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>> 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

>> 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 ago
His 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.
    - enriquto 1y ago
      > "Slack" didn't do anything. A uninformed sales process included (...) I didn't hit anyone! An uninformed hand, that was at that moment attached to my body, did!
      - tomnipotent 1y ago
        [flagged]
        sethammons 1y ago
        Woosh?
    - GlacierFox 1y ago
      Please say you work at Slack and haven't just typed this almost certain time line of events off the top of you head?
- 6c696e7578 1y ago
  > What an unnecessarily hostile take. I like to defend as much as the next person, but the defence from Slack ignores the approach. "It was a mistake" isn't enough to gloss over the trouble, as a service provider, they caused. What a rug pull, and to then perhaps blame it on a sales person isn't right. They saw a lot of users and tried to extort, no negotiation. Honestly though, what can slack do that can't be accomplished by a good old-fashioned mail list or IRC?
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    > Honestly though, what can slack do that can't be accomplished by a good old-fashioned mail list or IRC? I wish. It is common for communities to switch from Slack to Discord. I would rather prefer a self-hosted Mattermost server or Matrix but eh...
    - 6c696e7578 1y ago
      Maybe. Not deliberately playing the contrarian, but consider perhaps one of the largest, and longest running software projects, the Linux Kernel, which has existed for a long time now using mail lists and IRC. Most mail clients can filter mail quite well, and everything is in one place, easily searched etc and has open protocols. Using something browser bases puts you into a position where you have to choose between one or two browser engines and suffer however they manage the CPU and RAM. Teams hogged the RAM and CPU when I used it in the browser, for what wasn't much more than IRC, and a terrible message archive. Mattermost isn't much better at searching either, and it's mostly glorified IRC channels. The only niche is perhaps mobile users, who, could arguably also use an IRC client or browser based one at that.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Searching sucks on Matrix, and straight out unusable in Element, or was.
  - tomnipotent 1y ago
    So in other words you've never worked at a large org, or been in a leadership position over hundreds of people. So rather than acknowledge that things like this can happen, you'd rather jump to the least charitable conclusion. Clearly the Slack senior leadership sat in a dark room smoking cigars while laughing evil about all the cash they were going to get raising the bills on non-profits. Got it. That explains 0 other non-profits that have had this issue and gone public.
- silpol 1y ago
  No, it's not 'hostile'. Behavior "give me now 50K and then monthly 200K" is called Racketeering. wikipedia > In the United States of America, racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Did they offer new service and asked for more? No. Did they came with new calculation based on costs? No. They just insist on "more money or your operations are toast". Once executives and vice- clout get into the court on racketeering, just like al Capone was, things will go much better.
  - tomnipotent 1y ago
    Absolutely hostile. OP was talking to a human, not a company, on an issue they have no personal stake in in a forum that values decorum and engaging with the best interpretation of an argument. I see accusations and statements, not questions and discovery. Folks seem too busy grabbing their pitchfork to engage in an honest conversation on shitty enterprise sales tactics. People keep throwing out words like extortion and racketeering but clearly have zero idea what those words mean. > Did they came with new calculation based on costs? No. A regular review process flagged an account that it shouldn't have, and it was included in some low-level employees day-to-day. To try and act like this was some malicious planned attempt at extortion is an exhaustively stupid position to argue for, it has no legs other than to satisfy some dark urge. It's a challenge to get a team of developers to adhere internal processes just affecting one team, imagine how hard it is to manage processes spanning managers, directors, and senior executives when those processes are a decade old. It's absolutely naive to think the C-level executives of a company with 3,000 people are going to hear about an issue like this within 48 hours of it happening. But sure let's keep coming up with conspiracies to satisfy everyone's desire to virtue signal and show off how much they hate the cruel evil business.
- hliyan 1y ago
  Perhaps this increasingly common attitude of "ethics don't scale" is a good reason to consider legislation that enable the breaking up of large commercial entities when they commit more than a certain number of scale related violations.

tinktank 1y ago

His 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.
  - enriquto 1y ago
    > "Slack" didn't do anything. A uninformed sales process included (...) I didn't hit anyone! An uninformed hand, that was at that moment attached to my body, did!
    - tomnipotent 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - sethammons 1y ago
        Woosh?
  - GlacierFox 1y ago
    Please say you work at Slack and haven't just typed this almost certain time line of events off the top of you head?
6c696e7578 1y ago
> What an unnecessarily hostile take. I like to defend as much as the next person, but the defence from Slack ignores the approach. "It was a mistake" isn't enough to gloss over the trouble, as a service provider, they caused. What a rug pull, and to then perhaps blame it on a sales person isn't right. They saw a lot of users and tried to extort, no negotiation. Honestly though, what can slack do that can't be accomplished by a good old-fashioned mail list or IRC?
- johnisgood 1y ago
  > Honestly though, what can slack do that can't be accomplished by a good old-fashioned mail list or IRC? I wish. It is common for communities to switch from Slack to Discord. I would rather prefer a self-hosted Mattermost server or Matrix but eh...
  - 6c696e7578 1y ago
    Maybe. Not deliberately playing the contrarian, but consider perhaps one of the largest, and longest running software projects, the Linux Kernel, which has existed for a long time now using mail lists and IRC. Most mail clients can filter mail quite well, and everything is in one place, easily searched etc and has open protocols. Using something browser bases puts you into a position where you have to choose between one or two browser engines and suffer however they manage the CPU and RAM. Teams hogged the RAM and CPU when I used it in the browser, for what wasn't much more than IRC, and a terrible message archive. Mattermost isn't much better at searching either, and it's mostly glorified IRC channels. The only niche is perhaps mobile users, who, could arguably also use an IRC client or browser based one at that.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Searching sucks on Matrix, and straight out unusable in Element, or was.
- tomnipotent 1y ago
  So in other words you've never worked at a large org, or been in a leadership position over hundreds of people. So rather than acknowledge that things like this can happen, you'd rather jump to the least charitable conclusion. Clearly the Slack senior leadership sat in a dark room smoking cigars while laughing evil about all the cash they were going to get raising the bills on non-profits. Got it. That explains 0 other non-profits that have had this issue and gone public.
silpol 1y ago
No, it's not 'hostile'. Behavior "give me now 50K and then monthly 200K" is called Racketeering. wikipedia > In the United States of America, racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Did they offer new service and asked for more? No. Did they came with new calculation based on costs? No. They just insist on "more money or your operations are toast". Once executives and vice- clout get into the court on racketeering, just like al Capone was, things will go much better.
- tomnipotent 1y ago
  Absolutely hostile. OP was talking to a human, not a company, on an issue they have no personal stake in in a forum that values decorum and engaging with the best interpretation of an argument. I see accusations and statements, not questions and discovery. Folks seem too busy grabbing their pitchfork to engage in an honest conversation on shitty enterprise sales tactics. People keep throwing out words like extortion and racketeering but clearly have zero idea what those words mean. > Did they came with new calculation based on costs? No. A regular review process flagged an account that it shouldn't have, and it was included in some low-level employees day-to-day. To try and act like this was some malicious planned attempt at extortion is an exhaustively stupid position to argue for, it has no legs other than to satisfy some dark urge. It's a challenge to get a team of developers to adhere internal processes just affecting one team, imagine how hard it is to manage processes spanning managers, directors, and senior executives when those processes are a decade old. It's absolutely naive to think the C-level executives of a company with 3,000 people are going to hear about an issue like this within 48 hours of it happening. But sure let's keep coming up with conspiracies to satisfy everyone's desire to virtue signal and show off how much they hate the cruel evil business.
hliyan 1y ago
Perhaps this increasingly common attitude of "ethics don't scale" is a good reason to consider legislation that enable the breaking up of large commercial entities when they commit more than a certain number of scale related violations.