Planning to Leave Hey Due to Policy Changes

Here is an Email I wrote today to the support team at hey.com.

I sent this and post it here because I have been a very outspoke supporter of this company, paid for their books and products, have their stickers on my computers, moved teams on to their platforms, etc. It feels only right to be honest about this part of it and how I feel about what has happened.

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I am writing to notify Basecamp and Hey that I am in the midst of planning to leave Hey as a customer due to the policy changes recently announced by David and Jason.

🗞️ Read “Breaking Camp on the Verge” for further context.

I have supported Basecamp for a long time (as a customer and a fan), and Hey from day one because I believed in what I understood the company to be about and the way the application was built to work differently from other companies.

Yes, I like the products but it was more that Basecamp presented itself as an alternative company to the standard capitalist logic that runs tech companies anywhere that inspired me. I believed that this was a company truly trying to offer a different path in the world. The recent policy changes point to either a) that this was never the case and there were underlying beliefs that I do not want to be aligned with or b) that the company is now headed in a new direction that undercuts what I find most compelling about it.

I hesitated to leave or come to conclusions when I first heard the news because I know I didn’t have all the context and I hoped that more clarity would come. I also didn’t want to jump ship and have staff suffer for the loss of customer base. But the further posts on the web from the leaders of the company only seem to be a further digging in, rather than a willingness to truly be in dialogue, empathetic, and even consider that they may be wrong. Things I assumed they stood for. All of it seems really messed up and a great disappointment. I am sad for the turn of events but far more upset for the staff of the company who have been put through what I am sure has been an extremely toxic time in an already extremely volatile moment in the world.

I felt it was important to write instead of just leaving quickly and quietly. You need to know that this is a choice based on this policy decision, I use and enjoy these apps and have brought many others to your doors for business.

I do not expect or need a response. I plan to migrate out in the coming weeks unless there is a clear change in what is happening at BC (but as I see even staff are leaving, that tells me this is very unlikely). I hope that staff know that there are many of us out here ready to be in solidarity with you if it is called for.

Heart broken, Angry, Disappointed,

Wess Daniels (he/him) ⚭