5 ms·

So many microcosms with tech. I'm always reminded here on HN how terrible Office is and why we don't just use Google Docs. I hold this same opinion personally.

by Difwif 3y ago

So many microcosms with tech. I'm always reminded here on HN how terrible Office is and why we don't just use Google Docs. I hold this same opinion personally. However I go to other communities (I think the last one I remember was some startup subreddit) and GSuite is being mocked and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business. I assume it's just that we prefer the devil we know than the one we don't.

CSMastermind 3y ago
I generally don't see people recommending teams, typically business users seem to prefer zoom while the ones who use teams are forced to because it's bundled with other Microsoft products. Excel on the other hand is still miles better than Sheets for non-trivial use cases and I've seen business users revolt multiple times if you try to force them to use GSuite. To a lesser extent that's also true with Word and to an even lesser extent Outlook. I haven't yet seen someone threaten to quit if they don't get a Teams license (but I have seen that for Zoom). The interesting one is PowerPoint which I've noticed a lot of power users are migrating to Figma for. Also 10 years ago people would send nasty grams if they couldn't get Visio licenses but Lucidchart seems to have eaten that marketshare.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  >I haven't yet seen someone threaten to quit if they don't get a Teams license (but I have seen that for Zoom). Uhhh what? I suppose I am a novice video chat user who just uses it to talk to people and share a screen, but I am clearly missing some killer feature. From my perspective, all of the platforms suck for one reason or another. Bad CPU usage, latency, but hey, they have background swapping and fun emojis!
dietr1ch 3y ago
I don't think that the decision is being driven by bad company A v/s bad company B, and it's implicitly technical. All of us here probably will know when to jump out of spreadsheets and have some knowledge on how to approach things then, so a simple spreadsheet on Google Docs is fine for us. The problem outside, is that they are somewhat locked on the spreadsheet and have to stick with it, so more advanced features are welcome even though it comes with the price of the so called evil company according to the other group. And is Office really better than Google's Spreadsheets? Idk, I don't care about small differences, but they surely annoy hardcore users, plus no one really got fired for buying IBM
plufz 3y ago
Google is definitely the devil I know of those two, still I would not like it if one my main tools were provided by Google. Currently they seem to manage to both lack in innovation AND be unreliable.
drekipus 3y ago
> and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business. Welcome to astro-turfing and shilling. A pretty commonplace occurrence since about 2014 or so. You can only really rely on people you know and their experiences. always discount "what everyone says".
justapassenger 3y ago
[dead]
shiroiushi 3y ago
>and GSuite is being mocked and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business. These must be paid shills. While it's actually quite understandable why real people and businesses would want to use and recommend MS Office, no one in their right mind actually thinks Teams is the best video chat tool in the world. Any serious business uses Zoom, Slack, etc.
- aden1ne 3y ago
  Teams has network effect behind it. Because so many businesses already use Teams, in a B2B-setting you're almost expected to already have Teams as well.
- jrmcauliffe 3y ago
  Lol any serious business. Shoutout to all the people at mega-corps using Teams!
  - andylynch 3y ago
    Teams and Symphony are my industry’s weapons of choice. But I guess we’re just playing around.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  Not a paid shill, but Until recently Teams had capabilities Slack was laughingly behind :-/ Biggest one for me was that I could A) start multiple chats with same audience and rename them - so I can have chat with thom dick and Harry on system architecture over a few days and separate conversation with them on performance testing issues. This is trivial in teams. I have to create awkward channels in slack to approximate the functionality. B) seamlessly start a conversation with two people, then as you troubleshoot and expand, add more people, then jump in a call, then finish a call and keep chatting. Until recently slack would force you to start a new blank conversation when you added people - absolutely useless. Now they've hacked a solution that works up to arbitrary number of ten people and is so clearly a script in the background which still creates a new chat with added person but helpfully copies all conversation over. Then you need to add 11th person and too bad you've hit the magic number. In operations setting and evolving incidents, teams was just better. And don't get me started on slack "huddles"! My inlression has always been the opposite - startups used slack because it was cool. Serious businesses used teams because it worked and integrated well. Now. I've realized lately that when people talk about slack vs teams, they're usually not actuslly talking about slack vs teams. They're actually talking about their companies security and usage policies, as incidentally instantiated through the collaboration tool of choice. I've become aware that my experience with teams is bit everybody's, due to various policies and limitations imposed, and similarly for slack. But mostly... Not nearly as many people that disagree with average internet forum dweller are paid shills as may be believed :=)

by Difwif 3y ago

CSMastermind 3y ago

I generally don't see people recommending teams, typically business users seem to prefer zoom while the ones who use teams are forced to because it's bundled with other Microsoft products. Excel on the other hand is still miles better than Sheets for non-trivial use cases and I've seen business users revolt multiple times if you try to force them to use GSuite. To a lesser extent that's also true with Word and to an even lesser extent Outlook. I haven't yet seen someone threaten to quit if they don't get a Teams license (but I have seen that for Zoom). The interesting one is PowerPoint which I've noticed a lot of power users are migrating to Figma for. Also 10 years ago people would send nasty grams if they couldn't get Visio licenses but Lucidchart seems to have eaten that marketshare.

fbdab103 3y ago
>I haven't yet seen someone threaten to quit if they don't get a Teams license (but I have seen that for Zoom). Uhhh what? I suppose I am a novice video chat user who just uses it to talk to people and share a screen, but I am clearly missing some killer feature. From my perspective, all of the platforms suck for one reason or another. Bad CPU usage, latency, but hey, they have background swapping and fun emojis!

dietr1ch 3y ago

I don't think that the decision is being driven by bad company A v/s bad company B, and it's implicitly technical. All of us here probably will know when to jump out of spreadsheets and have some knowledge on how to approach things then, so a simple spreadsheet on Google Docs is fine for us. The problem outside, is that they are somewhat locked on the spreadsheet and have to stick with it, so more advanced features are welcome even though it comes with the price of the so called evil company according to the other group. And is Office really better than Google's Spreadsheets? Idk, I don't care about small differences, but they surely annoy hardcore users, plus no one really got fired for buying IBM

plufz 3y ago

Google is definitely the devil I know of those two, still I would not like it if one my main tools were provided by Google. Currently they seem to manage to both lack in innovation AND be unreliable.

drekipus 3y ago

> and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business. Welcome to astro-turfing and shilling. A pretty commonplace occurrence since about 2014 or so. You can only really rely on people you know and their experiences. always discount "what everyone says".

justapassenger 3y ago

[dead]

shiroiushi 3y ago

>and GSuite is being mocked and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business. These must be paid shills. While it's actually quite understandable why real people and businesses would want to use and recommend MS Office, no one in their right mind actually thinks Teams is the best video chat tool in the world. Any serious business uses Zoom, Slack, etc.

aden1ne 3y ago
Teams has network effect behind it. Because so many businesses already use Teams, in a B2B-setting you're almost expected to already have Teams as well.
jrmcauliffe 3y ago
Lol any serious business. Shoutout to all the people at mega-corps using Teams!
- andylynch 3y ago
  Teams and Symphony are my industry’s weapons of choice. But I guess we’re just playing around.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Not a paid shill, but Until recently Teams had capabilities Slack was laughingly behind :-/ Biggest one for me was that I could A) start multiple chats with same audience and rename them - so I can have chat with thom dick and Harry on system architecture over a few days and separate conversation with them on performance testing issues. This is trivial in teams. I have to create awkward channels in slack to approximate the functionality. B) seamlessly start a conversation with two people, then as you troubleshoot and expand, add more people, then jump in a call, then finish a call and keep chatting. Until recently slack would force you to start a new blank conversation when you added people - absolutely useless. Now they've hacked a solution that works up to arbitrary number of ten people and is so clearly a script in the background which still creates a new chat with added person but helpfully copies all conversation over. Then you need to add 11th person and too bad you've hit the magic number. In operations setting and evolving incidents, teams was just better. And don't get me started on slack "huddles"! My inlression has always been the opposite - startups used slack because it was cool. Serious businesses used teams because it worked and integrated well. Now. I've realized lately that when people talk about slack vs teams, they're usually not actuslly talking about slack vs teams. They're actually talking about their companies security and usage policies, as incidentally instantiated through the collaboration tool of choice. I've become aware that my experience with teams is bit everybody's, due to various policies and limitations imposed, and similarly for slack. But mostly... Not nearly as many people that disagree with average internet forum dweller are paid shills as may be believed :=)