[romellem]

I'm not kidding, one of the reasons I left my last job was when our parent company forced Outlook, Sharepoint, and Teams on us (vs. Google mail, Google Drive, and Slack). That change on its own isn't the worst thing of course, there were other reasons why I was considering leaving, but it was definitely one of the last straws.

Those MS solutions are just worse than the competition, and getting frustrated at your bugged technology because the parent company decides it can save some money is just trading employee satisfaction for dollars.

[ApolloFortyNine]

Gmail is so much better than outlook it's honestly insane. The way it handles email chains is infinitely better than outlooks, which often leads to responses just getting lost when someone replies all to a message that wasn't the most recent.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this is 'our' fault, as I'm sure someone will point out. But in the years of using Gmail at my last employer, it just worked.

[rnk]

I love gmail, use it every day. But the chat in the paid corp version of email is so painful. I hate it with a passion. Gmail also now has the stupid left side bar where it doesn't show the gmail folders unless you click first. I wish gmail chat would just copy slack.

[Myrmornis]

I would honestly like to know more about how to make it handle email chains. My work is happily quite email free but recently I've been involved with a company in my private life and I'm finding the email chains in Gmail incomprehensible -- the old emails aren't folded; I seem to have to scroll past millions of copies of the same email signatures with images in the signatures, as well as tons of quoted text from random copies of the group conversation at earlier points in its life, trying to hunt out the "real" last email. Is this normal?

[ApolloFortyNine]

Probably just one person using an email client is breaking its ability to collapse emails? In my experience it was perfect at collapsing emails.

Maybe it's a setting an admin disabled, if it's literally every email chain.

[readwriterick]

No, this is not normal in my experience using only gmail for all my companies for about a decade.

[albrewer]

> getting frustrated at your bugged technology because the parent company decides it can save some money

It doesn't even save money - the cost is just shifted from subscription expenses to lower dev team productivity. Management can't measure the latter as easily as the former, and arguing against switching is a much more complex argument to understand than "this number is bigger than that one".

[userbinator]

Management can't measure the latter as easily as the former, and arguing against switching is a much more complex argument to understand than "this number is bigger than that one".

There's a very appropriate classic quote for that sort of situation: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."

[galkk]

Outlook is more or less fine, but share point and teams are abominations

[TheRealDunkirk]

I want whatever you're smoking. Outlook is the poster child for overengineered software. It's the pointy end of Microsoft's attempt to make their software be all things to all IT department buyers' checklists.

[saiya-jin]

I don't know if its some crap in our top tier banking corporation's customization of Office 2016 suite, but outlook feels I am in Windows 95 era, running maybe some 486 DX2/66MHz machine with fabulous 8MB of RAM and loud clicky slow HDD.

I click on email, it takes few seconds to render that few lines of text. I click on one below, same 3-5 seconds. Emails I read few mins ago. Click on Calendar, again 3-5 seconds for switch. But then teams is same, effin' chat and nothing more, but also has proper UI bugs visible all the time, ie read stuff still has notifications. Having web call in it with screen share kills CPU for good. Our hardware is not the best currently but pretty recent and definitely things should be smooth.

What is it, implemented in javascript?

[mike22]

Then there’s the times people update the bug-tracker-table-in-a-Confluence-page, and Confluence sends an email alert about the edit to those “watching the page (which is everyone who ever edited it). In Outlook the scroll bar literally shrinks before my eyes as it renders the email from top to bottom.

[travisgriggs]

I credit Outlook with the downfall of email as a defacto form of internet communication.

[disgruntledphd2]

The calendar in Outlook is waaaay better than the Google one, though.

[pugworthy]

I'm curious whether this approach to career/job selection is sustainable in a downturn. You can do this kind of "I quit because..." thing if you have many opportunities and options. But when things are tight? Good luck to you, as they say.

One aspect of where I work (large old tech company) is that we value those that can adapt. You aren't judged as much by your skill set as you are by how you use your skills or work with the skills others have. Sure, there are limits and this doesn't mean you become the metaphorical frog in the slowly heating pot of water.

[noirbot]

They didn't say they'd never work somewhere with MS tools, just that that was part of the reason for leaving. I totally get it. If your employer is telling you a major part of your job is communication and giving you bad communication tools it's like if you got hired to be a chef and were given a camping stove.

There's certainly folks who enjoy the challenge or adaptation, but it does show a certain attitude towards the work and workers if your management doesn't think you need good tools to do the job well.

I'd stick around in a bad job if I thought I couldn't get something better, but it definitely means I'm looking to leave when things recover.