@AmyZenunim @narylis what in the haunted stars is a "bus factor"

@AmyZenunim @pynkbites it didn’t really give me a lot of confidence to see them list a bunch of reasons their finances are at risk, and then have jae explain how what they are prioritizing and launching right now won’t realistically close the gap (“[user subscriptions will] launch… within (hopefully) the next few months… with a 5% platform fee that scales down once we’re sustainable” vs. “[tipping] will actually launch *before* user subscriptions… [but] we do not consider tipping to be a revenue driver.”)

i will concede that it’s backseat management on my part at this point, but with regards to dealing with theire (understandably!) low bus factor, it really seems to me that their second dev would have been better spent on accelerating that path towards self-sufficiency with subscriptions than tasking them with new features that don’t further that goal, as that would have allowed them to better absorb the pain of their lead dev catching long covid instead of (presumably) having that project become blocked on a single individual.

all in all, paying a fair salary to these devs is admirable, for sure, and certainly more than i have ever been able to achieve with the handful of social media sites that i ultimately both was the only coder on and the only one footing the bill for over the past decade and a half. so yes, i would *love* to hear that someone can ultimately manage to actually cover costs for a substantial social network/community and actually be socially responsible in the process! the problem, however, is that the idealism of wanting to achieve that doesn’t mean one can avoid the twin realities of both the costs of running these sites and the risks that need to be budgeted for in your finances (like losing part of your staff to long covid). even if you aren’t yourself capitalist, we all still have no choice but to live in a world geared for the benefit of capitalists, which means making an honest assessment of where you are financially and how your next steps and resource reallocations will get you to a place where you don’t have to worry about it as much.

alas, the fact that cohost is already at the point of taking out unsecured loans to bridge the gap until they can improve their cash flow (which necessarily involves higher interest rates, and therefore, higher loan payments, commensurate with that) while saying “is there a road to sustainability? great question! no idea!” is not a particularly promising sign that they are closing in on that goal.