while there's undoubtedly a lot of truth in here, this comes across as a condescending and childish move by Slack that telegraphs their fear of facing real competition for the first time.

i'm sure Microsoft appreciates the free advertising, though.

Cringeworthy.

significant improvements in how people communicate requires a degree of thoughtfulness and craftsmanship that is not common in the development of enterprise software

This made me laugh when simply finding a file someone sent to you a week ago on slack is a complete f-ing nightmare.

Nope, you are not Apple.

geez...that was not necessary.

That smelly smell of fear...

This is like Drake/Meek Mill level beef. Trigger fingers turn to Medium fingers.

As other have pointed out above, it comes across as childish and condescending.

This line in particular: "We’re sure you’re going to come up with a couple of new ideas on your own too. And we’ll be right there, ready."

I couldn't even finish it. Such a rookie move.

Did I miss something? Why are Slack taking this kind of tone?

I just wonder how on earth, they thought that this was a good move?

You're a 3BN$ valued company Slack, you really should start acting like it.

Oh, and they disabled comments too. That says a lot.

I would love a Slack competitor that would be geared more towards larger communities and makes it easier to (for example) surface older content and anticipate common questions. The engagement aspect of Slack is great but for support it's a huge time sink compared to something like Discourse.

Also they published the same in newspaper :\ https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793811616760496128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Kind of ironic how this piece came across coming from a company that prides itself on communication and creating delight.

If nobody knew of Microsoft Teams, they sure know now.. talk of free publicity to competitors.

Slack has plenty of competition: https://chatgrape.com/ is one pretty good one that comes immediately to mind.

And this post makes me not want to use Slack. Very condescending sounding.

Curious to know why they didn't wrote something similar when Facebook launched Workplace

Absolutely hate the patronizing tone that Slack is using here.

SHOTS FIRED.. directly into your own foot.

With Apple showing us that once you go Mac you can go back—and Microsoft offering a very tempting piece of technology—your inadvertent advertising of a product that by the looks of it, a lot of us weren't aware of is just beefing up those profit margins.

Promote yourself and your features, Slack, not the failings of others. It's just bad business.

Why does Slack think it has no competition? I'm still surprised people are using Slack when they come with very little new improvements for their software. I'm not even a gamer but Discord is immensely better than Slack ever was, with new features being baked every single week. People were asking for a dark theme for Slack for ages and they stubbornly refuse to implement it. No wonder they get so salty at the sight of competition.

Wow, this is not cool at all.

This letter would be alright, if slack would be that good as they claim.

This reeks of desperation, calm down. Other companies are allowed to make competing software.

I made a simple suggestion...

https://twitter.com/travishines/status/793865111198982148

https://medium.com/@rhysmerritt/dear-slack-e6c4bcad8c89#.ybgturdbv

So Microsoft brings a new competitor, thanks for the new... Slack

I think it's fair game to call out when a huge company sherlocks your work. I also wouldn't be surprised if Slack has always thought of Microsoft as their direct competitor. Slack's logo and its colours reminded me of the Windows branding most office workers are familiar with. Except fun.

Seems pretty friendly to me ;)