3 ms·

> Everything feels evolutionary. That's total "normal" for Microsoft at least from 2018, the year I started working with some of their products (Power BI mostl

> Everything feels evolutionary. That's total "normal" for Microsoft at least from 2018, the year I started working with some of their products (Power BI mostly). They adopted a development model that is early release, fast iteration, and users as testers. No wonder everything feels experimental until much later. Back then I just couldn't use Power BI. But fast forward a few years, I think it got a lot better since maybe 2020. You just have to stick with it for a few years.

dietr1ch 7mo ago
> You just have to stick with it for a few years. So, you have to be a paying tester? Incredible that MS can keep enough businesses as hostage to be able to operate like that.
- calvinmorrison 7mo ago
  a LOT of stuff comes for free or marginal (10-100$ a month) so yes, you do pay but it's already 'baked into' the contracts people generally carry with microsoft, or something for IT to worry about when the yearly renewals show up
- markus_zhang 7mo ago
  Most of the time it's just part of the bundle. If you are heavy into SQL Server, Office 365 and Power BI then there is a BIG chance you are going to use Azure for whatever the reason. People who take Azure up without previous MS product experience...not sure about those.
  - thewebguyd 7mo ago
    There's a few, mostly retailers who don't want to give money to Amazon as a direct competitor, for them Microsoft/Azure is more of a neutral party, and most businesses already use Microsoft in at least some fashion so already have staff internally familiar with MS products (as opposed to say, going to GCP instead). For everyone else, it's like you said. "Eh, we are already knee deep in the Microsoft stack, why would we pick anything else?"
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
TYPE_FASTER 7mo ago
> You just have to stick with it for a few years. Also see: SharePoint
snapetom 7mo ago
I worked at a hospital in that timeframe and they rolled out Teams. Up until they, shadow IT teams were running Slack just fine. Man, what a horrendous pile of crap Teams was back then. The Slack teams were griping that they should just buy Slack, but Teams was the "enterprise solution." The problems were amplified during remote COVID work. Teams is fine now, but how many corporations went through years of frustration just because some IT decision maker said "Teams. Because it's enterprise."
- bigbuppo 7mo ago
  Teams is still a horrendous pile of crap. It's just that you've gotten used to the stench. It has few redeeming qualities other than, "we don't have to pay for another subscription" and that's not even the case in the EU.
  - benterix 7mo ago
    Yeah but today you can at least have a video call more or less normally. Back then it was a hiccup after a hiccup, it was impossible to work normally, and yet orgs pushed it down everybody's throats as it was bundled.
    - snapetom 7mo ago
      Definitely. Besides the performance issues, back then, Teams barely had any features. One example was that it wouldn't show you who was talking. First time we had a call was with 30 people and I remember a manager calling out a director responsible for this decision jokingly saying, "and you don't know who I am because Team doesn't show you who's talking." The UI is an overengineered mess and I'd rather use literally anything else, but to say it's still unusable is disingenuous.
- markus_zhang 7mo ago
  Yeah that's the thing. Management who made the deals are never put into that frustration, or very rarely, and I always wonder, at least for the big corporations, if there is any greasy palms...

dietr1ch 7mo ago

> You just have to stick with it for a few years. So, you have to be a paying tester? Incredible that MS can keep enough businesses as hostage to be able to operate like that.

calvinmorrison 7mo ago
a LOT of stuff comes for free or marginal (10-100$ a month) so yes, you do pay but it's already 'baked into' the contracts people generally carry with microsoft, or something for IT to worry about when the yearly renewals show up
markus_zhang 7mo ago
Most of the time it's just part of the bundle. If you are heavy into SQL Server, Office 365 and Power BI then there is a BIG chance you are going to use Azure for whatever the reason. People who take Azure up without previous MS product experience...not sure about those.
- thewebguyd 7mo ago
  There's a few, mostly retailers who don't want to give money to Amazon as a direct competitor, for them Microsoft/Azure is more of a neutral party, and most businesses already use Microsoft in at least some fashion so already have staff internally familiar with MS products (as opposed to say, going to GCP instead). For everyone else, it's like you said. "Eh, we are already knee deep in the Microsoft stack, why would we pick anything else?"
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

TYPE_FASTER 7mo ago

> You just have to stick with it for a few years. Also see: SharePoint

snapetom 7mo ago

I worked at a hospital in that timeframe and they rolled out Teams. Up until they, shadow IT teams were running Slack just fine. Man, what a horrendous pile of crap Teams was back then. The Slack teams were griping that they should just buy Slack, but Teams was the "enterprise solution." The problems were amplified during remote COVID work. Teams is fine now, but how many corporations went through years of frustration just because some IT decision maker said "Teams. Because it's enterprise."

bigbuppo 7mo ago
Teams is still a horrendous pile of crap. It's just that you've gotten used to the stench. It has few redeeming qualities other than, "we don't have to pay for another subscription" and that's not even the case in the EU.
- benterix 7mo ago
  Yeah but today you can at least have a video call more or less normally. Back then it was a hiccup after a hiccup, it was impossible to work normally, and yet orgs pushed it down everybody's throats as it was bundled.
  - snapetom 7mo ago
    Definitely. Besides the performance issues, back then, Teams barely had any features. One example was that it wouldn't show you who was talking. First time we had a call was with 30 people and I remember a manager calling out a director responsible for this decision jokingly saying, "and you don't know who I am because Team doesn't show you who's talking." The UI is an overengineered mess and I'd rather use literally anything else, but to say it's still unusable is disingenuous.
markus_zhang 7mo ago
Yeah that's the thing. Management who made the deals are never put into that frustration, or very rarely, and I always wonder, at least for the big corporations, if there is any greasy palms...