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Comment by pluc | Hacker News Reader

What I conclude from an organization using Teams is that they're running Microsoft stack, which affects my opinion far more negatively. Microsoft sales are powerful. If you use Teams, there's a chance that:

- You use Windows for OS

- You use Sharepoint for documentation

- You use Outlook for Mail

- You use OneDrive for storage

- You use Azure for hosting

- You use Copilot for LLM

- You use GitHub for scm

- etc

all of those are things I actively want to avoid. they're all sub-par, they're all managed by button-clicking pseudo-sysadmins, they're all red flags.

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You would severely limit yourself if you're strict about your list without nuance. GitHub is pretty much bog standard in most companies unless you're working for the few using mercurial, etc.

I work in a MS stack and most of your list is untrue for my case. We use slack for messaging, Confluence, Wikimedia, and GDrive for documentation, Google Mail for email, I develop primarily dotnet/C# apps on a MacBook pro M5, have access to all major LLM providers and primarily use Claude and antigravity.

There only thing that checks of your list is Azure hosting.

On a personal note, it has been by far one of the best place I've worked at. The dotnet ecosystem is so well developed and rich, I expect to be paid a huge premium if I ever have to deal with Java again.

GitHub is not git. GitHub is not an alternative to mercurial or svn.

This is like saying Facebook is the alternative to http.

The Facebook comparison is on spot: Both GitHub and Teams have become social networks. Even better if inferior, they solve visibility and connection issues. Actually Microsoft keeps the friction for people without an account just high enough that you want to use it in a business. What we need is that those services are regulated more like Telefone networks allowing federation.

The four companies that I've worked for here in Europe all used GitLab, btw.

How many times has Gitlab deleted their production databases and had irrecoverable data loss? I remember twice.

You can also run your own.

Which is its own flavor of red flag.

I'm not making a recommendation.

100%. We're a total Microsoft shop and it's all so mediocre. We started with Azure AD and slowly replaced all our AAA solutions with Microsoft ones. The Microsoft ones are cheaper (packaged together) and better integrated but in terms of user experience they're really mediocre.

The only thing that was not really worse was email, we came from lotus notes which was a crashy piece of shit.

But our messaging, storage etc solutions all were a big step back when we went to Microsoft.

> we came from lotus notes

in a DeLorean?

Haha yeah it's ancient I know.

We used it until about 2019 :S

The reason was that during the years a lot of people had been 'creative' and built tools in its database/scripting language. Many of these tools had been abandoned but still had wormed their way into critical business processes. It took us years to decommission most of them and in some cases rebuild them with modern tech.

I really miss Lotus Sametime though. It had so many features that Teams doesn't.

- Show my online presence status to everyone except person X

- Send me a popup when person X comes online

- Disable message read receipts for person X

- Custom emoji

Well lots of stuff like that. Really handy in avoiding toxic colleagues if you're neurospicy :) Or to catch them first thing when they came online because you need something from them. It was also much more fun in sametime than Teams.

Teams also keeps a 100% persistent record of everything you say even if you delete it. In Microsoft Purview. It's definitely your enemy.

The "comes online" alert is possible if you choose to be notified when the person becomes available, but it's capped at stalking 15 people I think. Not the best but achieves that goal.

That's ok, I never stalk more than 15 people at a time anyway :) :) :)

But it was damn handy sometimes. Teams doesn't have this feature.

What was more of a lifesaver was the not showing status to some people though. There was one guy who would consider me his personal support person and this was really annoying. I know it's not normally considerd a good thing to solve a human problem by technical means. But for me it works just fine and much better than taking it up with the person themselves.

In our european company (insurance/gov space) we use Teams, Outlook, Sharepoint as side products of Office, largely to get the official editing tools for the documents our clients provide. Depending on who you are in our company, you are using either Mac or Windows, although we are slowly shifting to OpenSUSE. Azure and GitHub are completely out of the question, and OneDrive is only used in the context of Teams/Sharepoint. Sharepoint, too, is only used by half the company for whom it is relevant.

Security-wise most of our data is with our customers on european servers (Word/etc. are not linked to OneDrive), except billing.

Serious question: what's your preferred alternative to SharePoint? We have an eclectic portemonteau of software, bookstack for docs, outlook and ms-365 for office etc. We're not a software company, think more mercantile and manufacture. We have a lot of stuff in excel, price calc, processes etc. I don't see a way away from excel. Currently we have all xls files on network drives, which is hard to maintain. Even though I'm not a Microsoft fan, I find myself pushing for SharePoint, simply so we can use the integrated share features in word and excel. LibreOffice and Collarbora don't seem to be there yet, even if I could convince people to switch from excel to Calc (and of our Ancient Wisdom Sheets would even work in LibreOffice).

a shared drive is much better than sharepoint. I don't see how sharepoint can make it easier. the best alternative is using google workspace instead. it doesn't make you sign in four times a minute.

Google is completely out of the question. As I said, we cannot switch away from Excel, whether I like it or not. Google Sheets is not a viable option: Everyone in the company knows Excel.

Network shares aren't bad per se, but they encourage people to place multiple files with the same name and then a V4, V5, V6 etc suffix. People have to download or check out the Excel files if they want to work with them, delete their local copies when they are done, and make sure they always check out the most recent version. If multiple people have to edit an Excel file, they have to synchronize so they don't override each other's files. So yeah, network shares aren't bad per se, but they aren't ideal either. SharePoint has a clear advantage here.

I'm not usually someone who advocates for Microsoft, on the contrary actually, but in this case I don't see a really good alternative.

If you have a better workflow, please explain it to me.

> Everyone in the company knows Excel.

What’s the big difference between Excel and Sheets?

Tell me you've never worked outside tech without telling me you've never worked outside tech...

I mean outside of tech, Teams, Meet, WebEx are all “Zoom”.

So if you can’t tell the difference between those products how can you tell the difference between Excel and Sheet?

That's not at all a fact.

Not only is that certainly not a fact, as the sibling commenter said, I find it striking how you're seemingly purposely missing the point.

They KNOW excel, they know where which buttons are, and the business logic and price calc are done in excel. These people aren't mentally challenged as you seem to think, they will know if their excel suddenly looks differently, offered by Google instead of Microsoft and in a browser instead of a native windows app.

So if you have nothing to contribute except power user arrogance, I will no longer interact with you.

> I find it striking how you're seemingly purposely missing the point.

Lol. You answer rude and get a rude response and then give up.

> They KNOW excel, they know where which buttons are

That’s not knowing excel though.

You’re not making the claim that people writing complex formulas with named ranges have an equation that doesn’t work in Sheet.

Sure, not specializing in computers doesn’t make you mentally challenged but it doesn’t make you proficient in it. If the reason somebody can’t use something is cause it “looks different” how have they survived the last 2 decades of Microsoft changes?

Never let it be said I give up easily ;)

But the excel-boundedness is exactly my point. Several sheets are so large they have been split into three files, referencing each other or external sources via power query. I'm not even saying it's good like it is, but it's just the status quo. I don't see any viable way to turn away from Excel in the short term, which is why I seek solutions.

And knowing where which function or button is in Excel IS knowing Excel, and programming formulas, VB macros and power queries is knowing Excel too. It has been a cornerstone in this company for the past 20 years. These people aren't IT people, Their core skills and how they bring value to the company lie somewhere else, and that's perfectly fine too. but I cannot expect them to just change the software they're been relying on for years just because I say so.

> What’s the big difference between Excel and Sheets?

Last time i looked, ability to handle more than a couple of thousand cells.

> - You use GitHub for scm

- You use Azure DevOps for SCM

- You use Windows for OS

Personally I run linux but most of the company is on Windows, sure

- You use Sharepoint for documentation

No, we use Nextcloud for docs and most storage

- You use Outlook for Mail

No, Mxroute. Which actually caused quite a bit of problems with Teams original because it REALLY expects you to use exchange

- You use OneDrive for storage

For large files only, or files that are shared in chat

- You use Azure for hosting

Nope, Hetzner

- You use Copilot for LLM

Come on, not even Microsoft uses that

- You use GitHub for scm

Yep and for all the complaining here, I've literally never had any noticeable downtime or issues. I don't use it for CI though

Not necessarily. We are a Linux company, which just happens to use github business and ms teams, because it's so much cheaper for smaller companies.

You’ve missed Office suite.

I know people love Excel and Word, but I just don’t get it. What even is Word? The web thing? Teams Word? The app?

Whichever Word last touched it, formatted it. This breaks it in the other versions.

How is this is a thing? It’s so awful.

I my experience, it's often that Excel is an absolute necessity. Try telling people who work in finance or accounting that they will have to use Google Sheets or another alternative and you'll have a picket line out front of the office within a week.

I've never met anyone who was a die-hard for Word, I'm sure they exist but they can't be a large contingent of users.

Excel is a lot like Photoshop. Everyone hates the parent companies, but there just aren't good alternatives for either one.

For many, Excel is sufficient reason to have a separate Windows computer or the determining factor in using Windows; Mac Excel is not the real deal.

Every single time I talk to an auditor or security team:

Them: Are you a Mac or Windows shop?

Me: 100% Mac, except for the Finance team...

Them: sigh Yeah, same here.

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