[HN Gopher] "About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyo...
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"About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today"
Author : minimaxir
Score : 543 points
Date : 2021-04-30 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| numair wrote:
| 1. I've seen great, failed, and dysfunctional companies and teams
| up-close and personal; companies that went from zero to $100B,
| from $50B to near-zero, and are stuck somewhere in zombie-land.
| In every case, the passionate employees defined a lot of what
| made things work, and were the canaries in the coal mines. When
| it comes to knowledge work, people who are "alpha" are passionate
| about every little detail in their lives -- so, silencing them is
| a nice way of embracing complete, utter mediocrity.
|
| 2. If Apple had teams circulating customer data internally and
| laughing about it, DHH would be asking for a Congressional
| investigation.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Why has nobody at/leaving Basecamp posted the "Best Names Ever"
| list so we know what we are talking about?
| newsclues wrote:
| Funny names?
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| It's not totally unusual to run into names like 'Suk Wang' if
| you're dealing in Asia.
|
| God knows what my name means somewhere else.
| intergalplan wrote:
| Make friends with anyone who deals with lots and lots of people
| across socio-economic status boundaries--teachers, social
| workers, anyone in government who deals with the public on a
| regular basis--and they can tell you what that means. You'll
| think they made some of them up, but they didn't. And that's
| without going international.
| newsclues wrote:
| I worked in a call centre for telcos and Apple doing tech
| support.
|
| We didn't have lists but funny names and stupid customers
| were frequent topics of discussion
| postit wrote:
| Reverse layoff
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I think that activists at the workplace are disastrous for
| productivity. When they band in groups, they act as a multiplier
| for each other, stopping all positive work. So I heartily support
| disbanding committees.
|
| I'm more or less OK with discussing any topic at non-work time,
| during lunch or whatever, but only until every participant in a
| discussion is willing to accept the views he/she personally
| disagrees with.
| danjac wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if this will become a case study in
| future in how to self-destruct a successful company with a single
| bad communication, much like Gerald Ratner (although this may be
| due to long-term grievances we're not aware of).
| creamytaco wrote:
| A bit melodramatic. Nothing of the sort will happen and
| Basecamp will be all the stronger for it.
| tosh wrote:
| > We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six
| glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you
| drinks on, all for PS4.95. People say, "How can you sell this
| for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner
| w0mbat wrote:
| It's a shame people took that speech seriously. It was a very
| funny speech particularly from someone who was not a trained
| comedian.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| Depends
|
| I will be looking and reaching out to them soon. A) they are
| now looking for a lot of people. B) I fully agree with their
| idea about apolitical work spaces, and I know a lot of folks
| that do as well. I have quit jobs due to the BLM fanfare, you
| are either with us or against us mentality in the workplace
| where I just wanted to do my job and get paid to do so.
|
| edit: I chose BLM because it was the big thing last year. Not a
| racist thing, but being 5000km away from all that, and still
| have people 'demanding' me I wear/use BLM support things was
| too much.
| [deleted]
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Black lives being undervalued is not a US-centric problem.
| deanCommie wrote:
| If I was DHH and Jason I would be extremely wary of any
| applications coming in right now.
|
| When your policies are being celebrated by Breitbart and
| other alt-right trash publications, you are going to attract
| a lot of folks with extremely questionable integrity.
|
| Not saying you're one of those, but if you can't recognize
| your point in history and are quitting your job over "BLM
| fanfare", then you also know the answer to the question of
| what you would have done during the civil rights movements of
| past. Nothing. You would have kept your head down and focused
| on your work. Which, maybe if you're in a sustenance-based
| paycheck-to-paycheck environment is justifiable. But if you
| have the luxury to quit jobs (PLURAL!) over being asked to
| take a stand, then you're not apolitical.
| totony wrote:
| >Not saying you're one of those, but if you can't recognize
| your point in history and are quitting your job over "BLM
| fanfare", then you also know the answer to the question of
| what you would have done during the civil rights movements
| of past. Nothing.
|
| That's not true. Being harassed to virtue-signal and not
| wanting to deal with those people has nothing to do with
| how likely you are to have your own beliefs and act upon
| them.
|
| >But if you have the luxury to quit jobs (PLURAL!) over
| being asked to take a stand, then you're not apolitical.
|
| No that just means that he has enough choice not to want to
| bother with people requiring you to take _their_ stand. I
| deplore people who do not have that luxury and have to deal
| with people radical enough to require others to mirror
| them.
| exolymph wrote:
| You have "commie" in your handle. C'mon man.
| weakfish wrote:
| What's your point?
| danjac wrote:
| They're going to end up recruiting from the brain trust
| that gave us Parler.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I'm sorry, my life is surrounded by extremely liberal people
| but I've never seen anyone 'demanding someone wear a BLM
| thing". Similar to the "war on Christmas" I think that
| someone made that up.
| Graffur wrote:
| Agreed
| hsod wrote:
| People demanded you wear BLM clothes at work?
| aaomidi wrote:
| They had many opportunities to reverse that blog post. They
| didn't and doubled down.
| danjac wrote:
| That's very typical behaviour from the founders. I mean it's
| worked for them in the past, but perhaps they never learned
| the value of a little humility.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Some people are willing to stick to their principles even if
| it costs them. We need many more such.
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| You may see principles, but I just see ego.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've never seen any correlation between how willing someone
| is to stick to their principles and how good those
| principles are.
| nailer wrote:
| OK. My experience is people stick to the values they hold
| dear and those tend to be ones they've given some thought
| to.
| mempko wrote:
| Didn't realize authoritarianism is a principle we really
| should be rewarding.
| threatofrain wrote:
| For those willing to stick by their principles, we should
| also see if they stick their landing.
| bonaldi wrote:
| "If you liked "How to build a blog in 15 minutes with Rails,"
| check out the sequel, 'How to destroy Rails in 15 minutes with
| a blog.'"(From
| https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1388174804985868289 )
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's a funny Tweet, but Rails is much, much bigger than
| Basecamp now. There's enough money invested in the Rails
| ecosystem at enough large and medium sized companies that
| Basecamp could go away entirely and Rails would continue to
| persist.
|
| (I realize that there's always the possibility that this post
| could age like milk, and everyone might be pointing at
| laughing at me in 5 years. But that's also pretty much true
| for any piece of technology, and not unique to Rails' current
| situation.)
| bdcravens wrote:
| I've seen more than a few tweets in recent days from those
| who feel distraught as Rails developers. Perhaps it's
| silly, but the Rails ecosystem and culture plays a big role
| in its success.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| With core Rails team members apparently resigning as part
| of this we may very well see a leadership shake up in the
| Rails community.
|
| Despite people claiming "Rails is dead!" for the past 10
| years, it's continued to be huge at pretty much all
| levels of development (introductory, hobbyist, contract
| work, startups, small, mid, and large size companies). I
| don't really see this changing that significantly.
|
| If we start to see an exodus off of Rails in the next few
| years from the big players like GitHub, then I'll start
| to get worried.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| At least two developers resigned from both Basecamp and the
| Rails core team today.
|
| https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn/status/13881310095317196
| 8...
|
| https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/1388146129284603906
|
| I agree with you, and I wouldn't be that surprised to see
| this manifest as a Rails fork.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I suppose a fork might happen if a large portion of the
| community decides to reject DHH. I think that'd be a
| mistake, but it could result in a schism in the
| community.
|
| I think what might happen is one of the other big players
| in the Rails ecosystem, like GitHub, might begin taking a
| larger role in the development and leadership of Rails.
| drailsusers wrote:
| Maybe Rails will survive but what about Turbo and the rest
| of the Hotwire framework? Turbolinks was pretty much
| abandoned and Turbo is short of a proper release with the
| lead developer leaving.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| StimulusReflex might take over that space if Hotwire
| doesn't get new maintainers.
| bonaldi wrote:
| Agreed, but culture and mindshare matter. You can be big
| like node or big like Perl. Losing cachet can be like going
| out of business: slow then sudden.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's awfully ironic, given how Basecamp has built their entire
| brand off of good management, and running a non-toxic
| workplace.
|
| Regardless of what people think of the specifics of the policy,
| it's a good case study in how _not_ to do something like this.
| Releasing a blog post that results in 1 /3rd+ of your employees
| resigning is bad management.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 1/3rd of your employees _so far_. Would like to see how many
| stick around having to operate in an environment where a
| third of your coworkers just walked (based on past
| experiences when this occurred due to layoffs).
| Trasmatta wrote:
| And like people have been saying elsewhere in this thread,
| 3-6 months of severance is _really tempting_ even if you
| weren 't personally offended by this policy change. If
| you're confident that you could get another job afterwards,
| why not take a free 3-6 month vacation?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Absolutely. The job market is going to be on fire for the
| next 1-2 years at least due to government stimulus,
| recovery efforts, "opening back up", all that, you would
| have to be very confident in your decisions to do
| anything to jeopardize employee retention. But not my
| business, not my circus.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Why are you assuming it's a bad thing that they walked? If
| they're so sensitive about this that they'd quit, I'd be
| really hesitant about working with them on a project
| critical to my business. Plus there is a long line of
| people that would give their left [---] to work there.
| DVassallo wrote:
| This is not a layoff. This seems to be a situation where
| the 1/3rd minority was annoying the 2/3rd majority.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Effect is still the same. Lots more work for a smaller
| pool of workers who are also going to have to try to
| attract and onboard new staff to backfill folks who left
| in a competitive job market. All of which has a cost.
| tshaddox wrote:
| What makes you think that? Wouldn't the people who were
| routinely annoyed at work be more likely to take a
| 6-month severance deal?
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| With layoffs I've heard the guideline that at least as many
| people as you lay off will quit in the near future (because
| for example you gutted their team, they lost their work
| buddy, they lost trust, their job got harder, etc).
|
| No idea what the source was or how valid it is, but I can
| imagine a lot of other employees not liking their job
| anymore in the near future, regardless of their position on
| this debacle.
| davidw wrote:
| I have no direct insight, but I'm getting a bit of a 'tip of
| the iceberg' feeling, like maybe there's some other stuff going
| on.
| predaking wrote:
| I felt the same from the time the very first post from Fried
| dropped.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| FWIW, I know the message in the original communication was very
| appealing to a lot of people, so they could get more interested
| candidates because of that.
|
| I wonder if what you'll see is companies sorting into "politics
| encouraged" vs "politics discouraged" environments, and will be
| interesting to see the outcomes of these different types of
| workplaces.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| That sorting largely already exists. The "politics
| discouraged" environments just don't typically need to
| evangelize their lack of politics; nobody's walking into
| their job at Oracle expecting to pressure Safra Catz into
| supporting their favorite causes.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I don't think the public blog posts written by the leaders
| was the "original communication". There was a lot of internal
| drama[1] that led up to it (and IMO, some poor decisions
| made). Perhaps that's what you were referring to as appealing
| to a lot of people, if so, then _yowsers..._
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708
| peterthehacker wrote:
| It seems like many commenters here did not read Casey's article
| [0], which details the story behind why "political discussions"
| were banned at Basecamp. The idea that most of the people leaving
| Basecamp are leaving for financial reasons (6 months pay in this
| job market) is short sighted. From the article:
|
| > Employees say the founders' memos unfairly depicted their
| workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the
| main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself.
|
| While there probably are some employees looking at this in a
| purely financial sense, there are many that are leaving, at least
| in part, because of concerns about leadership and culture.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-
| politic...
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I guess it's important to note the scale here. About a third of
| Basecamp employees is ~15-20 people?
| uomo wrote:
| According to the Verge, 18 employees (out of 57 total) have
| tweeted that they are going to leave.
|
| Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22412714/basecamp-
| employe...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| If that's just the ones quitting publicly, that's a really
| bad sign. If I was at Basecamp right now, I'd seriously
| consider accepting that offer, not out of concern about the
| policy change but out of concern about the future of a
| company that lost 1/3rd of its employees.
| rchaud wrote:
| Sure, but they have outsize influence in US tech circles
| because of the CEO's books about org management. The company
| also has a philosophical opposition to venture capital and the
| incentives it creates. Such as the common focus on DAUs, MAUs
| and IPOs instead of sustainable profitablility.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Is there a TL; DR summary of what's happening? I have no context
| other than something something basecamp mission driven company
| something something politics.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I'm surprised this isn't on the front page here. 120 points in an
| hour. Plenty to discuss. I hadn't seen this article and posted an
| article similar from the Verge and it was almost instantly
| flagged.
|
| EDIT: Looks like it bounced back and forth. I'm still getting
| downvoted on this comment though....
| minimaxir wrote:
| Everything involving Basecamp seems to get death-by-flags
| pretty quickly, which is disappointing.
|
| The better question is how this post got 120 points while _not_
| being on the front page.
|
| EDIT: Looks like dang unflagkilled it.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I believe that if you submit a URL and it already exists, and
| it's within some time limit of the original posting, that
| acts like an upvote. Or at least it used to work like that.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| These kind of submissions tend to bounce back and forth as
| flags and upvotes fight against each other. I've been on the
| front page 3 times in the past 10 minutes, and it was there
| the first and third time.
| tosh wrote:
| https://workflowy.com/s/basecamp-resignation/qrBBdTQydmTKLu0...
|
| via
| https://twitter.com/RogersKonnor/status/1388212747947679744?...
| coldtea wrote:
| It's sad that the target for those employees' "political
| disruption" is Basecamp.
|
| One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats
| employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so,
| pays well, embraces remote work, gives back to open source (RoR,
| etc.), and has good products, with no shady anti-consumer
| practices, that people actually like and pay for (as opposed to
| somewhere where they sell ads and attention).
|
| It's like these people took a stance against the nicest possible
| employees this side of a hippie co-op.
|
| Those leaving: (1) given the IT demand, will get a job elsewhere
| pronto, (2) will get the money of the buyout, and (3) will get to
| play the principled martyrs, too. It's a triple win for
| hypocrisy.
|
| At some point in the future, this will be marked as a time when
| cancel culture jumped the shark in IT.
| norswap wrote:
| The outrage crowd always prefers easy targets over good
| targets.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| If a third of the people were willing to leave the company over a
| decision, it sounds like there was a real, meaningful mismatch in
| priorities.
|
| Which is fine, but it's for the best for everyone to end that
| mismatch.
| dbt00 wrote:
| If more than a third of your employees think that a single
| policy change is enough for them to leave, then maybe your
| policy change is dumb.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Or you have too many employees and you can't think of a
| better way to get rid of people. Either way, it's not a good
| look for company leadership.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yeah, this is my take. I feel like a huge amount of the
| blowback here is the insensitive way in which it was handled.
| They announced it all publicly on their blog, meaning most
| employees heard about it first on Twitter. It could / should
| have been handled carefully and tactfully first.
|
| The resignations feel less less like a result of a mismatch
| and more like result of a slap in the face from
| mismanagement.
| toolz wrote:
| the decision may or may not be dumb, but appealing to the
| popularity of a decision is never logically sound. There have
| been incredibly unethical things done throughout history with
| far more than 1/3 approval.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| I think it's pretty sound in this case. A policy change
| that causes 1/3 of your company to resign in protest is
| definitionally dumb (unless you're a believer in the "I
| meant to do that" school of thought being suggested
| elsewhere in this thread).
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Some times the way to make the company happier is to fire all
| the unhappy people.
| ironmagma wrote:
| The unhappy people didn't get that way by virtue of their
| genetics.
| Hamuko wrote:
| If not outright dumb, it at least seems pretty ill-informed.
| Surely no one would intentionally craft a policy to nuke a
| third of the company? Did they do any research into it before
| announcing it?
| mortehu wrote:
| This is confounded by the fact that they were also offered
| money to leave. I suspect the results would have been
| different if they paid 6 months of salary to the ones who
| stayed instead.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Even so that's a lot of institutional turnover. Only a company
| with heavy seasonal patterns should be accustomed to that many
| people leaving.
| _jal wrote:
| Any employer that abruptly told me I needed to watch what I
| said at work would lose me, too.
|
| I'm not saying I demand the ability to be rude and awful, or go
| on political tirades, or anything even vaguely like that. But I
| spend more time talking to people I work with than any other
| set of people.
|
| Telling me I have to avoid entire categories of normal
| conversation is itself authoritarian politicization of the
| workplace, and I'd happily tell him to go fuck himself, too.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > I spend more time talking to people I work with than any
| other set of people.
|
| Aren't they a remote company?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's still full-time employment.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| i think we need a social movement about "life exists
| outside work"
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Yeah, but it would be nice if life existed at work too.
| You spend half your waking hours _at_ work. Even if you
| have a life outside work, that 's an awful lot of time to
| waste doing something that prohibits having a life at
| work.
| toolz wrote:
| and neither you nor your employer would be in the wrong.
| There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting no limits
| w.r.t. political talk in the workplace but people like myself
| very much prefer a workplace where I don't have to bite my
| tongue 24/7 simply because my political views aren't popular
| in the tech industry.
| ido wrote:
| prefer a workplace where I don't have to bite my
| tongue 24/7 simply because my political views
| aren't popular
|
| It's not that cut and dry; There's a difference between
| disagreeing about what is the optimal rate of taxes on
| labor and capital, if marijuana should be legalized, how
| much public money should be spent on infrastructure and so
| on vs say if trans people deserve acceptance & healthcare,
| gay people should be able to marry, women allowed to get
| abortions, or that ethnic and religious minorities
| shouldn't have to assimilate the values of the majority
| group.
|
| If the discussion is about the person you are talking to
| getting to enjoy the same basic rights everyone else does
| (or even just exist) that's not just any political
| discussion and it affects them very personally and
| directly.
|
| As they say, "your liberty to swing your fist ends where my
| nose begins".
| nailer wrote:
| > if trans people deserve acceptance & healthcare, gay
| people should be able to marry, women allowed to get
| abortions, or that ethnic and religious minorities
| shouldn't have to assimilate the values of the majority
| group.
|
| You think this. Others don't. Your values are not
| universal. If you want to advocate for your positions,
| arguing on a company slack while being paid to do
| something else isn't the time.
| ido wrote:
| The problem is that some people's mere existence is
| political. If you're trans, gay, black or muslim (for
| example) someone arguing against who you are is not a
| theoretical debate.
|
| If a coworker was saying or acting in an anti-semitic way
| (possibly not even consciously), I would absolutely feel
| unsafe as a Jew in a company that told me "that's just
| their beliefs, you don't have to agree with their
| politics". I would call that out on the company slack &
| if they continue doing so would expect them to get fired.
| nailer wrote:
| You're confusing innate and non innate qualities. Islam
| isn't an innate quality. People can and do leave Islam.
| Whether transgenderism is an innate quality is up for
| debate. People certainly can and do stop identifying as a
| different gender from their sex assigned at birth.
|
| In the case of your other example of black and Jewish
| people: it's already inappropriate to be racist at work.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'd encourage you to introspect on this. "Ethnic and
| religious minorities shouldn't have to assimilate the
| values of the majority group" is a common position, and
| one I strongly agree with. But you also seem to be saying
| that, across a pretty wide range of contentious social
| issues, everyone needs to assimilate your beliefs and you
| can't work with anyone who hasn't. Do you see the tension
| here?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| People have used their religions to give a pass to
| discrimination for a long time[1]. Today's scapegoat is
| gay and trans people, but a few decades ago it was
| miscegenation. People discriminated against mixed-race
| couples and said it was a core tenet of their
| religion[1]:
|
| > _Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow,
| malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents.
| And but for the interference with his arrangement there
| would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he
| separated the races shows that he did not intend for the
| races to mix._
|
| When it comes to discrimination and freedom of religion,
| the ACLU[2] has this to say:
|
| > _Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a
| right to discriminate in the name of religion are not
| new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring
| integration in restaurants because of sincerely held
| beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw
| religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit
| students who engaged in interracial dating. In those
| cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not
| about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring
| fairness. It is no different today._
|
| [1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art
| icle=55...
|
| [2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-
| religion...
| ido wrote:
| When it comes to basic rights (sometimes even the right
| to exist), yes that is what I'm saying. Homophobia,
| Transphobia and so on are not better than racism &
| religious discrimination.
|
| This is sometimes hard to see for people who are
| themselves not part of the "contentious" group (and not
| always due to malevolence, sometimes it's just hard to
| sympathize with people who aren't like yourself).
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not about "better than". The problem is that your
| principles directly conflict. How would you respond, for
| example, to a devout Muslim with religious objections to
| gay marriage?
| ido wrote:
| I would respond to them in exactly the same way I'd
| respond to a devout Christian who religiously objects to
| gay marriage. And I would still not think Islamophobia is
| justified (just like the existence of homophobic
| Christians doesn't condemn Christianity & Christians as a
| whole).
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| But what _is_ the way you 'd respond? It doesn't sound
| like you'd fire them. So it seems like your only option
| is to say "alright, I don't agree with you about this,
| but that's fine as long as you understand that you can't
| go around arguing this at work".
|
| Which is a reasonable solution, don't get me wrong. But
| this kind of solution is what people mean when they talk
| about limiting politics at work, and these kinds of
| conflicts are why it's a good idea. In order to work with
| people who don't share your precise values, there have to
| be ground rules to minimize conflict.
| oezi wrote:
| Well, but isn't there a big difference between talking on the
| company slack which is archived for eternity or do it in your
| private buddy group. I think most companies wouldn't be very
| fond of large scale political discussions (which might easy
| hurt and offend) on company media. But since everybody is
| flex time/remote anyway that doesn't stop you from it anyway
| on different media.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Why not just have dedicated opt-in channels for political
| discussions at work? Thats how the Recurse Center does it
| and it seems to work well. If you don't want to engage, you
| don't have to, and political discussions outside of those
| channels are actively redirected by everyone with a nice
| reminder to keep those chats in the dedicated channel.
| tdfx wrote:
| In my experience, those channels are usually dominated by
| people with the most extreme views who use it as a place
| to bully anyone with opposing views. I've worked with a
| few people who I enjoyed immensely but my perception of
| them as a person suffered after learning how they conduct
| their political discourse. I'd prefer to keep that
| negativity outside of my work interactions.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| So don't subscribe to the politics channel?
|
| That has not been my experience of these channels in
| general though. I think it depends greatly on the company
| culture and the people, code of conduct, and tone set by
| leadership.
| oezi wrote:
| I think basecamp got exactly into trouble because of such
| politics channels which festered over years and when the
| lid was opened nobody liked what they saw (laughing about
| customer names). And you are right with leadership you
| could have prevented it, but at the same time an
| inclusive workplace is one where leadership doesn't have
| to monitor each channel.
| tdfx wrote:
| That's actually exactly what I've done in these
| situations. You can't lose if you don't play.
| tdfx wrote:
| > Any employer that abruptly told me I needed to watch what I
| said at work would lose me, too.
|
| You don't already feel this way? There's a long list of
| things that would have you packing your desk if you discussed
| them at any other company. Society has already decided
| certain extreme positions are too brand damaging or
| disruptive to tolerate.
|
| This policy seems to reflect that a not-insignificant portion
| of the population has collectively lost their minds over the
| past year of isolation and now is looking to pick a fight
| over things that no one would've blinked at 2-3 years ago.
| It's destroyed friendships, family ties, and I'm sure a lot
| of team cohesion at many companies.
|
| I think requesting that this discussion takes place outside
| of company channels is a pretty reasonable reaction.
| _jal wrote:
| > It's destroyed [...] a lot of team cohesion at many
| companies.
|
| I have trouble imaging how a response to an apparent social
| cohesion issue that results in 1/3 of the office
| immediately walking can be considered a good outcome.
|
| It sounds more like a corporate schism to me.
| dagw wrote:
| _it sounds like there was a real, meaningful mismatch in
| priorities._
|
| Or it was just a good deal. Do we know what the "buy-out" deal
| was? I mean I like my job and the company I work for well
| enough, but if they offered a decent enough deal and I'll
| happily walk away tomorrow and not look back.
| bombtrack wrote:
| DHH stated it in his "Let it all out" follow up post.
|
| > Yesterday, we offered everyone at Basecamp an option of a
| severance package worth up to six months salary for those
| who've been with the company over three years, and three
| months salary for those at the company less than that. No
| hard feelings, no questions asked. For those who cannot see a
| future at Basecamp under this new direction, we'll help them
| in every which way we can to land somewhere else.
|
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
| goatinaboat wrote:
| I read that entire blog post just now and I am still none
| the wiser as to what happened
| Wolfr_ wrote:
| The founders went into a political discussion with
| someone on the other side of the political spectrum and
| got tired of it - then instituted a no-politics-and-
| society-discussion policy when the whole success of
| Basecamp is taking a societal , opionated view on
| software and what work should be.
| mendelmaleh wrote:
| If two thirds were willing to stay even with such a good
| severance package, it sounds like most agree with the
| decision...
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Not everyone is a developer in the US. Job prospects aren't
| that great for everyone.
| nostromo wrote:
| But are those the best 2/3rds of employees, or the worst
| 2/3rds?
|
| People with lots of options are often the first to jump ship.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Two thirds _so far_. It 's been less than a week.
| echlebek wrote:
| Not everyone can leave their job at the drop of a hat, even
| with a big severance package. You don't know their
| motivations or plans.
| mempko wrote:
| Exactly. Health insurance in US will tie people down even
| if they want to leave. For example.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| aren't they remote?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Most of them are still in the US.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Not really. You just pay for COBRA. Your 6 months
| severance will cover that rather nicely. Granted it might
| be cheaper to just get private insurance nowadays.
| quadcore wrote:
| Can someone explains a bit more what it's all about for outsiders
| so we can understand whats intellectually interesting in that
| news?
| didibus wrote:
| Seems like there was internal chatter about the fact that some
| Basecamp employees had kept a list of funny customer names over
| the years as a joke. And people were discussing how this
| happened, what they could do to change the internal culture so
| it doesn't happen again, how it portrays on their internal
| inclusivity, etc. And it looks like the founders were annoyed
| by all these discussions about it, so they made a policy change
| that you can only talk about business on official work
| channels. Keep in mind this is a fully remote company, all
| communication is done on official work channels. So after that
| policy change, a lot of employees felt they now worked at some
| authoritarian place where they couldn't just chat to their
| coworkers anymore except for serious business stuff, and they
| now need to watch what they're saying to others. As a result,
| about 25% of all employees quit. That said, they also offered a
| 6 month severance to those who wanted to leave, so who knows if
| employees all quit fully out of finding the phone policy
| draconian, or out of simply thinking the severance was a good
| deal.
| kboom wrote:
| Dont know their products well but customers names should
| clearly be disclosed on a need-to-know basis - if ever. I
| believe they did the right move (just my opinion). I just
| agree. Harassement is a bigger subject we think it is. I
| think harassment is our population regulation mechanism. I
| think human-to-human violence is always based on harassement.
| It's our alpha male fight. It is wired in our brain. It is
| also suffering. With innovation, we may escape the need for
| population regulation and then suffering goes down (while
| suffering is everywhere in the animal kingdom, we make it go
| down, it's fundamental to life innit). I dont have understood
| it yet completely but trully, it goes well beyong the concept
| of a school bully. A list of funny names? Population
| regulation is at play again, beneath the surface.
| [deleted]
| peruvian wrote:
| Seems like the entire iOS team is out.
| notadoc wrote:
| Guessing nearly 1/3 of employees at many companies would leave
| immediately if offered 6 months salary.
|
| Or maybe it's because those people were upset that discussing
| politics was not part of their job description?
| blocked_again wrote:
| 6 months salary is only for long term employees. For rest it's
| 3 months.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| isnt that a very large amount of money?
| predaking wrote:
| I'm guessing it might be that 1/3 of those employees were upset
| that they found out about the initial policy change via a
| public facing blog post, possibly felt that the behavior of one
| of their main leaders was increasingly toxic and poisonous,
| didn't want to be associated with him _and_ got a buyout. I
| mean, if I was working for a raging asshole who suddenly said
| "if you don't like me, here's 6 months salary" you bet your
| butt I'd take that. =)
| version_five wrote:
| Putting aside the other aspects of this story, I think a buyout
| offer, possibly even a "standing offer" is an interesting
| practice to consider at companies. I worked somewhere where there
| was a large, low morale group of employees that I think were just
| there because of money concerns + fomo if the company ever went
| anywhere. At the time I thought a buyout offer would have been a
| great way to separate the people who wanted to be there from
| those that were just putting in time.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Seems overly expensive. Anytime an employee quits/changes
| jobs/whatever, you're now out a huge additional amount of
| money.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| It's an interesting concept. One problem with it would be that
| the employees who can most easily get a job just consider it as
| a bonus for job hopping while the people who can't get a job
| anywhere else stay forever.
| throwawaypolicy wrote:
| And on the flip side, compensation plans that encourage people
| to stay to arbitrary dates are probably a mistake.
|
| That's where I'm at today. There's a lot of money resting on my
| staying at a company for a year. I don't feel like I've been
| working effectively with the culture or team, and I'm pretty
| sure both me and the employer would be better served by my
| leaving, except the financial incentive, sunk cost, and
| avoiding having a "I worked here for only 6 months" on my
| resume is enough to justify me staying an extra 6 month.
|
| Potentially not coincidentally "percent of engineers who stay a
| year" is one of the key metrics of the team that sets up the
| compensation structure...
| Wolfr_ wrote:
| I think if 1/3 of your company leaves there is short-term
| morale loss for the ones that remain. But the loss of internal
| IP will be devastating. Especially if you are not big on docs
| and have that "just be smart and ship" approach that Basecamp
| has. Basecamp has a real problem hand here... they probably
| never expected this.
| 542458 wrote:
| From what I'm seeing basically the entire iOS team is gone,
| and that app is nontrivial. It's going to be a nightmare to
| get new developers up to speed without any of the existing
| expertise around.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why would I want to talk about politics at work that don't affect
| my job and what would it change?
|
| Why would I bring up BLM and how it relates to the justice system
| at work if my company can't do anything about it?
|
| On the other hand, I would be more than happy to discuss having
| recruitment drives at Historically Black Colleges and
| Universities, expanding the hiring pipeline, equal pay at my
| company for equal work, expanding maternity/paternity leave, etc.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| My understanding of their new policy is that it bans everything
| you said you'd be happy to discuss FWIW. All of that sounds
| like political/societal discussion.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If I am working for BaseCamp, there is a difference in my
| mind about a mailing list discussing Hobby Lobby's health
| care policies with regard to birth control and discussing
| BaseCamp's policy toward birth control.
|
| I would quit if I as an employee can't discuss my own
| company's policies that affect me as an individual.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I really hope more companies declare their workplaces to be
| politics free. I am completely tired of the long march through
| the institutions
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_ins...)
| that has culminated in corporations being weaponized for one-
| sided progressive political agendas. These departures really just
| give away the biases of the tech industry at large.
|
| As for Basecamp's leaders - I think they did the right thing in
| making their blog posts and sticking to their principles.
| However, they should not have offered a buyout incentive, which
| can expose a small organization like themselves to
| destabilization. They also tuned the buyout offer incorrectly -
| it basically provides free money, which will be tempting to even
| those who would be fine working there. Really that's the only
| part they got wrong. I hope they're able to hire quickly and make
| it through this period - if they do, this will have been the
| right decision in the long-term, since there's no point in
| retaining employees who have such a mismatched set of values.
| klyrs wrote:
| I'm curious why more right-leaning folks don't see this as a
| free speech issue.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I consider myself a moderate, and by voting habit, almost
| fully left-wing. I do see it as a free speech issue in one
| sense, but in practice I only see free speech being allowed
| for certain viewpoints. For example if you work at Google or
| Facebook and you speak up against affirmative action hiring
| practices or transwomen in women's sports, you will be fired.
| The excuse will be that these opinions are "hate speech" or
| that they violate some policy of discrimination at work place
| or made someone feel "unsafe" or whatever else. If on the
| other hand, everyone is given the same psychological safety
| and ability to speak up, without any social or professional
| repercussions, that might be acceptable.
|
| That said, I think a workplace where people freely argue with
| each other and try to make their political viewpoints "win"
| is going to be unproductive. Leaving out politics is
| appropriate because it focuses the company's efforts on
| providing a better product or service. I view time and
| resources spent on those political activities as unproductive
| and distracting for the workforce. So in a sense, being
| political at work seems like a performance issue to me. I
| know some people will use mental gymnastics to claim that
| being political is somehow beneficial to the company with
| vague arguments around diversity or attracting certain
| customers or whatever, but I don't personally find those
| justifications to be compelling, as they seem disconnected
| from the reality that apolitical companies and products do
| just fine.
| bumbastique wrote:
| > _For example if you work at Google or Facebook and you
| speak up against affirmative action hiring practices or
| transwomen in women 's sports, you will be fired. The
| excuse will be that these opinions are "hate speech" or
| that they violate some policy of discrimination at work
| place or made someone feel "unsafe" or whatever else._
|
| It's ridiculous isn't it, how these flawed stances became
| some sort of woke orthodoxy in recent years.
|
| Another jarring instance of this is, they'll all go on
| about how important mental health and neurodiversiry is and
| blah blah blah, but as soon as the office autist steps out
| of line and says the 'wrong' thing, they all pounce on him
| relentlessly and without mercy. I mean, just look at how
| RMS was treated, simply for expressing his honest opinions.
| Hounded out of his job.
|
| No dissent allowed in this new religion.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Right wingers only support free speech in the workplace when
| it's speech they agree with, such as James Damore. It's
| politics all the way down, not a principle.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| The alternative to 'politics in the workplace' isn't really no
| politics in the workplace. Its unchallenged politics of whoever
| established the company culture.
|
| And anything thats unchallenged is going to slowly devolve
| until it's unfit for purpose.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Have you been in an apolitical workplace? I see this idea a
| lot, and it's very hard for me to reconcile with my personal
| experience, where I've never felt like I'm endorsing or
| propagating the politics of the higher-ups. It's hard to see
| how I could be, since there's not a single person in my
| management chain where I know who they voted for or what
| kinds of political ideas they favor.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| > Have you been in an apolitical workplace?
|
| Well, yes. I only ran into it in the last decade or so.
|
| Thinking back, it's interesting how utterly apolitical
| university was back in the day. About the closest we ever
| got to politics was the occasional and largely ignored
| pentecostal preacher.
| loopercal wrote:
| There's no details about this, however I believe it wasn't a
| "buyout incentive" it was a "don't talk shit about us" payment
| given that all the ex employees have only said things like:
| "After X years I've decided to leave basecamp."
|
| In which case, not sure not offering the package would have
| gone well.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Interestingly the employees who left have the best career
| prospects. Entire iOS team, head of marketing and head of product
| team.
|
| The 6 months free money is hard for anyone entering a strong job
| market to pass up.
|
| A lot of comments seem to think 1/3 left because of the no
| politics policy. 1 / 3 left because it would increase their
| wealth or give them the summer covid took away last year.
|
| How many people would leave your job now for 6 months salary? How
| many could get a job tomorrow if they did?
|
| A few probably left because they want to change social policy.
| Many are probably staying but still want to change social policy.
| The head of marketing, products and the iOS team are not leaving
| because of social policy.
| Semiapies wrote:
| I've noticed a lot of rather wishful thinking here and on
| Twitter along the lines of that the people who left are all
| woke layabouts or whatever and that this is some genius
| management move. No explanation of how to reconcile these ideas
| with the fact that so many of these people who left were in
| leadership positions.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The 6 months free money is hard for anyone entering a strong
| job market to pass up.
|
| Surely some of the employees left for ideological reasons, but
| 6 months of salary just for changing jobs is a difficult
| incentive to ignore.
|
| Anyone who was considering changing jobs would have a hard time
| saying no to 6 months of free pay. The publicity of this
| situation also makes them attractive targets for other
| companies looking to hire out of the situation.
| swyx wrote:
| heres the list of folks who have publicly announced their
| departure: https://workflowy.com/s/basecamp-
| resignation/qrBBdTQydmTKLu0... probably has more context to
| each in their threads
| bdowling wrote:
| I read the first tweet in each of those resignations. Out of
| 19 resignations, most give no reason for quitting. Five or so
| tweets cite "recent changes and new policies" as the reason.
| That reason is so vague that it may refer to the new policy
| of paying 6 months severance to employees who want to quit.
| swyx wrote:
| thats a very charitable interpretation. consider the
| additional signal that they all posted this publicly at the
| same time. anyway no point trying to mindread. this thing
| has taken up more mindshare than is really worth.
| bsder wrote:
| While everybody is latching onto "Hurrr... Durrr...
| Wokeness." apparently there were also some cutbacks to
| benefits and allowances and stuff. Most devs read the tea
| leaves from that kind of thing as as a bellweather for time
| to GTFO.
|
| My guess is that some of this has been building and the 6
| months of severance simply put it into high gear.
| pantulis wrote:
| Some of them are also world-class Ruby developers. They seem to
| be mostly north americans (i could be wrong).
| WDCDev wrote:
| It doesn't take much to be a world class Ruby developer.
| pantulis wrote:
| I should have written: all of them are world-class
| developers, otherwise they would not be having a job there.
| llamataboot wrote:
| Then, I guess they are all lying on their social media
| accounts? I mean you can also leave and say nothing. I agree
| that it wasn't this one decision...but if you can make a
| generous severance offer and not only does your company implode
| but all your senior leadership leaves, then probably your
| internal culture isn't what you thought it was and/or something
| else stinks and/or they all felt that strongly about this one
| decision.
|
| But even then...if you are a senior person that has been
| somewhere for the better part of a decade, you have surely both
| made and seen bad decisions made before. If you think that
| there is trust and mutual understanding and collaborative work
| is possible, you work through those.
|
| (Not everyone in tech solely cares about money. And the ones
| that do siphon their way to certain gravitational points and/or
| do the jump ship every 2-3 years to negotiate a new salary and
| not a raise...)
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside
| of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who
| left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop
| bitching about politics on the company dime? I don't see how
| demonstrating the inability to follow basic company rules in
| the interest of productivity improves their career prospects.
| Even inside the SV bubble, things aren't that warped, are they?
| andkon wrote:
| One of their iOS devs who left has been incredibly vocal about
| how he no longer felt like this was somewhere he could work
| because of this policy and its effects, so I think you're
| plainly wrong (or insisting that there's no way we could take a
| person at their word). https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn
|
| It's a lot more likely that the 1/3rd that left both left
| because they were unhappy with the policy, and because they
| thought they could get jobs elsewhere. I would bet there are
| some people who stayed behind who didn't believe they could
| find a job this good soon but who also disagreed with the
| policy. Which, I get it.
|
| 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job
| hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people.
| 40acres wrote:
| Does anyone remember when DHH went on a long Twitter rant
| accusing the Apple Card as sexist? These guys built a culture
| that they couldn't control and when they tried to take a step
| back lost a third of their workforce.
| [deleted]
| grumblestumble wrote:
| A lot of the conversation from the "no politics at work" crowd
| here is centered around "these folks were wasting company time
| and losing productivity protesting this". That entirely misses
| the point. The loss of productivity around this issue is entirely
| on the leadership team. They let this fester - they were
| complicit in allowing this dumb-ass list to be circulated around
| the company for years, and when it became an issue, they refused
| to take any action on it.
|
| I was wondering how this would go down where I currently work,
| because people here rarely discuss politics at all. Then I
| realized that making fun of customer names - and we work with
| large enterprise customers across the globe - would be shut down
| in a personal conversation with anyone I work with, and
| circulating a list like this would just never happen. The way to
| keep politics out of work is to keep your work environment
| professional.
|
| This wasn't employees pontificating on the merits of BLM or party
| politics in Basecamp channels, this was direct response to dumb
| shit the company was allowing certain people to get away with.
| DHH's blog post where he got into the details was still basically
| tittering at "lol Bigbuttson is a funny name", and it's
| deplorable.
| honksillet wrote:
| What list? What's the back story!
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| A list of customers with "funny" names. See
|
| https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-
| basec...
|
| and
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-
| politic...
| enriquto wrote:
| But where is the actual list? The only bit of information
| marginally interesting in this stupid drama is the list
| itself, yet it is nowhere to be found! Moreover, how can a
| "list of best names ever" be so troubling, let alone
| racist? I don't understand.
| simonh wrote:
| These are personal details of actual people. I sincerely
| hope it stays as confidential as possible.
|
| The fact is we don't know what actual behaviour this is
| about. I can imagine circumstances where circulating such
| a list was questionable but harmless fun. I can imagine
| circumstances in which it involved egregious and
| tasteless taunting and offensively derogatory behaviour.
| I just don't know.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| >Moreover, how can a "list of best names ever" be so
| troubling, let alone racist?
|
| Well I imagine the list had a lot of people from certain
| ethnicities...
| nailer wrote:
| It didn't. See DHHs blog post for numbers.
|
| > Out of the 78 names listed on the last version we were
| able to recover, just 6 names appear to be Asian.
| shard wrote:
| Really? DHH mentioned the vast majority of names were
| Nordic or English. Isn't that racist against the Nordic
| and English people?
| pantulis wrote:
| I dont think the relation "best names ever" -> "no
| politics at work" is that straightforward. There had to
| be a lot of escalation in the discussion internally, and
| then political issues were raised.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Ya, it almost seems like once the criticism of the list
| took on a somewhat political component (people saying it
| was racist), that the critics were silenced with the no
| politics rule.
| garmaine wrote:
| According to the summary articles posted upthread, that
| seems to be what happened. The list was reinterpreted in
| the context of Stop Asian Hate to be racist. Which is not
| exactly fair given that the list is 10 years old. One
| should judge by the standards of the time, not the
| changing standards of today. And reading between the
| lines, that's essentially what the Basecamp founders said
| too: (paraphrasing) "this was a joke in bad taste made by
| people who aren't even at the company anymore. we're
| sorry that it happened, but it's water under the bridge."
| Then someone filed a racism complaint with HR _against
| the founders_ and it escalated from there.
| frereubu wrote:
| I imagine people are wary of circulating the list because
| it's private data - people's names - from the Basecamp
| client list. It also sounds like those names might well
| be easy to Google, so they wouldn't even be anonymous.
| They shouldn't even have been shared internally, let
| alone externally.
|
| The idea that it's racist is that the names were only
| funny to English speakers, because they sounded like
| English words they consider funny, from the reporting I'd
| guess things like butt, dick or fart. That feels really
| condescending and exclusionary if you're on the receiving
| end of it.
| enriquto wrote:
| > The idea that it's racist is that the names were only
| funny to English speakers, because they sounded like
| English words they consider funny
|
| This makes no sense to me: aren't native English-speakers
| of many races? Aren't there non-English speakers of many
| races also? Moreover, this happens with any pair of
| languages. I'm not a native English speaker and there are
| some English names that sound extremely hilarious in my
| language. I see myself compiling such a list just for
| fun. I wouldn't expect English people to be offended by
| this silly thing, which is inevitable: when there are
| different languages, there are word collisions and some
| of them are funny.
|
| > people's names - from the Basecamp client list.
|
| Ouch, this is different, then! I did not pay attention to
| this detail. Now I understand why the list of names does
| not circulate (but still, I don't get what could be so
| bad about it).
| jolux wrote:
| >but still, I don't get what could be so bad about it
|
| Making fun of people in a way that isn't offensive is a
| tight line to walk interpersonally and best avoided
| altogether in professional circumstances. This is
| particularly true if you're making fun of people for
| fundamental aspects of their identity, like names. How
| would you feel if your name was on a list somewhere and
| people were laughing at it and cracking jokes about it
| regularly? Some people might be okay with this, but I
| think others might be rather offended by it.
| frereubu wrote:
| > I wouldn't expect English people to be offended by this
| silly thing...
|
| I imagine it depends to a large extent on whether you've
| heard the same shitty joke about your name - hur dur your
| name sounds like butt! - from far too many people in your
| professional life. Remember, this is a list of client
| names that was created solely for the purposes of
| ridicule while being passed around internal Basecamp
| networks. In terms of racism, I'm white and British, and
| it definitely has a flavour of the cultural racism that
| was prevalent during the British Empire which, for all
| its differences, America inherited.
| kbenson wrote:
| According to their response, it seems some of the names
| on the list (according to the founder, something like 6
| of the 72) were phonetically funny in English but Asian
| in origin (as opposed to the rest, which were mostly
| European and phonetically funny because of suffixing
| "son" to something that sounded funny). The implication
| as I understood it, as when this was pointed out as to
| why while it was an inappropriate list it wasn't
| necessarily inappropriate in a racial way one of the
| employees responded by initiated an HR discrimination
| case against founder, is that the people that saw it as a
| racial issue are not happy to have it classified as not
| one.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >there are some English names that sound extremely
| hilarious in my language.
|
| I'd love to hear some, that sounds great.
|
| Hah, cool.
|
| https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-names-that-
| sound-f...
| moistbar wrote:
| So the fact that the Chevy nova didn't sell in spanish
| speaking countries because the name means "no go" is
| racist too, then, right? I'm just applying the same
| logic.
| flobosg wrote:
| > A popular but false urban legend claims that the
| vehicle sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because
| _no va_ literally translates to "it doesn't go". This
| has since been debunked, however, as Nova (one word)
| means "nova" in Spanish just as in English. In fact, the
| car actually sold quite well in Mexico, as well as many
| Central and South American countries. Nova was also the
| name of a successful brand of gasoline sold in Mexico at
| the time, further proving that the name confusion was not
| a problem.
|
| --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevy_II_/_Nova
| #Urba...
| coldtea wrote:
| > _That entirely misses the point. The loss of productivity
| around this issue is entirely on the leadership team. They let
| this fester - they were complicit in allowing this dumb-ass
| list to be circulated around the company for years, and when it
| became an issue, they refused to take any action on it._
|
| The list is not the issue here.
|
| In an ideal world, the list would be seen as an innocent inside
| joke, and be totally not newsworthy. But millenials (not all:
| some, enough to change the culture around this) don't know how
| to take a joke. Like the children of hippies turned yuppies,
| Gen X successors turned prudes.
|
| If you have a name like Jonathan Lovesturds, sorry, but the
| name is funny, and you should be expect people to ocassionally
| make fun about it, including in companies you deal with. It is
| what it is, and it's not the end of the world, nor some huge
| abuse.
|
| The "politics at work" thing would be relevant and legit if it
| was for e.g. unionizing, abuse of power from some higher up,
| etc.
|
| But in 2021 this more often than not degenerates in people
| making a power-play, abusing identity politics and other
| fashionable talking points, to increase their influence in the
| company, attack others they don't like, and so on.
|
| Pretending the list was about "racism" (when it had absolutely
| nothing to do with that, aside from: "also contains a small
| percentage of foreign names that sound funny on top of the
| anglosaxon such") is also in this very vein.
| gkedzierski wrote:
| This reminds me of an incident they had years ago, when they
| blogged the name of the millionth (or something) uploaded file
| and then had to apologise for betraying their customer's trust.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Our experience when we issued our "No Politics / No Religion"
| policy at work was very positive. The few people who had an
| issue with it, subsequently quit or were terminated, and many
| of their co-workers actually thanked us afterwards for it.
|
| We didn't have to pay them to leave. One tried to use the
| company social media accounts to advance her politics, so we
| fired her, and the other person became frustrated that she
| couldn't vent at work, and quit.
|
| I don't know if it was Trump specifically that made them so
| persistently agitated, but they just could not stop talking
| about politics and creating drama.
|
| We later discovered that one of them had been considering
| reporting us to the state financial authorities because she
| didn't agree with our policy of accruing interest on client
| debts - and was collecting client invoices on her work desktop
| as "evidence".
|
| Placating "activists" in the work place may initially seem like
| the new norm in corporate responsibility, but it is actually a
| self-destructive spiral, as there are ever-changing foci for
| woke outrage. The risk of these same employees turning on the
| company is extremely high in the long term.
|
| Policies like "No Religion / No Politics" have benefits that
| far exceed eliminating office distractions. They limit legal
| liabilities by removing easily-disgruntled employees.
| themolecularman wrote:
| I'm hoping the company I work for will follow suit and ban
| discussions about this stuff in the workplace.
|
| Two years ago we had Ibrahim X Kendi speak at our company,
| he's now considered by many to be a "neo racist". Within
| months our open Slack channel for Q&A was shut-down.
|
| However we still have a lot of the internal activists.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I don't think he's considered by very many to be a neo-
| racist. Only in right wing circles and few of them would
| even know who he is anyway.
| ljm wrote:
| What's a 'neo racist'? Where are these odd labels coming
| from?
|
| Is it racist subculture or something? It just sounds
| absurd compared to saying 'racist'.
| krrrh wrote:
| It seems like the term neoracist has been promoted by
| John McWhorter more than any other public intellectual
| and you can hardly call him right wing unless your vision
| of the political spectrum is severely warped.
| kyriee wrote:
| By who?
| yardie wrote:
| > he's now considered by many to be a "neo racist".
|
| I'm sorry, what!? The author of "How to be Antiracist" is
| considered a "neo racist" by how many?
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm confused. Aren't such discussions banned by social norms
| everywhere for a very long time? I can't recall any public
| political or religious discussions at any place I've worked
| in decades.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I see you don't work with very many American fresh college
| graduates.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| This may be the answer. Some useful traditions are not
| being passed down, especially at startup-type places
| which don't allow older employees.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Chesterson's fence comes to mind.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I think this is more of the issue. Young startups and
| management are much more lax with this type of thing and
| let it fester and become a bigger issue than it ever
| should have been. I've worked at fortune 10 companies and
| smaller startups founded by older folks and there has
| never been any overt sexual innuendo or politics talk
| which would be obviously divisive. Most everyone has
| enough emotional intelligence to know these things should
| be left at home since there's no reason to bring them up
| at work.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| A few years ago I worked with someone who would constantly
| complain about a certain politician. Honestly the unending
| onslaught of negativity was the problem for me. They could
| have been complaining about a toaster over's inability to
| bake both sides of a sandwich and I still would have gotten
| sick of it if they kept saying it. I'm at work to make
| money, not to be subjected to endless banter about anything
| at all.
| [deleted]
| Udik wrote:
| I don't think a political discussion now and then at work
| is an issue per se. As long as you remember you're talking
| with colleagues, and you have to keep a respectful tone and
| be friendly and collaborative with them all the same one
| minute after the conversation is over. And insulting your
| colleagues (for example suggesting that they're racist, or
| homophobic, or otherwise a problem at work or in the
| society) is of course unacceptable.
| irrational wrote:
| I suppose it depends on what you consider public. I once
| worked on a team at a Fortune 500 company where the
| majority of team members were Catholic. They'd often bring
| up religious topics while chit chatting before meetings
| started. I'm not Catholic, but I didn't care. It's not like
| they were ever trying to convert me or anything. I treated
| it like they all belonged to the same book club.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I think what folks mean by R&P is _ugly_ R &P.
| Rapzid wrote:
| > We later discovered that one of them had been considering
| reporting us to the state financial authorities because she
| didn't agree with our policy of accruing interest on client
| debts
|
| Wow, and I thought the HR complaint against David was nuts.
| Sounds like basecamp was infiltrated by Ben Kuchera's or
| Randi Harpers. Can't recall the name of the person GitHub
| miss-hired.. Recall a few years back seemed like everyone was
| hiring "diversity consultants" or something only to find out
| they were creating toxic environments by seizing political
| power via threatening to "cancel" anyone that didn't think
| and say the right things. This set them up as a type of
| "thought leader", or perhaps even a cult type leader, where
| they controlled things..
|
| That was a weird trend and perhaps the tail end of an age in
| the post-gamergate era.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Was a weird trend? They've doubled-down. There are now
| Chief Diversity Officers.
|
| Duties typically consist of 1) Being a white woman 2)
| Sending out the monthly 'diverity of the month'
| celebration/awareness email 3) Rubber stamping the 'gender
| pay equality assessment' annual report 4) Using the word
| 'empathy'
| Rapzid wrote:
| The trend was taking social media influencers that were
| hijacking social justice issues on Twitter, and other
| social media, who were _already_ creating toxic
| environments there, hiring them, and thinking something
| other than creating a toxic environment at work was going
| to happen.
|
| Tail end of an age. But yes, we are in a new age now.
| tshaddox wrote:
| To me, that doesn't look like a strong defense of the "no
| politics/religion" policy, because the actual reasons those
| people were fired seem mostly unrelated and obvious grounds
| to fire someone, regardless of any particular workplace
| discussion policy. Deliberate unauthorized usage of the
| company Twitter account is certainly grounds for firing, as
| is using company time and resources for a plan to report the
| company to authorities (assuming the report was frivolous and
| the employee knew it). I honestly don't see where the policy
| about political discussions is relevant here at all.
| segmondy wrote:
| It's the season of ramadan, how would you support muslims
| that are fasting now or need to take off time to pray or go
| to their mosque on Fridays?
| jollybean wrote:
| "The way to keep politics out of work is to keep your work
| environment professional."
|
| Both yours and the OP are side-stepping the main issue which
| is 'Identity Politics' -> it cannot be avoided.
|
| It's 'very easy' frankly, to avoid 'Politics and Religion' at
| the office, frankly, it's normal.
|
| Also fairly easy to avoid 'abortion and gun control'.
|
| But - 'the companies position on BLM' for example, is
| something that basically hardly be avoided.
|
| An initiative by a few staffers to create a 'Diversity
| Council' which they control ... well that's not technically
| political but that's effectively the same thing - it will
| happen, the company has to take a position.
|
| And of course 'making fun of people's' names' isn't political
| either. Obviously, it shouldn't be done in a formal setting,
| but for god's sake if people can't have fun then the world is
| over. If a bunch of low-level customer service reps are
| having beers and laughing / venting about a bunch of stuff
| then obviously nobody should care. (Not that I think they
| would for the most part).
|
| Companies are now teaching 'diversity sensitivity' and they
| have to decide whether to go the classical route, or to go
| with 'CRT' which uses some really inflammatory language about
| how all White people are guilty of upholding White Supremacy,
| literally for issues like 'Thanksgiving', 'Focusing on
| Correct Answers', 'Objectivity' (and I'm not remotely
| aggrandizing or being hyperbolic here - this is the extent of
| some of that training). This training in some form has to be
| given and it reaches beyond just the '2 hours' you get when
| you start.
|
| So aside from the possibly bone-headed / lack-of-self-
| awarness moves by the leadership here, the issues cannot be
| swept under the rug.
|
| Finally, even though 1/3 did take the money, and that is is
| probably an unhealthy number, it's possible that it's a
| 'accidentally smart move' by leadership to just avoid the
| types of people he doesn't want.
|
| I utterly loathe the WeWork leadership - but I have to admit,
| when they signalled that they will not allow employees to
| submit invoices for meat - I thought it was brilliant.
| Machiavellian, unfair, yes - but it was a really smart way to
| define 'culture', even if they were effectively turning away
| a large group of people (and quietly suppressing others).
|
| So in the end, 1) we have to navigate the 'politics of
| diversity' there's no avoiding it and 2) from a Realpolitik
| perspective, this may not be so completely bad for the
| company.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| I think it'll be good for them in the long run too (if they
| don't go under in the short term)
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| I'm sorry...what fantasy land do you have to live in where
| you think it's ok to use a company social media account to
| promote your own politics not only without permission from
| the company, but an explicit denial.
| koonsolo wrote:
| It was with the best intentions to improve the world! ;)
| tashoecraft wrote:
| The problem with no religion and no politics is that it's
| impossible to draw a line on what is politics or religion.
|
| Let's say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is
| political. Are they wrong for mentioning that they are gay
| (no), but to some at the company that may be trying to
| advance their gay political agenda.
|
| Idk what the solution is, but just blanket "No religion/no
| politics" is just a way to say you like everything the way it
| is and don't want to feel uncomfortable
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Let's say you hire a gay employee, there very existence
| is political.
|
| It's not, though. I've worked with a lot of gay people, and
| none have ever brought politics into work. This is just a
| BS argument by the people who do. There is a legitimate
| point about where do you draw the line (e.g. is bitching
| about CA taxes "politics"), but this is not it.
| rodgerd wrote:
| "Cool, we need to you visit a client site in a country
| which will murder you for your sexual orientation" is
| about as political as it gets.
| gurumeditations wrote:
| When you're under constant attack since the beginning of
| time by homophobic straight people, particularly in the
| political realm, your existence is political. If a
| liberal Supreme Court didn't luckily strike down bans in
| many states in 2003, it would still be illegal today to
| be gay in Texas. Bans were struck down because they were
| enforced. Educate yourself on Gay life. You owe it.
| Decker87 wrote:
| How is someone existing a political issue?
| davidw wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_homo
| sex...
|
| Thankfully, most places have moved on from that, but many
| still don't allow people to, say, marry the person they
| love.
| [deleted]
| wakeupbakeup wrote:
| > _Let's say you hire a gay employee, there very existence
| is political._
|
| Maybe to you, but most of us don't give a shit either way.
|
| Please don't use your gay colleagues as political totems.
| It's actually quite dehumanizing. Just treat us as people.
| Thanks.
| bavell wrote:
| > Let's say you hire a gay employee, there very existence
| is political.
|
| With a few exceptions, I consider it very unprofessional
| for an employee or colleague of mine to start discussing
| their sexual preferences, gay or straight. I wouldn't ask
| for the same reason.
|
| > ... just blanket "No religion/no politics" is just a way
| to say you like everything the way it is and don't want to
| feel uncomfortable
|
| I think you are just projecting. There are tons of benefits
| (mentioned elsewhere in these comments) to keeping politics
| & religion out of the workplace.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > what is politics or religion.
|
| How is that so? They have pretty clear definition.
| datr wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Ame0j8jbMY4
| eropple wrote:
| "My pronouns are she/her" _is political_ when you have an
| audience who disagree with your right to choose them.
|
| (And those disagreeing are _wrong_ , but telling them
| that suddenly, by the logic of the "no politics" crowd,
| makes _you_ the problem. Almost like all of this exists
| to reify a status quo that 's good for the people
| currently high on the hog. Hm.)
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think a reasonable definition of the terms would call
| that political when it's hypothetical and interpersonal
| when it's happening.
| johncessna wrote:
| I think it's the forcing other people to accept your
| pronouns that's the problem, not that you can't pick your
| own.
| [deleted]
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Choices generally don't bind others into obligation.
| Probably why you're having trouble with uptake.
| j11m wrote:
| This example strikes me as more as a case of
| inappropriate boundaries than politics. I do not believe
| that your or my _opinion_ of pronoun choice is really
| relevant. Specifically...
|
| You can put in whatever pronoun choice you believe is
| correct.
|
| I may or may not have an opinion about it.
|
| I can keep that opinion about it to myself, unless you
| ask for it.
|
| Nearly all political differences have nothing to do with
| performing one's job.
| [deleted]
| danjac wrote:
| The thing is, it's not that Basecamp is apolitical.
| Politics is fine if it's the founders doing the politics.
|
| DHH has been _very_ vocal in the last few months in public
| tirades against Apple, government lobbying, etc. While he
| has every right to his views, he 's also the public face of
| Basecamp. So it comes across as a teeny bit hypocritical to
| issue a no-politics diktat on his workforce.
|
| The real problem with Basecamp isn't the no politics thing.
| The problem is that the company exists for the personal
| gratification of its two founders, and it's one rule for
| them and one rule for everyone else. If you're on board
| with that, fine, but maybe for some employees this was just
| the final straw.
| koheripbal wrote:
| > a gay employee, there very existence is political.
|
| If someone considers their very _existence_ political, I
| think that 's a big red flag. Whether it's because they
| think society is persecuting them for being Christian, or
| for being gay, it will still be a high confidence predictor
| that they will create drama in the office.
| kelnos wrote:
| No, I think you're missing the sense of the phrase. Gay
| people don't consider their existence political, but
| unfortunately others (through desired public/social
| policy) have politicized the existence of gay people.
|
| As in, "let's pretend they don't exist, ban them from
| anything that straight couples can do, and push them to
| get conversion therapy so they behave like us 'normal'
| folks".
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Interestingly I once hired a trans person who, had
| converted to the other gender, sorry I don't really know
| the terminology. She was extremely proficient at her job
| (CSS/JS/Frontend) and so we were really impressed in the
| interview and seemed to have realistic expectations and
| views about workplace, workload and all sorts of other
| cultural ideas that matched nicely with ours.
|
| Her big question to use was "is there going to be a
| problem with me working here". As in "are people going to
| treat me like shit because I am transgender".
|
| It was an extremely professional environment and I and my
| boss unequivocally said - we don't care what you are as
| long as you do your job and do it well.
|
| I worked with her for probably near a year and I did not
| see people overtly treating her badly, making comments of
| any sort at all. People called her by a name that she
| chose and used the pronouns she wanted.
|
| Of course I don't know her experience but I can't express
| how it was a 'professional' environment enough. I have
| never worked somewhere that was so damn... professional.
| This included old dudes, old women, young men and women,
| people from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds (UK,
| India, Ukraine, and all over the US, and probably more
| places).
|
| People minded their own business, were polite, did not
| intrude upon personal matters, and while there was some
| jockying around sports teams - it was a place where all
| sorts of people and backgrounds worked. There was an
| extremely competent HR department, and middle management
| and C levels who were very serious about being
| professional.
|
| I don't know - kind of a rant - hopefully her experience
| at my workplace was one of her better ones.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I had three teachers who were fired for being gay, and a
| former co-worker who was _probably_ passed up for
| promotions because he is transgender.
|
| It's not since _very_ recently -- and to some extent
| still only in certain geographies -- that being gay in
| the workplace is apolitical.
|
| I'm actually generally a fan of "no politics / no
| religion" cultures (IME: actual literal rules indicate
| the culture is broken... not opposed to rules, but I
| prefer places where it doesn't even need to be said out
| loud!). But there absolutely are workplaces where being
| gay is political. And prior to the 1990s being out at
| work was very much not a good idea in most of the
| country.
|
| We're not talking about ancient history here...
| Baeocystin wrote:
| It genuinely isn't difficult in practice. Be polite and
| professional to your co-workers. That's it.
|
| If someone is gay, straight, whatever, it doesn't have any
| bearing on their work, so it's not something that's
| discussed. I have literally zero desire to hear about
| _anybody 's_ sexual relationships at work.
|
| If someone thinks that the mere presence of a gay person is
| an agenda, then they fail rule 1, which is be polite and
| professional to your co-workers, and it's on them to either
| get a grip or leave.
| williamtwild wrote:
| Exactly . I dont know how he could consider as he / she
| put it "gay persons very presence is political". Thats is
| a very sad position to have . Thier presence is just like
| any other persons presence. I could easily see where a
| person with that mindset would not last long at my
| company.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Work is not someplace you go and leave all your
| personality at the door. We're humans, we share about our
| lives. You act like describing someone's "sexual
| relationship" is x rated, but merely stating "my
| wife/husband" reveals their sexual relationship and 100%
| will come up in work.
| [deleted]
| neolog wrote:
| > We're humans, we share about our lives.
|
| Some humans do, some don't. It makes sense for people who
| aren't interested to be able to avoid it and for people
| who are interested to be able to have it.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Unless their statement is "My wife/husband worked on a
| problem very similar to the one we're trying to solve
| here, let's give her/his solution a shot!" it's not a
| conversation I want to have at work, while trying to
| solve work problems.
| stormbrew wrote:
| > I have literally zero desire to hear about anybody's
| sexual relationships at work.
|
| So you shut it down when people talk about going on a
| date with their spouse or talk about their kids?
|
| Because literally, this is the bar a lot of homophobes
| exist at to consider a conversation about a gay
| relationship 'political' or even religious, and they
| _will_ act on it.
| wnevets wrote:
| Reminds me of the gamer moment memes about ANY character
| that isn't a straight white male or a busty white woman
| is considered political.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| No, but I think it's ok if someone is that toxic at work
| to think the above is an offense, to let it be known so
| they can more easily "work themselves out of a job"
| Baeocystin wrote:
| No, because I'm not the social police. But I don't want
| to hear about it while I'm working, and so I don't
| participate in those conversations. I'm trying to
| concentrate on work problems at work. End of.
| tomrod wrote:
| > Because literally, this is the bar a lot of homophobes
| exist at to consider a conversation about a gay
| relationship 'political' or even religious, and they will
| act on it.
|
| So the homophobe is being political, and therefore breaks
| policy.
|
| Perhaps they would feel better if they let their
| misapprehensions and hate towards their colleagues go.
| kelnos wrote:
| In my experience it's the homophobe who gets all up in
| arms about "politics at work" and tries to get management
| to implement a no-politics policy.
|
| Their goal is to further marginalize the already-
| marginalized, and shut down conversations about making
| the workplace a more inclusive place.
|
| Because somehow "hey let's stop discriminating against
| $XYZ type of person" is somehow "political".
| tayo42 wrote:
| It takes effort to get to the point where you can fire
| someone simply for being a homophobe. People are
| advocating for these types of rules. They're being told
| to just suck it up and don't be political.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Where do you work, hobby lobby? We are on a website
| sponsored by a San Francisco based start up accelerator.
| Regardless of where "no politics" as a rule goes no one
| in this world is getting fired for saying "My husband".
| It's a disingenuous reductio.
|
| Insisting on personal pronouns over another employee's
| pushback is a much more realistic (and still compelling)
| line of argument.
| stormbrew wrote:
| I mean.. you know that people do in fact work at hobby
| lobby? I don't, but uh.. there's a whole spectrum of
| companies and employees outside the particular
| demographics of this website and this kind of policy is
| absolutely weaponized in practice. Not in theory, not in
| any kind of reductio ad anything, in actual practice.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Yes, Hobby Lobby exists and people work there. Hobby
| Lobby's management will continue to do exactly what they
| were doing regardless of what basecamp does. If DHH sees
| your comment and says "you're totally right, we are going
| to embrace political discussion at Basecamp", Hobby Lobby
| keeps on being Hobby Lobby. It's a silly point to make in
| this discussion.
| tshaddox wrote:
| They even have a website! I'd be shocked if there aren't
| routinely Hobby Lobby employees visiting Hacker News.
| oivey wrote:
| Probably a majority of people held opinions like that
| extremely recently. Like, the 2000s or maybe later
| recent. There are still a ton of people who think like
| that, and you only really need one for it to become a
| hostile environment.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| The vast majority of people don't have the self-control
| necessary to be polite and professional when confronted
| with political/religious disagreement. Better to let
| everyone enjoy false consensus bias than to take the
| risk.
| pnutjam wrote:
| You're advocating for a middle ground that doesn't exist.
|
| As a racially ambiguous guy, most people are
| professional, but I pick up occasional comments and the
| way people act when you try to show them a better way or
| correct them really shines a light on this issue.
| podric wrote:
| It may not be true in your experience but it does exist.
| I've worked in several diverse offices in the US where
| it's exactly like that. Race/sexual orientation hardly
| ever comes up as a political topic and colleagues are
| generally friendly with one another (with a significant
| number of queer and POC colleagues)
| Baeocystin wrote:
| The middle ground is that most people are, in fact,
| professional. It is literally impossible to actually like
| everyone you meet, but if you can at least maintain a
| professional relationship, that's fine- that's all that
| is required.
|
| This is what actual tolerance looks like in action!
| sgift wrote:
| > The middle ground is that most people are, in fact,
| professional.
|
| You say that is the case. People affected by it say it
| isn't (and have examples). Who to believe ...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I've noticed an overlap between activist personalities and
| attention seeking personalities. Some people, either
| consciously or subconsciously, enjoy the dopamine hit from
| anger and confrontation and they will seek it out at work.
| afavour wrote:
| [deleted]
| seem_2211 wrote:
| It's the exact same behavior, but bred in a different
| environment.
| shkkmo wrote:
| You were the one that is adding partisanship to the
| observation. "Activist" is a non-partisan term and thus
| the statement should be read as applying equally to pro-
| life activists as pro-choice activists.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I've noticed an overlap between activist personalities
| and attention seeking personalities
|
| I've noticed an overlap between attention seeking
| personalities and people who get noticed for...well,
| anything.
|
| But that's kind of the nature of "attention seeking".
| Rapzid wrote:
| I think there is a difference between an activist
| personality and somebody leaching off those groups for
| their own means. Perhaps certain personality types are
| drawn to those activist circles because they sense an
| opportunity to acquire some sense of power over other
| people. Like a parasite. Saying they are parasitic sounds
| somewhat accurate.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Perhaps the perceived overlap is due to the fact that you
| end up perceiving people who have attention-seeking
| personalities more than people who do not, especially in
| places (like social media) that are designed to reward and
| amplify attention seeking.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| you mean.... twitter? ;-)
| sorum wrote:
| Can someone fund a study where they measure cortisol
| levels before and after test subjects turn off Twitter
| notifications?
|
| My assumption is that levels plummet
| linuxftw wrote:
| Well, if the studies are anything like FDA approve
| pharmaceuticals, the studies will be funded by twitter,
| no raw data will be made available, no attempts to
| replicate the studies by 3rd parties will even be
| allowed, much less made, and the FDA will approve the
| results.
| palijer wrote:
| There is probably an overlap between attention seeking
| personalities and every group from which you hear
| individual voices.
|
| Those attention seeking personalities are just the ones who
| get your attention and stand out.
| [deleted]
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah, anybody who quits over a no politics policy is probably
| someone you don't want in the first place.
| tootie wrote:
| Just to be clear, they banned "politics" after people
| complained about what they considered to be racism and
| cultural belittlement. This is the inherent problem with
| people wanting to avoid politics when what they really want
| is to avoid difficult topics. Topics that aren't just
| ballot issues but may be palpably real for actual people
| you work with.
| gscott wrote:
| How did Basecamp fill 1/3 of the company with people they
| didn't want. That is something they should try to have a
| lot of introspection on.
| Udik wrote:
| Seen the generous buyouts offered, it's probable that
| several of them left just because they liked the offer.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted. I'm mulling over an
| employer change right now for pure career progression /
| compensation reasons. I have a few good options lined up.
| If I were offered a generous buyout tomorrow for some
| random stupid reason, I would probably take it, even
| without first deciding exactly where I'm going to be next
| and without any regard to the underlying reason for the
| buyout. Wikipedia says they only have 57 employees (???).
| If so, that's less than 20 people jumping from a company
| with bad PR anyways and during a time when tech hiring is
| actually quite hot.
| kaitai wrote:
| Why not just... manage people well?
|
| No need to make it no politics/no religion at work. Endless
| talking about keto or veganism or BeachBody or CrossFit or
| vaccines or children or being anti-child or emacs or vim or
| whatever can be just as divisive and counterproductive _if it
| 's not managed_. Lots of people are assholes or misinformed
| about a lot of stuff. Big deal. _Manage._ That 's the active
| part of the word "manager".
|
| Don't use the company social media to advance your politics
| or sell your MLM products or shill for cryptocurrencies --
| company social media must be managed. Financial policies must
| be managed, and if people don't like them or aren't able to
| accept it, talk to them directly. Clear up misunderstandings
| if they exist and lay out the parameters of the job.
|
| This is not about Trump or politics or activists. This is
| about bad management.
|
| I manage and work with people of a wide variety of political
| persuasions. Out of work I have plenty of opinions about
| politics and causes. In work, I demand mutual respect and
| professionalism. I won't let A misgender B, I won't let C
| make fun of D's evangelical church, we're going to keep all
| the politics talk to a minimum but we're not going to ban it.
| If someone doesn't want to engage, that must be respected as
| well.
|
| But it's just foolishness to think that my "employees can
| come to work... without having to deal with heavy political
| or societal debates unconnected to that work". Not when heavy
| political debates unconnected to that work affect where and
| when they can pee or whether they fear for their lives at the
| speed trap that's stationed about a mile up the road from the
| office. We don't need to debate it, we can't solve the
| world's problems, and we don't need litmus tests, but the
| basic mutual respect and professionalism demanded of every
| employee applies to me too and I need to recognize that
| different employees walked in the door from different worlds,
| and their skin color/presence or lack of uteruses/accents
| come along. I need to proactively make this a good place to
| work for my valued employees because they deserve human
| respect and they're f(*^ing expensive to replace. That's the
| bottom line.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Politics is different than BeachBody talk because it is
| moralistic in nature. Politics turns people's brains off
| much better than other forms of discussion because it
| combines in-group out-group bias with moral righteousness.
| Same thing with religion, but religion is brought up much
| less frequently at work.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The problem with managing people, is that they are managed
| _by_ people.
|
| Managing people is hard to do well. It's like writing code.
| There are bugs, everyone has their own style, everyone
| thinks the other person's management process was faulty.
|
| At some point, your organization needs to set company wide
| standards. ...and like coding standards, they aren't
| perfect, they can have grey areas, and in some contexts
| they don't even make sense. But on the whole, they do more
| good than bad.
|
| Don't put GOTO statements in your code. Don't hard code
| passwords in your scripts. Don't talk about politics or
| religion in the office.
| cmorgan31 wrote:
| You would think a company that's been in business for two
| decades would have a rather robust ethics guide to
| working with corporate and enterprise customers. It seems
| to be part and parcel for almost all large SaaS
| companies. How in the world did they let their culture
| get bad enough for political rants?
| oezi wrote:
| I think what basecamp is experiencing is what can still
| happen even though you as a manager believed you managed it
| well. If you don't let "A misgender B" then you might get
| hit as DHH did. Because one way to read the affair is that
| one person got upset that DHH as the manager didn't let
| that person pull a holocaust reference into a debate.
|
| (not saying at all if this was appropriate or not)
| [deleted]
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Placating "activists" in the work place may initially seem
| like the new norm in corporate responsibility, but it is
| actually a self-destructive spiral, as there are ever-
| changing foci for woke outrage. The risk of these same
| employees turning on the company is extremely high in the
| long term._
|
| A big problem in 2021, going back some years, is that the
| internet makes it easy for anyone to put out their slate and
| call themselves an "activist." Years ago people used to say
| that politics was the last refuge of a scoundrel. This is
| what activists engage in: politics.
|
| Outrage is one of the emotions that's easiest to garner
| virality. Many "activists" are not conversant in ethics and
| philosophy. Many of them aren't good people. Many of them
| seem to be quite bitter and hateful while they talk about
| justice.
|
| Many of the loudest voices in this arena are engaging in
| outrage mongering.
|
| _They limit legal liabilities by removing easily-disgruntled
| employees._
|
| "Easily disgruntled" is a signpost. Activism in 2021 needs
| better filters, because far too many people who should be in
| counseling and therapy are proselytizing to the masses and
| young people, with public results that corroborate this. At
| least in the 60's and 70's, one had to be capable of
| organization.
| hogFeast wrote:
| That isn't what they said.
|
| What they said was: people who created the list went off on
| some weird tangent about the list being the first step towards
| genocide, if you have a problem with the list, you shouldn't
| contribute to the list (the subtle point here is that people
| who tend to be most active about these things usually feel
| guilty, management said the list was bad, management said it
| shouldn't have happened...what more do you want? Are you really
| saying that suggesting the list was genocidal is a normal
| response?).
|
| Circulating a list like this would happen everywhere. Every
| person believes they are above other people when they see other
| people behaving badly...funnily enough, bad things still happen
| because people think they are different from everyone else
| (understanding this point is a big step is the difference
| between managing yourself and having to manage other
| people...things happen, people make mistakes, they do things
| that they wouldn't normally do...once you manage a large team,
| the probability of weird things happening goes to 1).
|
| Btw, just as an aside, this whole discussion is going nowhere.
| I can only see this from my own perspective but most people
| have literally no knowledge of history, they have no knowledge
| of debate, they have no idea how to engage with other people in
| good faith. The reason why so many organizations have rules
| about not talking about politics is because, once an
| organization reaches a certain size, these discussions become
| impossible because the average level of a discussion is just so
| terrible (and there will always be a minority who actually
| don't want to engage with anyone else, they just want to burn
| it down). Ironically, this is essential to improving diversity
| in large organizations...but, irregardless, this discussion is
| pointless and will go nowhere. We will never reach a point
| where the complaining stops because the complaining is not
| related to anything outside individuals...it is just nothing
| (and a huge part of this is people feeling guilty).
| matteotom wrote:
| [1] is a useful overview. Somebody posted the ADL's "pyramid
| of hate"[2], which links biased views and actions as
| necessary (but not sufficient) preconditions to genocide.
| Some people saw this as going too far since "obviously"
| anyone who contributes to genocide should be fired, while the
| whole point of the pyramid is anybody can perpetuate these
| really early preconditions (and at the end of the day we
| should encourage people to learn from these smaller mistakes,
| and not punish them as harshly as firing).
|
| [1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-
| basec... [2]
| https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-
| of...
| filleduchaos wrote:
| As a somewhat ironic illustration about how pyramids of
| behaviour work, in this case keeping a funny name list at
| work was a precondition for a third (or even more) of an
| already small company resigning.
|
| That doesn't mean that keeping such a list 100% inevitably
| leads to losing so much of your workforce or that someone
| who points out that it _could_ escalate that far (given
| enough time and poor handling) is "accusing" you of not
| wanting to retain your employees. What it means is that you
| should nip such things in the bud and thus simply never
| have to play the guessing game of "will this go
| catastrophically badly or not?".
| hogFeast wrote:
| Yes, and I am saying this is a weird thing for a human to
| do (the explanation here is that the person was the one
| contributing to the list, and is overcompensating).
|
| Making of lists of funny names is not the first step to
| genocide. Genocide is horrendous, but the reasons for
| genocide are complex and the notion of a pyramid to
| genocide based only on jokes or whatever...is just wrong
| (again, that is what I said earlier about people not
| understanding history, I think it isn't coincidental that
| history/politics education in the US is of very low
| quality). That view is based on an extremely narrow,
| individualistic notion of human action/events that has no
| correlation with reality (living in a society where
| everyone accuses everyone else of being a genocidaire is
| also not fun for anyone, it is not inclusive, it is not
| diverse...I am sure lawyers would love it, no-one else
| would).
|
| This is the kind of thing that you would hope people can
| appreciate through common sense...but, unfortunately, that
| isn't the case anymore.
|
| Also, the issue isn't about someone being fired for
| promoting genocide...again, this is one of the subtleties
| of argumentation that you should learn at school...DHH's
| point was only about why the person was posting the pyramid
| of hate, self-evidently he did not believe that anyone in
| the office was attempting to organise a genocide (why does
| this needs to be said). His view on the list was clear: the
| list shouldn't have happened, it was bad, people who made
| the list should have not made it (rather than making it,
| and then attempting to over-compensate by saying the list
| was the first step to genocide).
|
| ...the stuff that people argue about on here is truly
| amazing. Again, the US underinvests massively in
| history/politics/philosophy...these are problems that just
| don't happen in some societies.
| enneff wrote:
| > Making of lists of funny names is not the first step to
| genocide.
|
| And that is not what the post you're replying to said.
| mhneu wrote:
| "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the
| victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
| -Elie Wiesel
|
| Choosing to not discuss politics is fine. But if you do that,
| you're making a choice: you're choosing to take the side of
| those who prefer political decisions to be made by a small
| elite, without feedback from people like us. You're choosing
| not to weigh in.
| krrrh wrote:
| Comments like this make me worry that a lot of people don't
| have lives outside of the office or their work identity.
|
| Or maybe people keep their friend groups so tightly curated
| by ideology these days that the only chance they have to
| argue about politics is at work?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Trying to keep politics out of work != Never discussing
| politics, and refusing to choose a side
|
| And I'm saying this as somebody who's very critical of how
| Basecamp has handled this situation.
| handoflixue wrote:
| > you're choosing to take the side of those who prefer
| political decisions to be made by a small elite, without
| feedback from people like us.
|
| If you're talking about life in general, yes, but "don't talk
| politics at work" is very different from "leaving all
| politics to a small elite because they never get feedback
| from people like us"
| wwwdonohue wrote:
| But do we really have to draw these lines at work, during
| work hours? The office is not a public square. It's not a
| place where you give feedback to people in power...
| [deleted]
| koonsolo wrote:
| 1. Voting is done in private for a reason.
|
| 2. You discussing politics with your colleague has 0 effect
| on political decisions.
| ineptech wrote:
| In the abstract, sure, an important sentiment; but applying
| Wiesel's words to this debate seems like the very height of
| hubris. No matter how fervently I might agree with some
| activists' goals, I am very dubious that Basecamp's old
| policy was actually improving the world, or that their new
| policy is hurting it.
| motives wrote:
| I don't usually like engaging in political discourse online,
| as its very rarely fruitful, but I'd just like to encourage
| you to study some philosophy before making statements like
| these whereby you treat your own opinion as absolute fact (or
| at least your phrasing comes off that way to me). The nature
| of inaction on these issues is not necessarily inherently
| immoral, and I would personally argue its supererogation
| rather than moral duty, so whilst it may be commendable to
| stand up in these sorts of situations, in my opinion you are
| by no means morally obliged. This whole area has been a
| subject of debate for a very long time and the answer is
| never as simple as a generalisation that can fit in a
| sentence or two.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I feel like I'm more tormented by people demanding I take "a
| side" which is invariably their side. God help me if I choose
| to disagree. Besides, we live in a Democratic Republic and
| it's my representatives making the decisions, not me. That's
| literally by design. My only real feedback is casting a
| single vote when it's the right time.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Choosing a side is how you get polarisation.
| wakeupbakeup wrote:
| Some things aren't worth weighing in on.
|
| For example, you go to work and some of your more braindead
| colleagues are earnestly insisting that keeping a list of
| amusing customer names is the first step on the road to
| genocide.
|
| Do you: (a) get involved in this nonsense, knowing from past
| experience how furious they'll get if you disagree, or (b)
| ignore this stupidity and get on with your job?
|
| Personally, I'd pick the latter.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| You're free to discuss politics outside of the workplace to
| your heart's content, gather with other activists and even
| found your own political organization in your free time.
| You're also free to quit your job and devote yourself
| entirely to, you know, politics. So I don't buy any of your
| argument.
| otachack wrote:
| I totally get your argument but how do we address issues
| where there's implicit bias being applied to our work? AKA
| mostly white, males programming in potentially biased
| features.
|
| Work is not a politically/religiously clean room
| environment whether we like it or not.
| icelancer wrote:
| >> AKA mostly white, males programming in potentially
| biased features.
|
| Compared to the US population, white people are
| significantly underrepresented [0] in US software
| development jobs and overrepresented by Asians. "Most" is
| technically true at > 50% but it is hardly reflective of
| US racial demographics.
|
| sources:
|
| https://www.zippia.com/software-engineer-
| jobs/demographics/
|
| https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
|
| [0]: as are black and hispanic people
| totony wrote:
| >I totally get your argument but how do we address issues
| where there's implicit bias being applied to our work?
|
| What kind of implicit bias do you mean?
| corey_moncure wrote:
| Someday you will look back on a world where it was okay to
| laugh at things, and perhaps you will even remember writing
| this comment.
| grumblestumble wrote:
| I'm generally perceived as a pretty funny guy, I joke around
| with both my reports and those I report to, and, yes, even
| with customers all the time. I've found that I don't need to
| diminish others to do this, there's plenty of other crap to
| joke about, like the quality of our products, how long it
| takes to get stuff done, the UX of the tools we share, dumb
| programming trends. It's easy to laugh without it being at
| the expense of others.
| moistbar wrote:
| Joking about the quality of your products is hurtful to the
| people who made them. Joking about dumb programming trends
| is offensive to the people who find them useful. You're
| still happily diminishing people, only now you won't even
| do it to their faces.
| pshc wrote:
| Criticism of a product or trend is not the same as
| criticism of its creator or users--if it even _is_ valid
| criticism rather than social noise
| eropple wrote:
| I'm glad that you wrote this, because "punch _up_ , stupid"
| is just not that difficult a concept in humor.
| rubatuga wrote:
| I would say it's actually hard to make jokes that aren't at
| the expense of others. Otherwise, everybody would be doing
| it.
| weakfish wrote:
| It's okay to laugh at funny things. But laughing at some
| things, like people's names, is... Not nice! And people
| should be nice, no?
| jjeaff wrote:
| It's fine to laugh at things. But circulating a list with
| customer's real names that you think is funny is very
| unprofessional. I'm sure my coworkers and I have had a laugh
| now and then about a name that is strange to us. But we
| wouldn't post it up somewhere and keep making fun on a long
| term basis. That's a different level.
| zepto wrote:
| They were laughing at _people_.
| wakeupbakeup wrote:
| They were laughing at _people 's names_.
|
| They were amused by _a double meaning found in an
| arrangement of alphabetic characters_.
|
| It's really not a big deal.
| kelnos wrote:
| It's not a big deal that a bunch of so-called adults were
| using company time, data, and resources to act like
| elementary schoolyard bullies making fun of people's
| names?
|
| Inevitably that sort of thing gets out, and insulting
| your customers' names is not really a great business
| strategy.
|
| Beyond that, I wouldn't like working with people who are
| so clearly children. And not even _good_ children.
| Graffur wrote:
| Is Bigbuttson an actual name? That is funny to an English
| speaker.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| It's also pretty offensive to your customer if that's their
| name.
| jtdev wrote:
| Maybe it's a pornography company...? Maybe people should
| chill the fuck out with the constant thirst for being
| offended.
| koolba wrote:
| If his first name was Bigsby I'd probably be laughing too.
| Though I doubt I'd put that in writing, in particular in
| anything remotely corporate related.
| grumblestumble wrote:
| Deliberately not an actual name, but I'm guessing the actual
| one he referenced is along those lines (he specifically
| mentioned it being Nordic)
| wincy wrote:
| Just as funny as something like Takeshita, which is a real
| Japanese surname.
|
| If I was working with someone with that last name I
| definitely wouldn't bring it up.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Can confirm, went to (an English-speaking) school with a
| Takeshita. Juvenile jokes were had.
| [deleted]
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > they refused to take any action on it
|
| Is this true? My understanding is they said this was
| unacceptable and apologized for not stopping their employees
| from disseminating this list earlier. I guess people wanted a
| stronger disciplinary response to people who contributed the
| list and they refused?
| jolux wrote:
| They said it was unacceptable but denied that it was evidence
| of larger problems, basically.
| kbenson wrote:
| Which, until I see more of the discussion and the list in
| question, I'm inclined to believe given the blog post
| someone else posted where they outlined the problem and
| their specific response.
| jolux wrote:
| I think when something like that flies under the radar
| for over a decade, serious organizational problems are
| not far behind.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| The main crux was a denial that this sort of behaviour led
| to genocide. I'm not kidding
| jon_bigbuttson wrote:
| Please do not make fun of my name.
| tlogan wrote:
| If a company ensures that everybody needs to act professionally
| all the time then even talk about politic will be done in
| professional matter. But as soon as you allow unprofessional
| behavior or talk regarding any topic (deals, customers, code
| comments, etc) you will have trouble with politic.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| To me the world's gone crazy where the word "deplorable" is
| unironically attached to some people making fun of some names.
| Unprofessional is the furthest I'd take it. Something you get a
| finger wag for.
|
| As a customer why would I even care if someone on the other end
| thought my name was funny as long as my shipment arrived? This
| generation truly is absurdly sensitive.
| nailer wrote:
| From DHH at https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e:
|
| > In fact, reviewing the original list in question, the vast
| majority of names on it fall into the category of the two
| specific examples above. It's not a list of, say, primarily
| Asian names. Out of the 78 names listed on the last version we
| were able to recover, just 6 names appear to be Asian.
|
| > So connecting this to the shootings in Atlanta, because the
| Asian victims of that atrocity had their names misspelled in
| news reports, is exactly the kind of linkage I'd like us to
| avoid when we analyze our mistakes together at work.
|
| The Verge is lying about things as usual, painting an
| inaccurate picture of interracial conflict.
|
| > "lol Bigbuttson is a funny name", and it's deplorable.
|
| Hyperbole. One European making fun of another European is
| hardly deplorable.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Seems like pretty innocuous lulz to me.
| ezekg wrote:
| Nothing is innocuous to outrage culture.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| DHH's blog post: https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-
| out-78485e8e
|
| See paragraphs below "So I replied:" ...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> They let this fester - they were complicit in allowing this
| dumb-ass list to be circulated around the company for years_
|
| Edit: nm, answered in other comments.
|
| What list? I don't see anything about that in the tweet, or in
| Basecamp's blogposts the other day...
| mbreese wrote:
| They had a list of "funny" customer names. Needless to say,
| "funny" wasn't a good description. The existence of this list
| for many years (and a recent reckoning over it) was what
| precipitated this entire situation for Basecamp.
| [deleted]
| klelatti wrote:
| It really sounds like JF / DHH really didn't want to have to
| deal with the issue - minimal disciplinary action and then push
| all discussion away from official channels.
|
| But I guess that it reveals what probably should have been
| clear about Basecamp - it's a vehicle for the expression /
| gratification of the founders - financially, emotionally and
| intellectually.
|
| And the loss of staff / possible impact on the company (and
| customers) was a price they were prepared to pay.
| reachtarunhere wrote:
| I don't see any issue with that. They get their gratification
| and the employees get paid for providing their work as a
| service.
| klelatti wrote:
| It wasn't meant to be criticism.
|
| However, losing 1/3 of your staff overnight over an issue
| like this does somewhat undermine the JF / DHH narrative of
| extreme managerial competence.
| baron816 wrote:
| The proposed changes are wholly reasonable, and definitely not
| that different from 99% of the companies out there.
|
| The real problem is that they've spent years hiring for a type of
| person where this sort of thing is anathema.
| kbuchanan wrote:
| > The real problem is that they've spent years hiring for a
| type of person where this sort of thing is anathema.
|
| This is dead on: the real issue here is not politics vs. not-
| politics at work--Basecamp is having a crisis because
| expectations were broken.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yeah, DHH is very outspoken politically, and fairly
| progressive. Of course there was going to be a selection bias
| where they hired similar people. This shouldn't have come as a
| surprise to them, and they should have realized the backlash.
| Shockingly bad foresight.
| danieljacksonno wrote:
| It's not that long ago that hiring a progressive usually
| meant hiring a tolerant person who would go the extra mile to
| include everyone, also people they disagreed with.
|
| It's only recently that parts of the progressive movement has
| radicalized.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > a tolerant person who would go the extra mile to include
| everyone, also people they disagreed with
|
| That sounds like the definition of liberalism rather than
| progressivism. I don't think the progressive movement has
| ever really fit under your definition -- or even wanted to.
| I think what you may be seeing is more people shifting from
| liberalism to progressivism (at least in certain
| communities like this).
| [deleted]
| themolecularman wrote:
| I agree, the Verge article mentions this explicitly that DHH
| and JF are routinely outspoken on progressive issues:
|
| > Both founders are also active -- and occasionally
| hyperactive -- on Twitter, where they regularly advocate for
| mainstream liberal and progressive views on social issues.
|
| What did they expect?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yeah, I had to stop following DHH on Twitter for that very
| reason. Every few months he picks up some new pet issue,
| and then will not shut up about it. Then he finds another
| issue, and moves onto that one.
|
| Of course they were going to have employees that approached
| politics in a similar way, and of course that would leak
| into the workspace. They've built their brand on the
| personalities of Jason and David, which has obviously
| informed all of their hiring decisions.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I wonder how many would have walked on principle alone, rather
| than a combination of principles _and_ a rather substantial
| buyout. Paying employees to leave over a disagreement changes the
| calculus on how much the policy itself was to blame.
| happyweasel wrote:
| Nice... being able to get rid of the annoying P.C. folks at work
| for a fixed price. That is a great deal for Basecamp.
| rawland wrote:
| "Everything is politics." ~Thomas Mann
|
| Especially: "Shut up and work."
| fortran77 wrote:
| John Warnock once said at an Adobe company meeting "when an
| employee leaves a company it's like taking your hand out of a
| bucket of water -- it doesn't leave a hole."
|
| This was in response to a similarly contentious issue -- moving
| from Mountain View to San Jose. People said they were going to
| quit. John Warnock said, in effect, "good riddance." And the
| company started growing very rapidly after that move.
|
| (This doesn't detract from the fact that I think DHH is a fool
| and often mean-spirited.)
| mfer wrote:
| Another way to look at this is... job openings are coming to
| Basecamp and people know the culture is a no politics at work
| place. I bet a lot of people will sign up for that. Enough to
| fill the openings.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| This is exactly what I thought, I'd personally find a company
| with an explicit non-activism policy insanely attractive, all
| other things being equal.
| bachmeier wrote:
| There'll likely be a big pool of applicants that want to work
| there because of this policy.
| themolecularman wrote:
| Yea I considered looking into Coinbase when they announced a
| similar policy - but I've got some equity keeping me at my
| current job. If that weren't the case I may jump ship.
| distribot wrote:
| Not really a buyers market rn. Maybe this ideological position
| will specifically attract people who feel alienated by SV
| culture, maybe not. But there's no way that losing a large
| fraction of your engineering team is anything but a disaster.
| totony wrote:
| I'd be curious if someone could explain _why_ they offer such
| steep buyouts? A company can always change policies and mostly
| does not pay you if you disagree with them. What makes this
| different?
|
| I agree an employee could become disgruntled after a policy their
| disagree with is implemented, but what entitles them to a payout?
| I assume a 6 months payout is attractive to everyone, that you
| agree or not with their decision. Isn't that way more dangerous
| than a few disgruntled employees? (You could also offer less than
| 6 months and still eliminate those)
| achenatx wrote:
| I run a small politics forum. I was able to get down to one rule
| that seems to work.
|
| No ad hominem or insults of any groups, people, or policies.
| People can talk about why they like things or why things will or
| wont work.
|
| People continually try to work around them and sometimes there
| are comments that are borderline. Most people are very respectful
| and libs and conservatives can debate.
|
| An example of trying to bypass is someone calling trump a Nazi.
| this is obviously meant as an insult. The person claimed it was a
| statement of fact. Trump has never identified as a nazi and
| therefore it isnt a statement of fact but is simply an opinion
| meant as an insult.
|
| Once the insults were removed the group functioned well.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| There's a pretty big difference between running a political
| discussion forum and having those same political discussions at
| work, though.
|
| On a political forum, people's main relationship is coming
| together to talk politics. They sought that out.
|
| At work people's main relationship is to work together. Talking
| politics becomes messy because it becomes a secondary
| relationship that can affect the key one, the work one.
|
| It also runs into the messy part of some people at a workplace
| have authority over others at the workplace. People get really
| funny about authority sometimes.
| aeturnum wrote:
| People have lives outside of work that sometimes intrude into
| work. Part of running a workplace is making the appropriate
| amount of space for those intrusions. How "political" your
| life is comes mostly from factors that you can't control:
| your race or ethnicity, your religious beliefs, your
| citizenship, your sexuality or gender. Saying "we don't talk
| politics" has massively different implications for different
| people.
|
| I get that workplaces can become distracted. I think we've
| all experienced it. I just think that banning "politics" is
| no replacement for engaged leadership and discernment while
| navigating a company through the world.
| yoelo wrote:
| Looking at what DHH tweets, it sure seems like the only
| acceptable politics at Basecamp is what helps selling their
| product
| notJim wrote:
| A big part of me wonders if this was the point of this whole
| exercise. A certain subset of employees are getting too uppity,
| so you just tell them to fuck off and then show them the door.
| Theoretically you could fire them, but that might risk lawsuits
| or even more turmoil. If you have the cash to do this, why not.
| Basecamp may be getting exactly what they wanted.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| These are all core team heads...
| prh8 wrote:
| They're not losing the bottom third of employees, no company
| ever wants this.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread it's said that in the compensation
| package there's a big payout if the company is acquired. Though
| I can't imagine how huge it would have to be that paying each
| employee six months of salary is cheaper.
| 40acres wrote:
| Doubt it. They are bleeding talent, generating terrible PR, and
| definitely did not plan for a massive buyout this year. This
| plan backfired heavily. Am amazing case study in incompetent
| leadership.
| senbarryobama wrote:
| I am shocked a company with ~60 employees warrants this much
| discussion and media coverage.
| 40acres wrote:
| From what I understood this wasn't a "we want to talk about Trump
| and BLM all day" situation but a "owners/leaders refuse to reckon
| with a toxic aspect of our internal culture".
|
| At some point the two mixed, the "pyramid of hate" is definitely
| out of the SJW playbook and probably went a bit too far for some
| people's taste. But shame on the leaders who for years have
| written books and blogs about how awesome their culture is to
| have 1/3rd of your workforce (so far) leave because of that
| aforementioned culture.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| They offered a severance of 6 months salary if you've worked
| there for 3+ years...
|
| I would be tempted by that offer regardless of any other
| circumstances, especially in today's competitive jobs market.
| timClicks wrote:
| I expect that was the intent. They wanted a smaller, more
| focused company and longed after a time when things were
| simpler. So they have decided to take the financial hit for
| convenience by providing an offer that they hoped people would
| take.
| [deleted]
| jcims wrote:
| People are also going to be tempted to not deal with the
| backlash of staying onboard despite a fairly generous buyout
| offer.
| notadoc wrote:
| I suspect many people would leave many jobs if offered a
| comparable payout, particularly if their skills are valuable
| thrower123 wrote:
| Yeah, I've got to say, that kind of offer, even if I liked
| working for a company, would be hard to turn down. Especially
| right now. Take the summer off, enjoy things after this
| hellacious year, get back into a position somewhere in the
| fall. I don't imagine that it's going to be a black-balling
| mark for these people.
| ghaff wrote:
| Depends on the situation of course. The grab a new job in a
| week heuristic doesn't actually apply with a lot of people.
| But a good exit package, as used to be more routine, is
| certainly something to take into account.
| yosito wrote:
| I see this as a third of the employees were more interested in
| taking 6 months salary than in keeping work conversations
| professional. Those aren't really people you want on your team.
| dbt00 wrote:
| head of marketing, head of design, entire ios team. Probably
| people they wanted on the team.
|
| If you read this news as "employees (who yosito disagrees
| with) should shut the fuck up", perhaps you think this is
| good. If you read this as, "I joined this company as a place
| where my voice mattered and now I'm being told to STFU by a
| founder on a rage bender", it makes more sense why people are
| leaving.
| brightball wrote:
| I followed the entire conversation and "a founder on a rage
| bender" is an extreme exaggeration.
|
| They asked the political conversions be kept out of work
| channels, but continued to encourage people to be active
| politically, active on social media and even active at work
| using other platforms.
|
| Framing the entire thing as some extremist plot to silence
| dissent is absurd.
|
| If someone wanted to come into work channels and constantly
| tell people about their religion, why they should convert
| and why other religions were wrong would you think it's
| okay to for the business to ask to keep those conversations
| outside of the main work channels?
| prh8 wrote:
| That's not the conversations they are banning though.
| Many of the conversations are actually about the company
| itself and its culture. This is not people "wasting time"
| and sowing discord via typical political topics.
| whynea wrote:
| Wealthy, privileged people making storms in teacups over
| trivial shit - like we have here, a list of funny names
| somehow being a 'racist' endeavour rather than having a
| joke with your colleagues - describes a good chunk of our
| industry, unfortunately.
|
| Shrill wokescolds are taking over our workplaces.
| predaking wrote:
| > I followed the entire conversation and "a founder on a
| rage bender" is an extreme exaggeration.
|
| I don't know, maybe you missed the part where he posted
| on Twitter about cancel culture and then started blocking
| everyone who disagreed with him. Rage benders don't need
| to be limited to the office. =)
| brightball wrote:
| The one where he linked to a NYT article/podcast
| interview and everybody start tweeting at him that he was
| raging about cancel culture?
|
| This one?
|
| https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1387731297980854272?s=21
| predaking wrote:
| Yeah! They tweeted at him such because that's what he was
| doing. Other people just said, "Maybe you should take a
| break" and got blocked. =)
|
| I guess if we're just going to go in a circle confirming
| that we've both observed the same thing vs. discussing,
| I'm happy to bounce! =) Have an awesome one!
| brightball wrote:
| Posting an article link is hardly raging about cancel
| culture, especially when it's a very reasoned interview
| about it.
|
| If you saw a link posted and see that as rage, it kinda
| proves the point.
|
| Did you read the NYT article or listen to the podcast? It
| was very reasonable.
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| This sounds like you've only read DHH's description of
| events. Read the Platformer article for more context.
| brightball wrote:
| If you're talking about this one, I just read it.
|
| https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-
| basec...
|
| When I read that, I see business leaders who engaged for
| months then asked people to move on when they realized it
| was never going to go away.
|
| Searching the chat logs and posting in front of everybody
| was a jerk move for an executive, absolutely.
|
| Everything else seems entirely reasonable.
| pumaontheprowl wrote:
| If they really cared about keeping those people, they
| wouldn't have offered an incentive for them to leave.
|
| For example, they could have structured the incentive such
| that it only applied to employees below a certain level.
| They didn't do that though because they wanted to make sure
| every employee who disagreed with the policy left.
| ewb wrote:
| I mean that's a false choice, plenty will be keeping work
| conversations professional elsewhere while also having 6
| months salary.
|
| I don't know if a full third of a company leaving at once can
| really be explained away as people they didn't really want on
| the team.
| BluePen7 wrote:
| The deal's almost too good to pass up.
|
| I'll program and be professional at company A just as happily
| as I would at company B.
|
| I'm already professional and apolitical at work, I don't feel
| I stand to gain much being otherwise.
|
| So I think you'd be inadvertently discriminating against
| people who are simply interested in getting 2 salaries for 6
| months.
| nprz wrote:
| Is it a competitive job market? I've been interviewing SWE
| candidates at my current workplace for some time and it feels
| like the org is competing for developers more than developers
| are competing for jobs.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| I think that's what he meant - _employers_ are competing for
| employees. I had one recruiter (who cold contacted me) admit
| that the SF Bay area job market is red hot and everyone is
| hiring like crazy.
| simfree wrote:
| Here in Seattle, if you can't quickly solve Fizz buzz and
| Hacker Rank questions in an interview, most companies
| interview processes will reject you in short order.
|
| It doesn't seem to matter if your getting quality PRs
| approved into popular FOSS software, nor do most interview
| processes actually vet for technical capability or quality.
|
| My friends who work in tech right now (whether at Amazon,
| Microsoft, Google, Mercedes, etc) essentially set aside 6 to
| 18 months prior to job hunting to screw around practicing
| these questions.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Even if I liked the job I would take it. Six months paid
| holiday would be too good to pass up.
| swyx wrote:
| depends. it (used to be) a tough job to get. i've heard vague
| indications that their profit sharing would have been
| extremely lucrative. but i dont know exact numbers.
|
| but just on a numbers basis if you made 1m a year profit
| sharing but a normal job outside you'd make 200k, you'd have
| to really hate working there to quit purely for the 6month
| payout.
| void_mint wrote:
| Eh. This thread is about employees of 3+ years, in which
| case, even if the profit share is very lucrative, they've
| received that profit share 3+ times. On top of that, I
| doubt Basecamp pays poorly. If you're even vaguely burnt
| out or bored, 6 months off sounds like a dream.
| [deleted]
| baron816 wrote:
| Yeah, let's say your salary was $200k. They give you $100k
| immediately, you turn around and find another job after a
| month off at $190k--that means you're making about $273k this
| year.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| $273k means you would be hitting the top marginal federal
| income tax rate and also the net investment income tax. If
| you are in a state with high state income tax rates, your
| additional $100k nets you $50k. Of which maybe $10k goes to
| replace the post-tax income you lost for the month you
| spent looking for a job.
|
| $40k in the bank is a nice bonus, but I wouldn't quit a job
| I liked for it.
| [deleted]
| francisofascii wrote:
| It depends on the terms, is it a lump sum? Or would the
| paychecks end when you get the new job?
| [deleted]
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Severance (or "buy-out"), is typically (in my experience)
| a one time lump sum event.
| NationalPark wrote:
| I wonder if they're regretting the "no employee equity" policy
| now.
| ggreer wrote:
| What? After two years, every Basecamp employee starts getting
| shares that pay dividends.[1] Their handbook also claims that
| employees will get 10% of the value of the company if it is
| ever sold or goes public (though they plan to never do so).
|
| https://basecamp.com/handbook/08-benefits-and-
| perks#employee...
| robocat wrote:
| "We ask that you think of any compensation from this
| program as not something to be counted upon, not something
| to be budgeted with, but as a true bonus. Year to year,
| profits and therefore the amount we're able to share with
| employees may swing wildly or not be paid out at all."
|
| Does anyone add in randomness (dice?) to actually enforce
| the feeling that profits/bonuses can swing wildly?
|
| "This Program does not have any set expiration date, but
| the company reserves the right to amend it or cancel it at
| any time. You forfeit your shares in the profit sharing
| program if you resign or are terminated from Basecamp."
|
| So not equity. Profit sharing.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Exactly, it's a profit sharing program that encourages good
| year over year results, not something that rewards you with
| assets that may be worth a whole lot of money, but only in
| 10 years.
|
| I guess it comes down to numbers though. How much money was
| this profit sharing incentive giving to most employees? And
| how many users did they lose this week?
| Hamuko wrote:
| Didn't Coinbase do something similar and only have 5% take the
| buyout option? How is this so different from what Coinbase did?
| disgrunt wrote:
| Coinbase was about to go public?
| dmcginty wrote:
| Their IPO was just a couple weeks ago.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Smaller, more intimate company, possibly more peer pressure.
|
| A selection bias at Basecamp, where they likely (whether
| intentionally or not) favored hiring politically outspoken,
| left leaning, progressive candidates. DHH has always been
| politically outspoken, so it's not a major surprise that they
| hired many similar types of people. Given how outspoken he is
| about literally everything, I'm almost entirely certain he
| would have been the first one out of the door if he were on the
| other side of this situation.
|
| And then just the horrible way in which they mismanaged this,
| by announcing it publicly on a blog post (many of them heard
| about it on Twitter first) before actually talking with their
| employees.
| [deleted]
| babelfish wrote:
| 1/3 of your company choosing the buyout is way more significant
| than 5%
| epivosism wrote:
| I think there's another interpretation to his question - he's
| seriously asking why this decision had such a different
| result in this case, not trying to assert that this is a
| similar result.
| coding123 wrote:
| Coinbase employees are probably "hodl"ers.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Two theories I've seen:
|
| 1) Coinbase's corporate culture is more libertarian (where an
| argument on "don't focus on politics" may go across more
| reasonably) while Basecamp's entire corporate brand is based on
| power for employees.
|
| 2) Coinbase was about to IPO and thus taking a buyout is harder
| to justify financially, while Basecamp equity is essentially
| worthless.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Does Basecamp provide equity? And if so how does that equity
| turn into something liquid for employees - do they get a
| share of profits based on that equity?
| jamie_ca wrote:
| They had what I understand to be a fairly generous profit-
| sharing arrangement once you hit a few years tenure.
| swyx wrote:
| can anyone ballpark numbers for what generous means? i
| know this question sounds nosy but i just want to know if
| this is closer to like 10k or 100k or 1,000k a year. i'm
| sure examples of each exist in the world under "profit
| sharing"
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| > Coinbase's corporate culture is more libertarian (where an
| argument on "don't focus on politics" may go across more
| reasonably)
|
| How is it reasonable to enforce "no politics" when the
| company's culture is based on a niche political tendency?
|
| The more reasonable interpretation is "no politics that looks
| different from our existing politics"
| swyx wrote:
| ergodicity. the makeup of a 60 person company is much more
| about the company than the population average "anti-politics-
| ban" (which coinbase, a ~1500 person company, is probably
| closer to, even when not considering that you are probably of a
| certain leaning when you work at a crypto company)
|
| but also i think the founders kinda blindsided all the
| employees with the announcement which probably made it worse.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I have a different take on this, different than most comments
| here: I think that the founders/owners knew what they were doing
| based on reading their book and lightly following them. I have
| never been a customer.
|
| I know that I am just guessing, but they might have been making
| the lifestyle decision that they wanted a smaller and more
| focused company that was more joyful to manage/run. Also, I have
| some sympathy for a "no politics" guideline for two reasons: no
| one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that makes
| anyone uncomfortable in a personal way; no one should really care
| much about other peoples' politics. Life is about so much more
| than politics. I am judgmental, but I judge people on how well
| they treat other people and by how much effort they make
| improving the world (understanding that people have different
| natural abilities).
| najtdale wrote:
| What an employer cannot ask at job interview, should not be
| discussed at the workplace
| humanrebar wrote:
| Eh. They can't ask your marital status, but keeping that
| secret your whole tenure would be silly. Same for medical
| history but it would be awkward to never mention a pregnancy
| that is obviously showing.
| bdowling wrote:
| > I think that the founders/owners knew what they were doing...
|
| > ...they wanted a smaller and more focused company that was
| more joyful to manage/run.
|
| I agree with you because the six month severance offer was so
| generous that it can only mean that they wanted a lot of people
| to take it. Also, if they found that they were losing too many
| people, then they would start offering people money NOT to take
| the severance offer. But that didn't happen. So, I have to
| conclude that the 1/3 headcount cut is intentional.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that
| makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way_
|
| I agree with this but plot twist: in a world where "silence is
| violence" you cannot choose to simply opt out.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| > no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that
| makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way;
|
| I get that you mean very well with this statement. However,
| given a large and diverse enough group of people working
| together, it's practically impossible that NO ONE will never
| feel uncomfortable in different situations or interactions. Be
| it personally or professionally uncomfortable. Period.
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| Divide it into smaller groups.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| If aiming for comfort 100% of the time is the highest value
| of a group of productive people, then they simply have the
| wrong goal to strive towards. And it won't be a very
| inclusive and accepting group either.
|
| We would not be where we are today if it weren't for the
| people that put themselves in a very uncomfortable
| positions to talk about something and possibly offend a
| bunch of people along the way, or people who haven't backed
| down even when made uncomfortable and stood for whatever
| they believed in to make their point clear.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You're never going to make a policy work that's goal is to "not
| make anyone uncomfortable". Politics aside, if you have an
| employee who is uncomfortable when it's warmer than 60F sharing
| an office with another employee who is uncomfortable when it's
| colder than 70F, bam, your HVAC policy is unworkable.
|
| Back to opinions: There is a very wide range of topics that
| might be uncomfortable to any one person. You'd need to avoid
| the union set of all of those topics--which might mean you can
| say nothing at all!
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I mean... yeah. That's been the prevailing culture in all the
| jobs I've had - when you're talking with your coworkers, your
| options are work or completely banal small talk ("sure is
| sunny today!"), unless you're in a small group you know well
| enough to be sure another topic won't make them
| uncomfortable.
| gregmac wrote:
| > no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that
| makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way; no one should
| really care much about other peoples' politics. Life is about
| so much more than politics
|
| While this sounds good in principle, there are still lots of
| people offended by others' personal choices and mere existence,
| and who do consider these political issues.
|
| Examples:
|
| https://twitter.com/JillWohlner/status/1386767595374850061
|
| > As a gay woman, you tell me I can't have a 'political or
| societal conversation' and that sounds a lot like I can't talk
| about my wife at work. Bc being in a gay marriage is a f'ing
| political statement to people.
|
| https://twitter.com/liatrisbian/status/1386774755286601728
|
| > And as a non-binary person, telling me to not have political
| or societal conversation at work sends me the message that I
| should hide who I am and can't have conversations around
| pronouns etc.
|
| > In fact, I have been told to not have those political or
| societal conversations. Worded the exact same way as that
| basecamp post.
|
| > You know what that lead to? Not daring to say a fucking word
| while being misgendered _all the time_.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Yep.
|
| And on the other side of the spectrum, it's extremely
| uncomfortable to be a Baptist, work with a lot of left wing
| folks, and then get asked what you did last weekend.
|
| It's not fair to expect everyone to be fully responsible for
| each others' feelings.
| ihumanable wrote:
| > Life is about so much more than politics.
|
| I see this sentiment a lot, and I definitely understand the
| impulse especially in the current political climate. "Politics"
| is just the word we give for how humans interact at scale, to
| which we all have a vested interest. I'm somewhat surprised by
| people taking the attitude that the policies and power dynamics
| that will meaningfully impact their lives, just isn't that
| important.
|
| Perhaps because in the US we have had a long period of relative
| internal stability, we get to have this luxury of going, "Let's
| not care about politics, life is more than that, it's my loved
| one's and hobbies and watching the sunset." But all the other
| bits of life that are more important than politics can only
| exist because of politics, because of the rules and policies
| and power structures we all agree to live under.
|
| A general shying away from politics means that a smaller and
| smaller group of people get to decide the rules for everyone,
| and I just have a hard time believing that that will lead to
| good outcomes.
|
| All that said, I do think that the workplace isn't a great
| environment to have those discussions, politics gets heated and
| it's hard to work with people when you've dredged up a bunch of
| big fundamental disagreements.
|
| > no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that
| makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way;
|
| This is a nice sentiment but ultimately meaningless. A rule or
| policy so broad that it could be applied to nearly any
| interaction, and one that doesn't look at the actions or
| intents of the person committing an "offense" but just says,
| "If someone became uncomfortable during an interaction, the
| other party is at fault." This type of broad unspecified rule
| just gives the rule-enforcers tremendous latitude to use it as
| they see fit.
|
| > I judge people on how well they treat other people and by how
| much effort they make improving the world
|
| I think there's a lot of politically engaged people that
| believe that through politics they can improve the world much
| more than through a single individual's actions. There's little
| I can do personally to improve the access to healthcare for my
| fellow citizens, but through political action fellow citizens
| could gain access to that. Many people would consider that an
| improvement.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| That's an optimistic view of politics. It seems more tribal,
| more like taking sides, more like sports. Politics these
| days, particularly in the west, particularly on the internet,
| has a real "you're-with-us-or-against-us" component. I think
| that's the thing people want to stay away from when they say
| they don't want to care about politics.
| ihumanable wrote:
| Political discourse has become very tribal, but that
| doesn't mean that politics has left its role in society.
|
| Politics sets the rules for what you can buy, what you can
| sell, what licensing you need, what forms you have to fill
| out, what taxes you have to pay, what actions lead to you
| losing your freedom, what actions lead to you losing your
| property, what actions lead to you losing your life.
|
| Let's not conflate political discourse with politics.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'm kind of tired of the sanitization of work thing. Human
| beings are grimy, sweaty creatures. People make friends, people
| dislike other people, people speak with candor, people lie,
| people want to have sex with each other. "No being human at
| work" is ridiculous IMO. I value and understand the need for a
| professional environment, but it seems we are playing to the
| lowest common denominator and trying to create one size fits
| all rule sets to avoid overtly saying which problem we are
| trying to solve: that the politics of _those people_ are toxic
| and they ruin everything they touch. You know what people I 'm
| talking about. Everyone here knows what people I'm talking
| about. Why don't we just admit what's going on here and make
| the very specific rules we need to make to finally put a stop
| to it?
| [deleted]
| Wolfr_ wrote:
| If that's really their intent why not do a layoff round with a
| bigger severance package for 10-20 ppl to get back to 30
| people, it would be less painful than this PR disaster?
| ezekg wrote:
| All press is good press?
| haihaibye wrote:
| Purging overly political employees is probably illegal, so
| they made a policy then offered $ to voluntarily self select
| themselves out.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| This is not a disaster for anyone involved.
| hogFeast wrote:
| > Life is about so much more than politics
|
| As someone who isn't from the US, it is very hard to
| comprehend.
|
| There is a meme about Americans. You meet an American, and ten
| minutes later they are drilling you about politics. And I
| understand why US society is like this, I am familiar with US
| political history.
|
| But it is very, very, very weird at a personal level. Like why
| do this? You are breaking a person's whole reality down to
| their politics...it doesn't seem like a good idea, it seems
| like the opposite of diversity or just accepting someone's
| humanity.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| How recent is that meme? Politics has long been decisive in
| America, but it seems like only in the past 20 years has it
| become something people have been become forward and
| culturally tribal about. Does that impression hold up for
| non-Americans too?
| hogFeast wrote:
| The standard interpretation is that politics became more
| divisive in the mid-90s...but, imo, that doesn't hold
| merit.
|
| Clinton worked with Republicans after he lost Congress.
| Obama worked with a Republican Congress. And you can go
| further back and point to someone like McGovern (or
| Goldwater on the other side) as reactionary/divisive
| candidates. You had Eisenhower Democrats and the like but
| there has always been a spectrum in both parties (and that
| is still the case today i.e. Manchin).
|
| I think two things have changed. One, the media. Politics
| in the media is different from the practice of politics,
| the latter largely about compromise. Because of bandwidth
| of media/politics as entertainment, the fringes of both
| parties have become more extreme (it has gotten so bad, you
| wonder whether some politicians know they are actors
| anymore). Two, diversity. Countries that have diverse
| populations will always have divisive politics. The US
| system is the most robust in the world but it is moving
| towards problem territory (for example, the Democrats seem
| to have settled on always electing a man and woman for
| P/VP...this is basically the segregated politics you see in
| Lebanon or other places with fairly massive political
| issues, the "our turn to eat" politics is more common to
| Africa than the developed world).
|
| My impression is heavily coloured by studying American
| history/politics for a long time. But other people I know
| just find American politics very weird...it is just very
| weird, everything is politicised...like Germany pre-Hitler.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that
| makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way;
|
| Agreed. But frequently calling that out IS what is deemed
| "political" by the person who was "just expressing an opinion",
| and "i just have a different ideology from you"
|
| > ; no one should really care much about other peoples'
| politics.
|
| Some people's politics is other people's human rights. Would
| you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was
| racist and thought that people of your race were inherently
| less capable than their own. (Even if they believed you
| _individually_ were okay)
| bumbastique wrote:
| > _Some people 's politics is other people's human rights._
|
| Yeah but this all started because some of the more hysterical
| employees started saying nonsense like: a list of funny
| customer names is the first step towards genocide. Some
| people's politics are just retarded.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| > Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their
| heart was racist and thought that people of your race were
| inherently less capable than their own.
|
| Ideally, you wouldn't even know this was the case.
| browningstreet wrote:
| But taking the conversation _there_ -- that politics is about
| racism -- is exactly the kind of extremism we struggle with
| these days. For the most part, we _should_ be able to co-
| exist across the political spectrum, but equating politics to
| something extreme, or having to bring up a false equivalency
| in conversation, keeps things heated.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Politics isn't about racism.
|
| Politics isn't ONLY about racism.
|
| Politics isn't ONLY about NOT racism.
|
| If you ban politics, you also ban politics about racism.
|
| But if politics was about whether the city should spend a
| budget surplus on a sidewalk upgrade or a new park bench,
| then nobody would even think about banning those
| discussions.
|
| So when you ban politics, you ban politics about racism.
| Because those are the controversial ones.
|
| And less abstractly, more concretely, about the basecamp
| situation, the politics that led to this ban were
| explicitly politics about racism.
| bumbastique wrote:
| Too much of politics is about racism and similar
| identarian issues these days, at the expense of more
| fundamental topics.
|
| For example, BLM should really have been about police
| brutality and police abuse in general. It's not just
| black people who get regularly shit on by the cops. But
| by making it all about race, the more general point is
| missed and no progress is made.
|
| Another example, you get Biden paying lip service to
| trans rights, but nothing about introducing Medicare For
| All - which would actually make things better for
| everyone, including those with gender dysphoria who
| require access to healthcare professionals.
|
| Of course, people who see all the country's problems
| through an identity politics lens don't like it when you
| point out things like this.
| wl wrote:
| Gun control. Abortion. Climate change. Drugs. The death
| penalty.
|
| Racism isn't the only controversial political topic out
| there.
| ideal_stingray wrote:
| I'm trans and disabled, and I'd rather work with someone who
| thinks people like me shouldn't exist but keeps their mouth
| shut about it at work than someone who thinks work is a great
| place to debate hot-button trans issues. Of course, other
| marginalized people may feel differently.
| wakeupbakeup wrote:
| I'm gay and feel the same.
|
| I honestly wish these people would just fuck off and mind
| their own business.
|
| Completely fed up of their stupid woke shit.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm a minority who has worked with people like that in the
| past, and I'll never do it again.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| What if your company built a feature or product that
| inadvertently discriminated against trans or disabled
| people? Would you want someone to advocate for those
| groups? Would that discussion be deemed political?
| FFRefresh wrote:
| What's an example of a product that would inadvertently
| discriminate against trans people?
|
| What does it mean to inadvertently discriminate?
|
| As an example, a lot of websites drop support for IE. If
| the makeup of IE users affected by it over-indexed on any
| particular type of race/gender/class/sexual orientation,
| would you classify that as inadvertent discrimination?
|
| If a first version of a new website/product wasn't built
| to be perfectly compatible with accessibility standards,
| are they inadvertently discriminating against those with
| disabilities?
|
| Are software bugs that may not be equally felt by all
| users an example of inadvertent discrimination?
|
| Is the only way to not inadvertently discriminate to
| ensure products are built to be optimized for every
| single human and use case? Every edge case needs to be
| solved for before launch?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Not necessarily trans people. But there are plenty of
| tech products that inadvertently discriminated against
| Black people because of bad training data. The best known
| case is Google's AI recognizing Black people as
| "gorillas".
|
| To this day, our home securing system sometimes
| recognizes my big Black stepson as an "animal."
|
| Facial recognition that was used by law enforcement, mis
| recognized minorities far more than Whites.
| ideal_stingray wrote:
| When I can, I try to point out "hey, we need to caption
| this" or "hey, I'm not sure this is accessible to
| visually impaired users" or "uh, these gender options
| suck". Probably wouldn't bring up my personal identity
| unless it was somehow relevant, which it rarely is in
| these kinds of discussions. I think it would be
| inappropriate to have a discussion about broader politics
| ("hey, what do you guys think of the bathroom bill?") in
| this context -- the thing that personally drives me up
| the wall is water-cooler conversation about politics like
| it's a sport, when it's unrelated to the product or the
| company.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| What about the risk that, if they are/become your manager
| or senior manager, then you might "inexplicably" never get
| the promotion you deserved?
|
| Would you rather have known about that risk early, or after
| a few years of not getting promoted?
| exolymph wrote:
| No policy in the world can make up for bad management.
| jtdev wrote:
| Do you insist that your coworkers adhere to gender
| etiquette rules imposed by the trans community? Bathroom
| assignments? Etc.?
| deanCommie wrote:
| Do you think your opinion is the common one in others like
| you? Or do you think you're an outlier?
| ideal_stingray wrote:
| I think it's hard to tell; people like me tend to not be
| heard a lot in these kinds of conversations. But I feel
| like there are enough of us that it's better to exercise
| caution and specifically carve out opt-in spaces for
| political discussion if you really want them to exist --
| marginalized people often have a lot of trauma related to
| their marginalization and it's easy to inadvertently hurt
| people with careless political discussion.
| icelancer wrote:
| It's a very common opinion amongst Asians, speaking as
| one who knows many who agree. Work is work.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their
| heart was racist and thought that people of your race were
| inherently less capable than their own. (Even if they
| believed you individually were okay)
|
| This sound frighteningly religious. Here you are trying to
| read people's hearts and refusing to work with them.
|
| It is this Manichean us versus them and not just judging
| actions but trying to look at a person's heart that has
| turned up the heat of discourse and is tearing our country
| apart.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Not at all. It was an imprecise choice of phrasing, I'm not
| saying you should be trying to guess what their thoughts
| are. I'm saying if that coworker revealed that information
| directly.
| jshen wrote:
| I think eating a lot of red meat is one of the greatest moral
| problems in our society today from climate change, factory
| farming, and habitat destruction.
|
| I don't think I should be haranguing people at work about it.
| pavlov wrote:
| You're invited to a work dinner that only has meat on the
| menu. Do you bring up the lack of a vegetarian option? Or
| should you shut up and not eat anything (or skip the social
| event) because colleagues know you're a vegetarian and you
| don't want to be perceived as haranguing people at work
| about it?
|
| I once had a job where I'd just signed the offer and was
| invited to their team dinner before my official start date.
| It was at a restaurant that only served chicken that you
| were supposed to eat with rubber gloves (I have no idea
| what that was about). It was uncomfortable to realize that
| I stood out like a sore thumb even before I'd started just
| because of a dietary preference. It had never occurred to
| the managers that a regular-looking man who joins their
| team might not eat meat.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Well, I was invited, shortly after starting a new job, to
| a restaurant that I couldn't afford. So I said, I'm sorry
| I can't go, and that was that. Definitely a very awkward
| way to start as it was from their point of view a
| welcoming meal.
|
| I can't quite tell, did you go to the chicken place? Have
| things improved?
| pavlov wrote:
| I did go because I hadn't realized it was a weird chicken
| place until I got there and was offered the rubber
| gloves.
|
| I left that job after six months. The four male founders
| turned out to be old buddies who wanted everyone in their
| little club to be exactly like them but with a deference
| to their incredible competence as employers. Maybe I've
| been unlucky, but I have the impression that small
| business tech jobs mostly suck. (Basecamp has a bit of
| that vibe, to be honest.)
| simonh wrote:
| Personally yes, because I'm an optimist and I believe people
| can change for the better and one way that could happen is
| through civil and professional working relationships.
|
| I agree it's not a comfortable situation and specific
| circumstances can trump a generalisation, but it's not
| impossible that I could tolerate that sort of situation and
| in fact people do it al, the time. How many of us have worked
| at places where everyone knew there was one guy who was a
| misogynist but plenty of women there put up with it?
|
| For me it's about the actual behaviour. I can't police what
| people think or believe, nobody really can in truth, but we
| can expect basic standards of behaviour.
| prepend wrote:
| > Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their
| heart was racist and thought that people of your race were
| inherently less capable than their own.
|
| I'm not able to know someone's heart, so if I reached this
| conclusion I would abort out due to faulty logic.
|
| Also, I don't really want to know Karen in accounting's
| heart, even if it's awesome. I'd rather just be professional
| and not know.
|
| Reading the experience in base camp equating this with
| genocide, hr complaints, etc it seems people were really
| convinced of things. But they seem really wrong to me. But
| they acted on it. Having such certainty is foolish.
|
| I'd rather not try to adjust my workplace based on people's
| hearts and would rather risk working with people who
| secretly, racistly hate me than to try to vet people at this
| level.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| > Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their
| heart was racist and thought that people of your race were
| inherently less capable than their own.
|
| In Judaism there's a tolerance for people that are orthoprax
| (right behavior) even if in their heart of hearts they are
| not orthodox (right beliefs).
|
| Despite the increasing percentage of non-believers, America
| is culturally deeply Protestant and so we don't allow this
| sort of thing. But I think we might be better off if we did.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >America is culturally deeply Protestant //
|
| Could you highlight some of the characteristics that you
| consider go along with this.
|
| "Deeply protestant" to me brings to mind the Quaker (a
| Protestant denomination) Cadbury & Fry chocolate companies.
| They did things like build municipal buildings, housing,
| schools. Fry family members addressed prison reform
| (Elizabeth Fry) and studied and acted to counter poverty
| and it's causes, for example. They reduced working hours
| too!
|
| Sure, it was paternalistic, and they grew wealthy from
| their employees, but it seems they acted benevolently and
| genuinely tried to make a difference in their communities
| and for their workers.
|
| https://medium.com/@cafonline/meet-the-philanthropists-
| sweet... gives a brief view.
|
| What we hear of USA this side of the pond and these sorts
| of attributes don't seem to mesh.
| kaitai wrote:
| America is much more informed by evangelical
| Protestantism, rather than Quakerism and other non-
| conformists, and deeply influenced by "sola scriptura"
| (which directly conflicts with Anglican and Methodist
| theologies). In the US evangelical and non-denominational
| Christian theologies generally posit that accepting
| Christ as your personal Savior (and the sole source of
| salvation) is all that is necessary to be saved (and
| Christian). Individual affirmation of a series of
| propositional statements is necessary and sufficient to
| fulfill your duties as a Christian. (This contrasts quite
| a bit with Quakerism, which is primarily experiential and
| focuses on discerning God's will and turning it into
| action _in community_ ). Orthodoxy is the primary measure
| of Christianity in the US. Any action can be forgiven as
| long as you say the right words.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I have heard that regarding judaism referenced at similarly
| high level frequently over the years. What is a reasonably
| accessible way one might learn more?
| kaitai wrote:
| As a woman I would far rather work for a guy who thinks
| women should stay at home but keeps his opinions to himself
| and his family and treats me fairly than I would work for a
| guy who can quote Steinem and Lorde and hooks but throws me
| under the bus. Have essentially done both. My personal
| motto has been "Your beliefs are not a problem for me
| unless you make them my problem." Orthopraxy all the way.
|
| Outcomes are the evidence. I am not interested in your or
| your company's social media statements. I'm interested in
| whether people who are underrepresented in the field can
| succeed at your company and whether you treat people like
| me fairly. This is obvious self-interest on my part, just
| like engaging in paid labor in the first place.
|
| "People leave managers, not companies." I think this is the
| most appropriate cliche to apply to the Basecamp story.
| ezekg wrote:
| This seems pretty meta, but very relevant:
| https://basecamp.com/gettingreal/15.5-ride-out-the-storm
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Jason and DHH would do well to speak less and focus on work more,
| like the rest of us average people.
| daodedickinson wrote:
| Meanwhile, many of us powerless cry ourselves to sleep over
| widely seen, publicly available evidence that happens to
| implicate rulers.
| jariel wrote:
| "He told me today that attempting to link the list of customer
| names to potential genocide represented a case of
| "catastrophizing" -- one that made it impossible for any good-
| faith discussions to follow. "
|
| And there you have the unavoidable issue.
|
| Some people believing that 'name mocking' is the 'core hate' upon
| which genocide is built, some people think that's a bridge to
| far.
|
| I agree with the CEO that the intellectualized vitriol towards
| the list is just far too much.
|
| It's hard for some people to grasp this, but if you allow rank
| and file to create councils that allow them to control the
| company, especially from inflated moral positions, then some of
| them will do that.
|
| A lot of people I believe express their anger and frustration
| through aggressive moralization and this is another outlet for
| that.
|
| There's a 100% chance that these movements attract bad faith
| actors and will cause problems, they have to be dealt with very
| carefully.
| robocat wrote:
| I would be interested in how many people quit that were involved
| in the DE&I council: "Nonetheless, the DE&I council attracted
| significant support. More than a third of the company -- 20 out
| of roughly 58 employees -- volunteered to help. They began
| examining Basecamp's hiring processes, which vendors the company
| works with, how Basecamp employees socialize, and what speakers
| they might invite to one of the all-remote company's twice-yearly
| in-person gatherings." - from: What really happened at Basecamp -
| https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
| kutenai wrote:
| The employees that left probably spent most of their time
| protesting.
|
| The next article will be "Influx of resume's for talent that
| prefers to work and be free from the thought police"
| geofft wrote:
| 30% of the company spent most of their time protesting instead
| of doing their job?? That speaks pretty poorly of DHH and
| Jason's business skills, doesn't it? Shouldn't they have
| noticed this problem earlier?
| kutenai wrote:
| You are right. "most" was the wrong word to use. "some", not
| zero, might be better.. it is just speculation anyway.
|
| Regardless of how much time they spent, they may have made
| others uncomfortable. I've heard that any kind of speech that
| makes someone uncomfortable is bad.
| geofft wrote:
| I've heard that too, from Jason's blog post:
|
| > _No more societal and political discussions on our
| company Basecamp account. Today 's social and political
| waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and
| every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or
| society at large quickly spins away from pleasant._
|
| But I think that's a misguided worldview, and people have
| to be able to deal with unpleasant conversations at work.
| The real world isn't a safe space for rich CEO's feelings.
| Maybe it used to be, but it no longer is.
| whynea wrote:
| Sounds good for Basecamp's remaining employees, they can seek out
| new colleagues who don't throw a tantrum when being politely
| asked not to bring their politics to work.
|
| I mean, look at the state of this whiner:
| https://twitter.com/dankim/status/1387378826364260354
|
| "In my entire professional career of 20+ years, I have never once
| cried at work until today."
|
| An absolutely pathetic child of a man. Asked not to rile
| colleagues up with divisive political discussions, and then
| literally cries about it.
| deanCommie wrote:
| " Asked not to rile colleagues up with divisive political
| discussions," is not an accurate representation of the stated
| policy that was introduced.
|
| Divisive was not a factor.
| faitswulff wrote:
| So all the free speech maximalists are here in force, right?
| ...right?
| the-dude wrote:
| "Changes at Basecamp" :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944192 ( 4 days ago, 774
| comments ).
|
| Which is a feel good piece about management philosophy ( a bit
| _back to our roots_ ) and does not mention layoffs once.
| albedoa wrote:
| The announcement of buy-out offers came later.
| detaro wrote:
| Sounds more like a "if you don't like it you can leave" and a
| bunch of people taking them up on it than a planned layoff.
| Would love to know what number of leavers they expected (I
| assume they expected/hoped for some) vs they got.
| the-dude wrote:
| Now you mention it, is surely reads like that. Especially at
| the end : _Who made these decisions? Well, David and I did_.
|
| And I searched the HN comments, and nobody seems to have
| uttered the words _leaving_ or _layoff_.
| ptrkcsk wrote:
| > Yesterday, we offered everyone at Basecamp an option of a
| severance package worth up to six months salary for those
| who've been with the company over three years, and three months
| salary for those at the company less than that. No hard
| feelings, no questions asked. For those who cannot see a future
| at Basecamp under this new direction, we'll help them in every
| which way we can to land somewhere else.
|
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
| switz wrote:
| If you want more context, this article really breaks down what
| happened internally. There's a lot more to the story than was
| presented. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708
| shoo wrote:
| > "There's always been this kind of unwritten rule at
| Basecamp that the company basically exists for David and
| Jason's enjoyment," one employee told me. "At the end of the
| day, they are not interested in seeing things in their work
| timeline that make them uncomfortable, or distracts them from
| what they're interested in. And this is the culmination of
| that."
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Seconded. I'm one of the strongest "no politics at work" guys
| you'll find, and unless there's substantial missing context,
| even I would consider leaving Basecamp over this. A widely
| circulated list to make fun of people's names is pretty
| egregious, and demands a lot more introspection on company
| culture than it sounds like the founders were willing to do.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| This article makes a great point about what might be
| considered "politics at work":
|
| > What that view misses, I think, is how confusing rules
| like these are to employees. One Basecamp worker I spoke
| with today, who requested anonymity, wondered the extent to
| which parenting issues could be raised at work. "How do you
| talk about raising kids without talking about society?" the
| employee said. "As soon as I bring up public schools, then
| it's already political."
|
| Or what if you're black, is talking about your race or your
| own lived experiences considered political?
|
| I don't tend to talk about political stuff at work too much
| personally, but recently we've been talking about the
| pandemic a lot (like everyone else). Is that political?
| Sure seems like it could be construed to be political. Even
| public health advice from the CDC is considered to be
| political these days.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Like any category of social behavior, the boundaries are
| fuzzy. It's also hard to draw a crisp line between
| passion and rudeness, yet I don't think anyone would
| conclude that being rude to your coworkers should be
| allowed. If you have a healthy culture, mutual respect
| and benefit of the doubt will smooth over the fuzziness;
| I've worked in multiple teams across multiple companies
| that manage to generally avoid politics, while still
| talking about parenting and lived experiences and the
| CDC.
| mandevil wrote:
| This story makes clear that it wasn't 'politics' the way
| all the outsiders thought of it. The way this rule was
| instituted makes it clear that it was about protecting
| company leaders (and DHH's ego) from criticism over their
| failures w.r.t the widely circulated list of funny names
| of customers.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Yes, I agree. This is what I said in my original comment.
| the-dude wrote:
| Thank you.
| creamytaco wrote:
| I don't see a lot more there, besides referring to (long)
| past events to justify continuing with specific policies and
| actions.
|
| In fact, it's definitely smart of Basecamp to realize that
| the kind of politics and ideology we encounter today in the
| US are anathema to any workplace and may lead to paralysis
| and rot-from-within outcomes. I expect more companies to
| follow suit.
| xt00 wrote:
| Reading the thing about the "small council" made me think, hmm
| this must be a huge company, but its 60 people.. I wonder how
| many of the people on the small council that got disbanded
| quit. Sounds somewhat like there were a number of employees who
| probably feel like they previously had a lot of say in the
| company and now maybe don't -- so yea hard to say who's right
| here, but big personalities sometimes do make things hard if
| there isn't some order to the chaos coming from the company
| leaders.
| mmmcookies wrote:
| I wouldn't hire any of these people if they left due to the
| policy change. How about you put your money where you mouth is
| and join a non-profit if you care so much about these issues.
| Instead, it's a bunch of incredibly privileged individuals
| throwing a tantrum from their ivory towers without any skin the
| game. It's pathetic.
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| Off the top of my head, Jane Yang, who I believe has quit, left
| non-profits to pursue a strategy of earning to give
| (https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/). What's your
| basis for believing these people don't really care?
| btilly wrote:
| WTF Twitter?
|
| I clicked on the story. Clicked the back button. And Twitter had
| a big giant popup on THIS page suggesting that I install the
| twitter app. That had no obvious way to be removed.
|
| I have no idea how they did that. But I really hope that the
| advertising spam industry doesn't start abusing this to place
| invasive ads all over other people's pages.
| danuker wrote:
| I also hate this; it happens more often with mobile.
|
| Here: https://archive.is/UJrNo
| asadlionpk wrote:
| You mean a modal on HN?? That has to be a bug in browser. Maybe
| even security bug?
| bosswipe wrote:
| Got a screenshot? What platform?
| baron816 wrote:
| What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people
| don't really have organizations they can go to to advocate their
| political positions.
|
| People have their families, their jobs, and maybe a couple of
| friends and that's about it. They need an outlet to push the
| ideas and causes they care about. The workplace is one of the few
| places where they can _feel_ like they're having an impact, but
| that's not really appropriate.
|
| I'd hate to go into work and be harassed about being "silent is
| complicit" (which seems like it was one of the major drivers of
| the change). I would hate it even more if I went into work and
| people were trying to convert me to evangelical Christianity, or
| Islam. I like that people want to express themselves and improve
| the world we live in, but they need to find a better place to do
| that.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people
| don't really have organizations they can go to to advocate
| their political positions.
|
| Why should workplaces serve as political-outlet therapy
| locations because people can't think of other organizations to
| use for this purpose? There are, in fact, countless numbers of
| political organizations and groups in the U.S. and you are free
| to start your own if you don't like anything on offer. The idea
| that you a company should cater to your other non-work desires
| such as baptism or finding a loved one or expressing your
| personal angst about some topic just because you're there and
| it's convenient doesn't make much sense. Yes, political
| activism takes time and you may not have time to go to a
| meeting after work or on weekends. That doesn't mean you can
| turn your workplace into a church or other political-therapy
| group.
| pochamago wrote:
| I think for the people who are so passionate they can't imagine
| not engaging with politics at work should look for careers in
| NGOs. I don't feel any disdain for activists, I just don't
| really want to work with them, and I think we'd both be happier
| if they were engaged in work that had first order effects on
| their beliefs instead of second or third
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| "Workplace is inappropriate for politics" is a really
| ahistorical stance to take. All the things that you enjoy
| nowadays (8 hr work day, 5 day work week, no child labour, etc)
| came about as a result of organized politics at the workplace.
| xbar wrote:
| Nope. Those are all the results of laws which came from
| politically elected officials who made policy.
|
| None of my employers limited work hours or work days or
| children at work because of political discourse in the
| office. Nor did historical companies from 3 generations ago
| when such laws were passed.
|
| All of those laws were created because companies did NOT
| implement such limits.
| hire_charts wrote:
| Who do you think convinced the politicians to make it
| happen? Lobbyists? (Ha.) It came out of labor movements!
| Strikes and walkouts! In 1867 workers shut down the entire
| Chicago economy for a week! (Congress then passed an 8-hour
| law in 1868, but that was just one step along the way.)
| nickff wrote:
| > _All of those laws were created because companies did NOT
| implement such limits._
|
| Many of the 'work standards' laws (including child labor
| laws) were actually enforcing standards and best-practices
| which originated from industry leaders. One example is how
| the mechanized textile manufacturers eliminated child labor
| (as it was unnecessary and uneconomical), then lobbied
| governments to ban child labor (probably to 'punish' their
| competitors). The 40-hour work week (largely) originated at
| various industry-leaders (notably including Ford, which was
| very efficient, and preferred energetic and loyal workers
| over tired and seasonal ones).
|
| https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-
| affairs...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| A lot of these policies seem like they'd violate NLRA/NLRB
| rules, as well.
| jtdev wrote:
| This "silent is complicit" angle is positively poisonous.
| wwwdonohue wrote:
| People have plenty of places they can express their political
| opinions. They can go to rallies, canvass for candidates,
| phonebank, volunteer, etc. etc. And all those would actually
| make a difference! I think people just like complaining, don't
| like working, and have identified in politics something that
| they can use to loaf that is "virtuous."
| Celebros wrote:
| Saw this article from the same author of this tweet a few days
| ago on here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708)
|
| This part of the article had me scratching my head:
|
| "Hansson's response to this employee took aback many of the
| workers I spoke with. He dug through old chat logs to find a time
| when the employee in question participated in a discussion about
| a customer with a funny-sounding name. Hansson posted the message
| -- visible to the entire company -- and dismissed the substance
| of the employee's complaint"
| [deleted]
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Not gonna provide my view on the politics side, but cutting
| benefits while at the same time making a controversial statement
| about workplace politics is a...bold move. The letter very
| noticeably says that they are providing compensation for these
| benefits _for this year_. That holds the clear implication that
| they won 't keep compensating people for the lack of benefits.
| Also, providing a monetary value for benefits misses the fact
| that time is also worth money. If you're going to cut my
| benefits, you should also compensate me for the additional time
| spent replacing these benefits.
|
| Doing such a clearly cost saving move and trying to frame it as
| keeping focus makes me feel like Basecamp is using "mission
| focus" as an excuse to make a bunch of unpopular decisions and
| bundle them together.
| coldtea wrote:
| They should watch not to let the door hit them on their way
| out...
| drailsusers wrote:
| DHH has a history complaining about censoring at HN [0] while
| this fuckup lands him a front page hit.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1368957511118843908
| geuis wrote:
| I'm not aware of the background behind this. Can someone provide
| the details?
| [deleted]
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| It's very hard for me to take all the talk of the pros and cons
| of talking politics at work seriously when it seems like this
| issue was about a list of 'funny names' of customers, including a
| number of names from people of different cultures. Then someone
| posted this one page PDF:
|
| https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...
|
| And DHH seems to have taken that pdf wildly out of context,
| calling it the "genocide pyramid":
|
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
|
| It seems like if your co-founders are escalating tensions at work
| when people bring up reasonable issues (like not making fun of
| your customers), I don't know what to say.
|
| The one other time politics has come up at Basecamp seems to have
| been a group of people commenting to DHH and Jason that their
| upcoming book's title may be ablest due to the use of the word
| "crazy."
|
| I work at a company where we don't talk 'politics' at work. We're
| a fairly professional group who frankly have a limited set of
| interactions. But I think both of these would be reasonable
| things to bring up, and at least once I did bring up what I
| thought was some problematic use of racially insensitive language
| in my team. It was changed, and we've moved on.
|
| I'm all for getting to work, and doing good work, but when the
| 'politics' you're trying to remove is suggestions to improve a
| legitimate issue at a company, I think that leads to this kind of
| mass resignation.
|
| One can imagine a situation where there really are a group of
| people in a company just discussing and fighting over politics
| all day and not getting anything done. But after reading the
| tweets of dozens of Basecamp employees over the past few days, I
| see no evidence of that happening here. If anything, it seems
| like the founders of Basecamp continually failed to de-escalate
| the situation.
|
| See the list of Basecamp employees comments over the past few
| days:
|
| https://twitter.com/i/lists/1202647
|
| Many people whose work I've followed closely as a Rails dev have
| left today. People whose work I used and relied on. I appreciate
| all they've done for the Rails community, and wish them luck in
| the months ahead.
| brrrrrm wrote:
| Isn't that only 20 people?
|
| Edit: as in, this is misleadingly phrased as if it's a large
| collective action
| minimaxir wrote:
| Still a third, which has organizational consequences.
|
| More importantly, this 20 people includes senior employees
| which cannot easily be replaced.
|
| > The entire iOS team is out, Head of Design and one of the
| oldest hires is out of the team and the Rails Core Team as
| well.
|
| https://twitter.com/agisilaosts/status/1388213430004375555
| williamsmj wrote:
| "About one-third of stools legs removed." "Isn't that only one
| leg?"
| pschuegr wrote:
| "Single leg removed from every stool! How will we replace
| them all?" "But we only have one stool?"
| loopercal wrote:
| You remind me of the database guy who, when I told him we'd
| lost a replica in prod and asked when it would be back online,
| said, "It's not a high priority for us, there's still another
| replica."
| pwthornton wrote:
| It is large collective action per the size of the company.
|
| A small company may actually weather this worse than a large
| company. Basecamp has run lean for years. Some of those big
| tech companies like Microsoft often weather huge layoffs with
| no real ill effects. But they often get really bloated when the
| economy is rocking and then lean out every now and then.
|
| But this is monstrous. I've never seen this many people leave
| at once.
|
| There is no way this is good for Basecamp.
| whymauri wrote:
| *Three* org heads, two lead developers, and seven developers
| (apparently the entire iOS team) in that group, at least.
| That's a recruitment/headcount nightmare... I wouldn't be
| surprised if other employees leave based on crunch and
| headcount alone.
| bob33212 wrote:
| I left a job because management decided to take on a customer
| that was going to be a disaster to work with. This could be
| happening here. If you were the lone iOS dev you would be on
| call 24/7 until they hired more people. Why not take a paid
| vacation
| confidantlake wrote:
| 20 people leave Microsoft, sure not a big deal. 20 people leave
| a company with 60 people? That is huge.
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