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Hey, I'm Rob, the CPO at Slack (for real tho, this is my 3rd time posting this so please don't flag :pray:). This was a mistake. We're fixing it. We appreciate
by seamanrob 1y ago
Hey, I'm Rob, the CPO at Slack (for real tho, this is my 3rd time posting this so please don't flag :pray:).
This was a mistake. We're fixing it. We appreciate you, Hack Club, along with all of you that are Slack users following along :heart:.
- flare_blitz 1y ago> This was a mistake. This looks extremely deliberate to me. Are you seriously suggesting that one of your sales reps accidentally demanded $250k from a bunch of teenagers?
- atonse 1y agoNo I’m pretty sure they’re suggesting that the account got somehow flagged as a for profit account, and they consider that a mistake and are fixing it. I think you don’t have to find the least charitable interpretation for what they’re saying. There can be something in the middle.
- flare_blitz 1y agoI can think of at least a dozen explanations less charitable than this one. Taking their word exactly at face value is not “something in the middle”.
- tomnipotent 1y ago> least a dozen explanations less charitable than this one Because you've already made up your mind that they're the bad guy, so it doesn't matter what really happened. One of the prevailing rules at HN used to be engage with the most charitable interpretation of an argument. It's always a better conversation when it's followed - this thread has just devolved into a bunch of pile-on virtue signaling with no actual interest in engaging honestly.
- dxdm 1y agoI don't perceive this as virtue signalling, this is your own slightly uncharitable interpretation. People are responding to what they perceive as bullying in line with what looks like extremely heavy-handee sales tactics that do not seem uncommon. It also looks like it only got addressed because it hit a someone with enough traction to go viral. That they had to resort to this channel at all raises questions in itself that go beyond the initial mistake and this particular customer. So while I agree that we do not know yet what actually happened, the response from Salesforce so far does not really address these all concerns, and is not inconsistent with less charitable views on what's going on. I think this is rightfully getting called out. With big power comes big responsibility.
- tomnipotent 1y ago> don't perceive this as virtue signalling It's the literal definition of virtue signaling - a bunch of folks with zero context jumping to conclusions of evil and malicious intent to satisfy their own needs to join the pile-on comments and show how fake mad they are. I see a thread of accusations and statements, not questions and engagement. > It also looks like it only got addressed The issue was less than two days old, in what world do you think a senior leader is going to learn of an issue like this in an org with 3,000 people? Most managers don't even get back to their direct reports in 24 hours, nonetheless getting a decision to someone higher up the ladder. > I think this is rightfully getting called out We agree in spirit but not execution.
- dxdm 1y ago> It's the literal definition of virtue signaling You seem to think people are responding here the way they are merely for social standing. At least, that's what virtue signaling is at its core, having looked at some definitions. I think people are upset at the actions of Slack/Salesforce and are responding accordingly. That would be a more organic or genuine motivation (for lack of a better word), while "virtue signaling" discounts the validity of people's responses and reduces them to a hollow show. That is why I called your interpretation uncharitable. > The issue was less than two days old, in what world do you think a senior leader is going to learn of an issue like this in an org with 3,000 people? We are commenting underneath a response by the CPO of Slack. There is a sibling comment by the CEO. I think they are aware. People are calling them out on the things their resposes do not address, which I mentioned in my previous comment. It wouldn't even need to be answers to all the questions people have. The response could have included things like: this is not how we want to treat any of our customers; we will look into what went wrong and why; we will explain when we know and how we will try to prevent this from happening again. That would have acknowledged the damage this issue does to the public perception of their business practices. Instead, they simply ignore all of that. Hence, people's reactions in here. > We agree in spirit but not execution. I agree that a lot of comments in here are quite emotional. I would be more wary if they were directed at a single individual acting in a personal capacity, instead of the representatives of a well-resourced corporation. The power imbalance matters a lot, and I think it makes a difference if someone rather more powerful is called out by more, rather than fewer, people.
- tototrains 1y agoThere was a phone call, there was a human, this was not resolved until there was a public backlash.
- fp64 1y agoSo if it were indeed a for-profit account, it would also be okay to give them just a couple of days to "find the money" or otherwise lose 11y of history?
- ubercore 1y agoI would guess that the issue came from losing the flag, and the disparity in amount owed built up over years, thus prompting the drastic action. A company that had a for-profit account would likely not incur that much of a bill that quickly, so it wouldn't play out the same. I imagine there are a series of escalating collections steps, and the flag switch popped them right to the most extreme end. Just a guess.
- fp64 1y agoNot sure if this works out, from my understanding the $50k would not even remotely cover a hypothetical for-profit categorization (should only cover less than 500 annual users, while my understanding is that Hack Club is significantly larger, by some orders of magnitude).
- guluarte 1y agolol a "mistake"
- blitzar 1y agoThis wasn't a mistake, you got caught.
- shooker435 1y agoHonestly this rep and/or the rep's management should be held accountable. This is an oversight that comes from end-of-quarter pressure but it doesn't make it excusable.
- ethbr1 1y agoThis. The fuckup sounds like it started on the Slack account team's end (or their sales leadership, if it was pushed from above), so that's where consequences should start.
- quickthrowman 1y agoAgreed, someone had to meet their 3rd quarter goal and threw a Hail Mary at Hack Club. Shameless.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- otterley 1y agoThanks, Rob, for owning up to it and doing something about it.
- brandon272 1y agoFeeling incredulous that this "mistake" ever would have been rectified had it not been for the public attention this is getting.
- dang 1y ago(I'm a mod here - your posts didn't get flagged! HN's software was filtering them because posts by new accounts are subject to a few extra restrictions. Fortunately a user vouched for your third try, which restored it, and I've marked your account legit now, so this won't happen again.)
- rhetocj23 1y agoHow many other 'mistakes' are there though? How many others are being exploited but just foot the bill?
- blueplanet200 1y agoThanks for showing up and owning the mistake. While I'm encouraged by this response, I still feel a sense of fear that this fix is a one off, if you could speak to how this could even happen and how mistakes like these would be prevented in the future I'm sure the community would appreciate it.
- seamanrob 1y agoI cannot guarantee that we won't make another mistake as we and our customer base grows. We're fallible! In this particular instance, this was the result of an oversight in our billing process, and we are returning Hack Club to its previous nonprofit pricing. We will be reviewing our billing and communications processes to provide nonprofits clearer guidance and adequate grace periods as they grow.
- jrflowers 1y agoOut of curiosity, will you be facilitating them exporting their chat history? Like obviously you see that this wasn’t just a billing error, this was extortion under threat of losing eleven years worth of data. If you see this massive screwup as just a price issue that can be fixed by lowering their bill, you’ve missed what’s happened here. Your company has entirely obliterated any trust here, and the way to fix this is to acknowledge that and do everything necessary to help them migrate their data to a place where you aren’t holding a gun to their heads.
- Mawr 1y agoYeah, I don't care about some non-profit or whatever. I care that the company thinks it's a-okay to demand from their customers 10x their yearly bill on the spot and to commit to 4x that yearly or else their data will be deleted in a few days. That's not an employee acting out of band, it's obviously their modus operandi.
- seamanrob 1y agoZach has posted separately about Hack Club continuing on Slack. In general, customers can export their data and the options for that by our various subscription plans are here: https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-workspace-data https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-worksp....
- amradio1989 1y agoWay to go Rob! Thanks for owning up to it. And for being persistent about correcting it.
- fasbiner 1y agoIt's not a mistake that you're only reachable when your bad business practices are so heinous they go viral. You are an executive at a company that saves money by not offering customer support except when there's bad PR or a lawsuit. Are you going to be fixing that your billing system is not human-reachable, or are you just going to be fixing this one incident while leaving the broken system as-is for everyone who didn't go viral?
- sharts 1y agoThis is the new way of doing business. Rip off as much as you can until there is enough publicity around your bad behavior such that it may affect your bottom line. And then say sorry to convey some kind of human connection in the hopes you will be forgiven and the bottom line can be raised again.
- sitzkrieg 1y agothis era of trying to fly under the radar until you get called out on HN is a really great look /s
- flir 1y ago:heart:
- creaturemachine 1y agoA few more heart emojis ought to make this go away.
- solarkraft 1y agoThank you for responding and taking this on. > We're fixing it By this you mean making sure something like this won’t happen to ANYONE ever again, right? I hope so and I hope that you will post about it so that you can somewhat recover from this certified PR disaster. I had previously considered advocating for your product but sure as hell won’t as long as this situation isn’t thoroughly solved. It also prompts me to look into your other business practices before ever considering speaking positively about you again.
- seamanrob 1y agoAs I said in another reply, I cannot guarantee something like this won't ever happen again. We're fallible for sure. But I can guarantee we'll keep trying and improving. This was the result of an oversight in our billing process, and we are returning Hack Club to its previous nonprofit pricing while we work with them directly to ensure their workspace remains fully accessible. We will be reviewing and modifying as necessary our billing and communications processes to provide nonprofits clearer guidance and adequate grace periods as they grow.
- tobr 1y agoI can see how the bill itself was a mistake, but the real scary thing to me is the timeline. Seven days from action required to deletion of all your data isn’t reasonable under any circumstances.
- electroglyph 1y agoyup, agreed. this is a super shady pressure tactic that should be shamed.
- scinadier 1y agoLet's be real, when an entity like Slack says "delete all your data," they actually mean they will add a flag in the database to make it inaccessible to those who aren't purchasing bulk data for data mining and llm training. The data will persist regardless.
- jmuguy 1y agoCan you comment on the other organizations who've had similar experiences recently? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45287607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45287607 https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/1aj3i16/adrian_cantrill_tech_study_slack_deleted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/1aj3i16/...
- epolanski 1y agoMove to other platforms? xD
- joewhale 1y ago*This was a mistake on knowing this would blow up
- dman 1y agoSince this was a public facing mistake, will there be a post mortem including details about the blast radius, how many customers were affected and what steps are being put in place to ensure this never happens to a customer again?
- doublerabbit 1y ago"We used the wrong React hook which increased the billing rate of our customers. Sorry" Ref: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/18/cloudflare_ddosed_itself https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/18/cloudflare_ddosed_its...
- jama211 1y agoThis is a joke right?
- jama211 1y agoI doubt it
- baq 1y ago> This was a mistake. I would be not at all surprised if Benioff said the initial deal was a mistake and you’ve fixed it now. Nevertheless glad to see someone here trying to put out the fire, even if in the grand scheme of things it’s probably too late.
- n5NOJwkc7kRC 1y agoI definitely heard about another nonprofit group that got similarly punted last quarter, or maybe the quarter before... shame I can't remember it now.
- bauruine 1y agoThank you for addressing this issue. Could you also provide feedback on the accusations that data export is only available for high-tier pricing plans and requires Slack's explicit approval?
- dakial1 1y agoGreat you are owning the mistake and fixing it. May I suggest a public post mortem so that the doubters can see that you went after the root cause? Might be interesting for HN as well as big companies have mistakes in policy, teams and automated collections...
- flare_blitz 1y agoThere is about as much ownership here as a squatter in a two-bedroom apartment. They are apologizing because they got caught, not because they genuinely believe they messed up.
- Braxton1980 1y agoSomeone suggested the possibility that the org status change which moved them out of the "not for profit". After this the billing department might just get a list of companies that are behind and start a process.
- flare_blitz 1y agoNo, I’m pretty sure Slack was never a “not for profit” company. Most not-for-profits do not ambush their customers with $250k bills on a week’s notice. I’ve seen debt collectors less predatory than this.
- Braxton1980 1y agoI'm referring to Hack Club. Am I incorrect about the details related to not for profit?
- didntknowyou 1y agozero owning of the mistake. calling it an 'oversight' with no real apologies is just a brush off
- drewbitt 1y agoI get automated billing mistakes, but a real human reviewed this case and demanded the money and the timeline. At that point, that is just a business practice.
- joekim 1y agoThe community here is very forgiving of software bugs, but why did the rep act that way? To paraphrase Warren Buffet, what are the incentives that directed that led to this outcome? Why did the rep in this case act so viciously? If Hack Club did pony up the $200k the rep would probably be compensated in some way. That would increase the propensity of a rep to strong arm with short deadlines and hold their 11 year chat history hostage even if it’s not the appropriate pricing for a non-profit. Since this is bad for Slack and Salesforce’s brand I imagine they’ll be putting in new mechanisms to disincentivize this in the future. When it comes to the rep getting paid they’ll become an expert at how to do it properly.
- fn-mote 1y ago> Since this is bad for Slack and Salesforce’s brand I imagine they’ll be putting in new mechanisms to disincentivize this in the future. You are dreaming... look at all of the other posts on topics like this. It's going to continue to be business as usual until you have the social capital for a post that gets to the front page of HN or similar status elsewhere.
- jenadine 1y agoSince everything is being fixed, does that mean that "Hack Club" is not going to move to mattermost after all?
- microsoftedging 1y agoYep, we're not! (From a hc'er). Zach announced that slack has gifted us half a decade of enterprise+. Whilst slack's behaviour is worrying, it probably wouldn't make sense to cut all ties. Either way- another 5 years to migrate! :-)
- pbasista 1y ago> This was a mistake. Yeah, right. Tell us more. You mean like it has become a mistake when the story about it broken up and went viral? But if Hack Club did not complain about it, you would have happily took and kept taking their money? That kind of a "mistake"? In all seriousness, why should anyone believe what you are saying? It seems to me that your story about a "mistake" is just as plausible as this kind of behavior simply being Slack's business strategy. Be ambiguous. Change the terms of the sale after the sale. Try poking. See which tactics works. If someone bites, take advantage of it. If they complain, call it a mistake and do damage control. Collect profits. Rinse and repeat.
- it33 1y agoHi Rob, I'm Ian, CEO at Mattermost. Apologies for repeating the question from jrflowers, but I couldn't resist: >Out of curiosity, will you be facilitating them exporting their chat history? Mattermost is self-hosted and enables full data control. There's some organizations that want to move to Mattermost for various reasons. It's important for them to bring along their data. Wondering what your opinion might be?
- akerl_ 1y agoWhat a weird attempt at injecting your product marketing.
- j45 1y agoI was wondering about what options exist for Slack, and Mattermost along with a few others do seem to have a completely free layer.
- smt88 1y agoAlthough transparently self-serving, this seems like a perfect time to say, "Hey, this couldn't happen to you at Mattermost because we A) have a free tier, and B) allow you to export your data."
- mostlysimilar 1y ago[flagged]
- baq 1y agoThis is hacker news, hackers are ceos, too, and have a very relevant product or service to sell. If anything he didn’t do it enough in this thread.
- kevdoran 1y agocancelled our company's slack plan when all this news dropped. We're looking at Mattermost, the reviews are really good
- mutant 1y agoHow many others get this treatment without the publicity, y'all still showed your colors. Enjoy your business practices.
- quickthrowman 1y agoIt wasn’t a mistake, your sales incentives led to this behavior and you got caught off guard by the negative publicity. Here’s exactly what happened: A human account manager had to meet their 3rd quarter sales goal and sent the demand for more money. It’s less than two weeks from the end of the quarter, do you really think nobody on HN is in sales and also facing the same pressure? This is such a transparent lie that I’m surprised you took the time to post it.
- FreakLegion 1y agoIt isn't two weeks until end of quarter. Like many businesses, Salesforce's fiscal calendar runs Feb 1 to Jan 31. Slack's did, too, before the acquisition. Q3 ends on Oct 31.
- rchaud 1y agoThe time to complete the paperwork on a $200k/yr deal is longer than 2 weeks. Especially if the customer is expected to fork over 4000% more than what they were paying.
- FreakLegion 1y agoB2B procurement in this range can take anywhere from a few days to a year, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the very specific and demonstrably false claim I was responding to.
- quickthrowman 1y agoFair, it’s 6 weeks until the end of the quarter. There’s still a human account manager involved, it wasn’t an automated billing error.
- atherton94027 1y agoExactly — anyone who has worked in sales for a New York minute knows that any six figures deal will have a human account manager assigned to it.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago>> Then, suddenly, they called us 2 days ago and said they are going to de-activate the Hack Club Slack, including all message history from 11 years, unless we pay them $50,000 USD this week and $200,000 USD/year moving forward (plus additional annual fees for new accounts, including inactive ones) > This was a mistake. Calling a customer and extorting them for $50k USD this week and $200k USD per year going forward is not "a mistake." It is a business decision which your organization made and did not expect to be held accountable for same. > We appreciate you, Hack Club ... You have a very different definition of "appreciate", unless you are using it in the accounting sense[0]. 0 - https://accountinginsights.org/what-is-appreciation-in-accounting/ https://accountinginsights.org/what-is-appreciation-in-accou...
- tinktank 1y agoHis response speaks volumes. Yours too.
- tomnipotent 1y ago[flagged]
- 28304283409234 1y ago"Slack changed the terms of a special deal we were given last year to charge us for staff and volunteers (not for every teenager coding), and we built programs around that special rate. " Not 14 years. Unlikely to be generations of execs.
- tomnipotent 1y ago> Slack changed the terms of a special deal "Slack" didn't do anything. A uninformed sales process included a customer it should not have, which was eventually resolved. Terms did end up changing, but for the better. I'm willing to bet money that no one from the team or even area of the org chart that made that deal are still in that part of the org, or that any of them would have been involved in any situation that would have brought awareness of what was going on. Sales team have relatively high turnover, over like 25% anually. In my experience it's usually the least stable org chart in the company. > Unlikely to be generations of execs. There's probably been no less than ~6 executives that have been responsible for sales operations in that time frame, and that the sales process has been revamped and changes to how revenue is generated just as many times.
- lucasyvas 1y agoWe all work at companies and know how it works - you get away with what you can. You bet wrong and nobody will believe otherwise. If it was a mistake, it’s fireable.
- Ekaros 1y agoFor whole chain of command up to CEO and board. That is least we should ask each and every time.
- maximilianburke 1y agoWill there be a publicly available post-mortem when the root cause has been identified?
- Braxton1980 1y agoCan you explain the nature of the mistake? Like someone who didn't know or a change that they were lumped into?
- jcmartinezdev 1y agoIt backfired badly, and now it was a mistake... Seems like posting it helped giving it some sort of resolution
- tototrains 1y agoNo, this was a decision that had negative effects and it makes you look very, very bad. But on the plus side you provided an excellent lesson to these teens and I'm sure they will consider the importance of trust, leverage, and incentives when dealing with other companies in the future.
- bogzz 1y ago[flagged]
- itissid 1y agoYou could start by explaining what exactly went wrong. Not doing that would be a mistake.
- vonneumannstan 1y ago>This was a mistake. We're fixing it. We appreciate you, Hack Club, along with all of you that are Slack users following along :heart:. Undoubtedly the only mistake here was this getting attention. I'm sure hundreds of other groups have had the same experience Hack Club did.
- southernplaces7 1y agoWhat you are is a parasitic liar who's reacting in disaster control spin mode. Extorting these people like that via phone call isn't a mistake, it's an obvious case of directed policy... that then got publicized and triggered some backtracking from a shitty company content with indifference.
- ineedasername 1y agoHi Rob, as head of product if you’re sincere in this then maybe check in with the SVP of North American sales, see if your sincerity is founded on something more than well-wishes. It would hardly be the first time in corporate history that a sales division was wagging the dog without the dog knowing. Heck that’s an interesting thought, why isn’t the SVP here commenting instead? If you can’t find the new one then maybe check in with Kevin Egan, congratulate him on the new CRO job, see what his take is on this being more of a mistake than standard operating procedure. Maybe have his reminisce about his sales days from way back at Oracle, where sales and revenue optimization is known for their ethical practices.
- didntknowyou 1y agoso you couldn't respond to your client but had enought time to make an account and post here because of the blowback?