6 ms·

I was ready to be unsympathetic - too bad for the company - but then I read TFA and it's a rug pull on a nonprofit teaching coding to kids.... https://hackclub

I was ready to be unsympathetic - too bad for the company - but then I read TFA and it's a rug pull on a nonprofit teaching coding to kids.... https://hackclub.com/ https://hackclub.com/ (They do help clubs sell things, taking "7% of income", so they do have a revenue stream, but the money that Slack wants would pay a veritable army of student interns.)

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
aramsh 1y ago
FYI Hack Club helps fiscally sponsor organizations that do not have the capacity to apply for nonprofit status (https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/ https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/). The 7% income covers dev fees for lawyers, engineers and a bunch of other stuff to help it kept running.
- michabyte 1y ago
  Hi, Hack Clubber here. Fun fact: The 7% does not completely cover the cost of running a fiscal sponsorship program like HCB! That fee does not make HCB a net positive product to run in terms of cost. It just helps offset it a little.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
chrisasquith 1y ago
Hi! Ty! And Hack club is totally free to teens and we provide travel stipends, hardware, electronics and more. (We don’t charge 7 percent to clubs to sell things :)) hack club run a fiscal sponsorship and adult-orgs using it pay us 7percent- which we use to make more things free to teens. - hack club cofounder here
- ugh123 1y ago
  Have you thought about moving to Discord? I'm sure it won't be free for your org, but could be friendlier terms.
  - sfn42 1y ago
    I was going to suggest the same. Why would it not be free? I would expect it to be free. I don't think running a server costs anything.
    - worthless-trash 1y ago
      Yet. Just takes them to hire the right marketing genius and suddenly you'll be subscribing to send more than 5 messages a week.
      - jon-wood 1y ago
        Even now it costs extra to have file uploads over 50MB, high quality audio, and large video calls. Features that an organisation like this could legitimately need.
      - keithnz 1y ago
        we use discord, it's great, we wrote our own bots for the things we need. In terms of making money, it's just discord has a different model for making money, it doesn't want the servers to cost money, it wants as many servers as possible so many people want to use discord. It sells directly to users.
  - viccis 1y ago
    Discord is (rightfully) finally under the scrutiny it is due. I would say that their choice of Mattermost is apt.
  - N-Krause 1y ago
    Isn't this basically the same as Slack, just good for _now_? I do use discord myself. But as a company I wouln't put all my communication data in the hands of a company that could just do the same as Slack did, in some foreseeable future.
- commandersaki 1y ago
  I don't know if it's still the case, but a young developer in Bangladesh has been making pretty cool neovim plugins on a mobile phone. Hack club is (or was?) collecting donations to get him a macbook laptop to hopefully reduce the pain points: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions
  - cskartikey 1y ago
    Yep! They got a Macbook Pro!
    - arresin 1y ago
      Damn that’s so cool. When I heard about that kid programming OSS on his phone it really put me to shame complaining about my work load.
  - squigz 1y ago
    On the one hand, that's awesome. On the other hand, I do wish open source people would have opted to get him something more free than a MacBook.
    - Sayrus 1y ago
      He choose the laptop for durability because he can't get it repaired in Bangladesh. People didn't pick a non-free laptop without consulting him.
      - KronisLV 1y ago
        A ThinkPad might have also been an excellent choice, but hope the MacBook serves him well! Note: this isn't a critique of his choice, just a mention of something others might find useful. Source: I had a T480, P51, X1 Carbon and now P1 Gen 6, they're pretty good. Also have a MacBook M1 Air for note taking and stuff.
        1y ago
jrubinovitz 1y ago
Hi this is to cover the cost of the non-profit. There's a thing called fiscal sponsorship where you can basically let people use your non-profit status and it's great for kids who want to throw hackathons to not worry about taxes, but hack club still needs to pay for that non-profit status.
enriquto 1y ago
> a nonprofit teaching coding to kids that's a perfect teaching occasion, then! Kids: don't use proprietary services just because they are trendy. Prefer always open standards!
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  I am a teenager and I approve this statement! Although I am not in the nonprofit tbh but maybe one day I would love to apply :> They sound cool. Sad that bad things happen to the good people. Slack really is slacking if they are literally asking 195k$ to a literal non profit whose helping kids/teens.
  - ayoreis 1y ago
    It's really easy to join! There are lots of cool programs currently running. Maybe wait until next week so the migration is done, but do check our website: https://hackclub.com https://hackclub.com (we have/had 100k people in the Slack)
- ketzu 1y ago
  > don't use proprietary services just because they are trendy. Prefer always open standards! So if you use an open standard, but not self hosted, and your provider tells you "pay 250k or lose all your data in 2 days", I'd say are not necessarily in a better position than they are now. It's not impossible to migrate off of slack, but migrations take time.
  - dijit 1y ago
    Not being funny, but I can migrate from Zulip SaaS to Zulip Self-hosted in about 45 minutes. The limitation is the speed of my internet. I know this, because I've done it. Similarly a migration from self-hosted to SaaS gitlab (though, not back). Perfect is the enemy of good, but man, it can be pretty close to perfect if you choose your vendors properly.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  Yep, time to self host one of the awesome self hosting list's chat options. This will teach independence too. I have a ready ansible deployment for zulip using docker in my repos [1], publicly available. All that's needed is a server, setting some variables in ansible, deploying that thing, and adding backups. It will cost significantly less than any slack subscription and will not cost per user. [1]: https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/server-management/src/branch/main/roles/services/setup-zulip https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/server-management/src/...
kaladin-jasnah 1y ago
Wow, this stirred up a memory because at some point I had like the most messages sent on Hack Club Slack ever (or at least per month). That was a long time ago.
Traubenfuchs 1y ago
[flagged]
- dominicrose 1y ago
  this is called gatekeeping by the way and it's very annoying when you're conscious that it's happening and it's against you
- mcv 1y ago
  We know a fun and interesting thing and we want to share it. You could use the same argument to stop teaching many other useful skills to kids. It's a bad argument.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  If you scare a bunch of kiddos gonna take over your job, maybe your job is not that important.
- cess11 1y ago
  Programming is much, much bigger than writing and maintaining stuff for businesses. It's a way to create many forms of art, solve everyday problems and automate a plethora of machines in our homes. You sound like an accountant whining about kids learning about calculators and statistics.
- amiga386 1y ago
  Alternatively: do teach coding to kids (which includes logical reasoning and problem solving) You don't want an entire generation of people who can barely operate the devices that enable and control a huge portion of their lives. Kids will benefit immensely from being able to logically reason, and will be less afraid to repair or work around shoddy software, even if they never write another line of code in their lives. Professional programmers dont fear kids taught to code any more than novellists fear kids taught literacy or accountants fear kids with numeracy. If anything, they know personally how important it is to learn these things.
- pyrale 1y ago
  If you are willing to mess with kids how is your behaviour with coworkers?
steezeburger 1y ago
Why were you defacto ready to be unsympathetic? Sympathy is my default.
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
Financials are here, not too surprising if sales at Slack saw this they'd charge more https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812908499 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812...
- markdown 1y ago
  The revenue is from contributions
- dmqctx 1y ago
  Welp -- this explains why Slack's sales teams is going scorched earth after them. If Hack Foundation is the same as Hack Club their revenue has skyrocketed in recent years, and they're showing consistent growth. So do sales people at big tech companies keep tabs on non-profits financials and decide when to pounce on them for money based on growth like this? something tells me probably.
  - whywhywhywhy 1y ago
    The word “nonprofit” shouldn’t really be used for these organizations anyway because you can see right there the people in charge of it are literally profiting. Noshareholder would be more honest.
    - JamesBarney 1y ago
      The people in charge are getting a very modest salary for a developer, and a extremely modest salary for someone running a 10m/yr organization.
      - BoredPositron 1y ago
        That doesn't really matter?
        j_w 1y ago
        It does matter. People working for a non-profit should not work for free. It's completely acceptable for a non-profit to have an income and assets. Revenue may increase and it would be irresponsible to immediately increase expenses to match when they can conservatively plan for the future. This is said knowing nothing about the company in question, just from my own experience working for a non-profit. Employees still need to be paid.
deeringc 1y ago
It also seems like a really bad decision from Slack's POV. 1) They should know that this is unaffordable for a nonprofit like this. By doing this, they will almost certainly lose them and their thousands of aspiring teenage developers as users. The chance of actually booking that 200K are next to 0. 2) Microsoft learned a long time ago the value of getting young developers using your software to learn. Once those teens start working, maybe starting their own companies or choosing which tools to use at their future empoyers, if they know Slack they are very likely to pick Slack. This is a very short sighted shakedown attempt that wont work in the short term but will drive people away in the medium term.
- troyvit 1y ago
  Slack doesn't even know this is happening. I get the feeling the decision on SF's part was as autonomic as scratching an itch.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

aramsh 1y ago

FYI Hack Club helps fiscally sponsor organizations that do not have the capacity to apply for nonprofit status (https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/ https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/). The 7% income covers dev fees for lawyers, engineers and a bunch of other stuff to help it kept running.

michabyte 1y ago
Hi, Hack Clubber here. Fun fact: The 7% does not completely cover the cost of running a fiscal sponsorship program like HCB! That fee does not make HCB a net positive product to run in terms of cost. It just helps offset it a little.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

chrisasquith 1y ago

Hi! Ty! And Hack club is totally free to teens and we provide travel stipends, hardware, electronics and more. (We don’t charge 7 percent to clubs to sell things :)) hack club run a fiscal sponsorship and adult-orgs using it pay us 7percent- which we use to make more things free to teens. - hack club cofounder here

ugh123 1y ago
Have you thought about moving to Discord? I'm sure it won't be free for your org, but could be friendlier terms.
- sfn42 1y ago
  I was going to suggest the same. Why would it not be free? I would expect it to be free. I don't think running a server costs anything.
  - worthless-trash 1y ago
    Yet. Just takes them to hire the right marketing genius and suddenly you'll be subscribing to send more than 5 messages a week.
    - jon-wood 1y ago
      Even now it costs extra to have file uploads over 50MB, high quality audio, and large video calls. Features that an organisation like this could legitimately need.
    - keithnz 1y ago
      we use discord, it's great, we wrote our own bots for the things we need. In terms of making money, it's just discord has a different model for making money, it doesn't want the servers to cost money, it wants as many servers as possible so many people want to use discord. It sells directly to users.
- viccis 1y ago
  Discord is (rightfully) finally under the scrutiny it is due. I would say that their choice of Mattermost is apt.
- N-Krause 1y ago
  Isn't this basically the same as Slack, just good for _now_? I do use discord myself. But as a company I wouln't put all my communication data in the hands of a company that could just do the same as Slack did, in some foreseeable future.
commandersaki 1y ago
I don't know if it's still the case, but a young developer in Bangladesh has been making pretty cool neovim plugins on a mobile phone. Hack club is (or was?) collecting donations to get him a macbook laptop to hopefully reduce the pain points: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions
- cskartikey 1y ago
  Yep! They got a Macbook Pro!
  - arresin 1y ago
    Damn that’s so cool. When I heard about that kid programming OSS on his phone it really put me to shame complaining about my work load.
- squigz 1y ago
  On the one hand, that's awesome. On the other hand, I do wish open source people would have opted to get him something more free than a MacBook.
  - Sayrus 1y ago
    He choose the laptop for durability because he can't get it repaired in Bangladesh. People didn't pick a non-free laptop without consulting him.
    - KronisLV 1y ago
      A ThinkPad might have also been an excellent choice, but hope the MacBook serves him well! Note: this isn't a critique of his choice, just a mention of something others might find useful. Source: I had a T480, P51, X1 Carbon and now P1 Gen 6, they're pretty good. Also have a MacBook M1 Air for note taking and stuff.
      - 1y ago

jrubinovitz 1y ago

Hi this is to cover the cost of the non-profit. There's a thing called fiscal sponsorship where you can basically let people use your non-profit status and it's great for kids who want to throw hackathons to not worry about taxes, but hack club still needs to pay for that non-profit status.

enriquto 1y ago

> a nonprofit teaching coding to kids that's a perfect teaching occasion, then! Kids: don't use proprietary services just because they are trendy. Prefer always open standards!

Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
I am a teenager and I approve this statement! Although I am not in the nonprofit tbh but maybe one day I would love to apply :> They sound cool. Sad that bad things happen to the good people. Slack really is slacking if they are literally asking 195k$ to a literal non profit whose helping kids/teens.
- ayoreis 1y ago
  It's really easy to join! There are lots of cool programs currently running. Maybe wait until next week so the migration is done, but do check our website: https://hackclub.com https://hackclub.com (we have/had 100k people in the Slack)
ketzu 1y ago
> don't use proprietary services just because they are trendy. Prefer always open standards! So if you use an open standard, but not self hosted, and your provider tells you "pay 250k or lose all your data in 2 days", I'd say are not necessarily in a better position than they are now. It's not impossible to migrate off of slack, but migrations take time.
- dijit 1y ago
  Not being funny, but I can migrate from Zulip SaaS to Zulip Self-hosted in about 45 minutes. The limitation is the speed of my internet. I know this, because I've done it. Similarly a migration from self-hosted to SaaS gitlab (though, not back). Perfect is the enemy of good, but man, it can be pretty close to perfect if you choose your vendors properly.
zelphirkalt 1y ago
Yep, time to self host one of the awesome self hosting list's chat options. This will teach independence too. I have a ready ansible deployment for zulip using docker in my repos [1], publicly available. All that's needed is a server, setting some variables in ansible, deploying that thing, and adding backups. It will cost significantly less than any slack subscription and will not cost per user. [1]: https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/server-management/src/branch/main/roles/services/setup-zulip https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/server-management/src/...

kaladin-jasnah 1y ago

Wow, this stirred up a memory because at some point I had like the most messages sent on Hack Club Slack ever (or at least per month). That was a long time ago.

Traubenfuchs 1y ago

[flagged]

dominicrose 1y ago
this is called gatekeeping by the way and it's very annoying when you're conscious that it's happening and it's against you
mcv 1y ago
We know a fun and interesting thing and we want to share it. You could use the same argument to stop teaching many other useful skills to kids. It's a bad argument.
mrheosuper 1y ago
If you scare a bunch of kiddos gonna take over your job, maybe your job is not that important.
cess11 1y ago
Programming is much, much bigger than writing and maintaining stuff for businesses. It's a way to create many forms of art, solve everyday problems and automate a plethora of machines in our homes. You sound like an accountant whining about kids learning about calculators and statistics.
amiga386 1y ago
Alternatively: do teach coding to kids (which includes logical reasoning and problem solving) You don't want an entire generation of people who can barely operate the devices that enable and control a huge portion of their lives. Kids will benefit immensely from being able to logically reason, and will be less afraid to repair or work around shoddy software, even if they never write another line of code in their lives. Professional programmers dont fear kids taught to code any more than novellists fear kids taught literacy or accountants fear kids with numeracy. If anything, they know personally how important it is to learn these things.
pyrale 1y ago
If you are willing to mess with kids how is your behaviour with coworkers?

steezeburger 1y ago

Why were you defacto ready to be unsympathetic? Sympathy is my default.

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

Financials are here, not too surprising if sales at Slack saw this they'd charge more https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812908499 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812...

markdown 1y ago
The revenue is from contributions
dmqctx 1y ago
Welp -- this explains why Slack's sales teams is going scorched earth after them. If Hack Foundation is the same as Hack Club their revenue has skyrocketed in recent years, and they're showing consistent growth. So do sales people at big tech companies keep tabs on non-profits financials and decide when to pounce on them for money based on growth like this? something tells me probably.
- whywhywhywhy 1y ago
  The word “nonprofit” shouldn’t really be used for these organizations anyway because you can see right there the people in charge of it are literally profiting. Noshareholder would be more honest.
  - JamesBarney 1y ago
    The people in charge are getting a very modest salary for a developer, and a extremely modest salary for someone running a 10m/yr organization.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      That doesn't really matter?
      - j_w 1y ago
        It does matter. People working for a non-profit should not work for free. It's completely acceptable for a non-profit to have an income and assets. Revenue may increase and it would be irresponsible to immediately increase expenses to match when they can conservatively plan for the future. This is said knowing nothing about the company in question, just from my own experience working for a non-profit. Employees still need to be paid.

deeringc 1y ago

It also seems like a really bad decision from Slack's POV. 1) They should know that this is unaffordable for a nonprofit like this. By doing this, they will almost certainly lose them and their thousands of aspiring teenage developers as users. The chance of actually booking that 200K are next to 0. 2) Microsoft learned a long time ago the value of getting young developers using your software to learn. Once those teens start working, maybe starting their own companies or choosing which tools to use at their future empoyers, if they know Slack they are very likely to pick Slack. This is a very short sighted shakedown attempt that wont work in the short term but will drive people away in the medium term.

troyvit 1y ago
Slack doesn't even know this is happening. I get the feeling the decision on SF's part was as autonomic as scratching an itch.