They've also deemphasized Skype usernames, which is unfortunate in my most common use case: connecting with someone who requests we use Skype for a one-off international business call.

I find I can type, say, jsmith123 into the search box and I'll somehow either get multiple users listed as having that username or a bunch of similarly named accounts, possibly ranked higher than the one I explicitly typed in.

We ran into this as well as our business used Skype for all internal communication for a time, and it was also used for remote interviews, because in the past most people has a Skype username. Now most don't, and Skype pushes that you sign up with your phone number, which is very hard to find, especially if you're linking to someone not from your country. There is no indicator if they used their local number, their number with the country code, their number with some combination of this, and so on. Likewise, it's not as simple as look for their number and add, you need to add them as a contact first then you can message them.

It's really unintuitive and contrary to how people use Skype. It's using the method whatsapp, telegram, et.al use, but they don't really have a discoverability feature. You know someone, or you don't until you know someone who does.

Skype should either have just ditched the username search or embraced it. They tried to make it both, but they really didn't pull it off well, and now there is an entire subset of the userbase you cannot find with their find feature.

Indeed. As far as I can remember its been a source of pride to have managed to keep an older version and avoided updates.

This last one on OSx has been particularly bad though. Its just so slow at doing even basic tasks like chatting.

You can say thanks to Electron for this.

It started way before that was even a thing, definitely remember when they switched from old school Contact list window + chat window to an all in one design on OS X my machine would rev up the fans when I video called on the latter.