Why you should hire a tech co-op | Hacker News Reader

Why you should hire a tech co-op

outlandish.com

16 pointsconatus26 comments

I can't figure out why Co-ops (particularly education institute backed) haven't really taken off in the US.

For example my alma mater Georgia Tech used to offer a Co-op program but I believe they discontinued it.

Northeastern here in Boston from what I have heard from others had serious problems with adoption of the Co-op program (I have to find the citation where I also read this).

Of course this was a few years back so maybe Co-ops are in now?

>I can't figure out why Co-ops (particularly education institute backed) haven't really taken off in the US.

I'm not familiar with what "education institute backed" means. Does that mean GTech provided initial seed capital to the co-op for free? If so, how much money was it?

To the general question of why co-ops are not prominent, it's because the workers don't have significant money. By definition, the co-op is owned by the workers and therefore, the workers need to fund the business. That limit on investment is why co-ops are often smaller businesses like consultants sharing an office & a laser printer or farmers-&-market collective. I also made a previous comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11165966

I had a complete brain fart and thought they were talking about education co-op which is more like an internship (sadly I skimmed the article... poorly).

I am surprised I wasn't downvoted (I deserve it) to oblivion for such a mistake.

An educational co-op is a completely different concept from what is described here. Work/school co-op means a student does paid full-time work while still enrolled in a degree program (e.g. a semester off). What is described in this article just refers to a worker-owned consultancy.

I can't believe I made that mistake as I even know the difference.

It was confusing and I thought it was the education one because they said:

* Hire a Co-op

* I have never seen a technology co-op. Sure I have seen grocery stores, farms, insurance companies etc but never seen a tech co-op.

* The article mentioned students.

Can't speak for elsewhere, but in the UK there are enough tech co-ops that we were able to form a network of them.

https://www.coops.tech/

This seems like it's just a pitch for this company - what's the actual value of the article?

The value of the article is the advertising - I could tell just from the title that it was almost certainly written by someone employed by a "tech co-op". I've never seen an article like this introducing a concept and why it's so great without it being written by someone financially motivated to do so.

The concept sounds interesting. Are there any successful tech-coops in the San Francisco bay area that people are aware of?

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but I do know that substack, James Halliday, who is behind Browserify has launched a tech coop https://bits.coop/

I hired from a tech-coop and the person didn't do any work.

"Why you shouldn't hire a tech co-op"

Yeah, because the status quo is to 'do the work you are hired to do', and they disrupted it.

> we reinvest our own profit into new projects that we believe are going to bring about real social change.

So what? Why is there an implicit assumption that if someone is trying to bring about "change", that it must be good?

I believe the "good" is implicit mate.

Pardon if I don't give someone credit for asserting they support "social change" without specifying what they're changing. It could mean anything from "ban mosques in London" to "free condoms with every middle-school lunch".

What social change we want to cause is: a) decided democratically by those who have done the work. b) subject to a rigorous "theory of change" (of the kind used by charities and the third sector) to decide on potential impacts and side effects of any change caused and to measure how much change has been caused.

So we don't just do change for changes sake but try and cause positive social change. We talk about this internally a lot and have robust consent based decision making processes to be "checks and balances" on these matters.

a rigorous "theory of change" (of the kind used by charities and the third sector) to decide on potential impacts and side effects

I see. Sounds like "very rigorous maritime engineering standards".

The Southern Student Organizing Committee sought social change that they saw as good.

OTOH, so did (and do!) the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Opinions rather radically different on which social change is good, so someone who merely tells you that they are seeking social change (whether or not they explicitly specify that it is “good”), but not what specific change they are seeking probably doesn't deserve much credit. Unless you are merely a seeker of chaos, such that any change, regardless of the nature of the change, is, inherently, good in your view.

I work here. AMA.

What's the pitch based on value to your customers, rather than some imagined "social value" from political causes which your customer may well perceive negatively?

We hope we produce well made software for our clients which tries to follow the best industry practices when building these kinds of things both technically and in terms of project direction. This all springs from a very close and collaborative relationship with the clients that being a coop lends itself to: user led design with plenty of user testing, short sprints focussed on delivering high value products that can be used immediately, close interaction with clients so we always produce precisely what they are after (standard agile methodologies apply here) a high quality of support and after care and so on.

As for clients perceiving the social value offer negatively, we tend to find people choose us because of the way we share and distribute the surpluses we make. In honesty I've been working here a year and it hasn't come up.

Sometimes clients come to us because they know that we are the only place that would be interested in building what they are after. Amongst other things, basically, if we love a project and think it can help make the world a slightly better, fairer place, we may actually support it's development (or further development) by funding some of its design and build ourselves. That's one way that a client may get value, but not the only way.

we tend to find people choose us because of the way we share and distribute the surpluses we make.

In my experience engaging consultants, I've never asked how they spend their profits. It surprises me that would be your major selling point, but maybe your clients are spending other people's money.

Many of the kinds of clients we have - charities, tech for good companies, third-sector organisations, unions, local government, lobbying groups etc - are pleased to work with someone whose profits are used to further aims proximate to their own organisations. But in pitches to clients I don't think we make it the main selling point, but part of the overall package.

Not really a question, just wanted to pat you on the back for the exceptional work on the NHS and school cuts sites. They were both highly effective (anecdotally I believe they played a not insignificant part in the general election) and really, really well done.

Thanks a lot, extremely kind! We are very very pleased to have made a difference. :)

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