Comment by cycomanic
14 hours ago
As bad as teams is, there is absolutely no comparison to the crap that is slack. Just a number of things I regularly encounter: 1. Slack selecting speakers instead of headphones for call, even though I've used the headphones just before. 2. Calls ringing on my mobile that has been quietly sitting on the desk, instead of on the desktop that I've been typing on. 3. Mobile and desktop client being completely out of sync, it sometimes takes several minutes for messages typed on the mobile to show up on the desktop or vice versa. 4. I always have to select which screen to share twice before it shares (non of the other programs have this issue) 5. Don't get me started on the worst search ever, it's almost always easier to scroll than to search if it wasn't for: 6. Whoever thought it was a good idea that we should everything older than 15 messages or so back from the server. So instead of just quickly scrolling up it becomes an excercise of wading through molasses.
7. The absolute brain dead formatting, which makes typing equations or e.g. python exponents super annoying (no I didn't want to have this text bold)
I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of teams either, but it's absolutely mind boggling how slack got to such a dominant position in this space
Not a fan of slack.
Teams is unjustifiably worse than slack.
The only way you can hold this opinion is if you haven't been forced to use Teams.
At work for some reason we use both Slack and Teams because part of the company likes one and another part of the company likes the other, so i actually get to have simultaneous experience with both.
I use both on Linux via Firefox (their tabs are pinned side by side). I prefer Teams because:
a) Slack constantly forgets my credentials and i need to go through a whole dance of logging in, proving i'm human by clicking bicycles, having it email some code. Pretty much every day.
b) Slack, for some reason i cannot fathom, randomly switches me to "do not disturb" mode (or something like that) even though i'm right there. Not even away: it switches to a mode where i do not receive notifications when someone messages me. Fortunately it still does the beepy sound and i do keep the tabs visible on my screen all the time so i actually do notice messages, but i had at least a couple of questions from others why i am in that mode.
c) Slack does not support audio calls. Not sure why, but it doesn't work in Firefox. Teams does work just fine. Fortunately all work meetings are done via Teams and all people on Stack are also on Teams so if someone wants an audio call we use Teams, but still, a negative for Slack.
The only issue i had with Teams is that its text input can get confused when typing `backticks` and it seems to dislike using emojis at any place except the end of the text. Also Slack has some (old) meme emojis, though if that is a good thing or not depends on your taste :-P.
Oh interesting, I could say all of these same points for Teams.
Being signed out on Teams leads to a really slim banner at the top (of the already messy UI) that tells me to sign in again, the strip is even grey... the only reason I notice I am signed out at all is because I have notifications on my phone that aren't reflected in the Teams UI. This is a consequence of my IT department having short sessions, but the fact that this is how Teams displays it- is a fragrantly terrible UX.
The more annoying one is when my phone is signed out I just stop getting push notifications. There's no indication that I need to sign in again or anything. I think Slack would have the same issue with short session times to be honest, unless they send you a push notification every time your credentials expire which is also frustrating.
Teams working in Firefox is relatively recent, afaik it still doesn't work in Safari. I think I specifically had to install Chrome a few times to join job interviews that were conducted on Teams as Firefox definitely was not supported a year ago.
> c) Slack does not support audio calls. Not sure why, but it doesn't work in Firefox. Teams does work just fine. Fortunately all work meetings are done via Teams and all people on Stack are also on Teams so if someone wants an audio call we use Teams, but still, a negative for Slack.
My slack experience is old so I don't remember but on msteams there aren't audio calls at all. All calls all video calls, the only difference the audio/video call buttons do is wether your webcam will be activated or not from the beginning but you can still disable it before joining on a video call and you can always activating your camera even if you pressed the telephone looking button to start the call.
The most amazing ball that was dropped during the pandemic was everyone making video call software better .. except slack, which made it worse.
How the heck do you screw this up so badly?
At least Slack knows about threading conversations.
slack is shit but teams is worst