>Why would we expect Slack or other tech companies to be helping random people with housing or social support?

Yet they expect congratulations. Slack's selfish commercial interest is entirely aligned with hiring cheap developers, but, they put out a press release and the atlantic magazine took it up.

I worked with a another charity that did a similar thing (not prisoners, but the underprivileged) and one of the companies we got some of them jobs at did the same thing.

The company got some cheap developers, avoided commission on a recruitment agency and then proceeded to issue a press release patting themselves on the back.