4 ms·

That was the reason we ditched Slack. I hate Teams with a passion, but we're not going to pay 6k per year for a chat app if we get Teams for free. There's just

by 9dev 6mo ago

That was the reason we ditched Slack. I hate Teams with a passion, but we're not going to pay 6k per year for a chat app if we get Teams for free. There's just no way to defend that decision.

iso1631 6mo ago
We used to have anti trust regulators. We don't now.
- 9dev 6mo ago
  We've got a lot of billionaires with a higher balance on their bank accounts though, so you can't say it was all for nothing
  - iso1631 6mo ago
    It's not the billionaires that depress me, it's the "temporarily embarrased billionaires", the wannabes who don't believe in the American Dream but idolise instead a winner takes all Ferengi style system.
hnthrow0287345 6mo ago
You can easily defend that for only 6k with 'but we like it and we'll be more productive with it and we won't hate our jobs'
- 9dev 6mo ago
  yeah, but that wouldn't be honest. Slack is more pleasant to use, but not 6k more pleasant to use. I'd rather put up with Teams and get my devs a raise instead.
  - craftkiller 6mo ago
    How few devs do you have? Assuming a small startup of 12, you'd be able to give each dev a raise of $42 per month. Your devs would have to be severely underpaid to notice a $42/month raise.
    - kstrauser 6mo ago
      And if you put it to a vote, "would you rather upgrade from Teams to Slack for $9 per month, or get $9 of taxable income more per month?", I think there's a very good chance you'd be switching that week. (I don't love Slack by any means. Still, I'd pay $9/mo out of my own pocket not to use Teams.)
dahcryn 6mo ago
6k would be a no-brainer. In our office, we'd definitely need the enterprise version for compliance reasons, not because of the features. That's about 14/user/month. At a workforce of roughly 2500, that's a 4million+ yearly cost for something that is comparable to something you can get without that pricetag. It's no competition at all at that point. Think about it, would you be willing to ask your boss to pay 4 million so you can have a different chat app? No matter how much more ergonomic and friendly and intuitive it is.
- 9dev 6mo ago
  I feel like most Americans don't appreciate the financial constraints under which European startups are operating :) The median series A is something like 1–6 million Euros over here. You have to seriously consider what you spend money for on these scales.
  - aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
    > I feel like most Americans don't appreciate the financial constraints under which European startups are operating :) The median series A is something like 1–6 million Euros over here. You have to seriously consider what you spend money for on these scales. I, living in Germany, rather wonder myself quite often why US-American tech startups don't act much more frugally: this would give them so much more leeway/runway to make their startups succeed.
    - matsemann 6mo ago
      Half of the time it's startups subsidizing each other in a circle to have users. Like if you're a VC, you "force" your companies to use tools made by your other companies. So everyone will use the chat app made by one company the VC owns, the CRM software, all the different SaaSes etc. So it's just money moving in a circle, but then all the apps get to claim good sales and user numbers.
    - carlosjobim 6mo ago
      Quicker and bigger is better than slower and smaller. Especially in a competitive sector. Better to go bust quick, than to eke out a tiny profit by being super frugal. The latter is a waste of everybody's time.
mulmen 6mo ago
You get teams for free with office but how do you justify that logic when free office suites are available? You can’t justify your decision on functionality because that could also be used to justify the cost of Slack. If you’re actually considering cost vs functionality then it’s no longer a no-brainer.

by 9dev 6mo ago

That was the reason we ditched Slack. I hate Teams with a passion, but we're not going to pay 6k per year for a chat app if we get Teams for free. There's just no way to defend that decision.

iso1631 6mo ago

We used to have anti trust regulators. We don't now.

9dev 6mo ago
We've got a lot of billionaires with a higher balance on their bank accounts though, so you can't say it was all for nothing
- iso1631 6mo ago
  It's not the billionaires that depress me, it's the "temporarily embarrased billionaires", the wannabes who don't believe in the American Dream but idolise instead a winner takes all Ferengi style system.

hnthrow0287345 6mo ago

You can easily defend that for only 6k with 'but we like it and we'll be more productive with it and we won't hate our jobs'

9dev 6mo ago
yeah, but that wouldn't be honest. Slack is more pleasant to use, but not 6k more pleasant to use. I'd rather put up with Teams and get my devs a raise instead.
- craftkiller 6mo ago
  How few devs do you have? Assuming a small startup of 12, you'd be able to give each dev a raise of $42 per month. Your devs would have to be severely underpaid to notice a $42/month raise.
  - kstrauser 6mo ago
    And if you put it to a vote, "would you rather upgrade from Teams to Slack for $9 per month, or get $9 of taxable income more per month?", I think there's a very good chance you'd be switching that week. (I don't love Slack by any means. Still, I'd pay $9/mo out of my own pocket not to use Teams.)

dahcryn 6mo ago

6k would be a no-brainer. In our office, we'd definitely need the enterprise version for compliance reasons, not because of the features. That's about 14/user/month. At a workforce of roughly 2500, that's a 4million+ yearly cost for something that is comparable to something you can get without that pricetag. It's no competition at all at that point. Think about it, would you be willing to ask your boss to pay 4 million so you can have a different chat app? No matter how much more ergonomic and friendly and intuitive it is.

9dev 6mo ago
I feel like most Americans don't appreciate the financial constraints under which European startups are operating :) The median series A is something like 1–6 million Euros over here. You have to seriously consider what you spend money for on these scales.
- aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
  > I feel like most Americans don't appreciate the financial constraints under which European startups are operating :) The median series A is something like 1–6 million Euros over here. You have to seriously consider what you spend money for on these scales. I, living in Germany, rather wonder myself quite often why US-American tech startups don't act much more frugally: this would give them so much more leeway/runway to make their startups succeed.
  - matsemann 6mo ago
    Half of the time it's startups subsidizing each other in a circle to have users. Like if you're a VC, you "force" your companies to use tools made by your other companies. So everyone will use the chat app made by one company the VC owns, the CRM software, all the different SaaSes etc. So it's just money moving in a circle, but then all the apps get to claim good sales and user numbers.
  - carlosjobim 6mo ago
    Quicker and bigger is better than slower and smaller. Especially in a competitive sector. Better to go bust quick, than to eke out a tiny profit by being super frugal. The latter is a waste of everybody's time.

mulmen 6mo ago

You get teams for free with office but how do you justify that logic when free office suites are available? You can’t justify your decision on functionality because that could also be used to justify the cost of Slack. If you’re actually considering cost vs functionality then it’s no longer a no-brainer.