I honestly hate the logic of Teams chat. In Skype for business you could create folders for chat groups. I could create a group for guys from e.g. IT support, Tech team, HR contacts, Accounting etc...when needed click on the group and drop down with the list and their current status is open.
The fact that chats from people are mixed together with Meeting chats makes it super intransparent and innefective keeping track of people I might need in future and don't want to keep them in a super long list of open chats under Recent. Also limit of pinning 15 people only is very limiting. Change back the logic from skype for business when it comes to chats. I would also prefer to have shown all chats from people based from newest to oldest (no meeting chats). I missed chat from a top manager in my organization because he landed below 10 meetings chats that came on top in the recent category in the meantime! Some meeting chats are like a spam and others might be good to be kept in a separate folder/category to be able to come back to them for information posted in them.
I do not understand this approach Windows, why do you have tendency to remove functionalities that worked great for years just in order to make a change...