Great!
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RE: https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/116189938186518281
Great!
But look, guys, even if you maybe don't want to directly badmouth Microsoft, you don't have to keep pretending that most people prefer it. Yes, there'll be minor switching abrasion; familiarity is a strong motivator - but I assure you, the number of users who *want to* work in MS Office or Windows is well witin a single-digit percentage.
- which also means feel free to improve on the experience. "We're not Big Tech" is not your only selling point.
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RE: https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/116189938186518281
Great!
But look, guys, even if you maybe don't want to directly badmouth Microsoft, you don't have to keep pretending that most people prefer it. Yes, there'll be minor switching abrasion; familiarity is a strong motivator - but I assure you, the number of users who *want to* work in MS Office or Windows is well witin a single-digit percentage.
- which also means feel free to improve on the experience. "We're not Big Tech" is not your only selling point.
@jwcph I do a ton of talks on this subject. People are very attached to their working environment and even if they are unhappy with Teams or Word or Outlook, they also overwhelmingly don’t want change if they can stop it. Your single digit number is very much not what I observe.
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@jwcph I do a ton of talks on this subject. People are very attached to their working environment and even if they are unhappy with Teams or Word or Outlook, they also overwhelmingly don’t want change if they can stop it. Your single digit number is very much not what I observe.
@bert_hubert @jwcph as a former Microsoft customer facing engineer, I can back this up. Changing tools is incredibly painful for orgs, just in terms of training and Skilling. We held sessions that would last a whole week just for technical people on how to use new tools, and that process would always require follow up training and reinforcement for technical people. For non technical people this is even more pointed. Doing migrations to or from Teams, which no one loves, was and still is a laborious and slogging process, something that takes months or longer. Changing systems is hard, and without mandates and top level support, is extremely hard.
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@jwcph I do a ton of talks on this subject. People are very attached to their working environment and even if they are unhappy with Teams or Word or Outlook, they also overwhelmingly don’t want change if they can stop it. Your single digit number is very much not what I observe.
@bert_hubert @jwcph Oh absolutely. And even if preference or approval ratings were somehow in the single digits, the amount of people who would rather move than stay put and use what is already there is… also in those single digits
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@jwcph I do a ton of talks on this subject. People are very attached to their working environment and even if they are unhappy with Teams or Word or Outlook, they also overwhelmingly don’t want change if they can stop it. Your single digit number is very much not what I observe.
@bert_hubert this is the thing that is baffling to me about microsoft feeling the need to change interfaces for literally any reason at all
Every time they force a substantive change on users they roll the dice that those users might choose to change to someone else’s product if they have to be forced through change anyway
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@bert_hubert @jwcph as a former Microsoft customer facing engineer, I can back this up. Changing tools is incredibly painful for orgs, just in terms of training and Skilling. We held sessions that would last a whole week just for technical people on how to use new tools, and that process would always require follow up training and reinforcement for technical people. For non technical people this is even more pointed. Doing migrations to or from Teams, which no one loves, was and still is a laborious and slogging process, something that takes months or longer. Changing systems is hard, and without mandates and top level support, is extremely hard.
@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph
That ia a lesson the open source / linux community has to learn.
That means that it is very important to be able to implement versions with enough look&feel to make transitions easier.
(In other words: you want to be able to drive through the software as if it is the same sort of car.)
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@bert_hubert @jwcph as a former Microsoft customer facing engineer, I can back this up. Changing tools is incredibly painful for orgs, just in terms of training and Skilling. We held sessions that would last a whole week just for technical people on how to use new tools, and that process would always require follow up training and reinforcement for technical people. For non technical people this is even more pointed. Doing migrations to or from Teams, which no one loves, was and still is a laborious and slogging process, something that takes months or longer. Changing systems is hard, and without mandates and top level support, is extremely hard.
@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph And that is why Microsoft has been getting away with outrageous license fees for two decades - from our tax payer's money.
We need to free ourselves from this hostage situation. And yes that will be painful but it is necessary.
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@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph
That ia a lesson the open source / linux community has to learn.
That means that it is very important to be able to implement versions with enough look&feel to make transitions easier.
(In other words: you want to be able to drive through the software as if it is the same sort of car.)
@vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph agreed, look feel and functionality is important. I would say not changing to Linux in my career has been driven but changes to familiarity of interfaces and management for me more than anything but the gap and knowledge on that has shrunk significantly. The key thing though, that I've seen over and over again is, you cannot change orgs tech stack's from the engineer level.
Nerds get how to transition, as I said even when we do understand it that process can still take months. Security initiatives, like most tech initiatives fail, because there is no executive buy in. Not just from the CIO or CISO, but from the CFO and CEO. These are hard to gain traction without showing both limited business disruption and increased value, but also with a coupling of regulation and law.
Ultimately for Europe to kick the big tech habit, it has to include thought leadership, which I appreciate Bert leading well, and also resilience regulation. At minimum we need to be having a discussion of where our data is held, what do we do if we lose access, and how does that impact our business resilience. I like that this conversation is gaining traction, but it still feels like it's missing in most board rooms.
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@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph And that is why Microsoft has been getting away with outrageous license fees for two decades - from our tax payer's money.
We need to free ourselves from this hostage situation. And yes that will be painful but it is necessary.
@kdekooter @tstruthers @bert_hubert Guys, I neither disagree with any of this, nor do I want to challenge your experiences - but I do want to reiterate that resistance to the inconvenience of switching (which I specifically referred to as a strong motivation) ≠ preference.
What people prefer is for IT to not bother them or make them feel stupid - NOT "using Microsoft products".
I have a bit of professional experience with this, too, and I stand by my percentage
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@vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph agreed, look feel and functionality is important. I would say not changing to Linux in my career has been driven but changes to familiarity of interfaces and management for me more than anything but the gap and knowledge on that has shrunk significantly. The key thing though, that I've seen over and over again is, you cannot change orgs tech stack's from the engineer level.
Nerds get how to transition, as I said even when we do understand it that process can still take months. Security initiatives, like most tech initiatives fail, because there is no executive buy in. Not just from the CIO or CISO, but from the CFO and CEO. These are hard to gain traction without showing both limited business disruption and increased value, but also with a coupling of regulation and law.
Ultimately for Europe to kick the big tech habit, it has to include thought leadership, which I appreciate Bert leading well, and also resilience regulation. At minimum we need to be having a discussion of where our data is held, what do we do if we lose access, and how does that impact our business resilience. I like that this conversation is gaining traction, but it still feels like it's missing in most board rooms.
@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph
It will make it to the board rooms the day trump orders visa/MasterCard to stop dealings with that company or the moment they get hit by the fall out.
A board room wants to get a job done and don't want to think about it more than absolutely necessary.It will just take time. Some are earlier adapters then others. Some transitions will take much longer.
Don't forget there is a large difference between now and 'before Trump'. That won't leave with Trump.
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@vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph agreed, look feel and functionality is important. I would say not changing to Linux in my career has been driven but changes to familiarity of interfaces and management for me more than anything but the gap and knowledge on that has shrunk significantly. The key thing though, that I've seen over and over again is, you cannot change orgs tech stack's from the engineer level.
Nerds get how to transition, as I said even when we do understand it that process can still take months. Security initiatives, like most tech initiatives fail, because there is no executive buy in. Not just from the CIO or CISO, but from the CFO and CEO. These are hard to gain traction without showing both limited business disruption and increased value, but also with a coupling of regulation and law.
Ultimately for Europe to kick the big tech habit, it has to include thought leadership, which I appreciate Bert leading well, and also resilience regulation. At minimum we need to be having a discussion of where our data is held, what do we do if we lose access, and how does that impact our business resilience. I like that this conversation is gaining traction, but it still feels like it's missing in most board rooms.
@tstruthers @vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph except this is all a fiction.
I agree entirely with the sentiment but MS changes the game completley with every 2-3 releases anyway.
Start bar, the ribbon, constant pushing to save in onedrive, task bar to dock, IE to edge to new edge, teams refocus on "updates", conversations in outlook, complete binning of UIs for a new one (outlook, whiteboard) on and on it goes.
Moving the UI around to confuse the shit out of the users is the modus operandi of MS, and if we're saying there's intertia because people are familiar with it, that just can't be correct. At best it must be that decision makers THINK their users are familiar with it.
In my honest and considered opinion ofc!
What some competitor would be best to do is create 3-4 modes of what the UI looks like, that correlate to different generation of MS apps, and provide a clear and easy way of selecting the appropriate one.
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@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph
That ia a lesson the open source / linux community has to learn.
That means that it is very important to be able to implement versions with enough look&feel to make transitions easier.
(In other words: you want to be able to drive through the software as if it is the same sort of car.)
@vosje62 @tstruthers @bert_hubert Well... yes - to a point. You're not going to change over to that new car that feels the same, if it also runs you straight into the exact same wall.
The switching costs can be lowered by emulating the experience, but that doesn't mean you have to include & conserve every single thing that sucks, too.
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