Every week I see another thread of people wailing and gnashing their teeth about having to use Teams at work instead of Slack.
I use both a lot, and I guess if I had to be chatting all the time, yes, I’d much prefer to do it in Slack. ok
But I like Teams better, because its piss-poor chat interface discourages chatting, which is good.
When a company picks Slack, they get a smooth, low-friction chat UI, but usually at the cost of permanence and clarity. Decisions get made in threads, consensus emerges (or doesn’t) in scattered DMs, all of which is forgotten as soon as it scrolls off the screen.
And the interruptions! Even with features like “Do Not Disturb” or status indicators, Slack encourages quick replies and discourages deep focus.
When we started adopting Teams, I was thankful for its busted, bland afterthought of a chat interface. It unintentionally kept people from focusing on it much, nudging them instead towards email, document sharing, and scheduled meetings (things Teams has great integrations for that are nearly nonexistent in Slack).
Ideally, of course, no matter what collaboration platform your company uses, they would have:
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Clear communication channel guidelines (when to use chat vs. email vs. meetings)
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Better chat hygiene practices (threading, topic focus, appropriate tagging), if chat must be at all important
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Published expectations around response times and availability
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Integration of chat with knowledge management systems (THE FINAL BOSS)
Many, many companies, however, aren’t this thoughtful about their collaboration tools. These companies are better off on Teams than on Slack.