Rant warning!
I mean I just quit a office call, the share screen ribbon wouldn’t disappear, opened task manager to kill it nope not found, finally had to select a “quit teams” option from start window. Note this is still windows 10.
Further the entire teams app is sloppy, when I start listing, the enter works but within the same message (when unintended) I have to ensure I click shift+enter to enter a new line. I can’t choose between enter and shift+enter.
A few questions now:
- why/how do these guys design a product this way
- Does it mean Microsoft can keep running any app which necessarily doesn’t appear on my task manager?
Because it actually makes a lot of sense from a business perspective to have your meeting software integrated with your messaging software integrated with your document storage, etc. MS saw the success of things like Zoom and Slack and said “we can do that!”
And the thing about large companies with big budgets is that they get things done. Maybe it is shitty, but it is done. And the thing about an IM client is that anyone can think up the idea… So the difference between MS and a startup like Slack is that there were 100 other Slack-like startups that failed to make a useable product. Slack made a product that worked because statistically, someone has to - and then everyone uses the product because it works. But MS is not going to run out of venture capital or new CS grads eager to work 80 hour weeks to “change the world” - they will keep plowing money and manpower into a product until it is ready to ship, goddammit!
So Teams stumbles across the finish line, strictly inferior to its competitors. Except that it has an ace in its back pocket… the fact that so many businesses already run windows. Already have MS 365 subscriptions. MS can pitch ecosystem integration as a selling point, and then undercut their competitors on price to paper over any deficits in functionality. And 55 year old CFOs of accounting firms see this and say “yes, let’s do that!”
And thus, Teams
Yes, the all in one. Beautiful.
“I’m in the files tab and I’m 6 folders down, halfway through reviewing a word doc. I’m still in the teams app because downloading a file saves it somewhere between purgatory and duat, so this is easier” ping “Oh, a message. Hold my spot in the file and folders while I check that” Teams: actually, you could go fuck yourself.
I went months without noticing it, but you can open the Teams library in the web because it’s just a SharePoint folder in a trench coat. Bookmarked immediately.
Dude trying to explain to co workers , especially the iPad generation, what the file browser is (ie, explorer), what teams is, and how teams is literally a front for SharePoint, and THEN WE ALSO HAVE ONEDRIVE FUCKING IT ALL UP its so frustrating dude. These kids have never used anything outside ios and windows 11 in their lives so they are cooked when it comes to tech literacy.
Never knew id be so thankful to grow up on dos and win95.
Exactly this. We used to run Mattermost (essentially Slack but hosted on-prem) and Zoom, and everybody loved the combination. Then the bean counters got involved, saw that we were paying extra for something that was already included with our 365 subscription, and that was that.
Now we’re stuck with shitty Teams and its shitty Electron app that seems to come up with new ways to not work on a near daily basis. So much so that “Teams be Teamsing” has become a defacto phrase for when something janky happens.
Ye gods I lived exactly through this. We had Mattermost installed on test server and it was like night and day with Teams. But as you say, the bean counters don’t care if you’re happy. “We already got Mattermost at home!” they said. And so Mattermost was abandoned for Teams which is indeed already present in the ecosystem and isn’t going away any time soon. Like herpes.
Keep up the pressure. We went through the same thing, but after a year of Teams misadventure, execs finally realized the savings wasn’t worth it