is leaps and bounds ahead already, and Slack really lost the boat many years ago. Speaking of which, I'm going now to buy more Microsoft shares.
  - Shared404 3y ago
    > Why would I choose Slack for my employees when Teams integrates so nicely with everything else in the "stack". Does it really though? In my experience teams has a buggy integration with other things in the stack. And Teams itself ia massively buggy and a resource hog for the whole time I've used it.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    I don't think I have ever heard someone favorably compare teams chat with slack before. Even when I worked at a company that used teams for video calls and MS for email and calendar and documents and what not, everyone used slack for chat. I don't think anyone was sad that slack didn't integrate with the other MS services "stack".
  - fooster 3y ago
    You are choosing teams. What are your employees choosing? In my experience teams is a terrible mess and a company using it would exclude me from working for the company because they very likely don’t give a crap about the day to day experience of the employee.
  - grokys 3y ago
    Maybe because you value your employees being able to copy an image from your chat platform? (Teams still can't copy images, instead you get a massive base64 block of text iirc)
    - zo1 3y ago
      I don't like that either, but I get it, it breaks the privacy of the sent message as messages have permissions attached to them. Honestly, bugged me a few times before I just switched to using the snippet tool. I use it all the time anyways and this felt natural.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        It's not base64 because of privacy, and using the snipping tool instead of just copying is not natural. Imagine opening a whole other program to copy some text you just highlighted.
  - xwowsersx 3y ago
    The boat or the moat?
- packetlost 3y ago
  The company I work for has a "Hours wasted because Teams sucks" page that gets updated at least weekly. Eventually the list will grow so large that we could probably attach a 5-figure dollar amount to it, if it hasn't already.
  - Racing0461 3y ago
    Depending on the size of the company, that value is absolutely insignificant.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      Bigcos with robust sales truly can’t afford the organizational-attentional cost of walking across the street to pick up a $10,000 coin.
      - Racing0461 3y ago
        /s ?
        hotnfresh 3y ago
        No, that’s really how it is. They leave opportunities to save or make five-figure (and larger) amounts all the time, because it’s not worth the distraction from other activities. And also from straight-up mis-management, but a lot of the time they know exactly what they’re doing, and it’s on purpose, and it’s probably not a mistake.
devmor 3y ago
If your goal is to monitor your staff and gather metrics on their communication - Teams outdoes Slack and is incomparable. If your goal is to have a platform that enables your employees to communicate with as little friction as possible, I have yet to see anything capable of replacing Slack. Teams especially, is something I loathe using every day. Everything about the UI and UX gets in the way of what I’m trying to do, rather than assisting in or even enabling it. It’s like it doesn’t want me to communicate - it wants me to react and offer as little useful information as possible.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  I went from a company using teams to slack a few years ago. Truly night and day. I have such a visceral hatred for Teams, it actually surprises me how much I can dislike some software that is for messaging. From how it can't copy and paste in and out of chat, to the way it sets laptops on fire, or its horrible ui. I really truly hate that software. Please just use slack or god forbid set up an irc node or something.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- imperialdrive 3y ago
  Agreed. Teams is already the most painful experience, and it's about to get even worse with the new 2.0 version being deployed.
wasmitnetzen 3y ago
My employer buys no Microsoft SaaS service, since we're mostly on Google services, so a stand-alone like Slack works quite well. And nobody uses Google Chat. And besides that, the UX of Teams is miles behind Slack.
- walthamstow 3y ago
  Not even GitHub? I believe that's the only MSFT service we have at my <40 people fintech dayjob
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Slack is not good UX in my opinion. It is often hard to see what generated a message notification - so yeah someone called me out, but who? where?. It shows me latest thread as being from last month when I know there have been more recent ones. It doesn't collapse those threads, so 100 reply incident threads dominate that view. Slack doesn't scale well (UX-wise) above say 30 people.
  - snoman 3y ago
    Opinions are valid, for sure. I can tell you that I’m a happy slack user at a company of just over a hundred thousand. I haven’t regularly used teams in about a year, but I would legitimately consider passing on a job offer where they used it. In a thread where many folks are talking about using the best tools for a job, teams is never the best tool for any form of digital communication.
zomglings 3y ago
I started using Slack in 2015 and thought it was a great product. Since then, they have hit 2 home runs on top of their basic chat functionality: 1. Slack Connect: Being able to share channels between workspaces is simply amazing. Most of our customers are on Slack, and having a Slack connection to them makes it much easier to communicate with them and get their feedback as we improve our product. I don't know any other tool that even comes close to how important Slack Connect has been to product development in my startup. 2. Canvas: They rolled this out last year as notes or something, and I was pretty underwhelmed with the experience at first. But very recently (within the past month I think) they reintroduced this as "canvas" with really tight integration with threads. We have moved all of our planning and synchronization activity to a canvas that we set up every week. Although these features are not difficult for Google or Microsoft to implement on a purely technical level, their product organizations don't seem to understand the network effects of chat the way that Slack's product organization does. Slack is certainly not dead today and they are showing the savvy to stay alive well into the future.
PoignardAzur 3y ago
One day Zulip will take over everything. Probably the same year Ubuntu beats Windows as the majority desktop OS.

aftbit 3y ago

Clearly no. Legacy inertia will carry it pretty far, even if literally nobody new tries to sign up for it. Our team is still using Slack and has no plans to migrate away at the moment.

robertlagrant 3y ago

Teams is doing well because it's often an IT department's simplest choice, but I don't find it's great for users.

zo1 3y ago
Why would I choose Slack for my employees when Teams integrates so nicely with everything else in the "stack". Teams is leaps and bounds ahead already, and Slack really lost the boat many years ago. Speaking of which, I'm going now to buy more Microsoft shares.
- Shared404 3y ago
  > Why would I choose Slack for my employees when Teams integrates so nicely with everything else in the "stack". Does it really though? In my experience teams has a buggy integration with other things in the stack. And Teams itself ia massively buggy and a resource hog for the whole time I've used it.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  I don't think I have ever heard someone favorably compare teams chat with slack before. Even when I worked at a company that used teams for video calls and MS for email and calendar and documents and what not, everyone used slack for chat. I don't think anyone was sad that slack didn't integrate with the other MS services "stack".
- fooster 3y ago
  You are choosing teams. What are your employees choosing? In my experience teams is a terrible mess and a company using it would exclude me from working for the company because they very likely don’t give a crap about the day to day experience of the employee.
- grokys 3y ago
  Maybe because you value your employees being able to copy an image from your chat platform? (Teams still can't copy images, instead you get a massive base64 block of text iirc)
  - zo1 3y ago
    I don't like that either, but I get it, it breaks the privacy of the sent message as messages have permissions attached to them. Honestly, bugged me a few times before I just switched to using the snippet tool. I use it all the time anyways and this felt natural.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      It's not base64 because of privacy, and using the snipping tool instead of just copying is not natural. Imagine opening a whole other program to copy some text you just highlighted.
- xwowsersx 3y ago
  The boat or the moat?
packetlost 3y ago
The company I work for has a "Hours wasted because Teams sucks" page that gets updated at least weekly. Eventually the list will grow so large that we could probably attach a 5-figure dollar amount to it, if it hasn't already.
- Racing0461 3y ago
  Depending on the size of the company, that value is absolutely insignificant.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    Bigcos with robust sales truly can’t afford the organizational-attentional cost of walking across the street to pick up a $10,000 coin.
    - Racing0461 3y ago
      /s ?
      - hotnfresh 3y ago
        No, that’s really how it is. They leave opportunities to save or make five-figure (and larger) amounts all the time, because it’s not worth the distraction from other activities. And also from straight-up mis-management, but a lot of the time they know exactly what they’re doing, and it’s on purpose, and it’s probably not a mistake.

devmor 3y ago

If your goal is to monitor your staff and gather metrics on their communication - Teams outdoes Slack and is incomparable. If your goal is to have a platform that enables your employees to communicate with as little friction as possible, I have yet to see anything capable of replacing Slack. Teams especially, is something I loathe using every day. Everything about the UI and UX gets in the way of what I’m trying to do, rather than assisting in or even enabling it. It’s like it doesn’t want me to communicate - it wants me to react and offer as little useful information as possible.

ecshafer 3y ago
I went from a company using teams to slack a few years ago. Truly night and day. I have such a visceral hatred for Teams, it actually surprises me how much I can dislike some software that is for messaging. From how it can't copy and paste in and out of chat, to the way it sets laptops on fire, or its horrible ui. I really truly hate that software. Please just use slack or god forbid set up an irc node or something.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
imperialdrive 3y ago
Agreed. Teams is already the most painful experience, and it's about to get even worse with the new 2.0 version being deployed.

wasmitnetzen 3y ago

My employer buys no Microsoft SaaS service, since we're mostly on Google services, so a stand-alone like Slack works quite well. And nobody uses Google Chat. And besides that, the UX of Teams is miles behind Slack.

walthamstow 3y ago
Not even GitHub? I believe that's the only MSFT service we have at my <40 people fintech dayjob
quickthrower2 3y ago
Slack is not good UX in my opinion. It is often hard to see what generated a message notification - so yeah someone called me out, but who? where?. It shows me latest thread as being from last month when I know there have been more recent ones. It doesn't collapse those threads, so 100 reply incident threads dominate that view. Slack doesn't scale well (UX-wise) above say 30 people.
- snoman 3y ago
  Opinions are valid, for sure. I can tell you that I’m a happy slack user at a company of just over a hundred thousand. I haven’t regularly used teams in about a year, but I would legitimately consider passing on a job offer where they used it. In a thread where many folks are talking about using the best tools for a job, teams is never the best tool for any form of digital communication.

zomglings 3y ago

I started using Slack in 2015 and thought it was a great product. Since then, they have hit 2 home runs on top of their basic chat functionality: 1. Slack Connect: Being able to share channels between workspaces is simply amazing. Most of our customers are on Slack, and having a Slack connection to them makes it much easier to communicate with them and get their feedback as we improve our product. I don't know any other tool that even comes close to how important Slack Connect has been to product development in my startup. 2. Canvas: They rolled this out last year as notes or something, and I was pretty underwhelmed with the experience at first. But very recently (within the past month I think) they reintroduced this as "canvas" with really tight integration with threads. We have moved all of our planning and synchronization activity to a canvas that we set up every week. Although these features are not difficult for Google or Microsoft to implement on a purely technical level, their product organizations don't seem to understand the network effects of chat the way that Slack's product organization does. Slack is certainly not dead today and they are showing the savvy to stay alive well into the future.

PoignardAzur 3y ago

One day Zulip will take over everything. Probably the same year Ubuntu beats Windows as the majority desktop OS.