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.
Yes, people are reacting to the policy. But it's definitely that the policy is a reaction to something as well.
Probably, the founders believed that the toxicity of the internal culture had reached a point where it was extremely detrimental to the workplace. And, knowing DHH, it was probably not only a financial decision but a lifestyle one. He may have realized that the advocates that actively discussed and promoted political issues within the org was making his life and others in the company miserable.
Would you allow a Jehovah's Witness to be a significant part of your life if they proselytize you every day? I definitely wouldn't. Some of these activists probably think that's their right to do so; so let them walk.
I'd be really surprised if this surprised the executive team. This seems to be a super intentional and very professionally executed cultural shift / purge. Professional, because you give them freaking 6 months of severance and you don't call them out or force them out. If that isn't recognized as goodwill, you're blinded by your political disagreements to seeing how nice of a treatment that is.
The people leaving probably grew with the company, and contributed a lot to the company, so giving them 6 months of severance is recognizing that. But it's also telling them, hey we are making a cultural shift in our identity, and if that identity is no longer you, sorry, we'll treat you really well as you find a place that supports your identity.
This reeks of professionalism and GOOD management to me.
Yeah, honestly this seems like addition by subtraction. The last thing I would want at work is to navigate around ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists. Not that all the people leaving were that, but it sure sounds like a lot were. At work I just want professionalism and respectful behavior, along with people that have moderately thick skin and don't seek to find offense everywhere.
I read a summary of the situation and it seemed to me like both sides handled it poorly. It sounded like there was indeed a lot of activism, which is something you don't really want in a workplace, but the C-levels didn't handle it terribly graciously either, what with looking at past logs to find an employee's messages. It's more than a little impolite, I think.
I have to admit there's a certain elegance in filtering out political people by banning public discussions of politics, though. I especially cringed at this bit:
> Jane Yang, a data analyst at the company, told me that restricting internal conversations would negatively affect diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, she said, the company’s profit-sharing plan gave more profits to people who have longer tenure — a group that is majority white and male. Making that discussion off limits internally could ensure that inequality in profit sharing becomes a structural feature of the company.
It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company.
"It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company."
That's exactly where systemic discrimination originates.
Hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and decides that it's a good day to oppress G people. They wake up in the morning having some amount of privilege, discover that it might be threatened, and their actions that day try to avoid reduction of privilege, even if it means treating G people unfairly. It's not anti-G people at first, it's just pro-self.
Over years this becomes a de facto systemic discrimination, generally without a rule that explicitly says "we don't want G coworkers". Instead there are rules that mean that everybody works on G holidays, the microwaves can't be used for "smelly" food (and guess what, all G food is "smelly" by default), and of course, rule is by seniority in the company which just happens not to have any senior G people in it. Somehow fewer G people get hired, and those that do are in low-status positions.
You can pick your own value for G; it could be gender or nationality or ethnicity or religion or skin color or whatever. It works the same way.
In what way do you think that a rule like "the people who have been here the longest should get a bigger share of the company" is unfair to a group of people that is segmented by anything other than "time with the company"?
If you want to ignore that there's an inherent bias towards companies being started more often by people of certain social or racial profiles, sure. But you'd be willingly be ignoring it, and that's why systemic problems are so insidious to fix, they require a more active analysis than "I'm not actively trying to discriminate someone".
> If you want to ignore that there's an inherent bias towards companies being started more often by people of certain social or racial profiles, sure.
Right, so it's not that the rule is biased, it's just that there's general bias because of other things and this rule isn't compensating for it, which are two very different things.
Equality of result is, by definition, a way to bias things towards a different group, and as a proponent of equality of opportunity, I think that's not a good way to build a just society. That's why I'm against trying to "fix" rules that aren't biased in the first place (ie rules which people who support equality of result consider "not biased enough the other way").
"Making that discussion off limits internally could ensure that inequality in profit sharing becomes a structural feature of the company."
The main concern seems to stem from making the discussion off limits. No "fixes" have been proposed. The first step to solving a problem at all is to admit that there is a problem. Being apolitical is privilege. For the unprivileged, simply defending ones rights and dignity is a political issue.
The woman owned and founded startup I work for is completely unable to hire the diverse candidates we have interviewed because they are completely unaffordable at a startup.
Why is this?
Because executives at various massive tech companies are getting massive bonuses connected to how many diverse people they hire. They give lavish salaries and large chunks of equity to people who they otherwise would not. Somebody who is getting offers like this is naturally going to have all of their incentives misaligned for joining a startup.
My company's back end code is Java and Python and we interviewed an engineer who I was willing to teach both of these languages to. She happened to be a black woman and only new PHP using the laravel stack. Zero experience doing front end coding and not really a standout when it came to databases and barely new cloud.
She asked for a large equity stake, but also wanted a salary of $195,000. We are not at all in the Bay area and this salary is completely ridiculous for somebody who also wants a lot of equity and has very few skills that connect to our code base.
She was hired at Amazon for some rather boring role on an internal team that helps the data centers meet energy efficiency requirements by building applications that are essentially dashboards for internal decision makers.
We actually talk on regular basis now because I give her some advice for learning Python.
She was simply negotiating based on her market value and her own fiscal priorities and made a sound well-reasoned decision.
If my company hits it big one day which of course is typically not high probability, people like you will show up and say that we are systemically racist. Ironically the twisted incentives at these massive companies are creating this issue. As long as women are significantly less interested in jobs involving things just like men are significantly less interested in jobs involving people we're going to have to admit that trying to bring things to 50/50 proportions is going to create weird incentives that will further create side effects.
> She asked for a large equity stake, but also wanted a salary of $195,000.
That level of pay is reserved for absolute top talent with at least 15+ years of experience everywhere I’ve worked. Only a major corporation could afford to waste that kind of money on a junior level dev.
Only when it suits the narrative. Also, white or light skinned immigrant don't count, of course, because in the oppression olimpic doesn't matter what your past history is, only what group you belong to in the present.
I think you are being downvoted because of HN’s inherent bias on topics regarding diversity and inclusion (although the flamebaity tone might also be at fault here). But I think this point needs reiterating as it is important to the discussion at hand.
I my self am an immigrant that don’t consider me self a member of any minority and I can attest to this. I don’t experience discrimination in my day-to-day activities, nor on the job market. The only discrimination I experience is what I inherit from USA’s immigration policies. I.e. I have more restricted international travel and my visa is tied to my employer (which I would imagine would be far worse of an experience if I would belong to a minority).
And this makes sense given the sibling threads. Being from a majority group in a country where I have good access to quality education, health care and other services, as well as good job opportunities. This indeed gives me a privilege that I take with me as I migrate. Non-immigrants that have been rejected these opportunities don’t have it this good.
In my experience immigration status alone is not enough to put into a group that has increased risk of being discriminated against.
Makes me mad because wife is an immigrant, but of the wrong kind - light skinned, came here legally - and while she grew in disadvantageous situations much like everyone else reaching the shores illegally, she got exactly zero support from the state, while everyone else was receiving welfare, free healthcare and privileged access to education and the job market.
When we eventually settled she had a long backlog of health issues, which we had to pay out of pocket to the tune of dozens thousands, because the mythical European free healthcare is only for the extremely poor or the tax evaders.
So fuck people towing the line of "we help immigrants because they are resources" - there are few feel good resources that are ultimately discriminatory and capriciously allocated to the most noisy groups, leaving people in need screwed because activists don't fill their diversity quota cards below a certain melatonin concentration
> In my experience immigration status alone is not enough to put into a group that has increased risk of being discriminated against.
This logic is kind of bizarre. You don't want to generalize, but only when it comes to putting people from one group into a different group for which you make generalizations.
In what ways could a rule giving advantage to people who are taller possibly have anything to do with men vs women? Would it just be a coincidence that the tall person bonuses happen to go mostly to men? After all, they go to a few tall women too, so does that prove there is no reason for women to get upset about this policy?
The answer is remarkably simple given the nuances of the topic:
The rule that “the people who have been here the longest should get a bigger share of the company” is unfair in a society which has a history of segregation that favored one group over another, and still is dealing with the aftermath of said segregation.
To justify: The favored group has more chance of being an early hire and therefore having better current benefits. On a large scale this leads to systematic discrimination which is not cool.
So the objection is that rules that don't attempt to fix biases are inherently "biased by default", even though the rule doesn't actually contain bias itself?
Right, but that uses some sleight of hand to make the claim that you can/should adjust for bias everywhere instead of at the source, which isn't something everyone finds fair.
I mean sure. If you have the power to fix the aftermath of centuries of discrimination, that would be amazing. However that is for sure easier said then done. In Cuba it took a civil war, a revolution and a total economic upheaval. I doubt there is popular support for anything like that in most countries.
If you are in favor of a revolution, all the power to you... But if not, then I’m sorry to say that our best option is the slow, painful and gradual correcting for our systemic biases for the next generations.
I don't think it takes a revolution to make a social safety net, ensure good education for every child, and institute free healthcare for everyone, but that probably sounds too close to "socialism" for some people's comfort.
Why do you think all those things would satisfy those that suffer from systemic discrimination? Presumably there would still be a bias towards promotion, opportunities and compensation. Great if you get healthcare from the govt but I don’t think people are suddenly going to stop these types of complaints.
Because childhood nutrition, healthcare, schooling/community and other living conditions are huge causal factors towards a talent pool of people who are prepared to pass a software engineering interview? The original complaint here is all about 'seniority' being inherently unfair due to those societal conditions.
Trying to 'unbias' (meaning a calibrated, countervailing bias actually) at the other end of the funnel, where incidentally 80%+ are already super liberal, doesn't really get the same mileage.
Ok, if we do assume those things do fill the funnel, what do you do foe the next 20-30 years while you wait for those changes to pull through? Tell the folks to “sit tight, we fixed it”?
Well, we're not going to hire software engineers that don't exist in the name of equity. And, yes, the answer to 'how do I do better in this seniority system' is literally always 'wait', no matter who you are.
If people are primarily upset about general societal things rather than clear cut workplace discrimination, I would submit they should focus their activism at those societal things.
I disagree with the idea that everything is racist/sexist/ist which is what this seems to support. Why wouldn't the people who have invested more time into an organization reap more of the benefits? Why stick around otherwise?
So explicitly pay more for certain people on a race/gender basis?
Aside from that being illegal out of the gate due to discrimination laws, who comes up with the formula? Is it revised? What kind of additional bonus are we talking?
In fairness, your second paragraph falls victim to the fallacy of "the problem you mention does not exist because solutions to it are too hard".
Yes, the things you mention are hard to design/decide upon, but strictly speaking that's not an argument against the parent (ie it's not that bonuses based on race/gender are wrong because they're hard to do).
It's a logical extension of the rule that you have to adjust for bias in every facet of employment compensation. You just don't like where the conversation is going because it sounds like a policy most would reject, so you don't want to talk about it. The person they were responding to later agreed that any policy that doesn't fix bias is biased in itself, so what's wrong with applying this any part compensation? There's clearly a pay gap here so isn't paying certain groups more not fixing this bias?
No, just don’t engage in policies which have these biases. Pay people the fair wages they deserve, give equal vacation times, be accommodating to people with families and to people with disabilities. And arguably favor higher pay over bonuses and stock options.
Sorry, I thought it was clear from the context that we are talking about how seniority rule—and whether it is discriminatory—in general. The original quote is:
> > Jane Yang, a data analyst at the company, told me that restricting internal conversations would negatively affect diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, she said, the company’s profit-sharing plan gave more profits to people who have longer tenure — a group that is majority white and male. Making that discussion off limits internally could ensure that inequality in profit sharing becomes a structural feature of the company.
> It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company.
And the reply was:
> Hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and decides that it's a good day to oppress G people. They wake up in the morning having some amount of privilege, discover that it might be threatened, and their actions that day try to avoid reduction of privilege, even if it means treating G people unfairly. It's not anti-G people at first, it's just pro-self.
The argument here is that if we evaluate by a metric that benefits the in-group more then the out-group you end up with doing discrimination.
In the comment you are replying I’m giving examples of fair pay and fair accommodations in general. It is a respond to GP which misunderstands previous post that we should be paying minorities higher to adjust for the bias that is causing seniority benefits being unfair. But as I have said, that is simply not what I’m (nor anybody here is) arguing.
> The argument here is that if we evaluate by a metric that benefits the in-group more then the out-group you end up with doing discrimination.
Yes. That's the point. The in group in this case has invested more time. They get more reward. What you're suggesting is rewarding those who have done less more than those who have done more.
You are either misunderstanding or operating under false assumptions.
a) Misunderstanding: I’m not suggesting that people get rewarded that have done less. That conclusion does not follow from: don’t engage in reward system that disproportionately benefits your ingroup. I see how you would arrive at that conclusion, but it is false. Not engaging in policies that disproportionately reward your in-group does not necessitate rewarding an out-group by a different metric. These are not two sides of the same coin.
b) False assumptions: Staying longer at a company does not equate having done more. It is entirely possible (and even quite common) that a new hire will contribute a lot more then established workers. A new hire brings with them a new perspective. They might not contribute directly, but they might be asking the right questions which gives more senior workers a better perspective etc.
The convenience of this scheme is that if you complain about being treated unfairly, you can be either told "sure, it's because of systemic discrimination, we'll fix it right away", or "you're just complaining because you're afraid of losing your privilege" - and this does not depend even a little bit on your own actions and your own achievements or qualities. It only depends on who the powers external to you pre-designated to be "privileged" and "oppressed" - and they did it not knowing who you are, what's your story and probably before you have been born even. Your experiences and concerns can be central or immediately dismissed just because somebody sorted you into one group or another. And it's your own fault, for being in the wrong group.
And the most funny thing about it is that people propagating this system actually thing they fight for equality and against the abuse of power. While this is exactly how inequality and abuse of power is done.
I'm at a startup (tiny) now, and thanks to DIE bonuses and hiring emphasis n at FAANGs, diverse candidates have never been more unaffordable.
Thoroughly middle of the road, PHP programmers who can't do front end at all, demanding large equity stake AND a salary higher than anyone else at company. They are just valuing themselves at market for a black engineer.
It's a shame, because in the chance my company (we are already doubling enterprise customers every 3 months) does well, some journalist will comment on how early employees are skewed towards white/male.
(I should note that founder/ceo is a woman who was so amazing when I interviewed that I took a pay cut for more equity, cuz she's a beast who I'm convinced will lead our company to success)
Guess the experiences here are pretty diverse. I’ve not had a problem hiring or competing with FAANG for excellent+qualified female / non-white talent.
What’s the current gender makeup % of your engineering team, if I can ask? As well, what’s the non white makeup of the engineering leadership and overall leadership team? I found it got easier the less that ratio skewed towards 100%M engineering team and 100% white leadership team :)
Current engineering team is 2 women, 2 men. 2 over 50, 2 under 40. All white.
Leadership team is mostly female, only 1 male, who is CTO. 1 is Latina, others white.
In the past, I joined a company where entire leadership team was Indian and male. I never would have thought to not work there because they didn't share my race. That would have been bigoted.
I elaborated on this more in my other response but:
“ I never would have thought to not work there because they didn't share my race. That would have been bigoted.”
There’s a wealth of factors that go into a choice to work somewhere, and someone not choosing to work at your company because they don’t see themselves represented isn’t necessarily bigotry, but then also wanting an assurance of a safe space and not always knowing whether it will be. I wish I could tell you otherwise but I’ve had these conversations with a wealth of marginalized groups over my career and the teams I’ve built, so it’s not unusual. It’s not a “oh I don’t want to work with these people because I’m [x] and they’re [y]” matter the majority of the time. It’s more often “man, I’m going to be the only [x] on a team of 30 [y]s” which is often culturally uncomfortable for a lot of people.
And yes sometimes on occasion it is “man, I don’t want to be working with a company of 10 [y]s where I’m the only [x]” or “if the executive team is all or majority [y]s, do I know for sure there’s career advancement opportunities here?”
We do have a rampant amount of sexism, racism, etc in our field (just like many others) and so that is something unfortunately people sometimes suspect. I’m not at all saying that this is the situation at your company - far from it - just saying the choices for people are most often verrrrrry far from bigotry.
Not sure of your background but it’s also not too hard for a CIS white male to not sweat working on any other team composition (say, all Indian) vs the reverse, because hey - even if you’re paying a pioneer tax, you’re probably not paying it for long. There’s a lot of advantages that group has that are often taken for granted. :)
Just a note that I’m astounded that a remark saying “hey, I’ve hired a diverse team, here are some structural things I’ve found that helped - tell me more about your team makeup” is something that garnered any downvotes at all. Are there seriously people here who believe this is a bad idea? I’d love to hear more about why you do!
I disagree with catering to candidates own biases though.
If a candidate assumes my startup is bigoted because it's all white, despite talking to us, I don't want them here. Stereotypes are stupid, useless, and immoral, no matter who they are directed at. Imagine if I had a problem with all but 1 of my leadership team being female? That would be me making decisions about them based on their immutable characteristics. Fuck that.
Actually that’s not at all why I brought it up. There’s a concept called “the pioneer tax” where being the first X of anything means you’re the pioneer. For example, the first female in a team of 3 engineers pays a much lower pioneer tax than the first female engineer in a team of 20 engineers. Replace female with black or Latina. It’s the same thing there. Career choices are a huge choice; why wouldn’t you choose to work where you’d feel most comfortable with the culture?
Ideally the earlier you can intentionally focus on diversity the better. This also goes for leadership too - both for hiring other leaders and it’s an easy demonstration that the company’s commitment to diversity isn’t just for token representation purposes.
Anyway...yeah, nothing about catering to candidates biases or people judging you as bigots. I sense the anger here at that but hopefully you can see that’s not where I’m approaching it from.
I really appreciate your extremely informative response.
I think you hit a very good point with the pioneer attacks and it's a higher cost as the team gets larger.
Funny enough I experienced the pioneer tax myself one time but for a different reason than ethnicity or sexuality:
Socioeconomic status. People can't tell by looking at me but within about two sentences they can very accurately HEAR via my speech patterns that I grew up in a lower socioeconomic class than 99% of US born programmers in the industry. I have a very rural dialect but I do work hard to have excellent grammar when I speak. Over the years I've worked hard to suppress the accent while at work and I'm sad to say that it's been very effective in reducing people's biases toward me. Of course that's just anecdotal it's not like somebody was scientifically measuring anything. And I'm fully aware it's a huge luxury to be able to hide what makes you different from people, as opposed to race/gender/etc.
I think that’s the entire point DHH was attempting to make: internal issues don’t need to be connected with broader issues like colonialism and racism.
That senior execs making more money is due to their tenure and merit, and not because they’re white and male.
I feel like a lot of companies (including Google) are still reeling from Google's "Bring your entire self to work" philosophy. It does feel like good management where companies like Coinbase have reified their mission/goals, and given those who feel like solving X needs to be included, a nice payout to leave. The world has a lot of complex problems and not every entity needs to work on fixing all of them--that may in fact be counterproductive.
Oh, have you seen tweets from Basecamp leaders calling people out? you could actually say that the execs are activists as well based on their posts on social media.
Not really sure where I sit on the whole thing, still, but I've seen this parroted as a "gotcha!" and I don't think it really is. The founders' activism is _public_. The ban is only on activism _at work_. The fact that so many people don't _get this_ is sort of proving their point.
That's not the case. They're explicitly saying employees are welcome to discuss the founder's activist preferences at work. They've also heavily used their workplace for activism. For example, they invited a political candidate to base a campaign out of their offices.
If you're looking for people with moderately thick skin who don't seek to find offense everywhere, a good place to start is to avoid the folks who wrote this blog post:
> every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction.
There's absolutely no reason to believe that there were any "ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists" at Basecamp among the employees. All we have is a blog post from someone who is overly sensitive to reasonable professional conversations and didn't want to deal with "unpleasant" conversations at work. It's a story told from that person's perspective and we shouldn't take it as absolute truth.
>There's absolutely no reason to believe that there were any "ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists" at Basecamp among the employees.
This is objectively false. There is 100% undeniable proof of these types of employees being there, including one of the heads of data analytics:
> Racist capitalism is poison that has weakened every facet of society and been used to “justify” horrific crimes against humanity while destroying our planet. We need massive power and wealth distribution enshrined in national and international policies.
> If you are white or a man, especially a cis-gendered heterosexual able-bodied white man, do the fucking work. Learn about the characteristics of white supremacy, push through your discomfort, and reflect on how you show up in the spaces you have power. Be ready to apologize when you screw up (we all do!) and then do better. And whatever you do: do not demand that your friends or colleagues or employees or neighbors or acquaintances who belong to historically marginalized groups explain to you all the ways you perpetuate harm and how society got here. Pay an anti-oppression professional for training and coaching; don’t expect us to get you up to speed for free.
I grew up with a single father, who was prone to religious fanaticism. Plenty of fundamentalist, culty churches.
When I was a teen, my father met a radical vegan animal rights activist, started dating, and suddenly swapped out religious fanaticism for radical left-wing activism.
The smells in my house changed, and the people looked different, but fundamentally they were the same:
Awful, zero original thinking, dogmatic, controlling, self-righteous, and, yeah I'm going to say it, failures in life if measured financially or in career status.
The cars in my driveway shifted from rusty, beat up, old Ford's/Chevys to rusty, beat up Subarus/Civics.
I hate tribal thinking, and the aggressive conformists who flock to it.
That's a stretch. First of all calling someone a loser cause he seeks other values in life? Also I am a huge loser, cause my car has been in garage for a year(covid homeoffice) and it got very dusty. Is rusty car really a denominator for losers, as I have met plenty of smart people who don't particularly care about 'things'.
you still need to consider that lots of people would judge you by how you upkeep things in any present moment. Sure, you can be a genius scientist in the stat of "flow", but recognition would come only later if that's the case
Why can't people just keep their shit to themselves?
In the work environment, I don't care if you want to save the whales or arm every teacher with an AR-15.
Do you do your job well enough that you don't personally impact me? You do? Good. Shut up about non-work shit and keep working.
Every single person I've ever seen who was a "passionate" "political" person is a fucking trainwreck in some area of the their life. How about your fix yourself first? Then once you've got yourself ironed out, you can try ironing out the rest of society...
It’s a false narrative that this was about politics and non-work things in the workplace. It was a workplace issue that blew up and employees were annoyed with how the founders handled it.
No, it's pretty fucking stupid all the way around... I broke my own rule and went to that garbage news site The Verge and read Casey Newton's article.
A list of names that sound or look funny.
Wow.
The amount of disdain I have for idiotic busybodies who would fuss and fret over such a thing cannot be overstated, or even quantified.
How about just ignoring the list? How about saying to someone, when they tell you about the list, "That's dumb. Grow up, <name>."
How about just going on about your day.
The fact that any human being would think a list of funny names should be a fireable offense is a testament to this new idiotic religion of Wokeness. A bunch of shitty people traded Christianity for another religion where they can be insufferable assholes, under the guise of righteousness.
>Do you think that kind of aggressive tone would be suitable in a work place?
No it wouldn't be, but this isn't work, it's an internet comment section. You're literally providing his point that "there's a time and a place" for shit like this, and work isn't one of them.
My comment was a reflection on the topic. Its interesting how one person is offended someone else taking offense to social issues but somehow sees their own outrage as justified.
> A third of Basecamp’s workers resign after a ban on talking politics. (NY Times)
Great PR recovery after, from what I can see is one of the worst management foul-ups I can remember. But then PR is one thing that JF and DHH are good at.
If telling people to "get over it" about a list of names and then they don't want to "get over it" and then telling them to go pound sand is the worst management fuck-up you've ever seen, then you need to never - and I mean never - quit your current job, because its pretty clear your management team is unbelievably competent.
In fact, send me a link to your company's Careers page, because I want to work for a company that's got their shit together so thoroughly.
Losing a third of your staff in one day over something that started off as a list of customer names counts as astoundingly bad management by any measure.
Don't start saying it was all due to the people who left - there were a number highly respected, long standing and apparently extremely hard working employees in that list. And they are probably prevented from giving their views due to severance terms whilst DHH in particular will no doubt be blogging about it again within days.
Remarkable how when 1/3 of the company resigns in one go - many of whom have great and longstanding professional reputations with no history of political activism and including head of marketing, design, customer support, iOS etc. - following fundamental changes they read about in a blog post, it's because _they_ were all intolerable, proselytizing activists who all had to go for the good of the company.
Absolutely nothing to do with the two leaders who spend a good chunk of time on social media telling the rest of the world how to run their business in the most in your face way possible.
It's interesting, all the discussion in the immediate aftermath was along your lines of thinking, and then later, everybody else came in to talk and took the side of the company without understanding what had actually occurred. They latch onto the word "politics" and decide it was the 1/3 who were toxic.
Indeed. The narrative seems to be "politics in the workplace is bad so they were right to stamp it out". Seems to me that they had a workplace issue and dealt with it in a way that has really, really annoyed many of their staff. Other companies have similar issues and manage to deal with them without losing 1/3 of their staff.
I disagree, this reeks of cheap solutions and ill thought HR managements.
To me banning politics from company chat feels vague and confusing at best. Another post from a few days ago got this from a worker[1]:
> “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.”
At worst it feels like you are being silenced. In technology topics of diversity and inclusion tend towards the political (it doesn’t have to be; but it most often is as witnessed on HN). Does this mean if you feel like the company is not being inclusive that you cannot speak up?
Tonnes of companies deal with issues like these in a better way IMO. Options include a code of conduct which prohibits escalating emotions in a political debate (i.e. by talking about genocide) while allowing (and even encouraging) talks about DE&I. Reprimand people that are found to use hostile language in public forums. Provide channels (echo chambers) where people can opt into and have a more heated debates (without breaking the CoC). Etc.
I don't understand the school thing. "My daughter is working on a project at school. I have to go to a parent teacher conference. etc."
I'm struggling to imagine what kind of political thing you would say about school. I can't share my thoughts on the school board, pedagogy, common core, racist school names, etc? Doesn't seem like an onerous restriction and I can't recall ever having a work conversation that would've violated it.
Have you not talked with colleagues about kids being out of school for the pandemic, what you need to do about childcare, how to make up the lost time, etc? No idea of anyone's opinions on whether schools should reopen, how kids are going back, and whether it makes sense?
These can all be interpreted as political issues, and I think very reasonable to talk about. The policy is so arbitrary that it ends up being that you can't talk about things that the founders don't want you to talk about.
I get the sentiment, but the execution is chilling.
I don't see any of those things as political (except in the meaningless sense of the word where everything is political) and I don't think that's what they were talking about banning. If we actually worked at Basecamp we'd just fire off an email to whomever to confirm, but as is I think the best we can go with is a fair reading. To me, Basecamp wasn't banning speech of the form "I can't wait for the kids to be back in person at school. The schools have been closed too long."
That's the problem with a policy like that. It just becomes another cudgel for people in power to arbitrarily decide what people can talk about. Not dissimilar to how everybody speeds so anyone can be pulled over.
In the absence of clear policy, it comes back to trust, which needs to be earned and can be lost. I don't work at Basecamp, so I don't know whether they "deserved" to lose trust and my opinion doesn't really matter. But the evidence appears to show that trust was dead, whoever killed it.
Yes, it is their company, they can run it as they please. How is that controversial? They have power, and they wield that power as they wish. If people don't like it, they can wield their own power to leave and find a new job as well, especially with 6 months of severance.
Well, they did. I don't know why others find it controversial, but I do because I see a lot of destroyed value here, mostly over what I consider a failure of empathy and understanding.
We all saw what happened, and we're talking about it because most of us think things could have gone a little better.
You’d be surprised at what some people consider political. In some parts of the US acknowledging the severity of the pandemic and admitting to getting vaccinated for covid would be considered political.
Banning political discussion is the better option. With the extremely polarized us vs them mentality folks in the US have, it is too easy for someone to be singled out for a different opinion. Twitter is a good example of this kind of groupthink and the putrid Mad Max landfill that remains when people retreat to their camps. I would never work in a toxic environment where I am being subjected to a constand barrage of politcal posturing unrelated to my actual job. I work to get paid to go home and enjoy my time. Talk about politics somewhere else.
I don't agree that it's too hard to not talk about politics at work. I have been doing it as a rule at most of my jobs for years now without thinking of it (and so do most workers). The idea that mentioning public school is "political" is a wrong idea.
Seriously? You—and most of your co-workers—have never mention that you wished you had more vacation time with your peers? Or that the work week should be shorter? Or that your bosses have it too good relative to you?
I have never worked in a place where we don’t discus these things periodically.
I don’t have kids but I have witnessed my peers in previous jobs say stuff like: “I wished school hours would be more accommodating to those of us that work shifts.” Which is a political statement about the strict nature of how we run schools.
nailed it. Seems to me they played it perfectly. Problems are out, company hits the reset button, and it's really hard for anyone to say these people were treated badly with a voluntarily accepted giant payout. Let's not forget that to regular people, these folks just left with one to two years salary with no obligations. That's winning the damn lottery to people who don't work in our overpaid industry.
The interesting question, which I don't see addressed in the comments, is how to avoid the Basecamp situation in the first place.
Just to pick one thread of many to pull on, any management team that actively encourages intra-mural political discussion should think through possible consequences. It's difficult to take such rights away, as Google's experience has shown multiple times. [1]
A lot of gossipers, haters, and narcissists hide behind the activist label to carry out their personal agenda. If you are building policy that allows activism, you need checks and balances against this free riding behaviour.
If you don’t check the behaviour it can take over like cancer. The gossipers and narcissists hide behind activism and the activists support them as one of their own because they align with the activists goal. People who do not want to deal with these people eventually leave for places without such policy and you are stuck with all the bad actors.
> Probably, the founders believed that the toxicity of the internal culture had reached a point
There are precisely one set of actors behaving toxically in this whole fiasco, and it's the founders.
> I'd be really surprised if this surprised the executive team. This seems to be a super intentional and very professionally executed cultural shift / purge.
Hahaha, what? In which universe are you inhabiting? No piece of evidence supports this theory. All the evidence clearly points at this being a hasty and unplanned reaction to a hasty and unplanned emotional outburst at an employee by a founder.
So, what? Hire new people to replace the ones that left and then eventually have to do a purge again in 5 years? This appears more to me like a short-sighted easy-way-out kind of move.
Why not spend the time to build channels for constructive political discussion? The workplace does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot isolate work from politics these days.
The policy they put in place is just not hiring those who would want to actively participate in political discussion at work. I think there are plenty of people in the world who see that as a net positive. Not everyone wants political discussion and to further mankind’s ideological philosophies; far more direct ways to impact society include just being nice to those around you.
Sure, but that's what you get for running a successfully bootstrapped company. You get to do whatever you want with it. DHH and Jason could have been, no doubt about it, much wealthier had they gone the typical funding route, but would not have had this kind of control. It's their lifestyle business, they get to pick their lifestyle. They who control 51% call the shots. Personally, I'd way rather work somewhere like that where a founder you know has that power than some investors you've never met. (Been there... woke up one morning and found out the company was for sale and we were to pick redundancies and slash until it sold, it sucked. )
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.
A number of their employees were very vocal from the moment the post went live. They expressed how disappointed they are. You can literally hear the despair in two employees voice in a 90s podcast episode where they announce its hiatus.
Basecamp was a company built on reputation, and people joined on that and then the leaders just flushed that all away. Its not surprising that opinionated and outspoken people - the kind of people Basecamp courted - left.
Despair over not talking about politics on work channels? Are they absolutely consumed with politics that they can’t focus on actual work tasks? I have worked with someone who insists on inserting a political topic or headline into every meeting and it’s distracting and exhausting
'not talking about politics' is a straw man for the actual issue. They have a list of funny names, got called out on it, and didn't like that. "politics" implies "we dont like Amy Klobuchar" or whatever, but it wasn't that.
It was about "what do we tolerate", "who do we welcome", "who are we as a company"? They didn't like their employees defining this for them, because it forced them to think things they didn't want to think about.
> They have a list of funny names, got called out on it, and didn't like that.
On the contrary, as far as I can tell (i.e., based on information released by founders and employees), they didn't object at all to being called out on it. Everybody at Basecamp, the founders included, thought the list was wrong and inappropriate.
What they did object to was the discussion being escalated to genocide and that there appear to have been employees who refused to climb down from that.
It does become impossible to have a constructive discussion, particularly about sensitive or controversial matters, when some people involved want to escalate to the most extreme position imaginable. It tends to mute other viewpoints.
that isn’t really a problem with politics though is it?
it feels like a problem with the discussions participants listening and speaking skills.
if someone immediately jumps to a negative extreme then its likely they feel quite emotionally distressed about the topic. if you notice someone is emotionally charged about a topic (either yourself or a participant) then we should seek to discover the shadow conversation that is being had. what is the true source of the emotional distress.
I don't disagree with you, but I can also see how that could become a huge problem in a workplace.
It can be pretty frustrating when people debate in this fashion about work-related matters. E.g., nowadays I find it particularly tiresome when people frame technical discussions (such as one database platform or front-end technology versus another) in moral terms. It's incredibly unhelpful.
It has the potential to be even more disruptive for non-work matters (though the original "Best names ever" discussion was very much work-related).
Still, whilst I'm not especially critical of the position DHH and JF have taken - though initially I found myself back and forth on it - I do of course wonder if a more nuanced resolution that alienated fewer people (I don't mean on twitter and other social media, which is mostly just noise: I mean at Basecamp) could have been found than something that feels like blanket ban, even though it's not really.
i would love to read an example of a technical discussion framed in moral terms. if you’ve got any off the top of your head, i’d appreciate you commenting them.
i suspect, a lot like becoming conscious of the impact the food we choose to eat has on things external to our local context (climate, animal welfare etc), technology decisions choices could be seen through such a lens.
as Frederic Bastiat wrote, there is “that which is seen and that which is not seen”.
You've honestly never heard a discussion between software developers where people label use of a particularly language, technology or technique X, "wrong", or said something like, "if you're doing Y, you're doing it wrong"? You've never seen the shade people throw at PHP?
Where do you work? Can I join?
More seriously, if you (have nothing better to do than) look through my comment history you'll find a discussion from a few weeks or months back where I chided somebody for saying (I paraphrase), "if you're patching directly in production you're doing it wrong." Granted doing so is far from ideal, and not something I've ever done with any kind of regularity, but occasionally it's the quickest way to resolve an issue whilst you follow proper process with a more involved investigation and fix.
I've found this varies a lot by company I've worked for: it doesn't happen where I work now much at all, but other companies I've worked at many technology choices are either "right" or "wrong". I just don't have the energy or patience for it these days.
ah, i took moral discussion to be code for political discussion, not actually moral (good vs bad) haha.
in that case, yes. people get dogmatic about the strangest things. depending on my level of give-a-fuck i sometimes dive in deeper, “why do you think this is bad?” etc.
sometimes theres a decent learning opp either for me, discovering a new way that something can cause problems or for them, learning to apply some nuance to their beliefs.
Absolutely. I definitely prefer for the discussion to start off dispassionately as opposed to having to drag it there, but I completely agree with you.
And that would perhaps be fair, although cryptocurrency discussions range far wider than technical concerns.
And that's quite a long way from what I'm talking about, which are technical discussions that are more day to day concerns for many software developers in the industries and types of application I've worked with (e.g., desktop software tools and web applications/services in sectors such as telecoms, life science, payment processing, retail systems, data analytics).
If that is the case, banning politics feels like the nuclear option. And regardless of the the intent I think the consequences will yield the result parent notes.
Other companies are able to handle peer conversations without making such a broad and vague category as politics taboo. Like you can enforce a code of conduct and treat speech of genocide as being in violation and issue a citation for a minor offense and terminate repeated or hard offenders. You can also enforce stricter speech standards on open channels and announcements while allowing workers to have free conversation in their own opt-in echo chambers.
Nuking all political dialogs just feels like a bad HR policy.
> You can also enforce stricter speech standards on open channels and announcements while allowing workers to have free conversation in their own opt-in echo chambers.
I think this is what the policy amounts to though, right? They're banning political discussion on their shared work Basecamp, but not anywhere else, and are even encouraging it in other private and opt-in channels, as well as employees' personal blogs, social media, etc.
And also banning any DEI initiatives, banning any and all committees, and a host of other changes that essentially boil down to "shut up and do what we tell you".
That's not actually what they've said though, is it? They're moving responsibility for DEI back into HR (they call it People Ops)[0]. I have pretty mixed feelings on HR as a company function[1] and choice of profession, but that's far from a ban on DEI initiatives.
(I don't dispute your comment that committees have been dissolved.)
> On the contrary, as far as I can tell (i.e., based on information released by founders and employees), they didn't object at all to being called out on it.
> What they did object to was the discussion being escalated to genocide and that there appear to have been employees who refused to climb down from that.
The topic brought up was the Pyramid of Hate, and I'm going to presume linking the list of names to one of the base levels of bias. DHH is the one who escalates that point to say, well this must be a fireable offense since it is on this pyramid with genocide on the top, which is really completely ignoring the point of the pyramid and not at all what employees probably said. An employee actually tries to explain this, that "dehumanizing behavior begins with very small actions". DHH ignores the point and completely unprofessionally and unethically (imagine the CEO of your company doing this) publicly shares some old chat log of the employee participating in making fun of the names, as if this employee wouldn't be aware of that and probably regretful of it.
So yes, an employee tried to explain what might be wrong with DHH's thinking and yes he did not like it at all and responded inappropriately and he was the one who wanted to "escalate to the most extreme position imaginable."
Here is the full-text from the article that described what happened:
"But Hansson went further, taking exception to the use of the pyramid of hate in a workplace discussion. 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. Presumably, any employees who are found contributing to genocidal attitudes should be fired on the spot — and yet nobody involved seemed to think that contributing to or viewing the list was a fireable offense. If that’s the case, Hansson said, then the pyramid of hate had no place in the discussion. To him, it escalated employees’ emotions past the point of being productive.
Hansson wanted to acknowledge the situation as a failure and move on. But when employees who had been involved in the list wanted to continue talking about it, he grew exasperated. “You are the person you are complaining about,” he thought.
Employees took a different view. In a response to Hansson’s post, one employee noted that the way we treat names — especially foreign names — is deeply connected to social and racial hierarchies. Just a few weeks earlier, eight people had been killed in a shooting spree in Atlanta. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent, and their names had sometimes been mangled in press reports. (The Asian American Journalists Association responded by issuing a pronunciation guide.) The point was that dehumanizing behavior begins with very small actions, and it did not seem like too much to ask Basecamp’s founders to acknowledge that.
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."
I haven't seen the employees "escalation to genocide", but as I understand it, it was an employee sharing the ADL pyramid of hate -- that such attitudes such as stereotypes were foundational to further hate.
Well, obviously I can only comment based on information that's been released publicly by DHH, JF, and their employees (both current and former). What would you prefer we all evaluated the situation based on?
Some employees have been critical on social media of the policy changes. None of them has suggested that DHH or JF thought it was OK that the names list existed. Again, all available evidence suggests that nobody who is still at Basecamp or who was there formerly, including the founders, thinks the names list is OK.
What exactly are you questioning here?
Because you evidently don't know any more than I do yet, based on that same body of information, you seem willing to insinuate a much shakier conclusion though you lack the courage to state it explicitly (because I think you know that it's not backed up by any evidence). You're not adding anything to the discussion other than noise.
In theory no more or less informed than anyone else in the discussion. This is a discussion forum: we all have as much or as little right to comment here as anyone else taking part in this conversation.
> They have a list of funny names, got called out on it, and didn't like that
Not at all true - they dealt with it extensively internally, agreed it shouldn't have happened, etc. But folks kept analogizing the list of funny name to genocide.
Is this a quote that comes from somewhere? I see multiple people talking about this 'analogizing a list of funny names to genocide'.
I think its been properly debunked multiple times in the comments here to say its untrue. Just wondering where it comes from that people keep commenting it so strongly.
People making such a fuss over a list of funny names? Yes, that's office fun you wouldn't want your customers to know about, which I guess makes it a bit unprofessional. But still it's absolutely innocent fun. Whoever makes it into an existential political issue has lost it, seriously.
Yeah, I’m sure I’ve been on a few over time and yet still an inner drive towards pattern matching and spurious associations leads me to moments of light-heartedness tempered by not wanting to cause offense.
This is truly becoming an issue in the first world, soon the biggus dickus sketch from The Life of Brian will be censored not to offend Richards across the country
Making fun of ethnic names isn't 'innocent fun' when your company purports to be diverse, equal, and inclusive.
If you don't believe me, well, DHH himself agrees with this: it's a problem when you acknowledge the pyramid of hate, as he does.
What's at issue is that he acknowledges all of this, then refuses to recognize any wrongdoing, dresses down employees in public, and claims that "political talk" -- about the company, about whether these practices are correct, about whether this is an inclusive and equal place -- is banned.
The first list you posted has a bunch of "funny" East Asian names. That stuff was racist in "Sixteen Candles," there's no excuse for it in a modern workplace.
What basecamp did "represents a serious, collective, and repeated failure at Basecamp [...] counter to creating an inclusive workplace. Nobody should think that maintaining such a list is okay or sanctioned behavior here."[1]
Yes, and that's referred to a list of funny names. It's still not clear to me in what the "ground fact" (the list of funny names) is different from the links posted above.
I'll be frank- and I know that I'm risking the mistake of reading just what I want to read-, I think that those "counter to creating an inclusive workplace" and the general tone ("serious collective failure" etc.) are just nods to the social justice culture, and are meant to appease and concede some ground to the opponent. I don't think (also because it is clearly stated elsewhere in the same post) that there was anything intrinsically racist in that list, or anything that made it substantially different from those examples above. Apart from the obvious difference that these are customers, and it's not nice to secretly make fun of them.
I'm not sure where you read all this. In his post [1] DHH says:
1) that the list was a mistake and that they've learned and moved on.
2) that "I was dismayed to see the argument advanced in text and graphics on [Employee 1’s] post that this list should be considered part of a regime that eventually could lead to genocide. That's just not an appropriate or proportionate comparison to draw"
3) that "the vast majority" of the names in the list were in fact of Anglo-Saxon or white background.
So he acknowledges, apologises and de-escalates. And points out that there is nothing racial about the list. What should he have done more, or differently?
My take on what the disagreement is about is that while there is agreement that the "Best Names Ever" list was inappropriate, there is disagreement about _why_ it was inappropriate. The founders seem to think it was inappropriate because making fun of your customers behind their back is not nice, but that it was not racist. The other contingent seems to think that in addition to being disrespectful of their customers, it was also racist. That contingent feels that in order to work towards a less racist future it is important to acknowledge past acts of racism.
Two other details I find interesting:
- In the post you linked to, DHH specifically talks about the Asian names on the list.
- The only attributed statements I've seen from any non-founder employees are from Jane Yang.
My guess here is that Jane is Asian, that she is likely one of the most involved employees in this situation, and that she feels that the inclusion of Asian names on the list constitutes anti-Asian racism. DHH clearly disagrees about the last point. If I'm right, this is a case where a white man is telling an Asian woman that comments she believes reflect anti-Asian bias are not racist. In my observation, white men telling minorities what is and is not racist is one of the surest ways to enrage those who feel passionately about racial justice issues.
> In my observation, white men telling minorities what is and is not racist is one of the surest ways to enrage those who feel passionately about racial justice issues.
Might well be, and yet this doesn't mean the "white men" are always wrong. If the vast majority of the names in the list belong to Western whites, and only a few to Asians, does it make sense to claim the list is racist? I don't think so. And why should someone admit (and thus confirm) a non-existent but very serious moral failing, just to appease an angry employee? With all that it entails: once something has been confirmed to be a moral failing, the same judgement automatically applies to all similar instances. We're seeing where this is going.
Thanks for sharing that - I hadn't read that particular post and it's very thoughtful and well articulated, and facts there are indeed surprising, such as the vast majority of the list being Anglo-Saxon.
To your question, I think it is the consequences of closing such a discussion that he leaves unaddressed. Does the company still value your opinion? Do you matter?
I honestly think, as DHH hints, that being able to 'rehumanize' might avoid even having to ask these questions.
This all seems very absurd to me. I can't imagine working at a company where I'd even be notified if CS had kept a list of funny names, much less expect owners to weigh in, repeatedly, about the attendant moral issues.
It's unprofessional, shouldn't have been done, we're stopping it, if people recreate it that will have appropriate consequences. Done. What's the point of even mentioning this trivial thing again?
Power. The point is power. Step 1: note an issue. Step 2: show how the issue is on a direct path to genocide. Step 3: as the issue is now connected to genocides, it should never happen again. Obviously the best way to ensure that is to have someone special (or, say, a committee) in a position of power.
I'm not even saying it's a cynical play, it's extremely easy to forget to reflect on it and just think you're doing the right thing all along. The outcome is still the same though.
> I think it is the consequences of closing such a discussion that he leaves unaddressed. Does the company still value your opinion? Do you matter?
It seems he clearly proved that those opinions matter, if he recognized the mistake, recognized the validity of some of the points made, and apologised.
What I've observed in this and other well known instances of "social justice" protests (I hope it's the best neutral term to describe them) is that there seems to be no endgame accepted by the protesters. No apologies are ever accepted without an explicit or implicit transfer of power to them. An example of an explicit transfer of power is setting up some commission or bureaucratic structure where the protesters or people they trust will be enrolled; and resignations represent an implicit transfer of power (the recognized power to make someone lose their job, which is not a small one).
Compare this with normal workplace dynamics. You can complain inside your workplace for many work-related reasons (workload, bad management, pay, etc.). Your complaints can be openly discussed, legitimately rejected, or acted upon. But in any case a change in the hierarchy or in the company structure is not something you expect. It can happen (very rarely) or not, and you might be satisfied with the responses or the changes or not, and if you don't like the answers after a while you might decide to move somewhere else. You don't consider unacceptable that the company doesn't see or address your point of view. At some point the discussion ends and that's it. This is not what happens on social justice complaints, and I think it's toxic (in the workplace, but in general everywhere).
I can't really comment about other "social justice" protests because frankly I don't really care about them, but yes this absolutely is about power.
What DHH neglects to address is that he's claiming the power to silence. "we had to close down this channel" or "discussions are being moved".
I like your idea of comparing this to a normal workplace dynamic. What if you get the rare change you wanted to see, but in exchange there is a new policy: no more discussions like this? Yes, your ideas about devops or whatever were fine, we're making a change, and now please never discuss our product development process again.
At the very least, does the change you 'won' feel genuine?
How was Basecamp's reputation built on social justice issues and fanning flames on internal message boards? I thought their rep was based on good product development
> 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people.
That still looks like 3 months free money. That is a considerable offer no matter a person's politics.
Occam's razor is most of the people who left did so because they didn't like management, because that is the normal reason people leave jobs. However, it is very noticeable that if someone was looking for a reason to leave for any unrelated reason, this was the perfect opportunity.
Not sure why you are getting down voted. Occam's Razor is heavily abused and misused in the majority of cases, treating it like some axiomatic mathematical principle and misapplying it to human behavior.
Tweet: "I’m planning on taking some time for myself before looking for new opportunities"
Seems like someone enjoying a break, and glad to have timed it to get a huge severance package.
Remember, it's not 6months pay to sit in prison, it's 6monrhs pay to do anything they want, including a hobby project, child rearing, a busoner idea, education... plus a few hours a week of job searching.
Or it's somebody who is so upset and shocked to the core about what has just happened that they need time to grieve for the best job of their lives becoming intolerable very quickly.
That’s not my experience watching friends go through the full cycle. The tech employment market for talented programmers appears to be the hottest I’ve ever seen and I worked through the late 90s tech boom where literal used car salespeople were being hired into tech only to be back selling cars by summer of 2000.
Talented people will also have higher standards (want large compensation package, or interesting work, or something else), and figuring out whether a job opening is up to that standard takes time. The result is that even for developers in high demand it takes a lot of time to find a new job.
> 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people.
If you're a developer, that's enough runway to launch a side-business. After all, job-searching is hardly time-consuming (it takes so little time that people do it while already employed in a full-time position).
Yeah, some folk will sit at home binge-watching netflix for 6 months. I can all but guarantee you that I will have a product at the end of six months if I was unemployed for six months.
At the end of the time I'll have a new job and a product (whether the product actually makes money or not is irrelevant. Getting a product to sell is the first step).
Super tangent on the thread but if you want a product that people are interested in you might think about using a process like Nathan Barry's Authority or 30x500. Not that those are the best or only ways to make a product, of course, but they're at least a direction to take to figure out what people want, need, and buy.
I personally have a lot higher requirements for a new position than "a job that pays more than my current one". E.g. working on something that is worth doing, together with great people.
I’m not seeing that at all. I have seeing 90% of people let go at my previous job (sample size of 50) pick up jobs within a month. A few obviously had a harder time but the market right now doesn’t seem to be hard at all.
The person you linked to said they are taking time off before looking for new opportunities, so they don't seem concerned about not having enough time to find something new.
> a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people.
That sounds really long. It never took me more than 2 months from an initial contact to an offer (whether accepted or not) and sometimes less. I've seen people hired in less than a month - in fact, I've seen many times people hired before they left the previous job. Of course, it's just my personal anecdata but 3 months sounds really long. Any hard data to back it up?
Well if they didn’t do it for they money maybe they could have publicly donate it all to charity. Otherwise it just looks like they did it for the cash.
I'm reading through his tweets and don't see much interesting on the subject. I may have missed it tho. Can you point me to a thread where hes vocal on it?
> there's no way we could take a person at their word
What people say on Twitter is hardly courtroom testimony. It is evidence, sure, but I wouldn't give it a whole lot of weight. Probably even less weight for being "incredibly vocal".
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...)
> 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.
Why are you assuming many were considering changing jobs at a company that has long tenure and believed to have a great culture?
If you read "Shape Up", you will realise there is a _lot_ of slack at Basecamp (I know, I've implemented it myself in one company), and a lot of space to think things through. Tons of autonomy.
6 months pay is not a good bargain for a great job.
It's a superb bargain for a job that has suddenly become very uncomfortable.
At the level of compensation from Basecamp (at least what they say) it would be very easy to do that in 1 year: just put aside 50% of salary each month and you will have full 6 months of salary or (as you already lived on 50%) you will have one year of half salary to take time off.
Of course putting 50% aside is huge but I think 20% is achievable and will still create in one year a couple of months to live without a job.
I find myself sometimes hearing people saying things like this “if my company will give me X salaries I will leave” but few will actually do it. I always push back saying how about in the next 6 months you put aside some money and take 1 month unpaid vacation. I listen the arguments why they will not do it and realise people say will leave job if compensated but mostly they dont walk the talk as there are other risks/loans/friends/promises that keeps them there.
Except, here, you don't even have to save. You get to keep both the money you made over the past year and six more months of salary. Literally having your cake and eating it.
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.
I believe you. But I also assume you're not dead weight your employer would be better off without. However, dead weight is what a lot of commentators online claim to think the departed employees were--and that Basecamp cleverly rid itself of them today--without any real evidence for these bold ideas.
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?
> 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 think that's a big mischaracterization of what happened.
For one, it seems a lot of the issue was about the 'funny names list' and heated debate around that. It wasn't people going to war over liberals vs conservatives. It seems DHH took particular umbrage at someone brining the Anti Defamation League's Pyramid of Hate into the conversation.
Secondly, Basecamp had allowed the creation of a Diversity and Inclusion committee with at least a dozen employees joining. DHH and Fried decided to unilaterally dissolve it. If you're going to give employees your blessing for a D&I group then just axe it with no discussion or warning, some people will be put off.
Then there's the fact that employees found out about this group of changes via blog post. That betrays a lack of empathy/care for employees when implementing a set of big changes.
Lastly, saying 'no politics or societal issues' because you, as the owners of the company felt uncomfortable, is a recipe for ruining the culture of a company like Basecamp. For some employees, they can't get away from politics and societal issues because it affects them every day and their very existence has been politicized. More savvy leaders could've established a better climate of respect and politeness around any 'political' discussion rather than a heavy handed and clumsy edict.
This wasn't about a bunch of people endlessly bickering about politics at work, it's about company owners who took a manageable issue and turned it into a public crisis. Companies several orders of magnitude larger manage to accommodate employees having political conversations without making messes like this.
> For some employees, they can't get away from politics and societal issues because it affects them every day and their very existence has been politicized.
It might sound like a "lazy excuse" for someone who hasn't been in their shoes. As lazy as commenting one's gut reaction even. It might be worthwhile to actually give this one some thought, maybe read up on it, talk to people. The non-lazy response basically.
Nobody’s “existence” has been politicized in the 30 years I’ve been in America.[1] I remember during 2015-2016 my friends were freaking out asking if I was worried if Trump would be sending people from Muslim countries (like me) to internment camps. I thought they were being completely absurd. I guess it wasn’t just me: a third of Muslims voted for Trump in 2020. People don’t do that when their “very existence has been politicized.”
Government policies may be unfair, unconstitutional, or discriminatory to different groups of people. But that’s not politicizing people’s “very existence.” That sort of rhetoric is just a way to dial up the temperature of political debates by equating any negative impacts with existential harm. People have a right to freely debate things like who the government will let into the country, what benefits it will provide to whom, etc.
[1] Except unborn children, whose very existence has literally been politicized.
What about deportation of undocumented immigrants? Isn't their existence in this country politicized?
People are being killed by gun violence, police violence, gang violence. Isn't it fair for people affected by these things to feel their lives have become political footballs?
> What about deportation of undocumented immigrants? Isn't their existence in this country politicized?
Their presence in a country they’ve entered illegally is the subject of political debate, but that’s not equivalent to a threat to their “very existence.” Calling it that is an attempt to emotionalize a basic function of sovereign nations: policing their borders. It’s something every country does—including the countries from where these undocumented immigrants came.
> People are being killed by gun violence, police violence, gang violence. Isn't it fair for people affected by these things to feel their lives have become political footballs?
If you’ve been killed by gun violence or police violence or gang violence, then you’re dead. If you haven’t, then you’re debating government policy, not the fact of your “very existence.” Even mundane government policy has life or death implications. People running red lights kills six to ten times as many people each year as mass shootings. But framing a debate over stoplight timing in terms of peoples’ “existence” would be a way to shut down rational policy debate.
As an Asian person, I’m much more likely to be killed or attacked by a repeat offender than by the police. But that doesn’t mean I can shut down a discussion of eliminating bail by saying it’s a “threat to my very existence.”
Based on the way you are using terms, you are correct, nobody's existence can be politicized. If they are alive (although possibly sick, in jail, or deported), they exist so there is nothing to discuss. If they are dead, they are dead, so there is obviously nothing to discuss.
Putting those semantics aside, the point was, some people's lives are affected by politics (I'd argue all are) and you can't expect them not to talk about their lives, including the effect of policy and politics on them. Well, you can, but apparently 2/3 of your workforce will decide that's not cool and leave.
There have been times when people’s very existence has been a political issue. That’s not happening in 21st century America.
Of course people’s “lives are affected by politics”—often very significantly. That’s a very different statement than saying people’s “very existence is politicized.” That’s just a rhetorical device to exaggerate the personal impact of political issues.
I would agree with that. People exaggerate at times, and you're correct that it can lead to unclear conversation. One of the worst parts is that bad actors can seize on a couple of words and detail an entire line of reasoning based on it.
> If you’ve been killed by gun violence or police violence or gang violence, then you’re dead
Unless it’s your family/friends who have been? “How was your weekend Mary?” “My husband/kid was shot in the back by police”
I find it sad how your arguing how people’s existence can’t be political or if they are it “doesn’t matter” because they unborn or dead while neglecting people who would still be affected daily like family or a mother who wants to get an abortion but can’t/has to deal with the assholes out front protesting
About 80 / year police shootings of unarmed individuals.
There were about 19,000 homicides last year.
1 in 55 people people are on parole or probation.
So even if we make the ludicrous assumption that people on parole or probation have exact same rate of violent crime as non probation or paroled you still end up with 345 homicides by people on parole or probation.
I assume a rate 2-3x the base rate for population would be a completely reasonable assumption, giving us ~10x more homicides by people on probation/parole.
The point is if police shootings rise to being an existential threat, than criminal justice reform is at least a much of an existential threat.
I disagree. If you are deported to a country which you may not speak the language, have no known relation, and be completely unable to support yourself, your life is effectively over. You can rebuild a new life from scratch, but depending on how you define existence, I think it's reasonable to say your old life no longer exists. Conversely, you could say you still exist after you die, because the master that made up your body hasn't exited the closed system of the universe.
To make it for home a little more, I'll ask, where would you go if you got deported?
Not really if you're limited to talking about a particular country.
Like I guess you could argue it's the difference between ethnic cleansing internally and invading a neighbor to engage in ethnic cleansing, but that's sort of not a hugely important distinction.
I think they're arguing the distinction between "I'm not allowed to live in the u.s. so I have to live somewhere else" and "I'm not allowed to live because I shot in front of a firing squad".
Which would seem like a very important distinction if it was my existence.
This thread was in part, but not solely, about undocumented immigrants, and sure maybe they have a place they can legally be sent to. But the same argument has been used for racial separation ("No, we don't want to subjugate black people, we just want to have a white ethnostate where the black people will be forced to move". The part not said aloud of of course, being what happens if someone wishes to stay where they have lived their whole life).
So yes, I think the distinction between "will be kicked out by force" or "will simply be shot in the street" can be a lot more tenuous than you're suggesting.
But even still, if we're discussing any group that isn't undocumented immigrants (or even potentially citizens whom the president wanted to strip that right from) the question of "where do they go" becomes even more important, because there usually isn't a place they can go.
I'm unclear on what exactly you mean by nation states. That term usually implies a cohesive culture shared by the population, and as such is more normally applied to smaller ethnically homogenous nations (think Spain or Japan or South Korea) and not a large ethnically and racially diverse nation liked the US. In fact the US (with it's vastly different culture and racial makeup between say Hawaii and Nebraska and Georgia) is usually the prime example of a country that isn't a nation state.
I think what you're actually asking is if I feel that it is just to enforce immigration laws on people already in the country, and generally speaking no, I don't think deportation is a just punishment for trying to be a productive member of society but overstaying a visa or similar.
You’re mixing up nation states and ethnostates. The US is a nation state and like every other nation it gets to decide who is allowed to take up residence there. The fact it’s not an ethnostate just means it doesn’t make those decisions in order to preserve an existing ethnic homogeneity. That doesn’t deprive it of the right to decide on what terms foreigners get to live there.
Deportation isn’t a “punishment.” It’s restoration of the status quo ante in response to someone entering illegally. If you build a house on someone else’s land, they can force you to tear it down. That’s not a punishment, it’s just undoing the effect of the illegal act.
I'm not, using common definitions. They just happen to usually be the same because culture and ethnicity are often very tightly coupled.
The factors you're talking about (border sovereignty and determination of citizenship/residency) are all related to being a "state" and have relatively little to do with being a nation, which is just a shared culture. A nation state is the term for a state, the political entirely, whose population shares a broadly homogenous culture. If you choose to define the US as a nation-state, then it blunts the "nation" portion to the point of redundancy, as the culture of sharing a government is enough to define a nation. Do a bit of research here and at a minimum you'll find that the US being a nation state is widely disputed. But we can agree to disagree because again, everything you're talking about is political determination related to statehood. Nation is irrelevant.
> Deportation isn’t a “punishment.” It’s restoration of the status quo ante in response to someone entering illegally
This is weak semantics. A goal of retribution is not a requirement for some act to be a punishment. It is simply "the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority as a response and deterrent to a particular action or behavior that is deemed undesirable or unacceptable". Defacto it is a punishment. But this again doesn't matter even if you choose to find it not a punishment, it is still unjust. It may also be a return to the status quo, but so too is, for example, returning someone to prison for a parole violation, and I think you'd be hard pressed to define that as anything but a punishment.
> If you build a house on someone else’s land, they can force you to tear it down.
I'm dubious of this. You likely could not compel me to tear it down. You could sue to cover the costs, but if I had no money there are limits on what you could do.
I'm contending that deportation is similar. It, at a minimum, is not a just way to "restore the status quo".
And if which you may not speak the language, have no known relation, and be completely unable to support yourself. Where would you go if you got deported?
Also I said about as safe. Your risk of being involved in a homicide is ~1%. You'd need to be at a much higher risk of being killed before this impacts your overall safety.
Trans peoples existence certainly has been politicized. In many cases they are de facto not allowed to exist.
> Except unborn children, whose very existence
To use your same disingenuous measure of argument, no their existence isn't politicized, whether or not they are "persons" (or alive) is. Fetuses quite obviously exist, everyone agrees on that.
The HN guidelines suggest you steelman the arguments of people who you respond to. I don't think you're doing that if your entire argument boils down to a weak rhetorical disagreement about how precisely to define "very existence". Since certain forms of discriminatory policy are politicizing people's very existence.
I also don't think people ever widely suggested Muslim people's existence had been politicized, so that's simply a strawperson.
Im pro choice and think the banning of gender reassignment in children is bad.
But you're arguing that deciding whether or not a fetus or unborn child is a person is not an existential issue, but when someone can choose to get gender reassignment is.
One is very literally an argument about personhood and the right to terminate and the other is about children's and parents right to choose appropriate medical care.
I'm not. I'm arguing that they're the same situation. I think there are other factors that make the issue of gender reassignment completely unlike abortion, but yes they're both existential. GP was claiming only abortion was and I pointed out that that was logically inconsistent.
The differences are that regulating abortion harms a third party, the woman, while allowing gender reassignment doesn't.
> Trans peoples existence certainly has been politicized
To expand on this - If a trans person has a coworker who consistent and deliberately mis-genders them, there's no way for the person to have a discussion about it that's not political.
Even simpler: if the existence of trans, let alone non-binary, people is a contentious issue in politics, there's no way for a non-binary (or GNC binary trans) person to state their pronouns without it being a political act.
The same is true for people in same-sex relationships. You can't just mention your spouse like a straight person would without it being political.
> It might sound like a "lazy excuse" for someone who hasn't been in their shoes.
I'm in those shoes. I still won't interview anyone who left their previous company over an inability to keep their religious/political beliefs away from work.
It's a double whammy if the person in question left because they couldn't proselytise to their co-workers.
> ... 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.
Exactly. These didn't use to have to be rules -- it was simply part of Professionalism and social courtesy. That wasn't that long ago, it seems.
It's not 0%, but I spend a negligible amount of company time talking about political issues. I also don't have a particular desire to.
Nonetheless, if something of a political nature did come up, either as a distraction that was affecting my colleagues (e.g. they're part of a minoritized group, or empathetic to one, and something is going on), or something the company was doing was at odds with my own political values; I would hope the company would accommodate the need for _some_ level of discussion.
An outright ban ala Coinbase, and now Basecamp, would send an extremely troubling message - and would prompt me to begin the motions of seeking employment elsewhere. A generous severance package would make it a much easier decision.
I'd say it'sa new union topic. Employers need to start worrying about what political opinions they are lobbying for, and what their employees want them to be lobbying for.
Corporate lobbying is going to stop just being for the owners
I wonder if there have been court cases for this; is slack considered a non-work area for, say, the purposes of discussing unionization? Would a DM between two people mediated through the company slack be a non-work area?
Though generally, it seems this kind of ban (of union discussion or pay) would be unlawful in the US,
> For example, your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about the union during working time if it permits you to talk about other non-work-related matters during working time.
This is a weird take. The tech industry is all politics all the time. Even if all you're doing is discussing policy changes as it relates to the business. Even if literally everyone at the company agrees and is on the same political side you'll still occasionally discuss things like municipal broadband or the Affordable Care Act. By banning politics it creates a hush hush atmosphere where the mere mention of something inocuious can get you fired so you end up never talking about anything.
.. This is a comical generalization of an entire industry which spans beyond US..
I have worked in plenty on companies (big and small) where politics was simply left outside of business and everyone was fine with simply discussing the actual system design, infrastructure and data models.
Employees were simply not permitted to attempt to convert others to Christianity or initiate flame wars regarding abortion laws.
There is a time and a place for politics and a business setting is just not it.
I think this is a great move by Basecamp and I hope more companies follow. At a minimum, their stance is now crystal clear and there will be high cohesion between employees and management.
System design is often inherently political as well.
How do capture gender in the database?
That's a political debate. Do you care that you can't correctly store 'foreign' names? Political.
Do you offer Catalan too when you translate to Spanish? Political.
Do you include disputed territories on your countries lists or allow people to enter 'other'? Political.
Privacy protection? Political.
Systems are shaped by political debate and in turn shapes it. Your decisions will have a political dimension whether or not you like it.
And that is before considering all of the internal cultural and behavioural issues that are inherently political.
As for Basecamp, I think they've set themselves up for further conflict and turmoil. If I was there and hadn't quit yet, I'd consider it now because such a huge departure will destabilize oth.the company and internal culture for a long time.
My team could professionally and empathetically discuss each of the issues you outlined, but that doesn't mean I raise discussions about whether voting for certain candidates is a case for the-end-justifies-the-means. I don't understand how a good-faith reading of an "activism on your own platforms" policy leads to "we can't discuss the data modeling for people's names anymore." This strikes me as a case of false equivalence.
> I don't understand how a good-faith reading of an "activism on your own platforms" policy leads to "we can't discuss the data modeling for people's names anymore." This strikes me as a case of false equivalence.
I suggest you read up on the politics of the use of names in the context of slavery in America as a starting point for understanding why names has a long history of being inherently political.
I've worked across a wide range of companies in tech for 25 years, so no, I don't. But I've also yet to work for or with a single company where tech decisions were not inherently political.
E.g. I had a contract to do a communications system to relay debug mapping data from an autonomous submersible. For a military research institute. It was inherently political because I had to consider if I was ok with working a project that might end up being used in armed conflict in the future my code certainly wouldn't).
Or when I worked on code to maintain the quality documentation for a systems integrated that delivered backend systems for the police. I had no problems with that, but I might have if it'd been somewhere where the police had a worse reputation than in Norway where I did that job.
I've worked on billing systems where we had to decide on anti-fraud measures. Sounds non-political, until you realise it often involves broad blocks that stereotypes behaviours based on factors that very easily ends up effectively profiling users.
I could list many more. I've yet to work on a single software system where the higher level architecture did not involve consideration of political issues whether explicitly, or implicitly. I'm sure there are some, but I think there are far fewer than you imagine.
Do you consider a farmer’s decision to sell food to the public political since he could be feeding terrorists?
Pencils can be used to write manifestos that result in countless deaths. Is the pencil manufacturer responsible for that?
I worked for a company that had train control systems as a product. How do you suppose that was political? Do you think we should have spent more time considering that maybe we shouldn’t have been making trains safer because we could accidentally save the next Hitler?
Parent offered since terrific examples. The least you could do is give an example of a company unaffected by politics. Frankly I'm skeptical of your line of reasoning but happy to entertain it.
I don’t think they exist because even something as simple as “changing master to main” gets pushback because “political”
It’s a name, it’s generally not hard to change, and if it makes someone happier why not main is shorter to type! But people still push back against it for.. reasons
But people still push back against it for.. reasons
It's pretty simple, actually
Person A: We need to do thing X
Person B: Why?
Person A: Because I am morally superior to you, and I say so
You really don't understand why person B would push back against tacitly accepting that they were the moral deficient? It's the same reason people dislike vegans who say "for moral reasons", they're asserting that everyone around them is immoral, and people find it obnoxious.
Im sorry but I really don’t follow. How is asking making any moral judgements? Your either reading into what people say and not handling your own discomfort very well or making assumptions on what person a would say? When this first came up I too asked why:
“Because it reminds people of slavery which is still fresh in the minds of many and makes some uncomfortable”
Because it reminds people of slavery which is still fresh in the minds of many and makes some uncomfortable
Well, "main" is like "mainmast" of the sailing ships that brought the slaves over.
See, once you start this game, it never ends. The master in "master branch" was never anything to do with slavery - and everyone knows it. No one in the world equated committing to master with endorsing slavery, but that is what you are accusing them of. Same as master bedroom and master's degree and mastering a skill and countless other examples. And why is "master" problematic but not "owner"? After all the common term was not "slavemaster" but "slaveowner" remember. Shall we do branch owners or code owners or file owners next?
Another way of looking at it is “why not?”
Why not leave it as it is then? Why step onto a never ending treadmill of arbitrary changes for change's sake?
Anyway I'm not trying to convince you here (I get the feeling that that would be pointless) I am merely explaining to you the behaviour you have observed but don't understand the motivation for.
Slippery slope much? I don’t see anyone bothered by or complaining about main, except those who don’t want to change it, and no ones ever said anything about owners. A large number of people don’t like master and if I can make someone’s life a little better with such a small change I will. Times change, language changes.
If you won’t do so that’s fine, but be honest why you won’t, your arguments keep changing first it was their “moral superiority” And now “where will it end/its change for changes sake” which both sound like excuses to me
If you won’t do so that’s fine, but be honest why you won’t, your arguments keep changing first it was their “moral superiority” And now “where will it end/its change for changes sake
What are you implying that my "honest" reason is, of course you are insinuating that I am a closet racist. And it is just change for the sake of being able to demand a change, if you are being honest, you get a vicarious thrill out of the power you get and the sense of superiority it gives you and you won't stop, and we both know it.
lol no that didn't cross my mind. more that its seems the idea of renaming master -> main makes you uncomfortable for some reason and your not dealing with it well. You keep bring up morales and now "superiority" - none of which crossed my mind because i don't think like that and wrt master/main all i care about is changing it for those who want it nothing else but it's real clear these are important to you and this discussion centers around those themes for you.
You keep jumping to extreme conclusions and assumptions which is kinda hilariously sad as that's what you accuse "the other side" of doing
i don't think like that and wrt master/main all i care about is changing it for those who want it nothing else
What you are missing - because I never mentioned it, and I should never have to mention it - is that I actually am a BAME or a POC or whatever. Not only does the word "master" not make me feel uncomfortable, noone ever bothered asked me if it did before starting to agitate for this change. Now you may be one too, I don't know, and feel free to change it to anything you want in your own repos if a word upsets you so much (and you should rid yourself of all other problematic words too, like "owner"). But don't kid yourself that you're doing it for the benefit of the wider BAME community. And don't kid yourself about your reasons for telling everyone about it.
You don't speak for all POC just like i don't speak for all queers and never would be so presumptuous to assume my opinions are shared across the community. So just because you didn't care or want it changed doesn't mean others didn't ask for it.
> don't kid yourself about your reasons for telling everyone about it
You really seem to have a hard time grasping that there was nothing more to it other then being raised as a concern by POC so i just did it and moved on with my life. The only reason i mentioned it was to use it as an example of how hard it can be to escape politics entirely in the workplace and this entire conversation has really hit that point home.
This entire thread is kinda the point. I feel like I've wasted days of my life reading about master versus main. Even went and converted my biggest open source projects to "release" myself cause I typically work on develop then push to master and tag as a release. So to me master is "most recent release". In my head it was always like "master recording". It's not even "main" cause work is being done on develop and the release branch gets it last. I honestly don't care either way, didn't bring it up at work, and no one else did either but the virtue signaling with this is just toxic. Your implication that someone not wanting to change their branch name makes them inherently racist is super toxic. It's just gate keeping being woke. You don't have woke enough points if you don't do this, that, and the other thing.
Also does a single POC represent their entire race? Isn't that itself racist to think that way? In any population you'll find people who can claim to support literally anything.
Except this isn’t how the fantasy plays out in real systems. This breaks builds, readmes, packaging, etc and takes a non-trivial amount of time to fix.
For all of those issues you can dryly resolve them by selecting whichever choice maximizes profit. By eliminating moralizers from its ranks, Basecamp can now make decisions that only consider profit.
That would also be a political choice. And in many cases there isn't going to be a choice that maximises profit without taking into account the PR effect of choices, which again devolves into politics.
The idea that any organisation can be apolitical is fundamentally flawed. At most you can enforce the (political) choice of pretending you're not political by shutting down discussion of it and leaving it exclusively in the hands of the executives and board. This appears to be the avenue Basecamp has taken. They are free to pretend that's an apolitical choice, and we're free to point out that it's bullshit.
Obviously, but that isn't my argument. My argument is that when you create a culture that approaches political decisions from a profit perspective, it is easier to make a profit.
> And in many cases there isn't going to be a choice that maximises profit without taking into account the PR effect of choices, which again devolves into politics.
This is wrong. You are conflating understanding a political position with believing in a political position. Understanding a political position doesn't require you to believe in it.
I honestly don't understand the sentiment here when people are saying "do your job" and other things to that effect that strip all context from this. The biggest issue right now is COVID and when discussing it the topic can and will inevitable lead to something political. Is it helpful to have to think about the arbitrary line your employers have drawn and try to toe it? When do you know if you pissed off someone higher up? You cannot stop workplace discussions because programmers are people too and will want to find camaraderie and sympathy. Putting these rules and posting them publicly seems like a poor way of simply avoiding the issue rather than resolving it
> The biggest issue right now is COVID and when discussing it the topic can and will inevitable lead to something political.
Will it? I feel like I've had dozens of conversations about the coof (most recently, about getting the shots and related stuff - I had some bad side effects to mine that caused me to miss a half day of work) without politics being a part of it. Do people not even try anymore?
Just the very idea of bringing up vaccines is "political" to those that think vaccines are a means of the state to control the population. You don't think it's political, but it is to someone. And that person, under the guise of a "no politics aloud" policy could seek to silence you from any references to the benefits of the vaccines, it's side effects, etc.
> By banning politics it creates a hush hush atmosphere where the mere mention of something inocuious can get you fired so you end up never talking about anything.
My understanding is that these people did not leave because they were not allowed to discuss something innocuous, they left because they were not allowed to preach their belief system at work.
> you'll still occasionally discuss things like municipal broadband or the Affordable Care Act.
And if the woke crowd were able to "discuss" something without calling everyone who refused to join their belief system names, then this wouldn't be a problem.
There's a big difference between having a friendly argument about the ACA over beers and telling a coworker they're enabling genocide by keeping a funny names list on the company slack.
I think "couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime" is really minimizing the leadership vaccuum that caused this in the first place.
As someone who hires I'd have zero issue with a talented person who also felt passionately about not working with people who enable racism or toxic environments. That's part of how you build good companies.
As a self considered centrist, I would have an issue if they couldn't discuss these issues in a dispassionate way at work. That might be wrong, but IMO (within reason) we are there to work and create value. We will make mistakes along the way, and some of those will be perceived as a step towards racism and toxicity. If we can't accept that it's a spectrum and not a binary, that reasonable people can have different opinions, and that once a decision is made we should move on together, I think I actually would have trouble working with such a person (and have in the past).
This sounds like I agree with what the founders did here. I don't at all. But I understand why they did it, and I don't disagree with their intentions.
I’ve worked with people who were passionate about each of those issues (maybe not all at once). None of them encouraged or participated in the dehumanizing of other people and all found that kind of behavior towards others to be abhorrent. I can tell you that if they were confronted with a list making fun of people's names in this manner said list would not have survived with any one of them being at the company, let alone all of them. =)
I would note as a follow up to this re: leadership and culture; 30 people left Basecamp today. DHH is hanging out on social media like it’s no big deal, back to talking about Apple. You know what’s consistent between the start of this incident and today’s behavior? The derisive and dismissal treatment of people that have been a part of his company for many years.
From the reporting I've seen, the issue here is not that these are the kinds of people with strong opinions that are fun to bounce ideas off of, these are the kind of people with strong opinions who if you disagree with will escalate the situation to intolerable levels such as refusing to accept a perfectly sincere apology and then equating it with genocide. This isn't the fun debate crowd, it's "the conflict is abuse" crowd.
I love a good debate with someone who disagrees with me in good faith, but that other sort of person is just exhausting and counterproductive to debate anything with.
It is not my intention here to cast judgement on people belonging to either side of the political spectrum. Just wanted to make sure that no double standards are applied in OP's hiring practises.
I agree that their behaviour hurts their career prospects. But I'm not sure if they agree. Many might think that the public at large is on their side and what they did looks good from the outside. This might be objectively false, but this belief would nevertheless encourage them to take the 6 months free money and leave.
At my college, some of the computer science coed fraternity leadership tried to convince us that even if someone couldn't do fizzbuzz they were still a programmer.
Fizzbuzz is not that difficult. There are two twists in the original task description. But if we talk about fizbuzz—like tasks: The point is not to be difficult. There are people applying to programing jobs who seemingly can’t solve even very simple programing tasks in a language of their choice. I could not believe it if i would not have seen with my own eyes. Fizzbuzz-like tasks are there to filter these folks out.
( You might ask what are the two twists in the original fizbuzz task:
- you have to know about the existence of modulo operator and how it can be used to test for dividibility. If you don’t know that one trick then fizbuzz is a lot harder for you.
- If you are the kind of person who translates the human sentences of the task description to code word by word then you can get into a kind of garden-path situation where you have to backtrack once to succeed. What do I mean by that? You read “For every number dividable by 3 print fizz”, you write “if i%3==0: print ‘fizz’”. Then you read the next sentence “For every number dividable by 5 print buzz” and you type “elif i%5==0: print ‘buzz’”. Then you read “for every number dividible with both 3 and 5 print fizbuzz” and you might translate that to “elif i%3==0 and i%5==0: print ‘fizbuzz’” but that of course would never execute, you have to move the translation of this last sentence to be the first condition checked for it to have a chance. Not anything I would call really challenging, but it requires a certain way of thinking to recognise that this is a problem and to solve it.
Thank you. Something just snapped into focus for me. Fizzbuzz always seemed easy to me, because I'm a math nerd, but I just realized that the concept of a "remainder" isn't something people often use in their adult life. Also, the fact that programming languages have any sort of remainder operator might not come up in a typical web dev coding bootcamp or a self-taught programmer's education. Or even a college graduate could easily gloss over the boring math operators, eager to make cool stuff in the worlds of OOP and web dev.
It's sad that Fizzbuzz is used at all. At present, using Fizzbuzz selects for people who either (1) Are math nerds or (2) Are already in the "in group" and possibly read HN. That probably makes a small contribution to the lack of diversity in tech.
Yes, and a "crankshaft" isn't something universally understood by non-mech-eng's, a "flank" isn't something universally understood by non-mil-scis, and "leverage" isn't universally understood by non-financiers. That doesn't mean there isn't value in expecting new hires to understand those concepts.
Implementing fizzbuzz successfully requires someone to have the most basic understanding of cause and effect, the ability to reason from that understanding, and the ability to reason abstractly. Nearly all forms of programming require that. So yes, fizzbuzz selects people in the "in group"- the in group of people who are actually potential programmers.
That's another good point, fizzbuzz really tests two things, and people tend to only think of one of them. The first one everyone thinks of is "does the person know how to write a simple if/else expression". But the other thing people need to know is how to do math, and use programming syntax, they haven't thought of in potentially a very long time.
It would be like testing if someone knows about a "crankshaft" in a job where they'll be exclusively working on Teslas.
I think it very much depends on the specific programming job, but I can't think of many roles I've come across where, if I were in charge of programming hires, I'd be happy with somebody who wasn't even aware of the concept of modulo. And I consider myself FAR from a math nerd.
> It would be like testing if someone knows about a "crankshaft" in a job where they'll be exclusively working on Teslas
Yeah completely agree. Not all things people call "programming" are the same. Only jobs that require someone to think in this way should have tests filtering for it
> Also, the fact that programming languages have any sort of remainder operator might not come up in a typical web dev coding bootcamp or a self-taught programmer's education.
That may be true, but as a web dev, I use the modulo quite frequently. Just yesterday I used it to implement some code where the client wanted to insert ads after every sixth paragraph in a page body, but not if there would be two paragraphs or less left on the page after the last ad. I can't imagine what kind of goofy hackneyed solution I would have ended up with if I didn't know about `%`.
Before CSS had :even and :odd pseudoselectors, we also commonly used it to zebra stripe tables.
Web dev isn't typically as math-y as, say, game dev, but I'd encourage anyone getting into it to at least learn the modulo beyond basic algebra stuff.
I've had to use it too - mostly when faffing about and not using some jQuery builtin. But to say that someone who doesn't know this easily-stackoverflowed ("how do I do something every nth array item") lacks basic programming ability ("why can't programmers program" is I think the original fizzbuzz blog post title) is I think going too far.
I regularly have people fail before introducing fizzbuzz, and then regularly pass on people that can’t do an equivalent problem that isn’t exactly fizzbuzz. Surprise, tons of applicants out there can’t actually code, it’s true!
As someone outside of the tech industry, this surprises me. I’m a writer, but when I wanted to learn to code, I did loads of coding exercises, including FizzBuzz. A couple of years later I could knock up a FizzBuzz algorithm in JavaScript or Python and probably other languages too—and I’m really not very good at programming, certainly not at a professional standard. Why is it such a Shibboleth in the tech industry?
The whole point of FizzBuzz is it is a trivial exercise. It could be any trivial problem. For some reason many applicants to software development jobs are simply not able to program even trivial stuff.
The initial blog post did not make that distinction. Not only is that a significant mistake in clarity, it was a significant mistake to announce a change like that via blog post.
With that change they also got rid of the D&I committee established with employee participation. If you're gonna tell your employees 'you have a seat at the table' on something sensitive like D&I, then eliminate that group with no warning, people are gonna feel some kind of way about it. Even Palpatine didn't dissolve the Imperial Senate right away.
I'd say probably a personal visit to the HR office, assuming he was bringing neo-nazi politics into the office. If he was doing it strictly on his own time, not a work issue.
You don't think someone holding views to the effect that jews, gays and black people/slavs should be exterminated is a work issue? If I belonged to any of these groups and found out by chance that the person was a neo-Nazi, even if they never brought it up at work, I would certainly demand that they not work in my vicinity anymore. Then management would get to choose between me and a literal neo-Nazi.
The problem is, at least in my experience, that phrases like "neo-nazi" more commonly refer to Trump supporters, Republicans, edgy Twitter wags, etc and less to Mein Kampf reading would-be perpetrators of genocide.
If I worked with a colleague from Iraq can they report me to HR for having been in the military and bombing their country?
I’m sure we can think of lots of cases where it is or isn’t easy to say yes to “report to HR”. It’s a tough topic and the answer to it changes over time and based on geographic social norms.
> 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?
Depends on how you frame this. Describing it as "sudden change of company culture", "lacking leadership communication" or "wanted to change fields and took the opportunity" can both be valid and inoffensive to either side.
On the other hand, there's a chance your hiring manager will feel similarly strong about politics, especially in SV, so even your framing might work.
"they offered a lot of money and it looked like a good idea" seems like a good enough justification to me. It seems unlikely to me that 1/3 of basecamp employees wouldn't shut up about their support for Donald Trump and how QAnon would save the dau
> The 6 months free money is hard for anyone entering a strong job market to pass up.
Money is a funny business. I'm convinced that anyone who's a skilled software engineer makes more money than they ever imagined after 5-6 years of working at a regular tech company. All the RSU upside, bonuses yada yada.
Folks who worked at Basecamp are top-notch programmers with close to a decade or more of experience. I'm certain that their motivation to work is driven in large part by craftsmanship, taste etc. Not to mention that social aspect of work -- building rapport with peers you consider intelligent/admirable; consistent record of work; crunch-time camaraderie, all of those things make up for their worth in 6 months of free money. 6 months isn't that long. Like someone else on this thread said, getting a new job, interviewing, building up trust in new team takes time.
I'm convinced that social policy at Basecamp, more than 6 months of money, influenced many people to leave. Particularly people with a lot of capital; cultural, intellectual or even financial. Personally, I'm glad. I want to live in a world where people take responsibility everywhere and not shy away from topics meant to drive morality/politics forward.
>>I want to live in a world where people take responsibility everywhere and not shy away from topics meant to drive morality/politics forward.
This is a problem given that politics is not universally agreed upon and if we can not work together with different politics then we can not have a pluralist society, which increasingly seems impossible as both "sides" of this debate want to sort people with differing politics as "immoral"
Precisely. If a pro-life person brought their “whole self” to work and started promoting pro-life views and calling it “a matter of morality”, these same folks would put an end to that really quick.
It has zero to do morality or “being responsible” or “making the world a better place”. It’s about pushing one particular political viewpoint with the end goal of grabbing power to benefit their group.
Many of the comments in this thread appear to be missing the context of what has happening at Basecamp.
From the Verge;
> While Basecamp does not publish diversity statistics, it is still, like most tech companies, majority white and male, employees said. But the idea of worker-led efforts on diversity issues got a frosty reception from the founders last year, employees told me. They were allowed to work on the project, but did not feel as if the founders were particularly invested in the outcome.
> Nonetheless, the DE&I ( Diversity and inclusion) 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.
HN guidelines are to steelman what you are responding to.
So, assume "examine how employees socialise" means "consider events where people go beyond who their usual contacts are, to enable more mentoring". Rather than, "spying on me and building a graph of contacts".
I suppose you are right and there is a range of implementations a committee comprised of a third of the workforce could use to "examine how employees socialize." Maybe its unfair to react simply to the text and not do the work of broader interpretation.
In terms of the guidelines, I am not a guideline lawyer as perhaps you are. When I think of the strongest plausible interpretation I often turn to Occam and accept the plain language meaning. For example, if a goal of the committee were to encourage mentoring, then the article could have said that.
In terms of strongest plausible interpretation of what I wrote, I did not write "spying on me and building a graph of contacts." I'm a person who is appreciative of privacy and would be annoyed by a group of colleagues who decided to "examine" me in any way. As I think about it now I can feel a wave of revulsion and annoyance toward a posse of busybodies who must not have enough actual work to do that they have time to "examine" me. Maybe you like being examined; me I still think people who volunteer to do that are creepy.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
[...]
Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it...
I'm not sure I'd want to hire someone who left their previous company because they felt they had the right to brow beat other staff with their political opinions.
I bet that most who quit for non-monetary reasons probably quit less because of the policy, but more because they lost faith in leadership. This whole episode was extremely ugly, and unnecessarily public. If I worked at Basecamp I’d probably just not trust DHH and Jason to not make my life worse for no clear reason.
Well these people will probably quickly land a job at GitHub, Shopify or Stripe. Also, there are iOS and data scientists. Again I am assuming they are really good in their field.
> Interestingly the employees who left have the best career prospects.
The people who can most afford to not put up with <whatever> are always those with the best career prospects. If you aren’t certain that you can get a job somewhere else that matches even the newly-worse conditions of your present job within the cushion provided by the offered buyout, then a buyout isn’t attractive.
Except there's nothing to 'put up with' other than policy which is going to be effectively the same almost anywhere, or possibly worse.
If you try to form an 'issue group' at an arbitrary company, to take on the executive team, and make demands with excessive intellectualizations that 'making fun of names' lead to 'genocide' - you're not going to get offered severance, you're going to get fired immediately.
The kind of leverage that people here on HN seem to think they have is a little bit bizarre.
People deserve to be treated with dignity, of course, people should not be making fun of people's names, it was stopped, and for the most part, that should have been it. Antagonizing almost any further is going to be seen as lacking in legitimacy and probably not acting good faith.
I think 90% of companies would be 'much less open' than Basecamp even with their new policies, 9.5% would be about the same. The rest, a grab-bag of different views, mostly at smaller companies. The bigger the company, the more the actions will be based purely around legality, caution, and the companies will to maintain some semblance of positive image.
The policy is only one part of it. No more 360 peer reviews. Allowing a diversity group then eliminating it. Announcing it all with a blogpost. And more.
It’s putting up with terrible leadership that seems to want to keep their heads buried in the ground and not have to deal with anything.
Most companies don't have 360 reviews or diversity groups, that's normal policy. It seems odd because they reversed their decision, but that is also reasonable.
It's not terrible leadership, I think it's just poorly communicated.
I love my job, but if I'd be offered my half-year salary right now to leave, I'd at least seriously think about it. It's a fat chunk of money. I'm not saying I'd take it, but I'd at least spend a couple of days thinking about it.
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.
edit: Excellent point below that the severance agreements probably included a non-disparagement clause, which would restrict what those who took the deal would feel safe disclosing publicly.
I know most of the people who left. It's the policy and the method of delivery, not the severance. The severence will make it easier to go for sure, but this is about the policy.
People seem to be making this way more complex than it is.
It's pretty common in a situation like this to also carry a no disparagement clause along with the severance. That's also why you see a lot of "today is my last day at Basecamp" with no other "because I disagreed with the policies", etc.
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.
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.
> apparently there were also some cutbacks to benefits and allowances and stuff.
They cut a fitness benefit, wellness allowance, farmer's market share, and continuing education allowances. However, they paid each employee the value of the benefit for the year and they created a 10% profit sharing plan. https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5
It's unclear how much money the 10% profit sharing is worth, except that now it's 50% better for the 2/3 of remaining employees. (edit: Yes, this is an oversimplification.)
I've read a bit more about the background to this now, and they hired someone in December who immediately went on an internal advocacy campaign for their personal politics. So, all of this, is the cost of hiring a "wrong" person.
Sometimes you hire the wrong person, Basecamp has done it before.
Having to replace (currently) 30%+ of your org increases that risk, in addition to the initial costs of hiring all those people and getting them up to speed.
> That means hiring costs, costs for hiring the wrong people, and lack of productivity.
Given that they seem to view politic discussions and committees as non-productive and that most of the people that left did so because these were important to them, they'll probably account for parts of their work and their leaving as "lack of productivity" and "hiring the wrong people" already.
EDIT: From a company perspective - not judging either way.
You're mis-construing the situation. The people are leaving because of the heavy handed and incredibly insensitive policy making, not because they spent all their time in committees and that's being taken away from them.
All the people that left that I knew were incredibly talented and productive people, they are going to be a nightmare to replace.
I'm not judging the people that left - sorry if that was received wrongly. I'm trying to say that from the perspective of the company, they probably see this deal less bad than you do.
Knowing what I know about the people who have left (so far) they are very much going to miss the people who have left. I don't know all of them as I left 5 years ago, but the ones I do know are all incredibly competent at what they do, including the ehtire iOS team.
I don't know about the math but I would hope a small-ish group of intelligent people likely familiar with game theory wouldn't get wrapped up in selfish, counterproductive tactics.
> They cut a fitness benefit, wellness allowance, farmer's market share, and continuing education allowances. However, they paid each employee the value of the benefit for the year and they created a 10% profit sharing plan.
So, the message that is very easy to take from this (since the employees know they work for a profit maximizing firm) is that Basecamp's own expectation of its future profitability was that the 10% profit sharing was likely to be less expensive than the benefits it replaced.
So, yeah, its quite possible that explains some part of the departures as much as the workplace speech code. But its all part and parcel of the same thing: "We're taking away your amenities, more tightly restricting your behavior, and exposing your to more risk" is quite a package.
> It’s unclear how much money the 10% profit sharing is worth, except that now it’s 50% better for the 2/3 of remaining employees.
Assuming the 1/3 that left, including many highly placed, had no role in producing profits. Which would be kind of weird.
And assuming the fact of the mass exodus has no impact on the perception of Basecamp and its product independent of the actual impact the employees had on profits, which would also be weird.
> So, the message that is very easy to take from this (since the employees know they work for a profit maximizing firm) is that Basecamp's own expectation of its future profitability was that the 10% profit sharing was likely to be less expensive than the benefits it replaced.
Or that they thought providing a monetary benefit, which each employee is free to spend as they wish, is a more attractive packet and/or better due to the reduced management overhead. Also, depending on how much the benefits cost them and how many employees used them, this might still be a better option for both sides.
> Or that they thought providing a monetary benefit, which each employee is free to spend as they wish, is a more attractive packet and/or better due to the reduced management overhead.
Sure, that's also an easy to reach interpretation. Unlike the other, not one that explains people being more likely to accept a buyout because of the change, so not relevant to the discussion, though.
I agree with this. The piece about benefits was weird and alarming to me.
If your employee gave you the individual cash value of your gym membership, it would be based on their corporate discount and the fact it was pre-tax. You would have to dip into your own pocket to renew that membership as an individual, as it would come after tax and be more expensive (joining fees, contract lock-in...). And what a shitty cop-out to call it paternalistic, as if the whole post didn't reek of paternalism.
A 10% profit share between 50 people is replacing a solid perk with an unpredictable annual bonus.
This is really simple, it's about the policy and the way it was announced, there's little more to read into the situation.
Minor points:
There was no corporate gym membership, it was just "Here's $100, spend it on fitness".
> A 10% profit share between 50 people is replacing a solid perk with an unpredictable annual bonus.
Basecamp was a phenomenally profitable company. The profit share was brought in after I left, but I'd have taken it over the other benefits if it had been either/or.
I don’t think a gym benefits can be pretax. Maybe if the employer owns the gym. What a company can pay for and not have it count as compensation is more limited than you’d think.
Worth adding that the eng team has an even higher rate of departures. Cross-referencing basecamp.com/humans.txt with the list of people who left shows that nearly 2/3 of the Engineering team left, bring them from 15 to 6 (including DHH).
It astounds me that you think people are entirely motivated by money and that social policy will have no bearing on those who have the best career prospects.
Companies and their cultures are not equivalent. Many of those people will have joined Basecamp because of the culture and the mission. They will have joined for reasons other than money. Many of them could have got jobs at FAANGs but didn't because they believed this culture was a better fit for them.
You have no data on why people left, you only have guesses you're trying to turn into data.
Many of the replies to your comment are equally of the hand wavey "see, social policy isn't the thing here" type, when social policy is absolutely 100% the thing here.
I've never seen such a disappointing thread on HN as this one.
I mean it doesn't have to be one reason. Like all big decisions, there's lots of factors involved, some weighed more heavily than others. Maybe for one person, money is worth 10 points, policy worth 5, and a new job prospect is worth 3.
The people who are counted in that are all ones who have publicly said that it's because of the company changes. Most of these are long-standing loyal employees who have no incentive to say this. If it was just about the money they could just as easily keep quiet and take the cash. In fact, for all we know lots of people did just that.
I think it would depend on how much I liked my job.
My sense is that DHH is just a terrible boss.
Note the "changes" [1] are not just "no politics" but also "no more committees" (of any kind at all; that is, no authority or responsibility except individually along line-of-report hieararchy), no more 360 degree reviews (no way to formally give feedback to your boss), and no more bringing up past decisions you disagreed with (!). Basically, no more employee input in anything, and a new focus on "insubordination" (they're not using this word, but these policy changes are like -- do your job, don't tell us what your opinion is about anything else in the company especially if you don't like something).
They also introduced a 10% profit-sharing plan though, which could be real money?
I don't think the people leaving -- some of whom had been there for years -- are doing it for money. I think that's not usually why people leave a place, especially when leaving without another job lined up.
I don't think it's really about the "no politics at work" policy either.
I think it's probably mostly about not trusting or respecting or feeling respected by the boss.
Interesting. I've read everything posted officially about this by the two founders as it unfolded and I've been super impressed by how well-considered these new policies are. As someone with several decades of experience as an employee, manager and then founder in both large and smaller orgs, I felt these changes were in the best interests of all stakeholders. With the myriad potentially conflicting sensibilities in today's workplace the only fair and sustainable approach is to focus on the work and the customers.
As an employee, these policies would make me feel more respected and safe. I guess the fact that you see it as a sign of a "terrible boss" and I see it as a sign of enlightened leadership is an indication how divided perspectives on workplace etiquette currently are.
I share a similar background to yours (employee, leader, founder, diverse org size) and would have agreed with you if it were not for the context of these changes. I too want to ensure people will safe and respected.
However:
* I don't believe any enlightened leadership posts publicly about wide-spread and company affected policy changes before informing and/or discussing with your staff. That's disrespectful to the people you serve.
* no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.
* I don't believe at all that enlightened leadership discards its values the moment that they become difficult to uphold.
* If the new policies weren't in reaction to the leader being called to be accountable to the people he served and the mission he told them they were on, I'd probably be more agreeable to your point. In a vaccuum a safe place for people of all politica and creeds (short of outright hate) to work together is what you want. What I don't want is an unsafe space where no one feels they can question the leadership or hold the company to its values.
That being said, I totally respect your coming at this from a different angle and I agree that there's certainly more than one way to look at this (as the reactions in this thread indicate).
> no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.
To be fair to them the world has changed a lot in the last few years.
I used to talk politics with friends and family but I've have had to stop over the last couple years because because of how divisive it's gotten. I now avoid those conversations because I don't want to lose family or friends. I'm center left and people who preciously were slightly left of me would probably consider me a nazi, and people who used to be slightly to the right of me would consider me a communist.
I could see the same changes happening at work. And conversations that used to be ok escalating into insanely heated situations.
Perhaps this is not an enlightened view, and I would not have used the word “serve,” but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. This is a company, not the government. As a citizen, the government serves me. As an employee, I serve my employer.
"but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. "
Leadership is all about serving the people you're shepherding. There is a responsibility and a stewardship that comes with wearing the crown, and it's not always for everyone. =)
I agree. There are lots of people who will never raise their voice but in quiet moments will tell you that political fights are very uncomfortable. Political flame wars are usually driven by a small animated group of loud voices. Another way to frame this policy is “let’s keep the workplace professional”.
If you've never experience a spittle-inflected rant disrupting a meeting, because some individual felt it their duty and privilege to engage with everyone on their particular viewpoint ... you simply don't know how disconcerting this can be. I have. I don't care much about my co-workers political views. I'm always happy to have a beer and discuss things after work (well, virtually these days).
But making people uncomfortable because you feel entitled to push your world view at work, makes you more of a liability to the company than an asset. Which in the case of Basecamp, the owners may have addressed well for all concerned.
I am not sure I follow. Are you saying straight white men’s actions are not labeled political while other people’s actions are discounted as political and thus stifled?
No, they're talking about some people's entire existence being political.
White/male/straight is the social default. Just consider movies and games: if a character is a woman, non-white, or non-straight, let alone trans, that's considered the director/developers making a political statement. And it only gets worse if they don't at least "behave" like white/male/straight characters.
The same is true for workplaces. A woman in an otherwise all-male team is far more likely to be accepted if she masks her femininity and acts like "one of the guys". A Black person will be more accepted if they "act white". Queer folks better just not mention anything related to their sexuality even if it would be normal for straight/cis folks. And if they get any jabs targeted at their identity they better just laugh it off and not "cause a scene" and upset anyone.
If you invert your statement it is exactly the same discriminatory focus. It would effectively say White/male/straight exist as a dominant cultural force that is inherently political. They can’t exist without imposing their norms on others. This position focuses on race, gender, sexuality as much as any other form of discrimination.
Rather than focusing on the differences we could focus on common ground and the value of inclusion. It’s not necessary to focus on differences and vilified existence of white/male/strait people.
I dunno, see people are non-white, and some people are political.
Some people are LGBTQ+, and some people are political
Some people are non-binary/femme, and others are political.
Having engagement people who's idwntity is political is valuable when you consider how much of the population is non-white, non-straight, people of color.
See, we can both play this game. It doesn't nothing for us. It's literally the core reasoning behind Basecamp's "no politics at work" move.
The changes do enforce a stratification in the organization, This may have been the intent in part.
Another thought I had was that they wanted to slim the company down. In that case, you look at what you want to keep and what you want to lose. You make it easy for those who you want to leave to make that decision. If there was a faction that loved a hypothetical free breakfast, and these folks caused discontent and discomfort among others, elimination of that breakfast, and a way for them to bow out gracefully, thinking that they took the W, would be 4D chess for the stakeholders.
You may lose some people you'd prefer to keep, that's always a risk. But if you have a way to cluster the people you are reasonably happy about parting with, by noting common behaviors (the hypothetical breakfast model above), lowering their interest level for staying (removing the thing they like), while providing an incentive to leave (a pretty good severance/buy out), this is a win for most people.
I've seen various really bad takes on Twitter, that miss almost all the (fairly obvious) nuance of these moves. The bad takes seem to cluster about the "attack" on peoples "rights" to talk societal and political issues at work. And some sort of joy at seeing a company "suffer".
I don't think these are even in the right ballpark. There's lots of missing information, and we can speculate about it, in a way that resembles blindfolded dart playing.
However, the management response is pointed, and as they seem to be fairly specific, one could (likely far more accurately) speculate what caused them. And why they are being considered.
The bans on political/societal talk likely originated from conversations that made some folks quite uncomfortable, or unhappy. They were likely sustained after being advised to stop. Rather than allow such talk to disrupt the organization, the owners had to make a decision. So they did, and provided a mechanism for the most vocal folks to ease their way out.
What looks to me is that the people who were made uncomfortable were mostly the owners. So they would like to make it clear that no employees may ever make them uncomfortable again. Stratification in the organization indeed.
By saying "these changes" plural you don't only mean the "no talking about politics" policy I guess; are you also talking about "No more committees" (of any kind; only reporting-line authority), "No more 360 reviews", and "No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions" (sounds like a rule on questioning decision-making to me)?
Primarily the "no politics" but I also see the wisdom in dropping 360 reviews. We did that several years ago and it was an amazingly positive change. As for no more dwelling on past decisions, that is the same thing as Intel's cultural value of "Disagree, but then commit." Basically, debate fiercely but then once a decision is made, commit to to it even if it didn't go your way and move on. This is a key part of being a team player. Things aren't going to always go your way and even leadership will sometimes make mistakes but it undermines everything if someone keeps harping on a prior decision. "See, I told it wouldn't work" is about the most immature and unhelpful attitude to have - no matter how correct it may be.
The Intel motto you quote is a much better formulation of this concept, if in fact the recent noise from Basecamp is a sign that they agree with Intel on this. Communication is also an important skill for leaders, and that seems to be lacking.
> As for no more dwelling on past decisions, that is the same thing as Intel's cultural value of "Disagree, but then commit." Basically, debate fiercely but then once a decision is made, commit to to it even if it didn't go your way and move on. This is a key part of being a team player.
Hmm... Does (or should) "Disagree, but then commit" contain a corollary of "...and let's look at it again in X months/years"?
I mean, if you do argue for something, say some particular technical solution, but the decision goes against you, and you do actually accept and commit to the outcome... Is this commitment eternal?
If, say, you're still convinced the programming language / framework / style you originally advocated would be a better fit for your team / department / company, are you bound to shut up forever or can you raise it again at some point in the future? And if you can re-raise it, then when -- is there some general waiting period for stuff like this, or should it perhaps be an explicit addendum to every decision?
N.B: Not asking for myself, just a hypothetical that I find interesting... OK, come to think of it, perhaps actually asking for myself after all: I haven't been turned down on any such suggestion... Yet, but am thinking about raising one. And if I get a "No" at first, how long do I go on nagging / wait before I remind everyone of it?
>As for no more dwelling on past decisions, that is the same thing as Intel's cultural value of "Disagree, but then commit."
You mean the company who is flailing in the market, losing employees and generally considered a bad place to work?
>"See, I told it wouldn't work" is about the most immature and unhelpful attitude to have - no matter how correct it may be.
Blame free post mortems are vital for an organization to grow and improve with time. If you cannot review past bad decisions and learn from then then you will be forced to repeat the same mistakes while your competitors evolve.
>but it undermines everything if someone keeps harping on a prior decision.
If accepting a mistake was made and then publicly coming up with a plan to not have it happen again undermines your ability to lead then you are a horrible leader.
Not only does Intel have the cash, but it has a quarter century of fab capitalization left and a history of come backs, first with the shift from memory to CPUs in the 80s and then overcoming AMD in the 2000s. Ironically, Intel's biggest safety net is spinning off their fabs like AMD spun off Global Foundries, which gave them the capital to claw themselves back from the grave and create this competition for Intel today. I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen an Intel chiplet design.
We're seeing shortages of chips made on everything from 30 year old processes to cutting edges fabs and that demand is likely to be relatively sticky going forward. Intel's going to have to try even harder than it is now to fail and it's going to take decades for the dust to settle, if it ever does (hello Intel Business Machines).
> I felt these changes were made with the best interests of all stakeholders.
Then why where a significant portion of their employees - the only stakeholders (apart from literally Bezos) - extremely vocal in their disappointment the minute it went out?
The only way you can consider these policies as well-considered is if you are not threatened by them.
If you have a group identity that does not match the founders, these policies will feel as if they are trying to silence you and your input when new policies arise that don't take your group identity into account.
The only fair and sustainable approach is to see humans as entire beings and not robots on a production line.
That doesn't mean the work and customers are forgotten, in fact it's exactly the opposite.
I left one company without such an incentive. The relationship between management and me had become toxic, and I needed to get out for my own sanity. After leaving, I did get the bonus I was previously due, which wound up being about 1.5 months salary. Didn't know about it before leaving. I was optimizing for sanity. I suspect that those who left Basecamp are performing a similar optimization, and the money helps lower the activation energy required for making that decision.
Short version is that the 6 month salary, even the 3 month salary offer is quite nice. I can understand why so many took the offer up.
Woke environments can, and often are toxic to those not interested in engaging in such discussions. I worked at one of those before, where one had to tread carefully, lest some "colleagues" be triggered into spittle-inflected rants about the president at the time ... thus wasting everyone's time and energy. That was actively frustrating and annoying.
Based on what. That is a very broad statement with lots of evidence to the contrary. They built an excellent business with employees that stayed for 10+ years and progressed from the most junior levels to profoundly accomplished senior roles. That is hard to create for any organization and the evidence is they did it well.
> “no more committees" (of any kind at all; that is, no authority or responsibility except individually along line-of-report hierarchy)
It sounds like there was a self appointed DE&I committee that had proposals for every area of the business. That doesn’t strike me as a healthy dynamic.
There’s a reason successful employee co-ops are rare and kibbutzim don’t exist anymore in anything close to their original form.
I'm not sure it was self-appointed, but either way, let's be clear, they decided there would be no more committees at all ever, right? Not just no more "self-appointed committees with unclear scope".
To the extent that "A long-standing group of managers called "Small Council" will disband — when we need advice or counsel we'll ask individuals with direct relevant experience rather than a pre-defined group at large."
To me this reads like a game-of-thrones-esque political maneuver, to make sure there are no loci of power that might challenge the bosses. The bosses will talk to you one-on-one if they think your opinion matters, you have no reason to be talking to your peers about anything, just keep your head down and do what you're told.
How you distinguish between "a group of people getting together to collaborate on something of importance to the company" (which the owners said DE&I was!), vs "an unpermitted committee"... I don't know if "no collaborating across reporting lines" is an intended or an unintended thing here, unclear.
If THAT strikes you as a healthy dynamic, I hope you get to experience it and find out sometime, and if it works for you, good on you. It didn't for 1/3rd of basecamp though -- I don't think it's about one specific policy, it's about this attitude toward employee involvement.
>no more 360 degree reviews (no way to formally give feedback to your boss)
The reason they gave for removing these was that peer reviews were overly positive to the point of pointlessness. You could still give feedback to your boss without 360 degree reviews.
Not all the people who left worked for DHH, who is the CTO.
OTOH, if the CTO is a terrible boss, there’s a very good chance that the rest of the C-suite is suboptimal, since executives generally aren’t picked at random, so there is probably some correlation across the group. And, then, down the chain of management, for the same reasons.
In fall 2008 I moved from Long Island to New Hampshire (for family reasons) and found a job in a small niche B2B shop doing C# Windows apps. On my first day of work, I notice the receptionist desk has a stack of McCain/Palin 2008 bumper stickers. The next couple of months were filled with employees talking non-stop about the election, from their deeply conservative point of view. Being quite progressive left-leaning this was pretty frustrating and distracting to listen to while I tried to just get some work done. They all seemed to believe Obama would send people to their door to take away their guns and assault rifles, and somehow also turn us into the Soviet Union.
The thing is, these weren't bad people. They took a chance on an self-taught programmer / art-school dropout in their late 20s with 1 year of professional experience, and they treated me well. When I moved back to New York (for other dramatic family reasons), the CEO offered for me to stay at their own house. I just didn't agree with their political opinions. I think for most folks working in tech hubs its just the other way around, where they are in a left-leaning bubble and its hard to imagine another POV. Coming from someone who was on the outside, I can say for me it was at best distracting and at worst alienating, and I can see why companies want to put an end to it.
I worked years ago in defense contracting, and remember being treated in a hostile fashion for admitting I was an Obama supporter.
Mostly good people, but super isolating when they would talk politics.
And I should note, that the pattern I noticed then and notice now with my mindlessly, tribally left colleagues who are mirror images of the right wing lemmings in defense:
People who are really into politics at work are mediocre at best, borderline incompetent more often. Anecdotal of course, but I honestly don't think basecamp will be impacted badly by this months down the road.
I don't see a single standout amongst the folks leaving. Sorry.
What lots of people seem to be missing here is that this wasn't that sort of political discussion at all. It wasn't about Trump/Biden, or even policy issues. It was purely about internal actions of employees and leadership. There's a world of difference between presidential campaign posters behind reception, and discussions about the handling of a list of customers' names. The problem with jumping to blanket "no politics" rules is that it prevents any nuance.
https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
Pretty sure it was about politics, because some employees felt it was an identity politics issue and the list of funny names would lead directly to holocaust. DEI issues were also directly mentioned in the blog posts.
That's a pretty disingenuous reading of the meaning of the ADL pyramid of hate. All it says is that tolerating one level of discrimination makes the next level easier. So in this example, stereotyping makes it easier to ridicule.
That's the literal interpretation given by DHH in his blog, when describing what happened. Personally I don't see how it is wrong, it literally says "first step to genocide". In any case, discussing whether it leads to genocide or not is clearly about political beliefs.
Yes, and DHH's interpretation is completely uncharitable and naive, and I don't know why you are buying into it.
The ADL's goal is to fight anti-semitism. The Holocaust opened some people's eyes about their anti-semitism and look to a new path. But in others it simply enabled and licensed their own prejudices because it allowed them to think "Well whatever I think/say/do isn't THAT bad."
The ADL's pyramid shows that genocide doesn't happen overnight with the snap of the fingers. Each incremental step is minor and ignorable. But it starts with stereotyping and biased attitudes.
I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Your last sentence seems to indicate that you believe the funny names list was a step towards genocide. Yet at the same time you say DHH's interpretation was uncharitable? You literally say exactly what DHH claims was said.
I don't know what the ADL is, but your belief in their theory is actually a political stance. It's not physics, it is a convoluted complex theory that can not be verified. Believing in it is "being on a side".
You're absolutely right, it is politics. Politics is all there is for discussions of subjects of humans interacting in groups. That's the definition ("Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.")
By that bar, no discussion of genocide, systemic discrimination, or individual prejudices can ever occur in any circles.
You're making the same mistake as DHH, which is at the root of this. Nobody says it "leads directly to genocide". There are literally a list of steps that it needs to go through first. The point of the pyramid is to remind us that we need to stop it as early as possible. Saying that it's one step in the direction of genocide obviously doesn't mean it's going to cause genocide. It just means that when genocide does happen, it starts with the level below, and so on down the pyramid. Somebody doesn't wake up one morning thinking "well, I laughed at somebody's name yesterday, so I'm going to kill their family today", but laughing at a customer's name might normalise laughing at a coworker's name, which in turn might make it more likely that they'll be excluded from something and so on up.
Is it going to cause genocide or not? If it is not going to cause genocide, then to comment on it with respect to genocide doesn't make sense. I'm sorry, I really can not follow your logic.
Somebody said it shouldn't be done, because the end result might be genocide. That's a pretty heavy gun to bring out for a list of funny names.
It really shouldn't be that hard. Of course the list doesn't cause genocide. Nobody is saying it does. What somebody did is share the ADL pyramid of hate. They didn't say "this list will cause genocide", they said normalising minor forms of discrimination makes more serious ones more likely. The point of the pyramid analogy is to tell you to stop climbing it. It doesn't say that you will keep escalating, it just says that it makes it easier for people to escalate. DHH overreacted, by claiming that meant they were accusing them of causing genocide. I previously assumed that he was deliberately misinterpreting it, but the fact that you, presumably an intelligent person, fail to see the meaning of it, then maybe he didn't grasp that either. But that's an even stonger argument in favour of being allowed to discuss it and explain the meaning, rather than banning all discussion.
That doesn't make sense. By bringing forth the ADL pyramid, they made the claim that the joke list would be a step towards genocide. They absolutely say that. They did not randomly share that ADL pyramid, they wanted to make the point that the list would lead to genocide.
Otherwise, by your logic, why not just say, "OK, we have the list, let's just all agree not to escalate it to genocide, and we can all carry on with our lives" (which would be ridiculous, because it goes without saying that jokes shouldn't be escalated to genocide)? So it won't lead to genocide, and there is no point in bringing it up.
That would only be logical if genocide was the only bad thing on the pyramid. The pyramid is supposed to be demonstrating that there is an escalating scale of hate. They are all bad! The ones at the top are worse than the ones lower down, but the ones lower down make it easier for the ones higher up to happen.
So now it is "jokes lead to genocide, AND to all sorts of other bad stuff"? Sorry I don't see a way out of that being a political battle. It's absolutely just a belief system. It seems just as likely that displaying a sense of humour could prevent bad things from happening. The difference is that with the ADL pyramid, people feel entitled to control other people's thoughts and actions, and humour does not bring such entitlement.
Personally I would loath having to have such discussions at work. It's OK to consider some jokes to be in bad taste. Point it out and move on. That should be the extent of it. But not calling on some abstract higher moral framework that let's you control your colleagues.
And I am not saying it should be a general rule for companies, either. I just want companies to be allowed to set their own rules.
For all I care, there could be companies with "no jokes" policies, and people who prefer could go to work there. I would prefer the "jokes allowed" companies. I just want there to be choice. Basecamp is a little ray of hope for me, but if people prefer to have political discussions at work, I don't begrudge them for working at companies that allow them.
I think you're right, but I also think that in reality it is very difficult to draw a line between personal political discussions and company policy decisions in the modern world.
Yes it's always boring when someone in the workplace makes bold political statements that no one asked for, but what happens when the company you work for outsources jobs abroad, is making questionable HR decisions, etc. I'm not sure it's right to say that any discussion about anything political is banned when a company policy that affects an employee can be political in nature.
Creating a positive and productive culture is hard. I don't have all the answers, but bans seem like a very blunt instrument.
"I'm not sure it's right to say that any discussion about anything political is banned when a company policy that affects an employee can be political in nature."
Why do you think that's the policy? Did you read the blog posts?
According to DHH's post, political discussion that is related to the business is allowed. Any other political discussion is encouraged but must take place in a dedicated non-work channel. The policy is also not zero-tolerance.
> Therefore, we’re asking everyone, including Jason and me, to refrain from using our company Basecamp or HEY to discuss societal politics at work effective immediately.
> This includes everything from sharing political stories in campfire, using message threads to elucidate others on political beliefs that go beyond the topic directly, or performing political advocacy in general.
> ...
> Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products.
Not so interested in nitpicking about whether banning is semantically correct - I think you know what I meant.
What's more interesting is the awkward situation they have created, which I'd argue is a false dichotomy - where does "societal politics" end and "politics that directly relate to our business or products" start?
The details do matter, though. By omitting details you create a hypothetical position that is less reasonable and easier for you to criticize. In this particular situation, this type of thing is particularly harmful because it paints the supposed originators of this made up position as something they are not. You could arguably consider it as libel by omission.
I don't even mean to single you out because I've seen this type of thing countless times on here and especially on Twitter over the last week or so.
"What's more interesting is the awkward situation they have created, which I'd argue is a false dichotomy - where does "societal politics" end and "politics that directly relate to our business or products" start?"
That can be tricky, which is why the policy is not zero tolerance and they already anticipate and are OK with people sometimes getting it wrong.
> but what happens when the company you work for outsources jobs abroad, is making questionable HR decisions, etc. I'm not sure it's right to say that any discussion about anything political is banned when a company policy that affects an employee can be political in nature.
Banning labor-related discussions is illegal in the USA, where Basecamp is based (Protected Concerted Activity). There is also the option of unionization to provide a further structure to protect your legal rights to discuss with management issues around pay, HR, and outsourcing.
Yeah I think you are making the important parts. The issues don't sounds like there were long winded debates about left wing and right wing ideologies.
If someone is being racist am I not allowed to bring acknowledge that because it is political?
I remember the same thing in 2000 when my colleague brought "Sore/Loserman" sign mocking (unknowingly) my candidates. I could not help but think less of him. I am not proud of that, but that was it. It's inside our DNA, to live in tribes. At work, it'd be better if we belong to the same tribe. Please, keep your other tribes outside.
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.
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
Not necessarily work for a ngo, but volunteer for one, join a union, join the local political groups that actually make a difference locally in your community. So many options, besides the work place.
This assumes that it's an earnest desire to improve society (which it sometimes is), and not a desire to gain/maintain status or power through virtue signalling.
What you're describing is basically a textbook definition of 'politics'. I find it funny that you call this virtue signalling when that term was literally invented to describe the opposite: halfhearted political activism that isn't trying to build power.
Well, the word "politics" has various connotations in general usage, and many of them don't describe the phenomenon I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is a cynical attempt at elevating one's zero-sum standing in a social group by showing conspicuous adherence to the group's purported moral orthodoxy.
People who are passionate about something would most likely like to recruit new people to their cause. Working for an NGO is a dead end as everyone is already on the same page there.
> 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.
I think this is a side effect of American obsession with work. We really build our identities and lives around our jobs, and our corporations want and expect is to be there all the time.
Yes, I think you are right. Americans work long hours, they spend far too much time at work, and many view work as something that should give them personal fulfillment. Combine that with a right-to-work situaion and a lot of people are investing too much into what is basically a profit-maximizing enterprise instead of a charity or social group.
Some people it turns out, don't want "political-outlet therapy", they want to build actual political power. When you work for a company that already has that sort of power, activism like this is a natural approach. In fact, I suspect that many people dislike this approach because they know it is effective.
When I see a Jehovah’s Witness coming up to my door, I pretend to not be home. I’d really hate to be forced to have that same feeling at work, but be unable to escape it. If you can’t do your job without evangelizing your coworkers in some form or fashion, maybe you should reconsider your career choices.
You are halfway there, but now think a bit further. Imagine if you were working at a job, but you are stuck with immature coworkers that are making fun of aspects of your culture, making fun of names that are similar to your own name, or similar to names of your friends and family.
You can't escape these immature people because you need to work the job with them in order to make money. So you deal with it for a while but then you start complaining "hey man that's really not cool". They don't take you seriously, in fact their response is "hey let's not get all political about this".
Don't you see how people making racist jokes can be just as annoying as a pushy religious person? There's a lot of ways humans do annoying things to each other, but we should all be working on ways to minimize the amount we are annoying each other, and sometimes that means facing up to the fact that something you are doing is racist towards another person and you have to stop it.
From the looks of it, everyone quickly agreed that this list was inappropriate and it was shut down promptly. The drama didn't start over that, but exaggerated claims people made such as "this is the road to genocide", as well as connecting this list to some mass-shooting, as well as some lingering conflicts such as whether or not the title "it doesn't have to be crazy at work" – a book published by basecamp – is ableist or not.
People act like "haha, this name sounds funny because it's similar to the English word [...]" is a huge deal and existential threat. It's ... not really. It's just inappropriate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that making fun of your customers for any reason is not a good idea. People seem to have lost perspective here.
DHH tried to inject some nuance, and paid the price it seems :-/ All this incident has accomplished is turning off people, in spite of clearly being sympathetic to it to the important bits of social justice.
The social justice movement is eating itself from the inside out with stuff like this.
Making fun of a culture is culturalist, not racist. And all cultures have aspects worthy of mockery.
And making fun of names doesn't even rise to that level. No one thinks less of a culture or a person just because their name reads like "fuck", or "Biggus Dickus", etc., in English. It's just a funny impedance mismatch between languages.
You aren't making the point you think you are. All you are doing is showing that you lack empathy for how others feel. And that is the fundamental problem: it isn't about what you think you are doing, it is about what other people think you are doing, and the fact that what you think is funny is offensive to other people.
I have empathy for people who experience prejudice, but not for people who think "this name means something funny in English" is racist. Those people don't know what racism means, and they devalue claims of actual racism when they say that.
There can definitely be a racist undertone to jokes about "this name means something funny in English" - it is often rooted in the idea that "this person doesn't belong", "these people aren't like us" etc. Furthermore (and as a completely separate issue), people who are already racist always latch onto these kinds of jokes to strengthen and justify their beliefs, which should be in itself a reason not to make those kinds of jokes.
It's very small in comparison to more serious examples - perhaps it's even the smallest possible example of problematic behavior - but it is problematic nonetheless.
That's literally the point that the Basecamp employees were trying to make in a relatively benign way before their leadership overreacted.
Would you see a racist undertone in putting "Rod Johnson" or "Dick Fuller" on a list like this? Would you claim the humor comes from those people not belonging? Because I would bet anything that the list would have such names.
I would also bet anything that names like "Vinh Ng" or "Ravi Chakrabarti" aren't on that list. Because those names aren't funny in English. Because they don't mean anything in English. So there's no impedance mismatch.
I know it's popular these days to claim racism all the time, but there's no actual basis for it here.
The articles about the issue clearly state that the list in question contained examples that mocked Asian and African names, so your comment is moot in this context.
Sorry, I'll make it clearer for you: the metric for being on the list is "sounds funny in English", not cultural origin. Thus there will be names from all different cultures, but for any given culture, most names won't be on the list.
Edit: according to this article,
"Many of the names were of American or European origin. But others were Asian, or African, and eventually the list — titled “Best Names Ever” — began to make people uncomfortable."
You are Gish-galloping at this point. Yes, Anglo-Americans making fun of Anglo American names is not racist, nor is a group of people exclusively joking about names from their own culture. But that’s not the situation here.
Jokes that begin more innocently can turn racist; happens all the time. It’s best not to allow them to turn in that direction by including the types of jokes that racists always love to latch on due to an element of plausible deniability.
If people took all the mental energy they expended in being apologists for inappropriate behavior and simply applied it to finding ways to enjoy time with others that don’t have all these issues, none of this would ever be a problem.
A Gish gallop involves many points. Mine is singular: a list of names that sound funny in English is not racist.
If a racist enjoys the list, that does not make it racist. Racists also eat toast. That does not make toast racist.
If people took all the mental energy they expended in labeling things as racist, and simply applied it to finding ways to enjoy time with people who don’t have all these issues, none of this would ever be a problem.
Respectfully - if we become so afraid of one another, or of enabling racists, that we stop trying to enjoy humor, share our culture, or just be authentic humans together, then the racists win.
This argument reminds me of a similar one: students, who when caught plagiarizing, defend themselves by saying "well, there were no other combination of words that could express the idea in question." However, in analyzing the situation, you find that there are thousands or possibly millions of different sentences that express the same thought that would not be considered plagiarisms of each other. There is simply no excuse; you can always come up with a unique way to write ideas in your own words.
Similarly, we have unlimited methods to share culture and humor in ways that don't involve backhandedly belittling others and which don't include feeding racism as a side effect.
That's the thing though, it doesn't matter whether you think something is "actual racism". It matters whether the person on the receiving end thinks it is racist, or racism adjacent. And making fun of people's names is absolutely racism adjacent. It dehumanizes the person on the receiving end by treating one of their fundamental self identifiers as a joke. It may not dehumanize them to the same degree as a slur, an offensive stereotype, "blackface", or similar, but it is absolutely dehumanizing. I listened to people who have been on the receiving end, and I believe them when they say that this hurts them and offends them. Is it as bad as some other forms of racism? Arguably no. But is it on the spectrum of racism? Absolutely.
This is what empathy looks like: you listen to the one on the receiving end and you believe what they say about how they feel. At the end of the day you have the right to decide that this isn't "actual racism" in your own mind, but that doesn't change the reality that the one on the receiving end still feels bad.
> It [only] matters whether the person on the receiving end thinks it is racist, or racism adjacent.
That's where I can't agree. It's possible to do something that feels "racist" to someone but isn't actually racist. If I'm wrong, then there's no objective definition of racism and we can all go home and call it "lack of empathy". You can't have it both ways. Either racism is objectively definable or it isn't.
Categorically speaking, there is a big difference between offending someone's feelings or sensibilities and committing an act of racism, which is defined as discrimination on the basis of race and is objectively measurable using well-established tests.
Imagine that you are walking by someone and accidentally elbow them in the ribs. They double over in pain, and exclaim loudly that you hurt them really bad and you should apologize. Now you could get defensive and say "Well I didn't mean to elbow you in the ribs, it wasn't on purpose so I did nothing wrong" and "Also getting elbowed in the ribs isn't actually that painful, there's no reason to make a scene about it."
But what you don't realize is this person was in a car accident last week, and below their shirt their ribs are broken. Your elbow just hit them on a sensitive bruise and jostled a broken rib. Your unintentional action was actually extremely hurtful. By protesting that you didn't do anything to hurt them you are just looking like a jerk. All it would have taken was an "I'm sorry, I'll be more careful" and it probably would have been fine.
This is similar to what racism and the effects of racism are: there are people who have suffered trauma from heinous acts. As a result they are already in a wounded state, and something "not racist" in your mind can still hurt because it pokes in the same place as the "actual racism". Just like you can't accurately judge whether someone is actually in physical pain and how much physical pain they are in, you can't always tell how much your action hurts someone emotionally.
In both cases the empathetic and moral thing to do is to believe the person in pain who says that your actions are hurtful.
The correct analogy would be if the person I accidentally elbowed claimed I was physically assaulting them, which I of course would deny.
Racism is a very extreme call-out and it is no wonder that people defend against it. It is no matter of believing that I hurt the person, I do. But I am defending myself from an attack I believe is unproportional,and actually leaves no choice but to defend myself.
Call it insensitive instead of racist and people are far more likely to listen.
You're not "the person in pain" though. You are pretending to speak for them.
In fact, one could say it's racist that you're feeling entitled to appropriate their pain when you claim to speak for them. Your racism is hurting me, and will continue to hurt me until you acknowledge that racism necessarily involves discrimination based on race, and that it's wrong and problematic of you to appropriate the actual suffering of others.
And you are assuming that people who are hurt don't want allies to take up their hurts. Some people can only win with allies, and that means people who don't share the same hurts taking them up as burdens of their own anyway.
And you know, democracy is all about coalition building.
When it comes to hurt feelings, it's not always the fault of the speaker. Some emotional pain is completely fabricated for egoic or malicious reasons, or is simply mistaken.
I'm not arguing against empathy for those who have been hurt by past acts of racism. We consider it normal and healthy to be careful and sensitive around those who have PTSD or the like from real offenses committed against them in the past. But to fail to be empathetic and thus re-open an emotional wound is not in the same category as the original offense, however bad such a lack of empathy may be.
You're making several categorical errors in your posts. We have to be careful to speak and think with precision. "The truth will set you free" and "the tongue of the wise brings healing"; but logical fallacies only muddy the water, and vague accusations stir up strife.
It sounds like you think I’m defending the dumb list. I’m not. To me, it sounds like the Basecamp leadership did mostly the right thing. They said, this list shouldn’t exist, we expect better in the future. But also, we’re sick and tired of people making extreme assumptions about people’s motivations and making this list tantamount to a KKK membership. The list was dumb. Calling the list the work of hateful racists was also probably dumb.
> So you deal with it for a while but then you start complaining "hey man that's really not cool". They don't take you seriously
Far from the truth. How did you surmise that this is what happened? They took it very seriously - the CEO wrote up a whole long postmortem on what happened, why it was a failure of management, and shouldn't happen again, admitting fault for not stepping in to deal with it sooner.
The portrayal of a whole spectrum of ethical questions as "religious" is the most bad faith interpretation I see deployed basically all the time in these types of discussions. It's practically a senseless meme at this point.
We're literally talking about people keeping a list of names they thought were funny that lead to the situation, which apparently enough people internally found offensive, and you have people in this thread talking about "professionalism" and "religious thinking"; what?
> but you are stuck with immature coworkers that are making fun of aspects of your culture, making fun of names that are similar to your own name, or similar to names of your friends and family
That is resolved with the manager, and if not, with hr.
I’ve had two particularly obnoxious coworkers in my career. One on the left and one on the right. Their behavior was indistinguishable from that of a religious zealot. They were extremely unpleasant people, and no one should have to listen to them while on the clock.
I didn’t say anything about human rights activism. I drew a parallel between religious zealotry and political zealotry in the workplace that I have personally experienced. And the parallel is perfectly apt.
Horseshoe theory of political orientation. It's very true. Personality types of left and right wing zealots overlap tremendously (inclination towards authoritarianism etc)
I'd lean that they are equivalent. Both are all about espousing what the right way to be a human is, and more specifically have strong opinions about the wrong way to be a human
Historically, religion and human rights activism are closely conjoined. Anthropologically, religious proselytization and ideological activism are nearly indistinguishable phenomena.
Which is part of what makes them annoying as hell. If they want to do that, let them first prove -- to my intellectual satisfaction, not theirs -- that I have a "soul" to be "saved" in the first place.
There are non-profit organizations or similar private organizations that are better suited for political activity. The workplace is not the correct place. I was also harassed by the "silence is complicit" attitude. Some other employees I work with would go up to me and ask me questions like "we want to know where you stand on xyz political issue".....and I'm like.....it is really none of your business. They then take that response as you "being part of the problem" and then start going after you personally. Like who the heck does that? Especially to coworkers.
> Some other employees I work with would go up to me and ask me questions like "we want to know where you stand on xyz political issue".....and I'm like.....it is really none of your business. They then take that response as you "being part of the problem" and then start going after you personally.
Yeah, this is textbook totalitarianism. People think totalitarianism is about dictatorship, but it isn’t: it’s about public policy dominating every part of one’s being, removing any personal or private space.
Forcing people to declare for this or that cause is absolutely totalitarian. It can be done with the best of intentions, but it’s still a unhealthy way of going about things.
> 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. [...] The workplace is one of the few places where they can feel like they’re having an impact, but that’s not really appropriate.
Politics is how groups of humans decide the distribution of power between themselves. It should be completely unsurprising that there is corporate politics around what power employees have within a company. Your claim that it isn't appropriate for employees to engage in corporate politics is a deeply political statement and just means that you think all the power within a company should be wielded by someone else. You are entitled to that position just as others are allowed to engage in collective action (also just politics) to achieve a different distribution of power.
I'd also add that it is weird how we live in a society where everyone acknowledges corporations have significant power over our government, yet people seem to be surprised that individuals working for them want a say in how those corporations operate (which would by extension grant influence over the government).
"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.
There's a difference between being completely apolitical in the workplace and being engaging in 24/7 political advocacy that infects every single issue you touch. I used to work with a guy who was a devout Christian. He would wear his cross, and everyone once in a while would say something like, "with God's blessing". That's okay. He didn't construct an altar next to the cash register and give sermons while zealously trying to convert every customer and employee and demand that we tithe 10% to the church. If he did that, we would have told him that it his behavior was not appropriate for work. It wouldn't matter how passionately he believed in his religion, or how critical he insisted it was that everyone was "saved". Its just not appropriate behavior for the workplace.
Politics is not “Dems vs Republicans” or “Tory vs Labour”. All the aforementioned improvements came from organized workers protesting against their bosses. That is politics.
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.
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.)
>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).
No, but movements for minimum age limits in industry began in unions in the mid 1800s, and the Democratic party adopting a pro-minimum-age law stance was due to pressure from Unions.
Similarly, the push for 8 hour workdays began with union support in the mid 1800s, 50+ years before Ford popularized it (and in fact it was due to this pressure that public sector employees had 8-hour workdays as early as 1869).
Individual states had banned child labor and passed 8-hour workday laws (due to union and public pressure) far before Ford or the Textile mills did so "voluntarily".
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.”
As I commented in other thread, here in europe this is very uncommon. Here we go to work, to work. Football and politics don't lead to good ends anywhere.
So, join any company outside to the US if you want to focus on work
It actually very much depends on what you mean by “work”. Go work in a European factory, and you’ll probably have to have a relationship with a union, which includes going to meetings and discussing causes. European offices, on the other hand (and particularly in the private sector), tend to follow the traditional “politics and salaries are taboo” culture, probably because those areas never required unionization to improve their working conditions.
>People don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions.
>[People] need an outlet to push the ideas and causes they care about
>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.
Political parties & elections are instruments designed to do just that. It's actually mildly alarming that people are so jaded they forget about these (?).
The US parties aren't really a place to express yourself. They are highly corrupt. It would be nice if the US system allowed for smaller parties to be viable.
I agree, and I think the mechanism that causes people to feel this way is, people are angry about a system that has failed to be equal, and work feels like part of "the system", so people feel as though a change at work will somehow change the system at large. And there's some truth to that.
I took a residency test for Germany recently, and some basic knowledge about how to participate in the political system was required. In NRW where I live, we have a "Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung", or state center for political education. People can go there (or the website) to educate themselves on and discuss current topics, and also learn how to participate in the system itself (through citizen initiatives, etc.). I thought it was pretty amazing that this was required knowledge for living here! If we had anything like this in California, I never heard about it growing up there.
FYI, There's a zillion local orgs for political parties, policy, advocacy, volunteering, etc. But since they're mostly volunteer run, they're mostly discovered word of mouth.
I tried twice to start a study group based on the book Becoming a Citizen Activist. Focus more on the how, vs the what. I haven't yet figured out how to make it self-sustaining. I'm not sure it's possible.
say what? Someone cleaning houses, or working as a cashier is pushing political views? Is a McDonalds worker putting 'big beef' industry ideology forward?
Most jobs have nothing to do with politics as most people don't have a true choice/luxury to be choose. Often people have to work, or starve/be homeless.
Most jobs out there are not political. That includes building a simple email client.
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.
> 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.
It’s, quite ironically, the height of privilege to be able to engage in distracting culture wars rather than working, be able to throw shade at your employers on Twitter and then leave with 6 months severance.
Well, you say that it's one of the nicest companies to work in, but clearly not if 1/3 of their employees are willing to leave over a policy decision. Some of the employees that left had been there for over 15 years — it used to be a good place to work, but this made it untenable for them.
> Well, you say that it's one of the nicest companies to work in, but clearly not if 1/3 of their employees are willing to leave over a policy decision.
I'm afraid many of them will be in for a rude awakening.
> I'm afraid many of them will be in for a rude awakening.
This is what stood out to me. Basecamp pay 90th percentile Bay Area salaries regardless of where you choose to live. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm not sure that's going to be easy to find without relocating.
Even if you're not a rabid mercenary you're certainly going to feel the impact, if not on your day to day life then on your future plans, of taking a possibly massive pay cut, if you don't want to relocate.
Maybe remote working will become more the norm post-pandemic, and that will put upward pressure on remote salaries, but I don't by any means think that's a foregone conclusion.
I'd say "I've been here too long, let's shop around since IT is a buyers' market, and take advantage of this one-time buyout offer" is a far more probable explanation than "no political discussions at work rule makes this untenable for me"...
Without the buyout or in a worse job market, we'd see much closer to 0 "principled" exits...
Difficult as it may be for you to fathom, not everyone is a mercenary driven by money and greed. Many people choose their work based on their values and beliefs. Especially a well known, tight knit company like Basecamp have leadership positions filled with people who live and breathe the product and its users.
Choosing to leave for greener pastures may be an easy decision if you're at an early stage of your career, but there's a reason these extraordinarily talented folks stayed with Basecamp for as long as they have. It's not because they just couldn't get Google to pay them more.
Management took a stance against the employees. Management cancelled their employees, removing their platform to talk about internal politics.
Framing this as 'these people' vs Basecamp is ludicrous. It's 1/3 or more of Basecamp vs. Basecamp's management. Important people in important roles, entire teams. They are this company. Or were.
> removing their platform to talk about internal politics.
And they are not entitled for it. They were encourage to do it elsewhere on their own dime and time, not the company's. Do these employees not know what are they hired for exactly?
How can you not talk about politics at work? What happens if you want to discuss a disputed nation? I hope TSMC isn't a supplier.
Banning politics is impossible because everything in life has some hand in politics. When they say it can't be discussed, in the context of what is being discussed, it's really just a ban on the topics that management don't want to discuss.
> What happens if you want to discuss a disputed nation?
You don’t?
> Banning politics is impossible because everything in life has some hand in politics.
Hard disagree. You can talk about how houses are too expensive right now without someone getting political about why. It’s simple. Just don’t get political.
If you are an international company you have to discuss these things. You literally have to discuss them for legal risk reasons, but us for cultural reasons. For instance, if you are a US company do you honor Crimea as a Russian territory... A lot of companies avoid working with the region altogether because of their acknowledgement of politics.
Another example is if you are a US company do you work with China knowing you will have to share your Chinese users data with the Chinese government. These are political and moral conversations that are decisions that should align with the companies values thus they HAVE to be discussed.
It's delusional to think you can avoid personal politics completely in a business. Basecamp is picking and choosing what is appropriate, and that's really the issue. It's an emotional response from their employees based on inconsistent behavior of management.
Hey guess what we're doing right now? We're discussing the issues of Crimea, Russia, and China... and we aren't getting political about it. Incredible. Maybe impossible?
>If you are an international company you have to discuss these things
No, you don't. These are business discussions. You discuss the issue, not the politics behind it. You do it professionally because you are a professional adult making business decisions. You leave the politics of it for Twitter on your own free time.
>It's delusional to think you can avoid personal politics completely in a business.
It's delusional and absurd to think that you need to bring politics into any discussion at work.
I don't understand the nuance of what you are saying. Focusing on the political issues is inherently political. One of the most common phrases you hear from a politician is "let's get back to talking about the issues." Yes they are business decisions but they are also political. If you choose to work with a country or not. It's not based on money alone, but also your leadership's values that are guided by their political compass. These aren't algorithmically driven decisions. These are human beings coming from diverse backgrounds making political decisions for how to increase the power of their company on the world in a way that that they can live with from a morality perspective and at the same time trying not to alienate their employees. I don't understand how this isn't political in nature.
> Yes they are business decisions but they are also political.
No, they aren’t. You’re trying to make them political. This is entirely of your own doing.
Take housing. It’s too expensive! Many people would agree. We can talk about houses being expensive without someone detailing the conversation by injecting politics into it. It devolves into politics when you try to let other people know why YOU think housing is too expensive. You are the one injecting politics into conversation where it isn’t needed, and absolutely isn’t wanted.
If you want to talk about politics go get a Twitter account.
Talking about potitics often comes with intolerance of other people's views, belittleling of their opinions, castigation of their stance, and outright disrespect if not silencing their words by bundleling it with a larger political movement or ideology.
In my experience politics, religion, and money are all generally regarded as off topic among anyone but close friends and family. Unless any of the three specifically effect your business directly (or a member of staff is being illegally discriminated against because of their personal beliefs) I don’t see how you feel like you can’t work without discussing them.
actually it’s brilliant. get rid of the cancer at one fell swoop. without having a layoff and while being excessively generous about it. and the folks that you want gone have left of their own volition, left feeling righteous, not summarily dismissed and bitter.
it was a brilliant strategic move. accidental, as far as i can see from the outside , but brilliant nonetheless.
the leavers are in for a rude awakening when they find that most workplaces in fact don’t want their ilk
The outrage crowd is not the leaving basecampers but all the people spitting acid on the company online.
1) They were heavily incentivized for leaving. If you even considered a carreer move, the 6 month severance is your call to action.
2) I don't know that them leaving is so bad. They disagree, they leave (with generous compensation), not a huge issue in my book. Everybody is being treated fairly here, it seems. But for some reason, people have to insist that basecamp is evil, while to me it looks like they're going above and beyond the call of duty to treat their employees right.
This is such an awful disrespectful comment. Some of the people leaving are veterans who have been working there for 15 years. How can you say such unsubstantiated nonsense?
I agree that Basecamp sounds like a dream company to work for. I don't agree with the founders on their politics at all, but my God do I agree on all the other stuff like remote work, and work life balance.
>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[...]
yep, the best gilded cage around. You aren't allowed to have any opinions when you show up to work, but man the dental plan is amazing!
Peter Sloterdijk once said that the person we're going to be building statues in a 100 years will be Lee Kuan Yew, for his construction of a prosperous country that is also devoid of any freedom or political expression. That's the tech CEO ideal in the valley as well if they had it their way.
I laud them for standing up for their ideals. That said, as a conservative, I don't ever "bring my whole self to work", even if my employer says to, because (a) I know my personal views are not welcome in the Bay Area, and (b) I think it's concerning that many companies are trying to become more than just a place to work on interesting stuff and get paid for your work. They must now make political views known that align with those of their employees as if to be one of the tribe.
I have my own tribe, consisting of my family and friends, and they won't fire me when the economy goes south.
I'm not conservative and have only a small fraction of conservative-adjacent viewpoints and opinions, and I am not welcome in certain Bay Area companies (backchannel fact, not speculation) due to having a little cokebottle sliver of Venn diagram overlap with (some of some) conservatives' personal opinions.
All of this is precisely 0% to do with the work, mind you. It's entirely philosophical viewpoint discrimination.
I don't think it would be that difficult to imagine such topics.
For example, supporting the border wall, or being against gender reassignment for minors, or believing biology has an impact on career choices on average, or being against race/gender as part of the selection process at universities, or being in favor of the ar15 being available for legal purchase, or believing IDs should be mandatory to vote.
There are any number of topics where it's only safe to discuss one side of the issue at most bay area tech companies.
I'm not taking a side on these issues. I am simply recognizing that it's the case they cannot really be openly debated.
Not OP, but small government principles, religious morals and being in favor of the government's defense functions are conservative views that are definitely not welcome in most parts of the Bay.
Mind expanding on this? I'm quite liberal and don't personally care what you base your morals on, so long as they don't result in, for example, you denying the lived experience of LGBT people in this country.
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
This caught him off guard because the progressive camp has since split into two groups: one that favored Hillary in 2016 and accuses the other of being class reductionists and the other that favored Bernie and accuses the first group of being identity reductionists. DHH is more aligned with the latter and is now discovering that he clashes with the former.
But what leads us to believe it was a surprise? Genuinely curious, did they say they were shocked? I would assume the opposite with an offer that generous.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Overall this is the sticking point to the argument that being a better manager will solve it.
Tech has awful leadership development pipelines and programs at the Junior and mid levels. I sort of struggle to think of anyone that actually does this at non-managing director levels other than the military with its Junior officer corps and maybe a very select few companies.
Not to be extremely pedantic, but the fact that the term “management” is thrown in as a solution and not “leadership” sort of proves this point.
OP is referring to generally strong and sound leadership techniques. These can and are taught by a select few orgs I just referred to; there’s definitely a science there to learn.
The issue is that so, so much of professional America doesn’t produce good leaders or bother to train them. The idea that strong management is a tenable, broad based solution, when the ball is currently at the line of management == don’t be an a* when you make schedules for your team, is not a good one.
Until corporate America, and especially tech, starts planning how to produce leaders and not just managers, a blanket ban is the only thing that makes much sense as an org policy that could actually work.
It’s true, fwiw. This is a leadership challenge that is solvable, and the orgs that grow leaders have track records of solving it without total bans. It’s usually just a matter of enforcing professionalism, diverting attention, steering attitudes, and most importantly working to create extremely high trust environments by designed. But: too many managers try* to hang in this brutal forum where* the best engineer who wanted to do EM stuff is a manager, and suddenly has to handle this. Leadership dev programs for junior leaders/EM-equivalent take years to do, not a promotion.
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?
> 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
No, I’d more expect a tech firm that arose in that era which gave us the “tech bro” image and in which reacting against stuffy, corporate, professional corporate structure and culture was all the rage to be among the least likely of firms to have that.
What job can you go on on political rants at? If you can get away with that then this means
1. You have a controlling share in the company and don't give af (b/c you might lose customers and employees)
2. Everyone else (at the company) already completely or mostly agrees with your rants
3. You are so damn good at what you do that people have to put up with you
Let's be honest, the most common reason people do get away with personal political rants at companies is because they get lucky and are in Scenario 2.
This is another reason why everything is becoming more polarized. Companies are beginning to "lean" much more one direction or another. There is no reason to think that this will change anytime soon.
>Managing people is hard to do well. It's like writing code.
I'll say.
One problem is that if management, especially owners, feel like control of the company is being wrested from them, they'll get pretty radical in the course corrections.
An 18th C. Navy Captain facing a mutiny will probably need to hang people until he's sure of his position. There really is no other way.
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.
BeachBody talk can however goes towards the other third rail in a business/corporate environment - sex.
Politics, religion, and sex are always going to be a problem in a company, as they distract from the core mission, divide people along lines that aren’t helpful in accomplishing the core mission, and add large potential liabilities everywhere.
Then you’ve been in some decently professional places! I definitely have, and have had people try to start conversations on the topic many times at one of the FAANGS when I worked there, and other places too.
There may have been more opportunity for subtle management beyond a dictated top down policy of no politcs/religion at work, but at the end of the day it is clear that the two employees being described by OP needed to go.
Based on the extreme degree of ... inflammation ... fanned by twitter, fb, etc I would say that people who are not able to keep their opinions under control beyond an occasional two person conversation are the ones who need to seek some sort of counseling.
There are conversations and then there are youtube meltdowns. I have no desire to work with the latter. You speak of professionalism and respect. In the diverse world we live in keeping to oneself seems the only reasonable path for the time being.
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)
> 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.
Well it's important to keep the context in mind here: "the holocaust reference" in this case was a chart from the Anti-Defamation League making the case that normalizing seemingly minor bad behavior makes it easier to go on to slightly worse behavior, which now doesn't seem that different from what you're already tolerating, and so on, and so on.
This is not a terribly controversial assertion, in and of itself. Was it a stretch to use it in this context? You could definitely make that case. (I've long been fond of the quip, "If you use a slippery slope argument once, you'll start using it everywhere.")
But I would argue that when DHH acknowledged the list making fun of 'funny names' was a bad idea, apologized, and promised to shut it down, he had the choice to stop talking at that point. He didn't have to publicly chastise the employee who brought up the Pyramid of Hate. He took positive steps toward putting out this fire, but then threw on a match of his own -- and then doubled down on that, publicly calling out an employee who kept at it.
So, if we're talking about DHH-the-manager, I would suggest he maybe didn't do the bestest job of managing here. He could have said, "yes, we'll take down the list"; instead, he went with "yes, we'll take down the list, but don't you think you're being a drama queen about it."
My impression was that it was the employees who wouldn't let it go, not DHH. And one employee in particular wouldn't let it go, so DHH helpfully pointed out that at some point they too had participated in joking about a customer name, so who exactly were they trying to persecute here?
I saw that too, and that I think was such a crucial mistake. Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valor. Is it fun to point out someone's hypocrisy? Probably. Is it going to be productive, especially to do so in a public manner? Absolutely, absolutely not. You're embarrassing them, to what, teach them a lesson? Well, lesson learned, but not the one you intended -- they'll learn that the boss is not above a little public humiliation to score a point. Trust gone. I'd sure start looking for other places if my manager, or the CTO, started doing that, severance or no.
I mean I don't trust hypocrites in the first place, so I'm not sure it's the boss that broke the trust.
One thing that I think gets lost in discussions of hypocrisy is that there are actually two types, and they should be handled very differently.
The first type is when an alcoholic tells you to slow down on your drinking, e.g. "do as I say and not as I do" hypocrisy. This kind is usually ok, because it tends to be more of a "learn from my mistakes" situation than a failure to understand the contradiction in your own words.
The second type is "rules for thee and not for me" hypocrisy – people that try to catch others out in their "bad behavior" but then think it is totally fine when they do it themselves, as they provide some sort of post-hoc rationalization for why it is ok for them to do it ("because context" or whatever) but totally unacceptable for others to do so.
Most people conflate the two types, but I try to only refer to the latter type as hypocrisy, and I think it is generally bad to be a hypocrite in that way. And from the sounds of it, the Basecamp employees in question were definitely more of the latter than the former.
I get your argument, but "oh, sure, you're calling me out, but you did this similar thing earlier, hah!" is not going to de-escalate conflict. Isn't part of being a manager in a prickly situation learning to choose your battles? If he'd just dropped it at that point, would there have really been any harm done to the company? Would that harm have been greater than the end result we've arrived at instead?
The damage done to Basecamp's public reputation, internal morale, and now all the projects set back by losing a third of their employees is unfathomable -- all for the satisfaction of "by gum, at least I don't have to say I put up with one of my now-former employees talking back to me in a way that was arguably hypocritical." On balance, was that really the right tradeoff to make here?
I get you, but I think you're assuming the point was to point out hypocrisy for the sake of hypocrisy, when the actual point of pointing out hypocrisy in this case was to ask the question: "What exactly is your goal here? Do you want me to fire everyone who made fun of customer names? Because if so that means I'm firing you too. Any response to this situation will involve disciplining you too, so what are you trying to accomplish?"
> I think what basecamp is experiencing is what can still happen even though you as a manager believed you managed it well.
But it doesn't really matter if the manager (or owner) believes they handled it well. It matters if the employees thought it was handled well. In the case at least a third of them didn't.
Even putting aside the substance of the no politics policy, the delivery and crafting of it was terrible. There was a DEI committee, and it and all other committees were unilaterally dismissed. The no politics rule was decided with zero employee input. And worse than that it was delivered via public blog post that had to be hastily edited after the fact.
Had DHH and Fried carefully taken employee input and crafted a policy that took their concerns into account, and delivered with care and respect, they could've still ended up with a no politics policy. But employees would not have been blindsided and maybe more people would've bought in.
But maybe DHH and Fried really want a company culture devoid of significant employee input into how the company is run.
I think ya'll are both right. On the one hand, you're right because "just manage better" is a silly assertion. As you say it is like "just don't be poor", or the one I think is more relevant to this conversation: "coal miners should just learn to code".
On the other hand, however, these are in fact business leaders who have written books about how good they are and how much they know about leading people, so... it's reasonable that our expectation of good leadership is a bit higher for them than the average middle manager.
So, how does this address anything the parent comment has talked about?
> keep all the politics talk to a minimum
Ok, so this is one management strategy and the parent comment provided another. You seem to be implying that one management choice has moral superiority to the other?
> whatever can be just as divisive and counterproductive
Yes, and their management choice could be to minimize these just as you choose to minimize politics. That is entirely orthogonal to making managerial decisions to ban certain topics.
They could choose to ban some of the non-politics topics of discussion as well. Hell, they could just say "shutup and work". They could say no work related discussion allowed at work.
Again, these are all managerial choices but you seem to be accusing the company of not managing at all?
> 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.
> their skin color/presence or lack of uteruses/accents come along.
You have addressed nothing about the actions of employees as the parent comment discussed. You have only addressed that people have different looks, feelings, organs, and politics. Great observation.
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.
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.
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.
Facebook use after acute social stress impair recovery of cortisol levels. I translate it as "Facebook use after social altercation makes stress longer".
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.
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.
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.
Even if we're referring to this case. What right do you think you have to use company name to push your agenda? Even if you're morally right about the matter, you're morally wrong to use company entity to push your opinion. If you're uncomfortable with the company then go to management. If it doesn't work with management then leave and try to get your retribution or whatever bullcrap using your name.
I have two separate mega huge employers and they both have similar approaches on this matter.
My bank employer’s approach is maximum inclusivity and mutual respect. That generally mean no politics just because it isn’t professional. Religion is a grey area. If religion is an excuse for social gatherings and celebrations then it’s fully allowed so long as everybody is allowed to participate. If a religious focused context is cause for distraction or disagreement then the conversation isn’t professional and the behavior, regardless of the religious content, can be punished.
My military employer is absolutely adamant that politics must be far away from the office. They also strongly nurture and require maximum inclusivity. Their view on religion is maximum support for any professed religion or faith as necessary to advance the religious Liberty of all employees. They have dedicated employees to ensure and guarantee religious support and exercise for any employee that requests support.
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.
Did you invent a field of psychology to be able to decide if people need counseling based on what is happening online? For all I know, outrage culture is mainly happening through bots of foreign enemies intent on destabilizing the anglophone world.
Once upon a time, when I was in college one of the times (twenty odd years ago), the university debating society invited David Irving, well known Holocaust denier.
The Anti-Facist/Socialist Workers party people got involved, and threatened protests and violence, and pressured the University to not allow the talk.
This started happening then, and not enough of us (including me) spoke up, so it got normalised. Obviously the internet et al has had huge impacts on this (as well as the messed up world we live in), but I do kinda remember those experiences as a turning point, looking back.
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.
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.
McWhorter recently wrote an entire Atlantic column about the actual word "racism" without once using the neologism for which you've blamed him. So, maybe he has reconsidered?
I’m referring to his use of the word in his new book (which he is serializing for free on his substack), “The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and Their Threat to a Progressive America”. [1] The first place I saw the term used (he has also used it on the Glenn Show podcast).
Regardless, I came not to blame him, but to praise him.
Though I do agree with Kmele Foster’s insistence that the term “racist” is well and good enough to describe the type of segregationist thinking and reification of the fiction of race that is promoted by so-called anti-racists.
Thanks for the link! I wonder if you've read the whole thing? Several chapters in [0], we find:
...I’m realizing I can’t use the term neoracism in the subtitle of my The Elect book.
From assorted social media posts, I am realizing that if I say Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and Their Threat to a Progressive America, many understandably think I am referring to black people being racist against whites.
I need to specify – despite that it may dampen the enthusiasm for my book among some – that I do not think of black people being racist against whites and white people being racist against blacks as equally reprehensible.
Many whites are deeply aggrieved that they are assailed for being racists, but that no one seems to mind black people not liking white people. They want us to assail black racism as vociferously as we do white racism.
I must disappoint. I am fully on board with the idea that racism is about who is up versus down. Black racism against whites is, at least at its foundation, about resentment at being abused. To apply the same judgment to this as to blacks being racist against whites is facile, uninsightful – frankly, almost a debate team trick.
“But where does it lead if you hate me and I hate you and you hate me …?” – okay. But we live in our own limited time slices. There are two layers here.
One: just a few inches past about 1964, is it so unpardonable, so incomprehensible, that black people might be mad at white people?
Two: if you object that 1964 was a while ago now, then is it so unpardonable, so incomprehensible, that lots of black people might be mad at white people now when so many intellectuals and artists and community leaders have taught them to be that mad for decades?
Note – I didn’t ask whether it was right that they have been taught that. The issue is that they were. And they harbor what they were taught at a time – today -- when no one can deny that racism does exist. Anyone who thinks I don’t know that hasn’t read me much.
So. In this vein, I am seeing that “neoracism” sounds to many like I am decrying racism against whites. I get why they think that – and I know that quite a few will think that’s what I mean without subscribing to the white nationalist groups who have used the word that way.
Some in my position would try to reclaim the word and make it mean what they want it to mean. I, for example, meant “new racism against black people.” But my comfort zone cannot fashion community meaning. I am not interested in standing athwart common human understanding and hollering “Stop!,” watching it continue despite me, and then self-gratifyingly grumbling that nobody listens to me.
My strategy will be to eschew the word “neoracism.” If people are going to read it to mean that my book is about arguing against racism against white people, they will be massively disappointed by my book.
This is because my book is about how the modern conception of antiracism is racist against BLACK people.
Social media and Substack allow one to fashion a book according to public feedback in a way never possible before. My book will no longer be titled The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and Their Threat to a Progressive America,” because I can see that this leads some whites to see me as defending them against black racism. My book will not do that, and I frankly suggest the whites in question learn to understand it. Racism punches down. Yes, I believe that, even though The Elect do too. I always have.
Instead I will try something new. The Elect: The Threat to a Progressive America from Anti-Black Antiracists.
In this passage McWhorter clearly disavows this word completely, because of just the misunderstanding seen ITT.
Aha, thank you! I am actually quite behind on it, and also hadn’t read that post, which I largely agree with. I can see how the term has escaped his ability to define it in the context of his argument.
It seems like our era of fast decentralized media makes it tough to employ a neologism in a way that clarifies rather than confuses.
I also appreciate your good faith effort to help clear this up.
It is used to point out the perpetuation and reification of race as a concept by people who call themselves antiracist. There are many liberal thinkers who have not given up on the notion that race is a fiction, and that the best way to be not racist is to understand this.
Race abolitionists like Kmele Foster (Fifth Column podcast) and Thomas Chatterton Williams (Self Portrait in Black and White), as well as scholars like Barbara Fields (Racecraft) point out that what people call antiracist depends on re-centering race in the discourse, which they see as promoting a race-based system of evaluation, which results in racist thinking (in the normal dictionary, pre-Foucaultized definition of the term).
Hence some people who agree with this line of thinking (though not the three I mentioned afaik) prefer to call “antiracism” neoracism because it’s a very different thing promoted by different sorts of people than what we traditionally call racism, but it still requires one to think in terms of race and to believe that race exists in a meaningful sense.
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.
> 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.
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'
Was a weird trend? They've doubled-down. There are now Chief Diversity Officers.
Yep. Most companies were hiring 'Chief Diversity Officer' types to inoculate themselves from the mob. Instead, the people they hired are leading the mob.
I have been gone through numerous diversity coaching at numerous big tech companies. Comparing diversity coaches to vampires is absurd and alarmist. All they did was demonstrate some biases in a way where I became more aware of my own biases, and educated us how everyone has biases and they can sometimes be good biases and sometimes be bad biases.
Comparing diversity coaches to vampires is absurd and alarmist.
That was a sentence I thought I'd never see written.
To your point, I'm glad you found that training to be helpful. The times I've been subjected to similar, I found it wasteful, condescending, and presumptive. So perhaps your mileage will vary.
That's where it starts, 'biases.' Then 'recognizing biases' turns into 'defeating white supremacy' and 'silence is violence' and 'everything is political, so we have to talk about this.'
Reminds me of a training I once attended --probably the most participatory and positive energy session ever. It basically had one point: "Don't be a dick".
"Don't be one to your friends, family, coworkers, or especially to our customers". The word is hard to define, but easy to recognize. And you kinda always know when you're being one.
Everyone has been one, and no one feels singled out or blamed. Doesn't let anybody leave feeling like a victim or a victor. Yet left people feeling powerful to call other people out for being one, without resorting to stronger language. That company had comradery; it's too bad it takes more than that.
Where I'm from, dick refers to a penis. So saying someone is a 'dick' is sexist and derogatory towards people with penises. Would you be allowed to tell someone not to be another set of genitals in a vulgar manner? Of course not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Once I was hired at a company founded and run by boomers, and on the first day noticed several stacks of magazines like "Hustler" etc. just sitting on the floor in a manager's office, while we conversed with other colleagues some of whom were women. This was probably 15 years ago, and I didn't quit or anything, but let's not exaggerate the virtues of old people.
If anything this C-suite freakout seems like a result of too much Covid isolation. Lots of executives are hyper-extroverts who need lots of coddling from people they've hired for that task. Some needs just aren't fulfilled over Zoom. This last year set these super entrepreneur dudes [and, to be fair, their top-percentile coding-god employees too] on tilt, and they're lashing out trying to get back on track. It's their company; if they want to sacrifice some jobs and profits on the altar of their warped personalities how can we blame them?
I'm not arguing either way, but both are extremes in decorum. Most companies run by generic middle of the road boring folks adhere to general decorum overall vs explicitly offensive behavior. This isn't because they're more virtuous IMO from my experience, just because they like most folks want to work 9-5, collect a paycheck and go home and not rock the boat.
> This was probably 15 years ago, and I didn't quit or anything, but let's not exaggerate the virtues of old people.
That’s true, but every time we humans have tried “let’s throw everything out and start over” it’s ended in tears. And that’s the prevailing vibe I get right now.
We're not talking about the French Revolution here. This is a small-to-medium (or, recently, perhaps "medium-to-small") privately-held SaaS firm. For its entire existence, this firm's marketing has taken the form of checks written against a hypothetical account of expertise in business organization and cultural transformation. This week most of those checks have bounced, but that is because of the particular properties of this organization, not "kids these days".
That you can find an exception from the bad old days, where a company was run like a <80s mechanic shop, doesn't negate that experience dealing with people is useful.
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.
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.
Discussing is one thing, and advocating is another, and it should be obvious which is which but some people don't know and many don't care, in fact advocacy was their goal all along.
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.
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.
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.
This is a point which I think is really tough for people to come to grips with. If you're in the majority, if you're what's considered "normal," then a whole lot of things aren't "political" for you but become political when someone else starts talking about them. When Bob talks about his wife, he's just making small talk; when Fred talks about his husband, he's "a gay activist." And god forbid one of your employees be transgender or nonbinary: requesting that they be acknowledged as such can be interpreted as an overtly political statement. Look at how many people get super, super angry with anyone who voluntarily lists their pronouns somewhere.
I agree with your conclusion, but I don't agree that it's a straw man. There remains a fairly large subset of people who are "fine" with having LGBTQ coworkers, but if those coworkers regularly talk about their personal lives to the same degree that non-LGBTQ coworkers regularly talk about theirs, it's seen as "pushing it in our faces."
On an earlier thread about Basecamp, I suggested that if the real goal is to keep conversations in the office civil and focused on work, the policy should be "keep conversations in the office civil and focused on work." You can politely shut down acrimonious debate in your Slack not because it's "political," but because it's acrimonious, and you're not sending a message that "political" discussions that really do have a bearing on your workplace culture are off-limits even if they're conducted respectfully. That's where Basecamp dropped the ball. (And let the ball roll under the couch and then set the couch on fire.)
In this example, the accuser isn't accusing the gay man. He'd be complaining to HR about politics at work. It was legal to fire someone for being gay up last year.
"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.
Companies that make you submit receipts for food are negative in my view and affect whether I want to work there. Simply set a per diem for food and leave it there. Trying to examine receipts for meat or not meat (or alcohol or salt or whatever) reflects a non-flexible mentality and likely makes other aspects of a company unpleasant and ineffective.
WeWork seemed batshit crazy this seems like one of the many signs of a dumb leadership style.
What's the problem? Workplaces are required to allow for "reasonable flexibility" in the practice of religion. An employee may need to take some PTO for certain types of jobs, but every job I've worked has a decent amount of leeway.
I left 5 years ago, so I'm remembering this as well as I can.
> 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.
That's not really what happened, and is a part of this story that hasn't entirely been made clear. The list was, if I remember correctly, about 10 to 20 names long and was tucked away in the company Backpack account. I found it in ~2010 when I first started and thought little of it.
As far as I know it didn't get added to after that, perhaps it did. It certainly wasn't "passed around". Backpack was closed to new users in ~2014, but we'd stopped using it at that point and some time I think before then someone had found the list, brought it up with the rest of the company as a problem. I seem to recall the phrase "How would you feel if you discovered your name was on this list" was mentioed, but it was a long time ago. Anyway, my recollection was that it was "deleted" (I guess it was a "soft" delete) with no dissent.
This wasn't about DHH or Jason letting a list be passed around, or defending it. No-one was tittering about "Incontinentia Buttocks" in 2021. Basecamp while I was there (2010 to 2016) became incredibly good at customer privacy and security, and I would trust them with my data, and this just wouldn't happen.
>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 (my surname had pun potential, so I got some of this as a kid, big effin' deal).
The "politics at work" thing would be relevant and legit if it was for e.g. unionizing, abuse of power from some higher up, the company doing shady business (e.g. Google and military deals, Facebook etc.) 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.
In an ideal world you don’t work at a company that maintains a list of customer names to laugh it. And if you did and someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list and they tell you why, you don’t self-immolate.
Pretending this list and subsequent lack of discipline isn’t about the founders vanity is very ignorant
> And if you did and someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list and they tell you why, you don’t self-immolate.
This isn't accurate. DHH openly admitted that the list circulating was a big failure that fell on the founders and the company, an admission that was positively received by most employees. The explosive part of the scandal starts when some employees insisted that the list contributed to genocidal attitudes and DHH rather aggressively pushed back on this point, saying that this is an unproductive escalation of the discussion (and then DHH himself ironically escalated the discussion even further).
> 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. Presumably, any employees who are found contributing to genocidal attitudes should be fired on the spot — and yet nobody involved seemed to think that contributing to or viewing the list was a fireable offense. If that’s the case, Hansson said, then the pyramid of hate had no place in the discussion. To him, it escalated employees’ emotions past the point of being productive.
Pointing out the problematic nature of the list was not the trigger for this. The trigger was a specific accusation made about the political impact of the list. The founders were clearly trying not to be a company that maintains a list of customer names to laugh at.
> We have to be careful to celebrate that progress proportionally, though. I was dismayed to see the argument advanced in text and graphics on [Employee 1’s] post that this list should be considered part of a regime that eventually could lead to genocide. That's just not an appropriate or proportionate comparison to draw.
>
> And further more, I think it makes us less able to admit mistakes and accept embarrassment, without being tempted to hide transgressions in the past. If the stakes for any kind of bad judgement in this area is a potential link to a ladder that ends in genocide, we're off on a wrong turn.
And in another post:
> I can appreciate how those examples raise the sensitivity of anything related to names, minorities, and power dynamics.
>
> Still, I don't think we serve the cause of opposing colonial regimes or racist ideology by connecting their abusive acts around names to this incident. And I don't think we serve an evaluation of you and others making fun of names in a Campfire session by drawing that connection either.
>
> We can recognize that forceful renaming by a colonial regime is racist and wrong while also recognizing that having a laugh at customer names behind their back is inappropriate and wrong without equating or linking the two.
I certainly wouldn't call that "aggressive"; it reads as polite, reasoned and measured to me, and even if DHH is wrong (I don't think he is) I fail to see how this is outside the bounds of what it should be acceptable for a leader to say to an employee.
That's fair, and I wasn't aware of DHH's published response when I posted that. My "aggressive" impression was based on a third party account that mentioned employee reactions [1]:
> 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.
It's fair to say that the founder has done some level of self immolation, but intentionally or not, your original comment focuses on the reason why they self-immolated which is what I think is inaccurate:
> And if you did and someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list and they tell you why, you don’t self-immolate.
No, whatever self-immolation that occurred didn't happen because someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list. They acknowledged that it was hugely problematic and wanted to correct the mistake and move on, which is a pretty normal response. The problem occurred when some employees clashed with the founder over acknowledging a specific political accusation.
I find it uncharitable & inaccurate to portray this as evidence of the founders' vanity because they shutdown when someone criticises the list, because that's not what happened. A heated political clash happened, and losing your cool over a deeply political issue is not surprising or a demonstration of vanity, it is exactly why many people don't discuss that kind of thing.
Depends if the attrition is people you wouldn't want working for you anyway. If not for business reasons, for human reasons.
The kind of backstabbing people to jump at the chance to make a grand-standing against a good employer and get a buyout bonus at a time the company is in the spotlight for BS reasons...
It makes no business or human sense to have your entire iOS engineering team quit at once with no one to replace them, which happened. It makes no human sense to make your company appear so toxic that it will be difficult to train or even recruit new hires, Etc etc.
DHH and co made a mistake: they thought that by treating employees well, and building a good working environment, they'd get some loyalty back.
But at the first chance of them proving otherwise, money (the buyout) and the faux-hero points ("principled" exit), won for many.
Notice how for ~20 years we haven't heard any pain stories or exposes from there, until this BS story of the "name list" (which is an inside joke blown out of proportion), and the "intolerable" pain of employees told not to discuss politics at work...
There's no doubt that it's causing significant harm now, but I think you're not seeing this from a longer term perspective: if they think continuing to allow political discussion is likely to create more workplace problems in the future, then that could outweigh any problems they cause now in their hiring pipeline. Two possible points in favor of this trade-off:
1. I've heard vague hearsay that it's hard to get a job there and they don't hire that often, they're not a big company with a big revolving door. Hiring new employees may be a less frequent and less consequential problem than avoiding workplace issues that affect existing employees.
2. This has apparently enhanced the company's image amongst some people, just read over this HN thread. It's not clear that this will damage their hiring appeal and overall ability to competently fill positions.
I find it quite a stretch to consider this an existential threat to 37signal. They're famous for having no VC/shareholder obligations or debt while continuing to be very financially successful for a very long time. Their products are well-liked and admired. Their founders are fairly wealthy.
Sure it can, if the situation has gotten so bad that you need drastic measures, it makes sense. It's not ideal, but that's a totally different thing that "making sense". People have to make hard decisions with temporarily uncomfortable and problematic consequences all the time at the executive level. Getting rid of a big chunk of the workforce is hardly uncommon in terms of drastic measures, no matter how it's done.
And to many people, this is going to make Basecamp appear more attractive not less. They won't have a hard time filling seats.
Indeed. Imagine you’re paying for Basecamp and you need to file tickets and get support ASAP this week? What do you think of them when 1/3 of the employees are gone in a flash? Whatever you think of the debate’s impact on workplace culture, the capitalist point of view is that the founders have most certainly scuttled their company because they couldn’t manage their chosen workforce.
Because several "ideal worlds" without any problems attempted turned out to be dystopian plans by lunatics wanting everything to be perfect and clean cut according to them - and causing untold pain in the process.
They don't need to make any power play, they founded and own the company. The power is theirs.
>They made it clear they don't want employee input, criticism.
No, they just made clear they don't employees diverting the discussion to BS arguments such as that "a list of funny names" is in any way similar to endorsing genocide. If that's the kind of "ideas" people would bring in, then they prefered to keep it to work talk. Who wouldn't?
It's like many people today were pampered children throwing tantrums, and don't know the basics of logic, what's relevant and what's not, how to not slippery-slope things to death, how to deal with their "feelings", and so on.
Or, that would be the case, if it was legit rage, but a lot of it is fashion, hypocrisy and power-plays.
On top of that there are people jealous at DHH and co, who can't stand their success and advocacy, and will rejoice at the first chance to turn them into scapegoats.
You're right but I think that's kind of beside the point -- they didn't have to use that power.
>"a list of funny names" is in any way similar to endorsing genocide.
I would say they are similar, the chart is to demonstrate that they're two ends of the spectrum of dehumanising and hatred. I think it's mistaken to fixate on the "genocide" bit, there are a lot of other things in the middle of the chart also, but it all starts with subtle things like mocking other people for having names that would be totally normal in their home culture. It's a very light form of dehumanising and it may not even be intended that way but it still is one nonetheless.
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.
counterpoint - maybe the significance of not undermining the other 2/3 of the company is exactly extreme managerial competence when the crisis has already made itself clear.
If you're saying that limiting their losses to _only_ 1/3 of their staff is a sign of great managerial flair then I'm afraid that I disagree very strongly.
It's like cutting off a limb with gangrene. The mistakes they made to get to this situation have been recognized, and now the next decision is how to make sure you continue to live, unpoisoned.
> Hansson told me that the rules are not draconian — no one is going to be bounced out the door for occasionally straying out of bounds. The founders’ goal is to reset the culture and focus on making products, he said, not to purge political partisans from the workforce.
You're looking at the press release and not reading what they're saying. 1/3rd of their company couldn't live with only 'occasionally straying out of bounds' and wanted to make everything political such that 'straying out of bounds' was the norm, so they got 'offered a buy out'.
what the sentence you quoted is saying is that its not based on political viewpoints, but based on behaviour, 1/3 of the company would not accept only occasionally being out of bounds enough to stick around. those 1/3 were likely undermining the actual effectiveness of the company for their political causes.
> Remarkable how when 1/3 of the company resigns in one go - many of whom have great and longstanding professional reputations with no history of political activism and including head of marketing, design, customer support, iOS etc. - following fundamental changes they read about in a blog post, it's because _they_ were all intolerable, proselytizing activists who all had to go for the good of the company.
> Absolutely nothing to do with the two leaders who spend a good chunk of time on social media telling the rest of the world how to run their business in the most in your face way possible.
>no one is going to be bounced out the door for occasionally straying out of bounds.
1/3 of their workforce couldn't accept that and took the buyout instead. That's why it was important to do it - they valued their politics over their continued employment. It wasn't to purge people based on their politics, it was to purge people who couldn't limit themselves to 'occasionally straying out of bounds' - 1/3 of the company undermining the other 2/3 to push their politics.
I don't see an issue per se, but it makes it clear that they've got the money to live outside of the sphere of politics and society that their employees exist within.
They can afford to make it a non-issue for themselves. And so they have. An empathetic option was available to them (own up to the stupid silly names list) but they cast it aside.
As a consequence, they've lost a lot of respect both in their workforce and in the court of public opinion. I don't intend to put much stock in whatever else they have to say now.
And for me it's not about the politics at work bit. It's the rest of it that is getting less attention. Cringeworthy Huxley quotes, paternalistic benefits, etc. etc.
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.
Especially when you juxtapose superficially-and-barely offensive things like this with ongoing things like war which are truly deplorable in real human suffering they cause.
Which is exactly the point! We tolerate war in the world because we tolerate smaller bad things. If we stop tolerating the smaller bad things, we can build a better society that no longer tolerates the really bad stuff.
That makes no sense. It’s not like an RPG where there’s a progression where you have to “level up” by first not tolerating small things and build up to not tolerating big things.
You can go ahead and jump right in to not tolerating wars while not caring about things that literally do not matter at all like some people chuckling at a name.
Indeed, the fact that so many people want to waste their time arguing about nonsense like this makes it much easier for the people who profit off wars to keep starting wars.
People have different needs that are at odds with one another. Compromising on what's bad for me but good for you (and vice versa) while doing what's good for both is how the world functions.
There aren't universal 'bad things' of varying sizes that we just need to get rid of. That's the sort of thinking that gets you Nazi Germany cleansing the earth of 'bad' people to bring about paradise - be very careful.
Not sure I agree. Seems to me plausible that humans have empathy and outrage limits. Unless you think someone can be outraged all day every day — because it seems like there is a new issue for the mob every day.
Sorry to say, but that's simplistic thinking. And going too far in the other direction as we're seeing today is a recipe for chaos. Society becomes overly brittle, and the smallest hit will shatter 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?
I would like to see the counterpoint to DHH’s blog post. There seems to be something missing because saying a names list is part of or indicative of genocide/systemic etc seems too far out to only be that.
Pessimistically, I’ve witnessed similar exchanges that didn’t seem plausible to me, but yet were very real to the people making the claim. I remember a friend who was convinced that their trans friends lives were in danger after the 2016 election and claimed that management not denouncing the election and allowing friends to work from home for safety was “literally the same” as attacking them. It was so weird having them walk through the logic I thought they were joking. Fortunately, everyone lived despite continuing to come into the office (until covid of course).
The argument here is that treating this kind of mockery as acceptable is part of what enables gradually more serious hateful behavior in a society at large. I don’t really think this is that controversial.
Whether it’s appropriate to bring it up in a work context to explain why something is racist, I’m not sure. I probably wouldn’t do it myself. But I do find it weird that DHH acknowledged the list was bad but doesn’t seem to believe there was anything ethnically or racially prejudiced about it. Children are excused occasional meanness without explanation, but adults generally aren’t.
Based on the post there doesn’t seem to be anything racially motivated so the pyramid doesn’t seem to fit since the list was funny names, including 6/70 non-English names.
Even if it was specifically offensive, bringing up a diagram like that in a specific instance as a path to genocide is such overkill it kind of kills the discussion.
While I think that system racism and casual denegration is bad and society needs to work to eliminate it, putting it on the same spectrum as genocide is like showing a chart that includes a light bulb and the sun as part of a discussion on luminosity. Yes, it’s technically correct but not useful for conversation. Making fun of foreign peoples’ names and genocide are both racist. But the odds of such an act leading to genocide is googol:1 given that there are billions of acts of this type of name racism daily vs rare instances of genocide.
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.
“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.
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.
Yes, the unstated fact in these discussions about politics in workplace is that the dominant group is very liberal or even leftists. Especially on social issues.
People who are criticizing Basecamp want their politics in workplace. Every single one of them knows they won't be in the minority. They won't have to be one of the few opposing voices in a sea of anti-abortion, pro-gun-rights, anti-gay-marriage, anti-immigration coworkers.
I wonder if discussing removing racial segregation from workplaces back in the 60s or 70s or whenever was considered a "very liberal or even leftist"? Sometimes there's just a right side to be on.
I've never had a discussion about abortion or guns-rights or whatever in the general workplace - maybe I've had social conversations amongst work friends - but really the "political" conversations I've had at work are mostly focus on building diverse teams to build better products or calling out and addressing bad behaviour.
>I wonder if discussing removing racial segregation from workplaces back in the 60s or 70s or whenever was considered a "very liberal or even leftist"? Sometimes there's just a right side to be on.
Absolutely. The US government considered the entire civil rights movement to serve the Communist agenda. Read about J. Edgar Hoover's enemies list[0] or COINTELPRO[1]. The FBI believed MLK was a Communist agent[2]. Any anti-war or Black activist group was portrayed as enemies of the state and left-wing extremists.
You can see the same playbook being used against BLM today. No one on the right will fail to refer to them as anything but a "Marxist terrorist group" that "burns entire cities to the ground" and "murders innocents with impunity."
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.
Sure, with respect to the language used in the original post, modal logic can be used as a formal basis for how we derive meaning from phrases like 'must' and 'never'. This has a lot of overlap with the field of deontology, which is a subset of moral philosophy which looks more closely at moral dutys and obligations. There are quite a few different theorys worth exploring in moral philosophy beyond just the deontological one, so I'd recommend starting with classical perspectives like that of Kant and making your own way from there.
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.
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.
>> 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.
>Work is not a politically/religiously clean room environment whether we like it or not.
This is exactly true; I really don't understand the opposite point of view (and I'm happy if anyone can enlighten me; I'm happy for good-faith discussion). It's not hard for anyone to admit that our society, the very organization of people along economic, class, race, and gender lines is 'biased' in some way, that the equality of the law does not reflect in how people are treated. Why do people think that the door to the lobby of your workplace is like a magical portal into another dimension, where these influences/biases/perceptions no longer hold any sway?
I understand that this argument can be extended - for instance, we might say that the public/private distinction is just as arbitrary, but we have good reasons to respect, say, sexual autonomy in the private realm. Do we have similarly good reasons, speaking in terms of what a well-meaning person in society might be concerned about for why 'politics' (speaking broadly as issues from 'the outside' that manifest within the company and issues of the company itself) should enjoy a similar distinction?
We spend one third of our adult lives at work. Much of that time is spent on interacting with others in some way. Should that really be closed off to 'politics'? Is man a political animal (Aristotle's words, not mine!) or not?
There is absolutely a political aspect to work. It is entirely relevant to discuss it. It is also entirely legitimate for an employer to say "talk about politics after the whistle blows, I am paying money for your attention right now."
Work is a third of your life, but it's the third of your life that is about doing what somebody else wants you to do in exchange for funding the other two thirds. That's not true for everybody, but it's a rule of thumb.
The other week I moved houses. I hired some movers who charged by the hour. If, instead of moving my furniture, they'd stood around talking about politics, and said "how can you tell us to get back to work instead of talking politics, when labor is an inherently political subject!" I would have been angry. Most people would, I think.
The big problem with this discussion is that it is inherently very divisive. Should the nation invade a "malicious" regime to "free" the people or wait for them to find their own way, even if it might lead to more suffering? Is Islam or Atheism the right way? There is no good answer but there are very strong opinions. Discussing those at work will lead to infighting and disagreements between coworkers, as well as a lot of time spent (or, from a company-profit-perspective, wasted) on political activism. Especially since the people with these strong opinions a very happy to annoy you to help their cause or attack you for "standing by and letting it happen". This is bad for everyone involved.
That being said, there's no clear no line, I agree with you. Some political issues are related to the work place - unions come to mind - and those should not be excluded. Disallowing those is probably illegal in most places anyway and Basecamp, by the way, did explicitly exclude issues which are related to work.
But I think the general idea is that yes, you should keep politics (and religion) separated from work, as far as possible. That does not mean that you can not talk about it on your lunch break or after work or that you're not allowed to unionize. But you should not make your coworker uncomfortable because she/he likes guns and you think only maniacs do so.
>We spend one third of our adult lives at work. Much of that time is spent on interacting with others in some way. Should that really be closed off to 'politics'? Is man a political animal (Aristotle's words, not mine!) or not?
It's exactly because everyone else must spend time with other people at work that they should keep their politics out of it - their right to work without being harassed for political causes is greater than someone's wish to discuss it at work. That's not why people were hired for the job, its not related to the job, leave it at home.
I am of course very much against harassment at work - I wouldn't want anyone to be the subject of relentless political statements - however, not all (and I daresay not most) political discussion is harassment. I tried to address the idea of "not relevant to the job" by highlighting that these things are relevant to "the job" where "the job" is a facet of both our society and our life - it is not separate from it, nor is "the job" a special realm immune from political influences. "The job" is political, to the extent where economic, gender, racial, sexual, etc. relations are already political on 'the outside'.
The main point of my comment is that saying politics is "not related to the job" is both ahistorical and incorrect, very much in the same way that ethical concerns relating to building bomb is just as "related to the job" as what material the bomb's shell ought to be made of.
Let's take a step back; are ethical concerns part of "the job"? Why or why not?
>I tried to address the idea of "not relevant to the job" by highlighting that these things are relevant to "the job" where "the job" is a facet of both our society and our life
Yes, you pulled a word game to justify your position from the outset and are restating it. I disagree. Just because you consider it important to every part of your life, doesn't mean you need to bring it up in your job. It's not an overriding thing for everyone else who doesn't share your level of alarmism and the outlook that economic, gender, racial, sexual issues define every part of your existence. I'm at work - I don't want to care about any of your racial, sexual, etc issues. I will treat you professionally and I want you to do the same.
>The main point of my comment is that saying politics is "not related to the job" is both ahistorical and incorrect, very much in the same way that ethical concerns relating to building bomb is just as "related to the job" as what material the bomb's shell ought to be made of.
Then find a different job. Maybe with an NGO who shares your causes.
>Let's take a step back; are ethical concerns part of "the job"? Why or why not?
Ethical concerns are part of my profession, but they don't define my life and my ethical concerns don't define other people's ethical or professional concerns.
Just treat people professionally and don't bring identity politics into the workplace.
Talk to other employees about it outside work and/or using personal accounts?
Or talk to management (this is not a moratorium on bringing up what employees see as issues with management, this is obviously about communications between employees which is tangentially work related at best.
It doesn't need to be a clean room, but a lot of people have been treating it like the equivalent of a polling place/church (more the former, I think most businesses and employees still know enough to avoid the latter unless they are explicit about it). I don't need to know your political leanings at work, I don't need to know your religious beliefs, and for the same reason I don't need to know your sexual orientation, preferences or kinks. You can make it obvious to me, and I don't care, but work is not the appropriate place for a discussion of any of those things unless the discussion is management or HR telling you that a) none of that matters for your job so you shouldn't care about other people's details with respect to that, b) to stop if you're making it an issue with people, and c) if you don't like that, take a hike. The only other case is when you're telling them someone else won't follow those rules.
Nope. You can still discuss politics over beers. Over barbecue. Over the phone on your own time. At your favorite place to volunteer. At your grocery store... Just please don’t do it where others are trapped having to hear you without any way out.
If you don’t want to hear opinions, work with robots not people.
Seriously, I get it, being ranted at sucks, but your a human, they’re a human, just say “I’m not really interested” and walk away.
Relying on company policy for this is a strange offloading of your personal social responsibility and relationships.
I understand and appreciate some work cultures are toxic, but I think it’s fair to expect people to taking a bit of personal responsibility for interacting like a normal person too.
You’re not wrong. That’s been my approach. I’ve left two jobs over this, and have found a place where I genuinely like all of my coworkers, and we pretty much steer clear of unprofessional topics.
There’s an old saying in the south: “never talk politics or religion around the supper table.” I think that it’s generally a good rule of thumb to avoid those topics when in a situation where you have a captive audience.
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.
There's a difference between not taking a side at all, and compartmentalizing so that some things are expressed in some parts of you life and some aren't.
They said employees are not expected to curtail political speech in personal contexts or using personal accounts, just for official work accounts, where work communication is done.
That was explicitly stated, and it was also stated that employees are encouraged to speak their mind politically on their personal accounts.
This is a company setting expectations about what work time and work resources should be used for, with that explicitly not including political discussions. I think that's entirely within the expectations of most employers and employees.
Firstly, who defines the "sides". There is a massive amount of US presence online which often reduces to Democrat vs Republican.
Except for those of us outside the US, who have no interest in US politics are often been told if you don't pick a side you are siding with evil.
Secondly, that statement is basically public cohersion. If you are told, you have to pick - victim or oppressor - absolutely noone is going to publicly pick oppressor. Its kafaesque in its simiplicity.
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...
Causality is backwards here. Which side is oppressed and which is the victim is a deeply political question; speaking out takes the side of victims because the widespread political support builds the shared understanding that their victimhood exists.
> 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"
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?
> 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.
After reading the article linked here in the comments a few times - "What really happened at BaseCamp" - I actually think that people who make a fuss about the list are dumb-ass. I mean, it's a list of funny names! Put mine on it, if you want! Anyone who takes offence to it, needs to chill out, forget about woke Pyramid of Hate and stop bothering other people
(for the record, pre-Nazi Germany had hate speech laws, and Hitler did write strong anti-semitic messages in his first book long before coming to power - this idea that "jokes will escalate to genocide" is pure woke fantasy & narrative that they use to promote their cause and bully other people into submission)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It can't be bullying if the person (that would be bullied) isn't even aware of it.
Source: I was actually bullied as a kid. I couldn't care less if people are making fun of my name (or anything else about me) without me knowing about it.
If I found out someone thought my name was funny enough to make it on a list, I'd be curious and probably want to know more about why. Offense doesn't even cross my mind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
This is basically what happened according to available info [1]. DHH, one of the co-founders, admitted the list was a mistake but aggressively pushed back on the political assertion by some employees that the list and the people involved were contributing to genocidal attitudes. As DHH pushed back, he went so far as to dig up old employee messages and repost them publicly to argue that the employees making accusations about genocidal attitudes were themselves hypocrites. Less than two weeks later, Jason Fried announced the new company policies.
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.
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.
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.
Ah, "cat.jpg". 100 millionth file name, you can see the post where that nugget was let out, and the followup apology from DHH on the svn blog still.
Thing is, Taylor, the head of Ops who made the fateful blog post made it up as a joke. He didn't check, or look it up, he wouldn't have done. The chance of it being called "cat.jpg" is slim. It was literally a joke based on the number of cat pictures that people uploaded to the Internet.
DHH proof-read the post.
People complained that we were prying into customer data (we weren't, and Basecamp's customer data privacy and security policies are incredibly strong), but DHH wouldn't let us "come clean" believing that people would think we were covering it up, so he apologised for it as if it were real.
Did they? My understanding it that DHH acknowledged the list was a mistake, apologised, and made it clear that such behaviour was no longer acceptable.
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.
Also, if someone had a funny name and they went against progressive politics, then they would be laughing about it. How about all the Donald Drumpf stuff from Oliver.
It puzzles me what progressives actually do laugh at when so much is forbidden and everything is somehow insensitive.
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).
[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).
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?".
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.
> This is the kind of thing that you would hope people can appreciate through common sense...but, unfortunately, that isn't the case anymore.
Many people literally don't care for actual issue. Lot of them are just opporunistic.
> 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).
Totally agree.
> ...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.
I call this a north-american problem. In other parts of world (at least where I am from), it is well understood to not talk about politics at work. Americans talk about both free speech and politically correct speech, ironical.
> 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)
I can relate with this based on my experience. Setting proper goals and incentive solves not all but many problems. But with big enough and diverse crowd there will be always some issues.
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.
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...
Same thing happens with relocation expenses. Many employers make you pay them back if you leave within a year. That's normally quite a sum, and can be even bigger if the employer paid closing costs or otherwise made a new hire whole for selling a home in order to move.
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.
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.
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm assuming that if they hire people as contractors they only do so until they've hired new people to fill the vacant positions.
I looked through the information and it looks a lot like what we used to call "Voluntary Reduction in Force (VRIF)" AKA a "voluntary" layoff. It includes 6 months pay which seems sweet. Am I missing something?
We used to have these when I worked at Xerox. The only question I have is did everyone get the VRIF or just some people?
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.
I don't think this is really about making fun of people's names, or holocaust references. It's about power.
The managers at basecamp were unhappy that their employees asserted power over them in the workplace, and decided to assert their own power in turn over what they view as their personal fiefdom and retract some of the freedoms they had so graciously granted their workers, because those ungrateful workers actually expected them to live up to their words about openness and owning mistakes. At least 1/3 of the staff, when confronted with their true relations with their management, then decided to quit.
I did find it amusing they announced this new policy of no personal/political stuff at work on his personal blog on hey.com, not on a company blog, and DHH continues to rant on twitter about a very political and public fight with Apple, one he chose to enter on behalf of the company.
I disagree. It’s about professionalism. Flame wars at work create a hostile environment where quiet voices are silenced. It’s the same reason HN bans political flame wars.
I think most would agree more professionalism would be nice, in fact getting rid of a list of funny customer names (as employees suggested) would be more professional, not less. But again, that's not really what the core disagreement is here - that's not IMO why people are quitting - it sounds like most of the company agrees that is a good idea.
They are quitting because the founders decided to assert their power nakedly and without restraint, to berate employees, shut down their organisation and discussions and attempt to dictate terms to them in a humiliating public way, that is to break the social contract between employee and employed. In doing that they declared that they alone decide the rules, they alone decide what is acceptable to say and what is not.
Every workplace has some subtle set of rules about behaviour but these rules are negotiated between employer and employee, and if as a manager you lose sight of that, you'll lose your best employees as they decide they don't really want you to decide everything about their waking hours without consulting you.
Maybe the company did negotiate. Most of the company stayed. I know I’d rather work for basecamp now, because they agreed to knock out the BS at work.
> you'll lose your best employees as they decide they don't really want you to decide everything about their waking hours without consulting you.
the company is actually saying they want to not talk about anything outside of work. They don’t want you consulting them, they want you doing your job during work hours. That’s a pretty reasonable trade for money.
Exactly this. What people don’t realize is this move is hardly political. It’s all about building a better business. When work is a safe space free from political flame wars, employees can actually focus on the one thing they were hired to do, and be happier doing it: write code, manage projects, etc.
No, it's about DHH using politics as a stand-in for the actual issue: they mishandled this issue with the name list, they got called out and held to task for it, and they don't like that behavior.
The politics thing really amounts to "don't challenge me" and is a nice diversion from the actual issue.
Do you think that the name list was racist? Because it sounds to me like many people do, and it seems only if it was an act of racism would your comment be justified.
Looking at the reported details, it does _not_ seem to be an act of racism. It was reported very few names on the list were Asian, for example, and the only (not fully revealed) examples I read were European names.
Not subtweeting their entire workforce on their extremely popular blog would probably be a good start.
Even if they decided to go with a “no politics” rule, doing it publicly was unbelievably shitty to their employees. Such policy changes really should’ve been done in private, especially since it was clear based on the phrasing that this was in response to a specific incident.
Disagree. There’s a difference between being transparent, and publicly implying that your workforce is problematic. Especially when there’s some issue that you’ve failed to deal with. That’s both inappropriate and unwise. This should’ve been an internal announcement, not an external one.
Maybe in a year after things have calmed down they could do a “we banned politics at the office and it was great” post, but the timing was guaranteed to create a fiasco for them.
As a metaphor, what they did is closer to disparaging someone’s work performance in an all hands. It might be “transparent”, but it’s also unprofessional.
Admit they made a mistake and address it, rather than institute a childishly overbroad ban on all "political conversation" specifically to shut down criticism related to their mistake.
DHH literally said it was a systematic failure of the whole company but ultimately his responsibility, apologized and asked to move forward. Part of healthy dispute resolution is accepting an apology and moving forward with good faith forgiveness. If an apology isn’t good enough the cycle of conflict just resets because there can be no accepted resolution.
His public response was to post a blog about forbidding politics from work.
Part of healthy dispute resolution is recognizing how to apologize correctly and to the right people. Token apologies do not work for complex situations.
Additionally: he apologized for the list but not for his appalling behavior against an employee who pointed out issues with the list and was childishly dressed down very publicly in the company’s chat.
> The long-running existence of the "Best Names Ever" list that [employee 1] described yesterday represents a serious, collective, and repeated failure at Basecamp. One that we need to learn from together by transparently tracing its origin and history.
> Not only was it disrespectful to our customers, and a breach of basic privacy expectations, but it was also counter to creating an inclusive workplace. Nobody should think that maintaining such a list is okay or sanctioned behavior here.
> Furthermore, Jason and I should have caught this list. We are ultimately responsible for setting the tone of what's acceptable behavior at Basecamp, and in this instance we didn't. I'm sorry.
Have you read DHH's blog? It sounds like they did exactly that, and the instigating employees were unwilling to let things go and insisted on continuing to escalate things.
People were hurt by a very obvious instance of the company failing to live up to its stated values, so they attempt to bring it up to its founder.
He’s painted the situation as “troublemakers out to get my skin” whereas from all the reporting it appears that he’s been the one to needlessly throw a childish and very public temper tantrum.
Read his words. They offer a respectful measured tone. They acknowledge and seek to make amends. It is a case study in healthy communication and dispute resolution, and that is saying something for someone like DHH who is prone to bombastic trolling generally. DHH never said instigating employees he merely requested that the apology be accepted and the team move forward. Then he asked everyone to consider the degree of severity of the problem and not give in to the temptation to bring slippery slope arguments into the debate because it actually undermines any possible progress by inflaming the debate, making people’s opinions more intractable and destroying any possible resolution.
The mistake was the timing. If they'd started the company off banning that stuff, they'd have been fine. If they'd waited until months after this controversy died down, they'd probably have less than 10% losses. Doing it now was a truly enormous screw up.
Yeah, seriously. It’s Basecamp. There’s a very deep bench of engineers and product people that would love to backfill the roles.
It will still be damaging short term because they lost a lot of depth in cultural and product knowledge, with the marketing and product leads gone. Not easy to replace someone who’s been living and breathing the products for over a decade.
If the response to this is any indication, they've just alienated a significant portion of that bench.
Basecamp seems very profitable, so it may not be fatal. But my guess is that it cuts far, far deeper than Jason and DHH intended. There may well be another wave of resignations next week.
If your goal was to get likeminded people who don't want to discuss politics into the company, and "pot stirrers" out, seems like the post succeeded. Maybe that wasn't the intent and they were naive enough to post something publicly like that and not expect resignations, I couldn't say.
Frankly, at this point I’m inclined to agree with OP that the politics rule was just a pretext to assert their power over the employees. (Partially because the employees learned about all this via the public blog post, which seems uncontroversially dickish no matter how one feels about the actual changes).
I’m sure they expected attrition — hence the severance — but I’d wager they thought it would be closer to Coinbase’s 5% when they announced a similar policy, not 30% and counting.
Twenty so far, actually. Including Sam Stephenson, who seems to have been their longest-tenured developer. Also their head of design, head of marketing, and head of customer support. And their entire iOS team.
Yeah, sounds like a pretty big fuck up then on Basecamp's part. Weird that they didn't see this coming, I can't imagine being so out of tune with a large portion of senior, long-standing employees.
I think the loss of culture is the intended effect, and the loss of product knowledge is the cost.
I'm not going to argue about which culture is better, but the split between people who wanted to get their jobs done and make a good product, and the people who wanted to use their job as an avenue for social change/partisan warfare (depending on which side of the split you're on) sounded toxic.
I suspect there will be a lot of highly-qualified people who will want to go to work at Basecamp who wouldn't have wanted to work there before. We're in the middle of a culture war:
* A lot of people like wokeness.
* A lot of people hate it.
Most SV companies have gone for the woke side of the current culture war, and so my perception is that there are a lot of people who hate it and don't have good places to go. From a purely supply-and-demand perspective, running a non-woke firm seems the way to find good employees. Conversely, being a woke employee seems the way to find good jobs.
To be clear, I'm not advocating employees be overly woke -- this is all more about social signaling than actual advocacy.
FWIW I'm not saying this is a good thing, or purposeful, but just that if the goal was to eliminate dissent, a whole bunch of people quitting is probably more or less accomplishing the goal.
Person you're replying to was mentioning customers quitting, not employees (and I have seen a number of people mentioning they've cancelled their Basecamp or Hey subscriptions today).
Product managers are not exactly a time critical position. If the iOS app falls behind the Android app for a few months, will many users even notice?
And it won't take them long to re-fill these roles. There's a ton of unmet demand to work at a place that's purged the activists. You aren't gonna see them much on Twitter but Basecamp just gave themselves a massive recruiting advantage that FAANG cannot/will not match, and they already had a good reputation. Lots of people read DHH's blog post and thought "excellent, that's what's needed". Any impact on the firm will be transient at best.
“Most” of the company staying is cold comfort when that “most” is a slim majority. Losing a third of your work force at once, effective immediately (or close to immediately) is a catastrophic outcome that’s really hard to sugarcoat. Especially when the company has just gotten into a very ugly public fight with their employees, and remote work is no longer a rare benefit to entice talent.
I would not envy being a hiring manager at Basecamp right now.
The cynical side of me thinks this is just Fried and DHH not wasting a crisis and turning it into an opportunity to quick pivot and flush out the deadwood.
I do agree with others, though, that I'll bet Basecamp is a better place to work now than it was a week ago. If people want to quit because they'd rather engage in struggle sessions than focus on the work, I won't be sad to see them leave and take their distracting socio-political griefer wokeist cloud with them.
Stop politicizing tech. We are in the technology industry, not the humanities faculty lounge and our jobs should be free of virtue signalling and cancellation.
I doubt this was planned, the whole thing seems like a bunch of bad impulses rather than something done on purpose. Especially since this has absolutely trashed their public reputation.
I completely disagree about Basecamp being better after this. Attrition, no matter the cause, is awful for company morale. Finding out that several teams are just gone without any notice or time to transition is going to make life kind of suck for those who remain. Sure hope their docs are good.
As far as stopping the politics in tech; Basecamp got a glowing write up in Breitbart. “No politics here” is political. There are good and bad ways to handle such things, but blanket bans and “here’s the door if you don’t like it” is hamfisted and clearly bad for retention.
> Especially since this has absolutely trashed their public reputation.
Definitely this has trashed their reputation with people on the left. Some of my friends have been posting on Twitter that they wouldn't work for Basecamp now, whereas they used to aspire to work there.
But it is far from clear to me that my friends are in a majority. Many people on the right, or people who are apolitical, or people who just don't like politicisation in the way that has been reported, may be perfectly fine with this.
In terms of reputation, it wouldn't surprise me if this is a net win for Basecamp.
For sure losing a third of employees is an existential risk, but I suspect senior management would have accepted that risk.
(I consider myself to be left wing, but not woke).
I think people who are viewing this through a left vs. right wing issue are missing the forest for the trees.
The issue is not the new policy. The issue is the way it was rolled out; in an extremely public way that was basically a subtweet of their entire workforce, all while they knew there was a ton of internal drama they’d failed to control. That was unbelievably bad leadership, and I think anyone focusing entirely on whether or not the specific policy is good or bad, to the point where it makes them want to join or not, has been fighting the culture war way too much for their own good.
I’d be fine with a no politics policy, I would not be fine with the blog post, especially if I felt that the internal problem hadn’t been dealt with and instead I’d been crapped on publicly by my boss.
If you're in the business of "changing the world" or "changing peoples' lives" then your business is political. Politics reflect how people feel about things.
You're using tech as a shorthand for "technology company" -- companies are also organizations of people with feelings. People function best when they are treated with respect and given psychological safety. People need to have room to discuss how they feel about things, so you can build better policies that make people happy and motivated to succeed at the mission. Sometimes those things are lumped into what a company might consider "political" and it's not an easy line to draw.
For example, gender imbalance is one of the most important "political" things that I think every healthy company needs to look long and hard at; how do you do that if you clamp down on that as "political discussion?" Similarly if racial injustice is impacting a segment of your workforce more than others, don't you think it's worthwhile for management to do things like make statements of support, check in on their employees, and basically be a bit human and accommodating? Or wait is that political discussion?
Folks like you who say employees should just "focus on the work" dismiss the idea that people shouldn't just be viewed as cogs in these money-making machines. Tech, where company profit margins are fat and where actual productivity is not measured in SLOC but in the ability to generate ideas and focus on how those ideas affect users, is actually one of the only market segments we can actually point at and say "you have the means to do better." It's really sad when founders like Fried and DHH give their employees the impression that they are no more than pieces of a money making machine after clearly fooling a lot of them into thinking there was some semblance of a social contract there. So no it's definitely not a better place to work now than a week ago.
By the way, people aren't stupid for thinking that there's a social contract, especially at small companies. There's always a loose contract -- and one of the powerful things about equity and its presence in SV companies is how it aligns the incentives for management and labor. But trust is also a component of that alignment force; trust is one of the things that has always made silicon valley magical. So it's really disappointing when that trust is violated.
Officially having policy to not discussing politics is very good. In my experience, it is rarelly imposed but there is always someone who crosses line and it comes handy.
On side note, sadly in my (unpopular) opinion, north americans are focused too much on being politically correct in speech instead of being correct in action and thoughts.Hope this will not be their downfall.
“I’ll bet Basecamp is a better place to work now than it was a week ago”
I don’t know, if my week at work concluded with one of the founders going on a blocking spree and leading the Rails community to start discussing disassociating itself from him, I wouldn’t consider that “better”. :)
Me too! I haven't even heard of Basecamp before, but now it has made it's way onto my whitelist of "sane companies worth working for." I really hope they survive this debacle and keep making good products.
Damn, I’m going to have to face some competition! I wouldn’t say what they’ve done was a master stroke but now everyone knows their name and as you say it’ll be top of the list of sane companies to apply for
Good leadership doesn’t result in you losing 1/3rd of the company’s workforce.
Or, since I know that the common retort here is “they’re better off without the troublemakers”; good leaders don’t build organizations where 1/3rd of the organization is troublemakers; that’s a failure of hiring.
There really is no way to spin this in a way that makes them look good. The PR hit is really just the cherry on top of losing so many people, and paying 6 months of salary for the privilege to boot.
> And even if they couldn’t, having a smaller but more productive workforce might be a win.
I wouldn’t want to work for a company that somehow managed to get dragged down by 20 people. If losing those people is making the company better, then it sounds like leadership is deeply incompetent and let things fester for way, way, way too long. Keep in mind that some of those people worked there for 12 years; if losing them is a net positive why weren’t they fired a decade ago?
I also think the idea that the remaining workers will be more productive is laughable. Events like these crush morale, even if you ultimately agree with the policy decision being made. Never mind what happens when you lose so much knowledge, including entire teams and directors, with basically no warning or opportunity to transfer knowledge.
Hope their docs are world class, or their replacements are gonna have a bad time.
That's almost more surprising to me. In small companies I usually expect most people to stick together because everyone knows everyone. Having 1/3 leave isn't something I'd ever imagine.
I think with more and more remote work social ties get weaker - at least from what I have seen people are easier to leave because the group isn't as tightly connected when everyone knows each other just from some remote meetings and PRs.
I doubt it. Basecamp has extremely long average tenures. The people who are quitting are often 9-12 year veterans. If social ties were that weak there, they would’ve been pealed off by recruiters before.
We will see if most of the company stays after losing a third of its staff including several directors and some of its most senior and longest-tenured engineering talent. Would you? I’m not sure I would.
They’ll live. They just kneecapped themselves for no obvious reason, but they’ve got enough cash, remaining talent, and customers to live. Especially since they’re not VC backed, and slowing growth isn’t fatal.
I’d wait until you hear about customers quitting before you assume that they’re in trouble, and I don’t think it’ll happen.
I’m not sure how losing 1/3rd of your staff, including the head of design and the entire iOS team could be seen as anything other than a massive issue.
An issue, yes, but we don't know what else could be going on behind the scenes at Basecamp. You can replace a head of design and an iOS team quickly at a company that small (58 employees before the purge).
If anything else is going on behind the scenes that makes losing 1/3 of the company a better outcome, I would lay blame for that directly at the feet of leadership for letting it get that bad.
People always say that though. A few weeks go by, hype dies down, no one cares. Boycotts are rarely effective. Most people just want software that works, and migrating creates time and effort that affects business. I’m sure most people who cancelled were already on the verge of it before.
Tools like Basecamp are much harder to boycott than consumer goods because they’re so sticky. I’m not even sure “boycott” is the right word here, as I think if they lose any customers it’ll be more of a “loss of faith” problem than a political one.
Personally, while I’d find the list of “funny” names offputting, I wouldn’t cancel. I however would take the buyout if I worked there; leadership there seems genuinely incompetent, and it’s not like remote jobs are rare anymore.
That really depends. Where they activists? Then hell yeah, because it will be great from now on, like a calm morning with the sun shining after a stormy night.
A company I'm involved with fired their lead developer and it really was cartoonish how everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Others are stepping up, discussions don't take forever because that person needed to be at the center of everything etc. They've picked up a lot of velocity since then, simply because a problem-employee is gone.
Did they knock out the BS? Or did they just get dragged into a massively political and now massively open fight? What do you think the average productivity of a Basecamp employee is right now?
Even after the dust settles, will you trust that DHH and Jason will keep their promise of no politics? What a company says about its culture and the reality are often quite different.
That’s an oddly mechanical way of expressing that a third of the company didn’t stay. If an asteroid hit the planet and a third of the population died, it would be very weird to say “most of the population survived”.
Are you sure “most of the company stayed”? Over a third has already publicly announced they’re quitting, and the changes were only announced like a week ago, so...
They’re not just hemorrhaging employees, they’re hemorrhaging customers too. I know I will never give them money.
This looks like a fatal blow, not a place someone would want to work. I’m sure they’re hiring though so you could probably get a job there and ride it out to the end.
I doubt that, most companies could not care less about the internal affairs of their tools' companies, unless it impacts the tools' performance and featureset, something we still await to see regarding Basecamp, whether they can successfully plug the employee hemorrhage wound and get new employees working on the product.
No evidence of this whatsoever. A bluecheck on Twitter loudly proclaiming that he's not going to pay $99/yr for email (HEY) or never using Basecamp again doesn't count. Citation needed.
> most companies could not care less about the internal affairs of their tools' companies
Most might be broad. Lots of companies absolutely care about the interal workings of their vendors. They can and do make decisions on these kinds of factors, especially if a large contract is on the line or they are looking for that last thing to separate 2 viable candidates. All companies doing manufacturing in places like Asia are constantly being looked at by human rights organizations to ensure the employees are being treated as humans. Personally, I won't do business with companies like Uber (even with new leadership), Wal-Mart, etc based on things reported about them.
Apple, Google, Amazon isn't tech with their manufacturing in Asia? Uber lost a lot with revelations of the fratbro leadership and corporate culture. Theranos lost everything when people looked into the fradulent practices. Lots of tech companies have felt blowback because of internal policies.
Most companies do actually evaluate their vendors. Basecamp built a brand on “management” and just proved they’re maybe the worst in the industry at it. Only on HN are people supporting them. It’s a dead company walking.
If a vendor we were working with lost a third of their employees, I would question whether that vendor would be a good long term relationship, regardless of what caused the exodus.
The founder’s egomania and the customer name list. I’m not going to give a company run by people stupid enough to put a bullet in the head if their own startup, any money.
I don't want to worry if my name is funny enough to be included in a list of jerks. That's ugly behavior and I don't want to have business with people that are looking for reasons to disrespect me.
>If we can’t take a joke we can’t share the connection of humor with others.
As an adult that has spent their entire life hear the same old tired jokes about their name, I could easily see/sympathize with them for no longer being amused by something that would make a 10 year old boy chuckle.
It is one think to have a laugh at something unexpected. Such things happen. Trying to maintain such a list and to keep it around for years is another level of objectivizing that is far from professional.
In addition, if they are so easy to one's name, it is likely that they will try to look for other sources of fun: accent, looks, type of issue.
I am also tempted to use their products now, even though I don't necessarily see their value inherently (they just don't fit my style of apps) simply to reward their behavior.
The idea of a bunch of right wing reactionaries using ultra crappy Web 2.0 project management software out of spite is actually rather amusing. There’s not enough of you guys to keep it alive though (not that you really did this).
I don't think we know why these people resigned, since the severance package was so generous that many of them may have just taken the excuse for a long holiday.
I would count myself as someone who would simultaneously be thrilled with management's decision to ban political discussion at work but also quit to get the six months pay.
I mean most of then say explicitly that it’s because of this decision in their tweets. Would you really go out of your way to say something like that if you didn’t believe it?
If it makes your interview for the next position go a little more smoothly on why you suddenly "abandoned" your job, then yes, I could easily see people taking a mere thirty seconds (if not less) to fire off a tweet.
What I think it is missing here is a concept I discovered very late in my career, after a burnout which took me over 1 year to pass over: psychological contract.
Which is defined as "Psychological contracts are defined by the relationship between an employer and an employee where there are unwritten mutual expectations for each side. A psychological contract is rather defined as a philosophy, not a formula or devised plan."
So I don't know what happened at Basecamp but here is how breaking a psychological contract feel to the employee from my experience:
A leader representing the company does something, an action, takes a decision.
You, the employee, feel that a wrong was done to you, even if the rules, law and contract says the one who took the action has the right to do it.
And in the beginning no amount of explanation about the action will alleaviate this feeling. Logically you will agree that they can do what they did, but emotionally (psychologically) at the end of every meeting or discussion you will still feel that somehow a wrong was done to you, a balance is unbalanced ...
Shortly you lost the trust in the company that what they will do has your best interests at heart.
It takes a big amount of effort and trying to put yourself in the shoes of your leader to try to understand how they got to that decision/action and if indeed was done in good faith you might overcome this. If not, then the best is to leave.
A "leader" makes a decision and the people under him decide whether to listen to that decision, to push back against that decision, or leave. So in reality, the company's direction is influenced by people both at the top and at the bottom of the totem pole.
True leaders realize the importance of cultivating those underneath them, and adapting their direction to pushback or input.
Managers of high-performance teams recognise that they're not the talent; the job is to enable the talent. You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon.
Hire good people, give them goals, and the resources they need, then get the fuck out of their way. Let them make their own processes, rules, norms, even mistakes. Most organisations have a prevailing culture, so they'll operate in context anyway; create boundaries by application of Conway's law. Intervene by guidance and with pertinent and impertinent questions, not with directives and fiat. Authoritarianism is the death-knell of ingenuity.
It’s one thing to solicit feedback and be open to the input of your team. It’s another, often ineffective, thing to let your team lead you. How would a leader make a decision when there are conflicting views or recommendations.
Brian Epstein made lots of decisions without the bands opinion and many more when they disagreed.
Well, here's the rub: I generally try to avoid saying "my team", because I don't regard them as possessions.
I'll make N-way decisions between conflicting ideals when I'm invited to adjudicate, but refrain otherwise. My guidance would be to workshop apparently dissimilar preferences extensively, because 99% of the time there is a synthesis to be found, and creating a focus for conflict tends to encourage loud voices to get louder, drowning out alternatives. I'll treat any administrative decision-making as being on behalf of the team, i.e. as having been delegated the authority to do so from the members. I learned years ago that governing by consent of the governed is the only form of respectful leadership, and this extends to organisations and corporations, and it's never more apparent than when a manager switches jobs and people follow to the new gig because they liked working with you.
The most important function, in this management style, is hiring, and in some organisations, talent acquisition has been half my workload. Regarding which I was once told, "hire people smarter than you"; the only issue with this maxim being the corollary, viz. that the CEO is, by induction, the company dunce.
Interesting perspective. What is it about my team that is possessive? The work my?
Why is it that you avoid possessiveness?
I am not asking from judgement but genuine curiosity.
I think there are some valuable ideas in your post. And I generally agree with your perspective. I also think nothing about governing with consent of the governed alters the existence of an actual power structure unless you would resign in the face of a team member not consenting to your decision.
Yes. The primary meaning of "my" is the individual possessive. The secondary meaning of association, or membership, is something one cannot reliably communicate, even to oneself.
> Why is it that you avoid possessiveness?
I don't own people. They have individual agency.
> resign in the face of a team member not consenting to your decision
That's bonkers. It's still thinking in terms of a command authority. It's not me that has to consent, it's the rest of the team. Or more precisely, don't make decisions on behalf of a team if it hasn't agreed to recognising their validity in advance. The most important consent to obtain in this regard is hiring (nuance: compensation/levelling is best left to a separate corporate organ), followed by seating (yes, really) and allocation of day-to-day work.
Frankly, a manager whose team doesn't recognise the validity of their decisions, or who can't handle being challenged to qualify and explain their thinking, should go. Continuing the earlier analogy; if the band is unhappy with their manager, they can get a new one.
Command authority is for temporary dictators in situations required real-time skilled decision making, like a surgeon in the OR, or the emergency controller for a downtime incident. It is not for deciding which continuous delivery tool we'll use, whether we're including SSO in the next release, or buying standing desks, or who gets to sit next to the window, or has to refactor a problematic query.
The hardest thing to do in this context is fire someone, but then, it always is.
The easiest thing to do is actually extinguish the team, because the quid pro quo is that it spends company resources.
Who said they were high performing? They had the best team money can buy almost but I'm really not sure it was high performing. Looks like it had a lot of problems and I'm sure it affected productivity.
In any marketplace, there are always people who decide not to deal with any given participant. That doesn't mean they have more or less power. There are still others to deal with.
Sure, ending a relationship is disruptive. But moving on is perfectly feasible.
I'm referring more to people -- leaders in a position of power and influence over those below them, like a CEO or manager.
And the thought here is not novel -- it was taught to me as part of an Organizational Psychology class in b-school
One's ability to lead is only as good as their ability to get followers to follow their lead. Hence why so many people use fear to keep others in line -- it's the easiest and simple way to ensure compliance
The leader makes a decision, but usually that decision is either fully defined or heavily constrained by the wishes of the team. Being in charge often feels more like figuring out what your subordinates want to do and putting out some compromise in a way everybody can agree to than coming up with directions yourself
Somehow negotiating a delivery date feels different from feeling free to use company resources to discuss outside politics...but I'm old fashioned, I know.
It wasn't "outside" politics though. It was discussion of things going on at the company, that the owners decided were "politics" that would be banned in the future.
I'm old fashioned enough to know that when you impose changes overnight that lead 1/3 of your staff to leave on the spot then maybe a little bit of consultation might have been a good idea.
This is obviously wrong: decisions are negotiations. Rules are merely the next step in a continuous process. Rules change, participants change, environments change.
Ok, so why do we accept that companies are run like autocracies, but we expect that societies are run like democracies?
If we say that employees should be smart enough to autonomously do their jobs well, wouldn't their collective intelligence be better at running the business in its entirety? Why isn't it smarter and more financially sound to run a business like a democracy?
You should give "The Alliance" by Reid Hoffman a read. Excellent book - the first half, anyway - and I think it might give you a different perspective (or at least some food for thought).
America - land of freedom and democracy, where all are created equal... you must do exactly as your boss says without question though. The workplace is a magic alternate dimension where totalitarianism is suddenly good, for some reason.
You fundamentally do not understand the definition of totalitarianism which is why, you, simply lofting that word at everyone in every direction to blanket disparage things you don't like results in 90% of your comment history being greyed out.
I know I'm wasting my time here but here is the first three definitions of totalitarianism I was able to find :
(emphasis mine)
> Britannica: Totalitarianism: *form of government* that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state.
> Google : relating to a *system of government* that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
> Dictionary.com : of or relating to a *centralized government* that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life.
A business is not a government and you are using the term in a meaningless context so you are going to have to forgive everyone else for pointing out that what you are saying makes absolutely zero sense.
Employers have a great deal of authority of their employee's lives - to that extent they govern their employees. This is all straightforward, conventional usage of these words and terms.
Government also makes the rules about how businesses operate (property law, contract law, and so forth), and give businesses the right to enforce them - in this way, businesses are an extension of government in the control they have over our lives.
All you're doing is question-begging the exact premise I'm critiquing in the first place: That the workplace is in a magic separate dimension where principles usually agreed to be good (democracy, equality) are no longer desirable or even applicable.
Instead of insults, perhaps you could explain what you think is wrong with it or what you disagree with.
I'm not sure why this has made you angry - perhaps you've become irrationally attached to certain ideological beliefs, and my pointing them out has triggered you.
Some things reach a point of idiocy where no one is going to be convinced and you just need to call things what they are. And that is fucking moronic. So let's just stick with that.
Imagine being so convinced you're correct that you call others idiots and morons, when a cursory read of the relevant wikipedia article would show that you're obviously wrong.
> A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, *generally* a state.
> While *all types of organizations have governance*, the term government is *often* used more specifically, to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations.
So you are simply ignorant of the broader meaning of the term. I look forward to your apology. But do please try to interact with more humility and politeness in future, and be familiar with the very basics of a topic before debating it.
It’s a two-way street, though. If you’re a half-decent software engineer there are tons of bosses willing to give you gobs of money. And smart bosses recognize that.
Are you a socialist/communist? I've only heard socialists talk in these types of terms, "authoritarian" "totalitarian" etc when referring to the workplace.
Well I'd say that companies, unlike governments in a nation, are myriad, and one has choices as to where to go. Similarly, the founders should retain as much control as they wish, as do the employees, as it's a bilateral contract. Now, for companies that essentially force workers to work, such as minimum wage shops, I have no sympathy for them.
Sure, and if people don't like one, they are free to move to another country as well. Although this is harder by at least an order of magnitude than switching jobs of course.
This is in no way "authoritarian". Basecamp is saying that if you want to sell your labor to them, they have a few requirements. Plenty of companies have this. Is making employees wear or uniform or wash their hands when they leave the restroom authoritarian? After all, if they don't follow those rules, they'll be fired and their income streams will be cut off.
> Because that's called plutocracy, which is bad. Things should be governed by democratic principles rather than plutocratic principles.
This is a value judgment not shared by everyone. One/few person rule can be quite efficient in certain tasks such as rapid development and deployment of resources, because you can cut through red tape. At the same time, it can be inefficient in other tasks.
You mean the professionalism of the founder going off on people in petty ways after they pointed out that making fun of customer names is bad and the company should review it's culture? Or where they banned any ability to give negative feedback about management under the disguise of banning political discussions?
If anything, I see everyone who is leaving as being the professional ones in this situation.
I agree that a leader should not single individuals out in a public way. That’s wrong.
However, if DHH’s verbatim quote of his response is accurate, it sounds like things had gotten out of hand with this company’s culture.
If a leader says “this is unacceptable - we will do better going forward”, that should be enough in this kind of situation. But apparently it wasn’t for the employee that you allude to.
A third of the company had joined some D&I committee and that committee apparently felt that its scope extended to the entire operations of the company. It sounds incredibly disruptive.
And I'm reading the company was ~60 employees, all remote. In a business that small, it's difficult to imagine how far the culture was off the rails to have 20 people focusing time and effort on something like a D&I committee.
If you don't think DE&I is important, than of course you think it's "off the rails" to have 20 people spending time and effort on it. If you do think it's important, then there'd be nothing "off the rails" about having mass participation in it.
Oddly, according to the coverage, the owners had previously said publicly and internally that they thought it was important.
The owners had previously been very publicly and assertively taking very "liberal" and "progressive" positions. They have been on the "wrong" side of the "culture wars" for those who think it's "off the rails" to be spending signficant time and effort on DE&I. "Hansson had encouraged employees to read Between the World and Me, a memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and The New Jim Crow... Both founders are also active — and occasionally hyperactive — on Twitter, where they regularly advocate for mainstream liberal and progressive views on social issues."
I wonder how it will feel to them to become the darlings of people very opposed to those positions they had been taking, as seen in these threads. I wonder if the owners will become born-again to the right-wing side of the "culture wars".
> I wonder how it will feel to them to become the darlings of people very opposed to those positions they had been taking, as seen in these threads. I wonder if the owners will become born-again to the right-wing side of the "culture wars".
Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, right wingers are not the only people opposed to woke insanity.
You're posting this anonymously because you know that's not true. Right wingers are, by definition, the people who speak out against the woke insanity. That's how the culture war works.
I am not posting anonymously. I identify as a liberal. My other posts probably indicate that. But I think any ideology that divides humanity into a group based on social or racial factors is unfair and perpetuates harmful divisions rather than inclusion. If “woke” arguments divide according to race, class or social history then such arguments are simply inverting racism and classism rather than moving forward to a more inclusive unified world.
There is a whole class of not only liberals but leftists (socialists, communists) who oppose identity politics: r/stupidpol. I know because I frequent that subreddit. So you're not correct, it's not just right wingers.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a 2D plane of opinions: liberal/conservative on one axis, moderation/extremism on the other.
This is a far more accurate take, I'd say. People are analyzing this incident using old political/social categories when in fact identity politics doesn't fit cleanly into these classifications.
That's great. I'd probably subscribe if I still kept up with stuff like that.
If that sub were defining things, you would be right. But the people they're making fun of are defining things. My vote for the new axis goes to individualism vs. collectivism.
You're very wrong on this point. I've been left-leaning all my life, yet I'm utterly dismayed by the rise of Wokeness. In fact, I'm increasingly coming around to the idea that Wokeness is an elaborate psy-op by the rich and powerful to divide and conquer the poor and powerless.
I missed this last week. Just because what I said doesn't apply to you, doesn't mean I was wrong. Simply using the term "wokeness" and describing a suspected conspiracy puts you squarely in the group I'm talking about.
The only difference between me and you is that you think it means something when you say you've been left-leaning all your life. It doesn't. You're in the outgroup, just in denial about it.
Pretty much yeah. Any coverage (left or right!) of him from now on will include this stuff and paint him in that light. I think he's one step away from people disrupting his events and not being able to speak on college campuses.
Nobody said it wasn't important, but 20 out of 60 people focusing on it in a remote company that builds unrelated software is absolutely off the rails. You're essentially paying 1/3 of your employees to come up with new ways to suggest the other 2/3 need to stop being so racist / sexist / bigoted. It's difficult to imagine a more self-destructive culture.
> Oddly, according to the coverage, the owners had previously said publicly and internally that they thought it was important.
No owners would publicly say D&I are not important.
> I wonder how it will feel to them to become the darlings of people very opposed to those positions they had been taking, as seen in these threads.
I'm sure these decisions only came about after some hard looks in the mirror.
There's a fundamental disconnect where the way that a bunch of rich, mostly-liberal tech employees in cushy jobs talk to each other does exactly dick-all for people facing the very real social problems in America. They live in separate worlds.
These well-meaning D&I enthusiasts are pushing on a rope -- and then, when another innocent man gets killed by the cops the next week or whatever other newsworthy thing happens, they push harder. That's not how ropes work.
I feel like you have a misunderstanding. Most of the work of a D&I group like this is pushing for diversity and inclusion issues in their workplace, not in the country at large. And why shouldn’t they? There are places and organizations for society-wide stuff as well.
And it's especially bad in a small company, because you're no longer looking at high level statistics. With only 58 people, you're not saying, "we've got too many white men, statistically." You're implicitly saying, "Mike and Jeff shouldn't have been hired. We should have found people of the race / sex I want to see more of." And, implicitly, "We're going to have to really lean on them to not hire another white guy." Now hiring managers are hesitant to do what's best for the business out of fear of being called -ist.
This idea that employees are entitled to organize privately on company time to try and leverage the company to focus on some unrelated special interest at the expense of being as successful as possible as a business is not as widely accepted as some here seem to think.
The “special interest” is not actually unrelated. A company can become better and more successful while also becoming more diverse. The very fact that you see becoming more diverse as coming at the expense of being more successful shows your inherent bias.
It express the reality that having good intentions may have nothing whatsoever to do with outcomes and that misalignment can be exacerbated under more pressure.
The issue at Basecamp and every other socially minded startup is obviously that people don't realize they are pushing on rope, and they lament anyone pointing out the fact as some kind of obstacle.
The clear majority of these kinds of 'social blow ups' are happening at companies where leaders and staff tilt way over to the Left/Liberal and Libertarian/Openness side of things, which should give pause for people consider that maybe those 'pushing back' aren't remotely trump-loving alt-righters, in fact probably the opposite.
The very nature of these threads is exhausting and frankly if I had to work at once of these places I would take respite in not having to deal with it. If there were some kind of pervasive evil that needed to be dealt with, then of course we'd have to do that, but I strongly doubt that this is the case.
Right, if you think DE&I consists of "new ways to suggest everyone else stop being so racist / sexist / bigoted", you're clearly not into it.
You realize those who think it's important don't think that's what it is, right?
If 20 employees were on the "social" committee planning a holiday party, would you consider that as "off the rails", because you are paying them (some here unspecified number of hours) to throw a damn party? I doubt anyone would get that up in arms about it.
I get it, you think DE&I is a mistake, (unless you think coming up with new ways to tell people to stop being racist is not a mistake? But I think you were clear), so the more people involved in it, the bigger the mistake. But if someone thinks it's important, perhaps even more important than a holiday party, then the more people involved in it the better, and having a large portion of the company involved in it is not a mistake. That's it.
> If 20 employees were on the "social" committee planning a holiday party, would you consider that as "off the rails"
The party planning committee would presumably not try to dictate which vendors the company deals with and which speaker is at the next all-hands meeting.
If you think a party planning committee doesn't have real power and influence, bring nothing but carrot cakes and oatmeal raisin cookies to your next party.
> Right, if you think DE&I consists of "new ways to suggest everyone else stop being so racist / sexist / bigoted", you're clearly not into it.
There's no other way for 20 out of 58 people to spend any significant length of time focused on D&I of the company they work for.
1 out of 58? Maybe. But 20? There's only one way this thing can end.
> If 20 employees were on the "social" committee planning a holiday party, would you consider that as "off the rails", because you are paying them (some here unspecified number of hours) to throw a damn party? I doubt anyone would get that up in arms about it.
A party planning committee is not targeting the rest of the company.
> I get it, you think DE&I is a mistake,
I didn't say it was a mistake. I said 1/3 of a small remote company focused on it shows it was off the rails.
Maybe they should have just joined in. Each of the 58 employees could be brainstorming ways the other 57 employees can be less bigoted. Just hope they could find some time to write software, too.
> A party planning committee is not targeting the rest of the company.
Sounds like a pretty lame party if they're not inviting the rest of the company.
Also, that you think discussing how to make a workplace more diverse, equitable, and inclusive is somehow "targeting" the other employees says a lot about your stance on those things.
> 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.
> “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’”
It’s ironic that “professionalism” is so malleable. We’re talking about misuse of customer data in a borderline racist way, and when employees did their job and raised red flags, the founder dug through search logs in a petty attempt to embarrass an employee - in front of the company.
Tell me again how this is “about professionalism.”
You are leaving something out that seems quite relevant to me, which is that the list wasn’t just objected to as unprofessional but that the conversation was escalated to the highest possible level, linking it to genocide.
One person mentioned the pyramid of hate and you think it makes sense to point that out when talking about a policy that spans all employees? It’s clear basecamp doesn’t know how to handle difficult discussions, but politics is business. The state, laws and political institutions are the basis of all wealth and power. Their cowardice means their business is now in jeopardy.
We have lots of difficult, sometimes racialized discussions at BigCo. It makes us better at engaging with the world outside our walls. It’s not unnecessary or distracting from our work because our customers live in the same world we create products and services for, it’s part of our work.
Look at Apples stance on privacy, that’s based on a lot of difficult political discussions that culminate in corporate policy. If we did away with politics, we couldn’t have come to some of the decisions we have until forced by legislatures or our competitors.
Right? Who's being hysterical here? The coworkers who rightly recognized the harms of racist speech or those who crow that such recognition is tantamount to an accusation of genocide.
It’s possible to ban flame wars instead of politics. Dealing with differences of opinions (or lack thereof of this skill) is what causes flame wars. Politics is not the only thing people disagree on. Should they also ban discussion of potentially contentious improvements to the codebase?
Edit: reading some of the comments below, it does also say they banned discussion of certain past decisions. It’s not just politics. Interesting.
> It’s possible to ban flame wars instead of politics.
I find this statement idealistic in the US, as so many issues, political or not, are turned into good-vs-evil moral confrontation. Universal care is taking freedom from citizens. Taking vaccine is big pharma's conspiracy. Wearing masks is eroding civil rights. The left is not better. J.K Rowling is already a Nazi. Any Trump supporter should be hunted and punished. Questioning Faucci is anti-science. Questioning Biden is supporting Trump. Asking a person not to graffiti on my house means losing my job for opposing the right movement. And how much hate did Bari Weiss get from her staff for an editorial decision?
> Should they also ban discussion of potentially contentious improvements to the codebase?
Sometimes, yes. For example, if your company is riven by endless flame wars over tabs vs spaces or where curly braces go, it can make a lot of sense to publish a style guide and cut off further discussion.
In this context it sounds like an engineer who joins the company and suggests an improvement to or asks the reasoning behind why the style guide says something would be fired or receive reprimand. In an idea meritocracy on the other hand engineers are empowered to understand and question things. I have found that by questioning things, it helps me disagree and commit to things. I have found open discussion is what build alignment. I don’t think I would be happy working somewhere where I cannot question the reasoning behind a decision.
As an example, when I first joined Twitch, it was an uphill battle initially to get buy in for automatic code formatting, however through questioning and understanding their past decisions the team came around to implementing it, as well as numerous other improvements I still have engineers reach out to me thank me for years later. If they had this policy, it’s possible I would not have been around long enough to actually champion the improvements.
In other examples I received constructive coaching from a manager “the team feels like while you had valid points, you yak shaved/took it personally, in the future please write a doc instead of doing X”. No one was fired or reprimanded. No company wide policies were created. I can look back at my career at Twitch and honestly say I grew as an engineer, because they used positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.
In your opinion, when do such "improvements" tread the line between important and related philosophical questions to ideological glory-hogging and metooism? What you describe generally sounds like technical issues and computational philosophy in relation to the backend. That's appropriate to discuss even if there is confrontation involved. But what do think about Twitch's policies with regards to its frontend? Should employees have a say in how they get to interpret Twitch policies? Is it hypocritical that Twitch's moderators should go after unflattering speech (pogchamp, etc.) in the name of improving the platform when hiding behind a veil of ignorance with regards to so-called "booba"? A company can do what it wants and, in a more limited context, so can its employees. But shouldn't there be a point where a company's higher-ups or a single differing employee can do their business without being required to buy into the koolaid that ever improvement is supposed to be for the perceived good of the company/fellow employees/the cause/the world/etc. in every way possible? Especially if such a way is outside of one's actual depths? In short, when should people stop expecting "more" out of you?
I’m honestly not quite sure what you’re getting at, but employees at Twitch could indeed dissent about the moderation policy without being subject to termination as a result.
As an example, I was in charge of deploying the website the day we hosted a Trump rally. I made it well known to my team and manager that I did not like this, as did others, but I did my job anyways, and there were no flame wars, nor did anyone get fired. Although I disagreed with Emmets wishes, I still hold the utmost respect for him. The same cannot be said for Armstrong or DHH.
Should an employee have to accept ideological points for his company at face value even if it goes against his sense of workmanship or integrity? What about vice versa (companies vis a vis employees)?
How much does (or should) anyone's say diverge at Twitch especially from the dominant ideological creed (whether such a creed was employee-fostered or company-fostered)?
Where does one's technical achievement end and "the cause" begin?
No an employee should not have to accept anything, and in the US does not have to.
My key point here is that in companies that allow discussions, I can ask questions of the policies I disagree with to understand what motivates the policies. I can propose alternative viewpoints. Often, via having open uncensored discussions I find that it is much easier to disagree and commit
In the Emmet / Trump example, he explained the reasoning (we are a platform) and allowed us to grumble. Had there also been a policy that anyone complaining would be terminated, I’m not so sure I would have deployed the website that day.
Thank you for answering my questions. I appreciate your insight.
In your opinion as a professional, what should Armstrong and DHH have done without kowtowing to their employees?
And while I still have your attention on Twitch, what is with the company's hypocritical stance on scantily-clad women (a la Alinity) and copyright abuses while claiming that it isn't allowed? Your employment seems to have been contemporaneous with those episodes, so it seems like you would know a few things.
I just deployed the website and worked on dev tooling, I don’t have any comment on Twitch moderation.
I’m not convinced Armstrong and DHH had such a drastic flame war problem, for example after banning politics, Armstrong made several public political rants including endorsing Kanye West - http://modernconsensus.com/politics/ceo-of-apolitical-coinba...
Perhaps they should have done what most other companies do, and ignore the “problem” if employees are otherwise productive, and if not then replace unproductive employees with productive ones. Whether an employee is productive is tangential to their political beliefs, and an employee who is causing waves over politics will just cause waves over something else if you ban politics.
I would work for someone who I disagreed with, but if an employer tries to silence me and turns around and advocates for their own political candidate, it seems to me the employer is being narrow minded, underhanded, and hypocritical
Saying "I don't think we should make fun of our customers" isn't a flame war. 1/3 of employees don't leave because a few unreasonable people are told to tone it down.
DHH says the trouble didn’t come from objecting to the list. In fact, he’s disavowed it repeatedly. He said the trouble was that the employee said that the list was not merely unprofessional but was one step on a ladder of racial oppression that leads to genocide.
It’s one thing to say someone is acting unprofessionally. It’s another thing altogether to accuse them of being on a path to genocide. If I did that to someone when it was so clearly uncalled for, I would be an asshole and my relationship with that person would be strained from that point forward.
If you don’t like that strain in your workplace, you try to draw a line on speech. It’s not something I’d want from the government, but it seems appropriate for a workplace.
But isn’t this also DHH making a strawman of a strawman?
I’m led to understand the graphic in question was about how long-term tolerance of micro aggression can lead macro-aggressions over time, the ultimate form of which being genocide.
To share such a graphic isn’t to make a point that “your actions lead to genocide”, it’s to highlight the important of being diligent about not allowing micro aggressions to become commonplace and accepted within a culture. Because the long term society-wide effects of that can be genuinely terrible.
Except it's a fairy tale from the minds of social scientists with lots of research funding and zero experience of real world genocide. The simplest response to the diagram would be a free copy of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago for all employees.
Exactly this. Graphics like this serve to educated about how an environment tolerant of small things can eventually become tolerant of bigger things, and then much bigger things, and that's why it's important to pay attention to the small things.
The employee wasn't accusing anyone of supporting genocide, even though DHH clearly took it personally.
> an environment tolerant of small things can eventually become tolerant of bigger things, and then much bigger things, and that's why it's important to pay attention to the small things.
Huh, sounds like the "broken windows" theory of policing. Did not expect that.
The list was clearly unprofessional and made some people uncomfortable, that is enough for it to be gone. It would be worthwhile to discuss explicitly what was wrong with the list, opening people's eyes to perspectives they hadn't considered and to take a little time to foster shared ideals for the workplace culture. Even alluding to genocide is wildly over the top and I can understand if it offended some people, regardless of whether they had anything to do with the list.
Ok, but how is that relevant to making Basecamp better?
If he's disavowed and apologized for the list then this genocide point is just a big waste of time and a distraction. I can't see how it would achieve anything productive.
I do see the point, it's an argument that there exists a plausible slippery slope from (allegedly) quasi-racist jokes to genocide.
I just think it's sanctimonious, a total waste of time and a distraction to throw such incendiary and flamebait things out into the workplace's communication channels, especially if it's been apologized for already.
Yeah seriously. I’m the first to complain about wokeism (e.g. I disagree with a lot of claims of cultural appropriation), but there wasn’t anything unreasonable about the graphic there and dhh is really strawmanning it.
And yet, it's possible to have a direct conversation with someone where you say, I appreciate where you're coming from on this and I hear what you're saying, but in this place and time you escalated this conversation in an unproductive way and I'd like to talk to you about bringing more light than heat to what is a difficult conversation.
Going from "someone posted an ADL infographic about the pyramid of hate" to "we're cancelling all external benefits, DEI discussion group is cancelled, and nobody can talk about politics anymore in our office ever" is an insane overreaction.
It sounds as though the commity was trying to push a critical theory agenda, and the founders came down on it.
I agree.
On the other hand, it does sound as though basecamp is actually just a lifestyle company for the benefit of the founders, and once everyone realized that is the true 'mission', many left.
He disavowed it repeatedly, once he was criticized about it. He and Jason Fried were aware of it for years and had no issue with it until the dirty laundry started to smell.
I agree with you...except that I don't think this ties in to what's happening at Basecamp at all.
I don't think that Basecamp had an issue with "flame wars", I don't think that the company tried (or succeeded) in banning them, and I don't think the company's actions represented (or increased the level of) professionalism at Basecamp.
So while in general, yes, sure, professionalism is great and we should try and stop destructive flame wars, if you dig into what actually happened at Basecamp, and the timeline, and, eg, the exact reason DHH was reported to HR internally, it becomes rapidly clear that this was something else entirely, in my view.
The policy change was not triggered by people behaving unprofessionally or having a flame war, it was not tailored to prevent unprofessional behaviour or flame wars, it was executed in an unprofessional way, and it has now itself caused flamewars. In short, I think your argument is correct, but is a damning indictment of Basecamp/DHH, not a defense of them.
There are on-record accounts from both DHH and employees of what the actual disagreements were, and they were not political discussions. They were discussions about the list of "funny" customer names.
> they were not political discussions. They were discussions about the list of "funny" customer names.
They were not political in the sense of being about politicians or political parties. They were political in that they were motivated by the agenda and language of the activist left.
A subtext in many responses from said activists is that this is “not politics”, but something more essential or “above” politics. I agree insofar as they are treating their ideas more akin to a religion now.
How is "don't make fun of our own customers" an 'activist left' agenda? It may have been couched in liberal terms, but ultimately it's a pretty politics-free motivation.
Did you read anything about this? Nobody thought this was a good thing. Jason/DHH apparently addressed it multiple times over the course of months. A group within the company refused to move on, including someone who participated in making fun of customers.
It's not an exclusive option. It is both. You don't have to be "professional" if you're a Supreme King - in fact, you don't need to be anything, the more power you have, the less limitations are placed on you for the sake of others. If you have a lot of power, you can demand from the management to expunge everybody from the company that dares to support wrong political ideas, or demand the management to perform acts of supplication to the right set of political ideas, or turn the profits to causes that you want to be served - instead of causes the management wants to be served. Being able to do that is a power, and we have seen exercise of this power before. Some company leaders are ok with giving a vocal minority of their workers this kind of power, some are not. As a member of a non-vocal minority that does not want my work to serve the power of vocal minority, I would sincerely hope there would be more of the latter.
Deplatforming loud voices under implicit threat of termination doesn't reduce "silencing". I have never ever bought the "we have to silence people so people can have free speech" line of argument, which I've mostly seen over the last 5 years being used to justify banning conservatives from college campuses. Quiet voices are deciding to silence themselves voluntarily, they aren't victims we need to protect by silencing others.
I'm not saying such silencing doesn't have benefits, but ensuring people aren't silenced isn't a benefit of silencing people. Bombing for peace generally doesn't result in peace, just more bombing.
I would not ban conservative voices from college campuses. The work place, however, is not a college. I would prohibit any inflammatory speech that was serving to divide and distract the team. We share more in common that we disagree on. In a team setting we need to be United and aligned full stop. If you’re in the army and heading into battle you don’t debate philosophy, art or sports you focus on the mission and unit cohesion.
In college you debate and explore ideas. Different contexts. Different purposes. Different rules.
HN nerfs the position of submissions with any flame wars (high comment to vote ratio) rather than political ones specifically. Those are not the same situations.
But you might remember the disaster as HN as an experiment tried to get rid of those by banning all politics topics... Of course not 100% identical, but some analogues hold. Going against flamewars is quite different than banning topics wholesale - and if you are a "quiet voice", are you going to dare touch anything potentially political now?
And if it's about professionalism, you probably shouldn't communicate your policy change to your employees through the personal blog of an executive...
lobste.rs is going very well banning any off-topic subject like politics. Might be because is invite-only or because the rule was enforced from the beginning
Then say that is reason resigning, I haven’t seen a single person report that. All reports have been focused ENTIRELY on the prohibition on political speech.
It's only a flame war if there is a war. Management should be on the same page as any DEI initiative, especially considering who management is in this case.
Part of what makes HN great is the good faith, respectful discussions. Please stick to issues rather than personal attacks. If you disagree with my opinions I welcome a debate in the ideas. I am a leader with responsibility for a large team. These issues are complicated and warrant thoughtful debate.
We have lots of difficult, sometimes racialized discussions at BigCos that are political. It makes us better at engaging with the world outside our walls. It’s not unnecessary or distracting from our work because our customers live in the same world we create products and services for, it’s part of our work.
Look at Apple's stance on privacy for example, that’s based on a lot of difficult political discussions that culminate in corporate policy. If we did away with politics, we couldn’t have come to some of the decisions we have until forced by legislatures or our competitors.
I totally agree. It is important to have debates and foster a culture of civility, while recognizing that there are times where the debate breaks down, becomes dysfunctional and can escalate. In those moments a reset or pause is appropriate to again foster a healthy dialogue.
One of the most valuable investment I’ve made in my life is counseling focused on functional, healthy communication and dispute resolution. It has allowed to respectfully resolve areas of disagreement and reach consensus on difficult issues.
P.S. thank you for engaging. I found your follow up comment helpful and important. I think it is critical we as a society build companies that can engage in difficult debates and take normative positions to improve society. Your example of Apple is an excellent example and I think added something important to this thread.
This pretty much nails it. The "politics" angle has been revealed to be a red herring by the subsequent accounts of everyone involved. The same contentious discussions would have happened had this policy already existed! I guess you could say the policy gives the founders a ban hammer to swing to end discussions they don't like.
Separated from their justification, the 6 policies represent an assertion that Basecamp leadership are the sole arbiters of all things Basecamp. I don't think that's an awful thing in itself, but the way it was announced was clearly felt to be completely demoralizing for employees who assumed their judgment on the direction of the company was valued.
And the result seems likely to be catastrophic. Basecamp has had their pick of the litter for talent for years. Sure, they'll hire new folks who are aligned with their new way of running the company, but you don't go back to being a beacon of the industry when you lose 1/3 of your staff in a week over an ego trip.
1/3 of the staff that believes in things like that the “It doesn’t have to be crazy at work” title is ableist (see the Jane Yang post). Even when refers to a situation and not to a person.
How radicalized you have to be to lose your capacity for critical thinking like that?
If anything, Basecamp is a much better place to work now, without them
They did away with peer reviews and somehow that is a bad thing too, if I read others on Twitter. It would be a serious notch against me taking a job if I knew I had to write a peer review. Stupidest corporate shit ever.
I used to use the word "crazy" all the time, until it became apparent to me that it's not particularly kind to use a word that primarily exists to disparage severely mentally ill people. There's no positive way in modern English to call a person "crazy".
As a younger person, I made a similar change regarding my use of the word "retarded" to refer to situations I thought were nonsensical or illogical. I'm now embarrassed to have used that word so thoughtlessly, even though it was pointed out many times that it was an unkind thing to do.
Call it radicalism if you want, but I think it's just a matter of stepping back and reevaluating behaviors I took for granted. You know, literal critical thinking.
We're not yet at the point where people look at the word "crazy" as being wildly inappropriate in the same way as "retarded", but I think it's completely reasonable for people to raise the point that putting it in the title of a book that represents the whole company is not a good idea.
You're fooling yourself if you think Basecamp will be improved by losing 1/3 of its staff, including some department heads and long-tenured employees, as well as its nearly universally positive reputation.
Sounds like they will get applicants wanting to make successful products for their customers, instead of focusing their work time and resources on accomplishing a personal political agenda.
Because OP said "you don't go back to being a beacon of the industry when you lose 1/3 of your staff in a week over an ego trip", which to me implies that this caused Basecamp to take a massive hit to their reputation.
Except it's really not clear how this is going to shake out, because people are quite divided on the issue.
> Treating people right is fundamental to how we do business. We treat our customers as we’d want to be treated, we treat each other like family ... [1]
Absolutely spot on. I think they had an implicit contract with their team which they broke in a fundamental way.
Notable that DHH's twitter hasn't seen any expression of regret or thanks to the people who have worked hard to build Basecamp and now feel they have to go.
Its really sad. He misunderstood a comment about a pyramid and instead of investigating a bit more about the meaning he decided to assert managerial power.
When he finally gets to the point where he realizes his mistake, I wonder how he'll spin it (subconciously) into a rant about how awesome he is that he realized his mistake.
Nobody was implying actual genocide. In fact the ground level of the pyramid, where you do absolutely nothing wrong, is still necessary to build it. (i.e. to make any sort of mistakes you first need humans).
If he understood it he could've just said "Yep you're right, we have to make sure we're not building the foundation for worse things" and be done with it. In fact he already agreed with that. I have no idea what he was thinking.
The pyramid is a depiction of the fact that genocides can't happen without insensitive jokes. Of course it would be silly to read it as saying insensitive jokes necessarily lead to genocide.
But why bring it into the conversation?? If you're not implying any link from jokes to genocides, why is it relevant? I agree that bringing the concept of genocide up in a conversation about insensitive jokes is absolutely escalating.
We can talk about the direct harm of insensitive jokes. That conversation can stand alone.
The pyramid says belittling jokes are acts of bias. It says they're as bad as slurs. It says they help prop up systemic discrimination. And it shows it isn't just 1 non expert's opinion.
Those are debatable points. But they're relevant if someone else says belittling jokes are harmless.
Did the employee say anything about genocide actually? Or did they just expect people to focus on the relevant parts?
It only took him a decade to acknowledge that calling for porn in business presentations was a bad idea, so perhaps he'll have changed his opinion in the 2030s.
>At least 1/3 of the staff, when confronted with their true relations with their management, then decided to quit.
At least 1/3 of staff, when offered either 3 or 6 months of salary just for switching employers, accepted it.
I feel like you'd get similar rates, potentially higher, at any employer recent incident or not. If you have the career power to quickly slot in to an equivalent job elsewhere, you just cut years off of your retirement date.
I don't think any "its really about" take can ignore that.
Given how much higher Basecamp pays than almost the entire rest of the industry, it's extremely likely that most of these staffers will be taking a significant pay cut.
Remember, Basecamp pays the 90th percentile of San Francisco rates + profit sharing kickbacks for a company that's fully remote. Regardless of position.
As I understand it, no stock though. There is no potential that you would, via Hey, be able to cash out. (And frankly, I can't see the technical or user appeal of Hey, it seems very bleh. I'd rather work on Signal any day.)
Why would you want stock in a company that has no intention of being sold? Especially when they're making up the difference in cold hard cash that you can use to buy whatever other rocketship you think is out there.
If you're looking to cash in on a unicorn, you are almost always better off working somewhere else that will pay you the most in cash and using that cash to make your unicorn bets.
Well exactly. No IPO, no buyout on the horizon. Stocks would be a less valuable compensation than cash.
But the allure of partaking in massive success in a revolutionary startup is pretty significant. Less so if you have a steady salary perhaps, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of these people use the safety net of savings and a solid technical rep to try some riskier innovation.
I really can't believe I'm explaining startup allure on HN.
I think I made it clear that's a trap that mostly suckers fall into.
You can still partake in the massive success of revolutionary startups with your cash. In fact, you're in a much better position to, because if you're making a lot of cash, odds are you are senior and connected in your field. You have better odds of picking winners and investing in them.
Oh man, 100 thousand percent agreed with this. I'm not sure why this seems to have escaped the notice of a lot of the discussion here. If you suddenly are confronted with the fact that the company you worked for isn't what you thought it was, you're left with a pretty significant choice to make. If I had something like that happen to me, I wouldn't have needed the severance to bolt.
It cannot be understated just how great the two leaders think they are. For the entirety of their career they've been literally telling everyone else they're running their company the wrong way.
They thought this was just another instance of them having a stroke of thoughtleadership brilliance and everyone else is wrong.
I think this is an unfair representation and you are straw-manning the situation at least somewhat.
The company doesn't think that 'name calling' is appropriate, rather, they don't believe that this activity is the beginnings of some kind of 'race war' and object to language such as 'leads to genocide' as hyperbolic.
"unhappy that their employees asserted power over them in the workplace,"
Yes, if your staff are exerting that kind power, that's in most cases an unhealthy thing, unless there is considerably legitimacy in the assertion of that power. The 'argument' is over the legitimacy.
"over what they view as their personal fiefdom"
This is not the appropriate language: it's their company, and their responsibility. It's not a 'personal fiefdom'.
"expected them to live up to their words about openness and owning mistakes."
They did. The company doesn't support the right of individuals to 'make fun of people's names'.
It's unreasonable to believe that excessive fear-mongering such as language regarding 'leads to genocide' should be accepted at face value.
"t least 1/3 of the staff, when confronted with their true relations with their management, then decided to quit."
This is clearly not true, because 1/3 of most Americans literally today, might opt to take 6 months of severance in order to leave their jobs. I probably would.
The companies language may have been lacking in self awareness and possibly tone-deaf, but none of their policies are unreasonable.
I think it was handled poorly, but just because it was, doesn't absolve the antagonists as having perfect legitimacy.
I think from a policy perspective, things are fine, but from a 'populism' perspective, no so much. It does make me question a little bit either side, as though I'd want a lot more information to determine how bad things are either way.
Thank you for a thoughtful nuanced response. I think your perspective that questioning hyperbolic rhetoric is not the same as tacit support for the underlying issue is really important. It is critical to maintain perspective in discussion and avoid vilification of a counter party.
... pointing out that others are using the term 'genocide' in their language, is not 'accusing co-workers of genocide'. The managers didn't accuse anyone of 'genocide'. [1]
I don't see anything in this article as draconian or even excessive on the part of he executive team.
This is not the appropriate language: it's their company, and their responsibility. It's not a 'personal fiefdom'.
I used the word deliberately. They mistook their relationship with their employees for a feudal one, they have now discovered it was not.
It's unreasonable to believe that excessive fear-mongering such as language regarding 'leads to genocide' should be accepted at face value.
I imagine gentle disagreement with this graphic would have been completely fine and appropriate coming from the manager - it's ok to disagree at work, many people wouldn't want to take part in that sort of discussion (also ok), but it's not ok for minor disagreements like this or a complaint to HR to lead to massive retaliation from management and a major restructure of the company to attempt to shut down any future complaints.
Offering severance like that doesn't seem like a retaliation. The owners of the company decided that the culture of the company was going a route they didn't like and made a decision that was overall very generous. It's both professional and how managers should act. I'm baffled that this is viewed so harshly, or that anyone outside of Basecamp even really cares about this.
> I used the word deliberately. They mistook their relationship with their employees for a feudal one
Feudalism:
"the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection."
I think it does, in that it's doubtful they'd have offered this unless they thought they were in a much stronger position where a far smaller number would have considered it enough to decide to leave.
You don't do something you expect to lead to a third of your company leaving. Even if you were actively planning a round of redundancies, you wouldn't do this as you risk losing your best performers.
The cost they'll face in fixing this loss of company knowledge, hiring and training replacements will be several times the cost of just the severance.
"They mistook their relationship with their employees for a feudal one, they have now discovered it was not"
This kind overly dramatic rhetoric demonstrates the lack of perspective on the part of the antagonists which is possibly at the root of the problem.
There is no reason for leadership to risk the company and all of their time and investment over 'fake rhetorical wars over the meaning of words' which have very little substance on either side.
Of all the ways for a company to fail, having internal resurrections over nothing is at least something that can be avoided.
They company executives acted as though they were owners managers of the company - which they are - and gave their staff an option, which some of them took.
That's it.
" gentle disagreement with this graphic would have been completely fine "
It wasn't just a disagreement over a graphic, it was a group of people forming an alliance to shape the nature of the company in their social view.
That's going to require some restructuring.
Aside from the tone of the communications, the company did what any other company would do, and now they're more or less situated as most other companies.
A lot of people are here in for a rude awakening in life; questioning some actions the company is making and having them addressed is reasonable, but forming alliances, challenging the leadership is suicidal unless there's a high degree of legitimacy, which there isn't.
If the company refuses to stop dumping chemicals, then yes, you can form an alliance. If you're worried the company has a doc floating around with crude jokes - but they stopped it ... and you want to restructure the company in your social terms because you think there's something existential at foot ... you're going to be fired.
Even if the tone was off, the company acted within reason.
Yes, but are people upset with the status quo due to a legit grievance, or a political orientation?
I suggest that the status quo at Basecamp was probably in any reasonable reality just fine. The movements to 'eradicate systematic racism' seem to be afoot mostly in the places that are already the most self-aware and tolerant.
This is the interesting paradox and it's why I believe that the social organizers at most of these already tolerant places are antagonists out to enforce the worldview they 'read in a book' in the workplace, out of a misguided attempt at moral justice.
Contrast this with blue-collar union formation, which is almost always in good faith in the sense we would expect, not that unions are perfect either.
I don't doubt those trying to start a union at Amazon, but I do doubt highly paid white collar workers thinking we all need some kind of 'major overview' of workplace conditions to ensure their view of the world is put in place.
I'm sure there is always a kernel of truth in demands (i.e. no making fun of names!) but that doesn't necessarily justify broad social action.
> Hansson’s response to this employee [that apologized for participating in the list] 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.
(From The Verge article[1])
In summation an employee participated in the list and wanted BaseCamp to change its ways on diversity. DHH took to publicly bullying this person and shutting down discussion.
However, I have to say that if I had stated "Yes, I'm embarrassed that we didn't put a stop to this list far earlier." and then some employee kept objecting, referring to the pyramid of hate and genocide and all that and I knew that said person had participated in the making fun of names themselves, I would be tempted to call that out as well.
That does not make it right and it certainly shouldn't have happened publicly but I don't think it reveals quite the character flaw that some seem to think it does.
I think that is a pretty bold statement. In my experience, while some openness and reflection in a company is healthy, when a team or a company gets too meta and spends a lot of time talking about their own interpersonal feelings and relationships, it can overall create a really uncomfortable vibe where everyone feels as if their behavior is constantly being judged. I can see how they might want to reduce that without it being a flex of power. I can also see how some employees might see it as a flex. I think calling it feudal really goes too far.
So employees should be able to do raunchy stand up comedy about farts and sex then? Some topics are unprofessional in a work environment. Politics has become one of them.
Sounds like he has matured. He isn’t the first and won’t be the last to become more professional as he gets older. If that’s not what is going on here then I hope at least to show an alternative way a policy such as this could be interpreted.
I wouldn't judge a person for who they were, I would judge them for who they have become. People learn and people grow. To get life experience, you need to spend... life.
Back in the day when you forked a repo on Github, it said "intense forking action". Sometimes people don't TRY to be offensive, they just want to be funny. Mix in immaturity and stir. But, given my example, should we never ever use Github again?
It seems pretty well connected to "raunchy stand up comedy about farts and sex", which was proposed by a different commenter as an analogue to politics. If you object to the analogy, perhaps you should debate it with the person who made it.
Let’s take a recent polarizing topic: whether trans people should use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. Which bathroom do trans employees use? How can Basecamp possibly avoid that issue?
Okay, so let’s tweak the example a bit so it involves literal speech. Say an employee asks a coworker to refer to them with a specific set of pronouns, and the coworker refuses. Who is bringing politics into the workplace?
People are upset about the policy because it gives cover to treat people’s identities (such as using they/them pronouns) as forbidden political speech.
Nobody is bringing politics to the workplace. But the person refusing to use the pronouns is kind of being an asshole?
I mean, it's a workplace, not a school. You don't get to choose how you call other people, period. Other people's pronouns and names don't really matter to your day to day job, just call them whatever they want and go on with your life.
The response would be something like "I come here to work, not have their lifestyle shoved down my throat". You do see how a blanket "no politics" rule creates space for HR to turn to the other employee and say "look, you two are not gonna solve this at work so just leave the pronoun stuff at home", right?
It’s not political to say as a general principle we support the customs of other cultures even if we don’t agree”. If I go to China I don’t tell them their names are in the wrong order because their family name comes first and given name comes second, I act according to custom and respect. If a Chinese person visits me in the US same principle. Why not treat all coworkers the same.
Someone saying that name/pronoun choice is "shoving a lifestyle down their throats" is not being reasonable and is being an unreasonable asshole on purpose just to make a point. At this point you tell this person to shut the fuck up or get the fuck out.
Telling someone how you should be called is not unreasonable. You're still allowed to roll eyes in your head, but calling them anything else is behaving like a petulant schoolchildren. There's no place for that in a professional environment. Just accept and move on with your life.
I agree with you, but you have to realize that you’re describing a sociopolitical stance that is far from universal. See for example this comment elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27002001
Imagine that a coworker keeps misgendering you, and that commenter is your manager. Your workplace has a “no politics” rule. Who do you think will be told to stop being “political”?
Sure, but if a workplace is unreasonable then all bets are off... I don't think any kind of political discussion is going to have any effect in a workplace that accepts a manager purposefully misgendering a co-worker.
I also don't think that someone politicising something makes the "other side" political automatically.
If Basecamp hired a retrograde sexist that called unmarried women "whores" in the hallway, the women would have all the right to complain, and it wouldn't be a political discussion. It would be just be (in a perfect world) HR vs Asshole.
EDIT: Also I'd like to say that I'm not condoning banning politics at work. We probably agree on most things. I'm just saying that co-workers, managers and the company being reasonable makes way more difference than politics/no politics. Unfortunately there's no perfect solution to the problem of people being unreasonable, other than those sociopaths ceasing to exist.
I think it's too reductive to say "if a workplace is unreasonable", as if it's a binary condition. At any workplace, there are going to be all sorts of people, with all sorts of opinions, many of which may not become apparent until the issue is forced. Some of those people will be in charge of others. So it's entirely plausible to have an office full of mostly-reasonable people and still find a manager who asks their report to relax about being misgendered.
The retrograde sexist thing sounds obvious because public opinion there is so one-sided. But that's not true for all issues. It was legal to fire employees simply for being gay or trans less than a year ago.
I think we're mostly on the same page here. I agree that ultimately, assholes will find a way to be assholes regardless of the policies in place. But we should still be wary of policies that give them cover to do so.
I'm not implying it's a binary condition. There's many degrees of "being reasonable", and we're still have a lot of progress to make.
What I am saying is that someone forcing an issue doesn't make "both sides" political by decree. A person being misgendered can still bring the issue with HR without it being political in a way that's against any kind of political conversation.
"Basic human decency" has always been a political position, in most countries that have a messy democracy (eg not small and very homogenous).
Or at least, there have always been those who think that their belief system is obviously basic human decency and those of their opponents pure evil outside the bounds of civic discourse. Then they can pat themselves on the back and have their liberal pluralist cake while eating it too. Usually these people exist on both sides of a given topic simultaneously!
I disagree. Forcing made-up pronoun "choices" and the notion of changeable, additional, or even infinite genders is the same as forcing others to go along with an ideology that is invented by a small but loud segment of activists. It is disconnected both from biological realities and language standards. When others are forced to go along with it, they are being forced into supporting harms like women’s spaces being lost (for example women’s sports), impressionable children being exposed to gender identity ideology in school, and so on.
Telling someone who you want to be called in terms of a name, is reasonable. But asking them to reconsider what gender you are, what pronouns to use, etcetera is asking them to participate in an ideology or religion. Rather than asking people to blindly obey pronouns but “roll eyes in your own head”, we could just as easily ask those demanding different pronouns to “keep it in your own head”. What makes one stance more legitimate than the other?
I believe trans people deserve safety and legal protections but I don’t see altering genders or pronouns as being the same as being guaranteed basic rights. I would say the neutral position for a workplace might be that someone can claim a different gender or pronoun for themselves, but others could choose whether to go along with it or not, per their own individual choice and ideology. Neither side should let that deter from their work responsibilities.
Gender is completely meaningless when it comes to do real work. This should be similar to filling a form with preferred title "Mr", "Ms", "Mrs", "Dr", whatever. It doesn't make a difference in the final output of my work.
It's the same as religion, for example. Someone wearing a Hijab or a Kippah, or a Dastar shouldn't and doesn't affect anyones capacity to work. And it doesn't. I don't need access to the hair of my co-workers.
Even if you dislike someone's life choices, you're not being asked of anything other than to behave as neutrally and as professional as possible. You don't need to love them or spread their gospel. You're just being asked for a bare minimum of respect.
Just because some people want to turn this into a political crusade doesn't mean that the trans people or religious people are. They are just living their own lives and those things we're discussing so far are completely harmless.
I know we’re basically in agreement, but I’m just curious whether the multiple comments asserting that misgendering people is the “neutral” position have affected your opinion on how politics bans can be weaponized.
Oh, I don't disagree with that. I still think political discussion bans are dangerous and the wrong way to go, and it could definitely be used as a tool for oppression.
But having political discussions is also not a panacea, and I've seen it also being weaponised in the name of the same oppression. For instance a very publicly racist CTO I worked under was kept because the CEO claimed "we want diversity, even diversity of opinion". Of course it was bullshit and both of them were ousted by the board.
I guess I'm just trying to be pragmatic and say we should solve the pronouns issue in a more pragmatic and humane manner (HR) rather than let people weaponise it with alt-right politics (or by claiming that trans people are being political).
Honestly I just wish those people had other hobbies other than picking on others.
School is different because the participants, by definition are not yet mature adults. The solution in that case is education.
In the workplace, respect for others is an expected part of the role of each person. If a person asks to be identified by a particular name, or by the use of particular pronouns, then no other person in that workplace has the right to argue that they can't/won't because of their personal beliefs.
I dunno, if you get upset about being referred to with your legal gender maybe you are the one with a problem instead?
I find it hard to emphathise with someone making a big deal out of that.
I can sort of see how you’d like to be called differently if you are changing your gender, but at the same time I cannot really blame the person calling a boy a boy.
I’d try to, but probably find it exhausting to try and keep track of how people want to be called.
> Why do you assume the gender they tell people isn't their legal gender? Some jurisdictions allow changing it.
I don’t. But generally, by the time someone is legally allowed to change their gender it’ll be fairly hard to call them anything else, so most of the issues come from the transitional phase.
> Do you keep track of people's names? Their partners' names? Their jobs?
Fair point, though the answer is somewhere in between. I suck at remembering names too :)
I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with it, which is probably part of the reason I find it hard to imagine.
Some places have no prerequisites for changing legal gender. Some places don't allow it at all. Trans people can look androgynous just like cis people. And non binary people can look male or female.
> But generally, by the time someone is legally allowed to change their gender it’ll be fairly hard to call them anything else, so most of the issues come from the transitional phase.
For what it’s worth, literally everyone I’ve ever met that requests specific pronouns is fine with occasional slip-ups as long as you make a good faith effort to get it right.
That is clearly an interpersonal conflict that can be resolved through standard dispute resolution process in an apolitical fashion. If a common ground of mutual respect and civility can’t be achieved then the disputing employees can be transferred to different teams.
How can it be resolved in an apolitical fashion? It is by definition a political dispute.
Again, the point is that banning "politics" creates space for the company to say "leave the pronouns at home; engage in social issues on your own time".
In doing so the company would take the political position that standing up to abusive behaviour can end up with the victim being punished by being transferred.
Consider if the conflict was over one employee insisting on using racial slurs instead, and the victim being moved rather than the aggressor disciplined.
To me a stance like that would make me quit as a matter of principle, and I'd also avoid doing business with a company if I was aware of such a policy.
Good point about a racial slur. But invert that. Should I be forced to call some by a racial slur because they are reclaiming the word if it makes me uncomfortable?
These are not easy issues. We are talking about the mutual rights of others and the ability to force people to act. A posture of good faith compromise is warranted.
Being transferred against your wish can very often be felt as punishment, as it can affect your career prospects, and any change forced on you in response to being victimized tends to feel like punishment.
If I was being transferred due to a transgression someone else did, I'd consider suing or leaving the company as a matter of principle. The outcome of a policy that involves transferring someone rather than dealing with abuse is you over time get left with those who are fine with maintaining an abusive workplace.
If someone is trying to force you to use a slur, they're being abusive. A pronoun is not a slur.
But again, being able to even have that discussion about what is and is not acceptable is a political discussion. That Basecamp has now banned.
I for one would never consider applying to Basecamp after this because they've made it clear employees can not safely discuss issues that may affect them at work.
Intent matters. If my feelings are based on an inaccurate assessment of the intent then my feelings aren’t in line with reality and I can choose to adjust my feelings in light of more accurate facts.
Intent may affect legal culpability, but people are not robots, and are free to consider something punishment whatever the intent. If the effect of reporting abusive behaviour is to be forced into a change you consider punishment, then it is punishment to you, whatever the intent was. And some jurisdictions it would put the company at legal risk even irrespective of intent because e.g. employment tribunals can often take a dim view of actions taken against a victim without their consent even if the intent was all good.
More importantly, I'd consider a place that cared so little about victims of abusive behaviours a horrible place to work that'd be worth leaving regardless. I'd start thinking about leaving such a please even if I just observed it happen to others, because it says something about the lack of fundamental respect for employees.
1 is not apolitical; it essentially means the misgendering employee needs to acquiesce.
2 is frankly a terrible solution. You're keeping a "missing stair" employee whom you need to carefully ensure doesn't interact with any coworkers they'd misgender. If someone can't respect a coworker, especially after being directly told to, they should be let go.
Mutual respect means one person makes a good faith to respect the preferences and culture of another person. And the other person it patient and forgiving of mistakes and assumes good faith from the counter party. Some cultures have different salutations based on age. Even though the US doesn’t make that distinction it is respectful to adopt it.
It isn’t necessary to fire every employee because a dispute is intractable. If an employee makes a good faith effort to adapt but makes innocent mistakes that are very poorly received they may not be at fault.
To be clear, I mean a scenario in which an employee refuses to refer to a coworker by their preferred pronouns. There is exactly one way in which that situation can be resolved with mutual respect: the former employee making a good faith effort to not misgender the latter.
My religious beliefs prevent me from accept this frame of reference. My religious beliefs are clear. God made Adam, a man, and Eve, a woman. They are not interchangeable. This is my religious belief.
Why must it be me who gives up my beliefs to accommodate the other?
Why is mutual respect not the other person understanding this is my religion?
I don’t see why people’s feelings are hurt when their significant others cheat on them. It’s their partners' right to do so, after all. Maybe they need to learn some acceptance.
Breaking a voluntarily agreed upon exclusive arrangement is not the same as not submitting to someone's request to go along their individual perception of reality.
Expecting coworkers to treat you with enough respect to you refer to you how you identify is a pretty basic workplace expectation. It's not a violation of your rights in any way if you get written up by HR for misgendering a colleague. Who are you to decide for them who they are?
It reads to me - based on the founders' blogs - that the issue would then become one related to the business and thus be open for discussion. Maybe not exactly what they were thinking (Apple. Apple. Apple.) but still in the spirit of it.
However, the rest of the company openly discussing another employee's bathroom dealings probably crosses lines outside of politics. I would be highly uncomfortable if that came up at my employer about some new hire.
My point was that Basecamp is forced to take a stance on the issue. But probably a better scenario to illustrate the point is an employee intentionally misgendering another. Who is “bringing politics into the workplace” — the employee who asks for a specific set of pronouns, or the employee who refuses to use them?
The employee who refuses to use them. They are being deliberately confrontational. If, in 2021, with all of the medical, psychological and sociological evidence, you refuse to accept that gender identity is an individual's choice, and to respect that choice, then you are at fault.
I have posted a similar comment above, I will make a similar comment here. And I am making this comment in good faith.
My religious beliefs prevent me from accepting the frame of reference of the person requesting unconventional pronouns.
Their frame is “my identity is different to what society imposes on me, I will ask that you treat me in the way I request, not using the societal default”.
My frame is “God has made Adam and Eve, a man and a woman. They are not interchangeable, by asking me to accept interchanges, you are asking me to go again my religious beliefs and commit sin”.
I am asking this sincerely. Why must I give in to accommodate the other instead of the other way around?
Why must I commit sin instead of the other accepting my religion prevents me from indulging the request?
You’re free to retain your beliefs, but you can’t vocalize them in the office. Just as it would be disrespectful to publicly judge a coworker’s religion, it’s similarly disrespectful to comment on their gender identity.
As a concrete example: if a woman gets married and takes her husband’s name, it would be inappropriate for a coworker who believes her religion’s marriage is immoral to continue referring to her by her pre-married name.
You mention “societal defaults”, but you must know that in the west those norms are heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian (especially Protestant) values. So frankly, it’s frustrating when a presumably Christian person asks why they should respect deviation from those norms. It kind of feels like playing a game with someone who has made up house rules to give themselves an advantage, and accuses others of unfair play for choosing not to follow them.
I feel like your comment did not answer my question. And, I feel like you’re biased in the opposite way but attempt to coat that in neutrality. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not saying that as an attack, or even as a “bad” thing ( whatever bad is ) but as an observation of what I perceive.
There is also the example with the married woman changing her name. I think it’s a very good argument. In fact this is perhaps the best argument I have seen so far surrounding the pronoun debate. In the example you give, I would agree completely, the judging person refusing to use the new name is in the wrong.
But, this argument makes a hidden assumption. One cleverly hidden in the parallel. You are assuming the two scenarios ( marriage name change and trans pronoun change ) are the same category, and thus it follows those two should be traded in the same way.
Here is why I believe the two are distinct categories. The marriage name change is language neutral while the pronoun name change is language altering. Language in part exists to establish labels for categories in order to facilitate communication. You cannot “hunt mammoth” if you don’t know what “hunt” and “mammoth” is and you cannot substitute different words expecting the same result. “Hunt mammoth” is not the same as “Hunt deer”. Categories are important. They make communication possible. In the example you give, the woman changing her name does not alter the language in any way. In the pronoun side however, the request makes an implicit language change. The request involves altering the category of men or women. “He”, and “she” loose their meaning if they are applied on request.
The discussion to be had at this point is weather those are categories worth having. But that is a separate discussion. For this discussion I don’t feel like the parallel holds.
> You’re free to retain your beliefs, but you can’t vocalize them in the office.
Why can’t we apply the same logic in reverse? The person believes they are a gender or a sex and they would like to be treated in accordance with their beliefs. They can retain that belief but can’t vocalise it in the office.
> Just as it would be disrespectful to publicly judge a coworker’s religion
But, here is the crux of it. By asking me to indulge the pronoun request, they are publicly judging my religion. My religion forbids me from accepting the interchangeably of men and women. They are judging this aspect and attempt to force me to change it. How do we handle this conflict in a way agreeable to everyone? And if we can’t find a way agreeable to everyone, why should one camp give in to the other?
> in the west those norms are heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian (especially Protestant) values
This is an irrelevant point. As a side note, I don’t believe “Judeo-Christian” is a thing. This is a strange, made up category originating from the bizzare melding of politics and religion in the souther US. This concept is devoid of any meaning outside the US. It’s certainly something foreign in Europe and other broadly Christian nations like those in South America. But, regardless, this point is irrelevant. If we were in an Arab country, the influence would be Islamic. In India it would be Hindu, in every place there are influences from the past.
Let me turn on the head your assumption, because again I feel like you are making unstated assumptions.
Why should the expectation be neutrality and not conformity to the historical norm? Why should the historical norm give in to new trends?
I think I’ve been fairly forthcoming as to how I feel about this issue. I’m not trying to coat it in neutrality — I just think trying to be evenhanded here engenders better discussion than coming at it aggressively. You made it a point to stress that you were asking sincerely, so I responded accordingly.
The point about Judeo-Christian (or just Christian, if you’d like) norms is actually the root of the matter here, if you’ll bear with me for a moment. It seems like we can agree that there is a significant Christian influence in the laws and culture of the US, so let’s go from there.
That influence is the lens through which we have to view your notions of “language neutral” and “language altering”. Language naturally evolves to accommodate human necessity, including culture and norms. The state you’re referring to as neutral is a norm that was created by Christians specifically to accommodate Christian beliefs. So asking to respect the norm in cases of conflict isn’t really “neutral”, at all — you’re actually asking to revert to a state that was created to privilege your belief system.
You’re right about an influence being present in any country, and we can probably find similar examples elsewhere. For example, some Muslim-majority countries harbor negative views about women in the workplace. Imagine a man saying that working with women is an affront to his religious beliefs, and why should the historical norm give in to new trends?
Ultimately, though, no one is being forced to change their beliefs — just to be accommodating of those who don’t share them. This brings us back to figuring out who must acquiesce to whom. But here’s another place where we seem to be on the same page: the pronoun issue and the marriage example are equivalent if we ignore the status quo.
Should the status quo matter? Here (and in most cases) I think the answer is no — definitely not without considering who created it and whom it benefits.
Last I checked every business involves at least one customer if it's going to survive. Maintaining lists of "funny" customer names is inherently related to the business.
> Which bathroom do trans employees use? How can Basecamp possibly avoid that issue?
First, working remotely solves that problem for Basecamp. You use the bathroom at your home.
Second, if you are designing for an office, you have private, individual bathrooms. What happens behind a closed bathroom door, and what someone looks like behind a closed bathroom door, is nobody's business.
Political deals with social and governmental public policy. Company bathroom policy is not political. If the company wants to solicit policy debate for a specific bathroom policy then it’s leadership can. The CEO could also issue a unilateral decision with no debate.
They pretty much announced they will never want to solicit policy debate on anything ever again, is how I read it.
Which is what made some employees realize the boss didn't respect them and wouldn't tolerate dissent, so they didn't respect the boss anymore, so they took the buy-out (which was in fact very kind).
Couldn't Basecamp just have designated bathrooms, choose one way or the other, employees follow company guidelines and HR for dealing with complaints? Would employees discussing this internally finally solve the bathroom war and bring everyone to one side?
The policy changes go far beyond banning politics or unprofessional behavior. Unless unprofessional is defined as anything which says anything negative about management directly or indirectly in any circumstance including yearly reviews.
The idea that “politics” is a distinct idea is absurd. To use your example of sex jokes, I can very easily see the same people trying to ban “political discussions” supporting sex jokes at work. It’s just a joke! Laugh or don’t, that’s up to you, either way it’s not big deal. Just grow up and accept that there are different types of humor, and complaining about jokes is just a way to bring everyone down. Focus on your job, not the jokes. In fact, that was the very argument before sexually harassment and hostile work environments became grounds for civil lawsuits.
Also, the very idea that any company is “above politics” is patently absurd. Is labor organizing political? It’s certainly about the workplace. Is advocating for a tax shelter in Delaware and Ireland political? How about advocating for removing the tax shelters? That’s certainly about the company.
Nah, banning “politics” is just a way to enforce the CEO’s politics and place them above question.
I think that's just so. In this case, what is defined as "politics" is basically "what will make the owners uncomfortable or challenge them."
And well, sure, such as it ever was. They usually try to put a fancier face on it, because when you make it so blatant, well, people who have options will leave.
Employees discussing politics is a different issue that a company acting in the political theater. Reducing conflict by discouraging political discussion is not necessarily about any one political perspective it may just be about keeping the workplace civil.
Know what else is unprofessional? A list of funny ethnic names being shared around.
Edit: Like even ignoring for a moment how the employees felt about this how do you think customers and prospective customers felt? It's completely inappropriate no matter how you slice it, and DHH and Jason picked this as the hill to die on. Ridiculous.
It's unprofessional regardless, but I don't believe it was ethnic names in particular:
> current employees were so mortified by the practice that none of them would give me a single example of a name on the list. One invoked the sorts of names Bart Simpson used to use when prank calling Moe the Bartender: Amanda Hugginkiss, Seymour Butz, Mike Rotch.
> Many of the names were of American or European origin. But others were Asian, or African, and eventually the list — titled “Best Names Ever” — began to make people uncomfortable. What once had felt like an innocent way to blow off steam, amid the ongoing cultural reckoning over speech and corporate responsibility, increasingly looked inappropriate, and often racist. [1]
The managers at basecamp discovered that their employees formed an inquisition that was whipping itself into frenzy looking for the heretics to burn at the first opportunity found.
Unfortunately when lancing that boil they also lost some people who decided that 6 months pay at the hottest market in years is too good to pass up.
The Casey Newton verge article goes into how they disbanded a Diversity and Inclusion committee. How boneheaded does DHH have to be to think that was a good idea? Your employees want to feel accepted and safe. Like it or not the demographic of work is changing and people are becoming more accepting and are wishing their workplaces do the same.
What I think I’ll take from this is how a lot of organizational policies have simple human emotional reasons behind them.
Reading the official company stances, they all look like reasonable, well meaning changes. But then 1/3 of your organization quits? There must be more to this! And in fact its just a normal human squabble, with broken promises, public dressing downs, power assertions.
It can kind of put into perspective a lot of big policies in general. That almost certainly what we know today as pillars of reasoned thought, has originated by some basic human desires, and what we’re reading is only their rationalizations.
I mean it’s obvious of course, but this here is a _really_ good clear cut example of it.
I think is hypocritical to think you can never "be political" at work. Work is where politics are the most prevalent and important in your life, work agreements, rules, benefits, compensation, processes. All political. It seems they're not banning external politics, they're banning internal dissidence.
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).
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.
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.
Let me tell you why I call this fanfare (in my country, I won't chime in on other countries issues).
During the pandemic, we had BLM marches, politicians virtue signalling, people hating on the police ("The only good cop is a dead cop" signs during those marches), etc. Do we have racist police? For sure. Do we have a PROBLEM with the police with black people? Not so much. Yes, there are cases of abuse, but never to the level you see in the USA. The last case I remember was a year and a half ago, where a (white) cop was accused of attacking (punching) a (black) woman for refusing to pay for a bus ticket and not leaving the bus, everyone cried racism. After video from inside the bus was shown, it showed a cop 10 minutes trying to talk her to leave the bus, she kept refusing, he grabbed her arm to take her out, and she started hitting him, bitting him (there were photos released after where his arm looked like he was fighting wolves), using somethign she picked to try to hit his head.
This was a big POLICE=RACISM and whatnot. Proved wrong. But still BLM.
You know what actually happened around and no one cared? 4 Government emigration official beat to death a guy inside their offices. I saw no march. I saw no instagram posts. Why? Well, he was white. I saw no celebreties going on tv to sshow their support. No nothing.
So yes, sorry, I don't want to work in a place where I am supposed to put a BLM tag on my username or whatnot, in a country that doesn't have those problems, and being accused of being a racist because of it. Life is too short to deal with that shit.
>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.
You mean that a compelled expression of a view is not disingenuous? Forcing someone to express their support is the definition of disingenuous, because they do not do it out of their own volition. I think virtue-signal is perfectly suitable here.
>People are not being harassed to virtue signal. People are being harassed to be explicit about the contents of their character.
Whatever way you frame it, it is still harassment and IMO shouldn't be tolerated.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wasn't dhh working on it too? maybe there's remaining devs that can get it working. but that will really stink, considering that it was the best thing I've seen (outside of htmx) that can kill the front-end monster.
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.
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.
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...
Thanks for posting that, it had additional info I was unaware of that changed my view. This quote in particular:
> “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’
I had originally thought it was more in line with the Coinbase decision, which was more specifically about taking a stance with respect to the BLM movement, which is an external political discussion, vs. what to do about sensitive issues within your company. Discussing how to handle issues like the "Best Names Ever" list that are internal to your company isn't "politics", it's called running a company.
The clear difference from the outset was that Coinbase merely banned discussion of politics, whereas Basecamp made a whole host of changes where the general theme was to restrict any rank-and-file involvement in decision-making and turn the company into one ruled by diktat from the top.
It's why I fully expected that these changes had little to do with politics, but more about employees criticizing some aspect of internal governance.
> Discussing how to handle issues like the "Best Names Ever" list that are internal to your company isn't "politics", it's called running a company.
If you read the full context, the list was condemned by management. Apparently multiple times. A group of employees would not let it go for months and it developed into a huge internal distraction. So yes it was not about "politics" in the sense of Republican vs Democrat, but rather it was woke ideology.
The word genocide shouldn't even have been mentioned.
Why would you even bring up the word "genocide" in any discussion, especially when talking about correcting bad behaviour? Are your colleagues nazis? Do you think they have potential to commit genocide?
> 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 £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap.
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.
Giving thought to principles and those principles being "good" or realistic have nothing to do with each other. I don't want to bring up obvious examples but there are tons of examples where principles with a great deal of thought have been clearly destructive. I cannot believe the kind of childish simplistic thinking going on in this thread
Uh do you really want me to spoon feed you the obvious examples of people with strongly held opinions devastating large swathes of the world? Clearly their ideas were very well considered except they're not particularly "worthy of having"
The counter examples don’t disprove the effect. Yes we’ve had long considered ideas like communism that have resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred million people, no that does not disprove the notion that on average ideas that are more considered are of higher value that ideas that are not considered.
I’ll take the other side of that bet. You just got rid of a bunch of folks who clearly didn’t want to be there anymore. You also probably put an end to those obnoxious, unproductive political debates that seemed to have been getting more pervasive. After a bit of hiring, your profits are up. Morale is much improved. Productivity is up.
Time will tell which prediction turns out to be the outcome.
I suspect that this opinion is held mostly by those who support the departing employees. Does that describe yourself?
I think it _is_ an existential risk but having observed some of dhh's personality traits, I expect he just lost patience and said "that's it - either they go or the company does" and is quite willing to gamble the future of the company on the basis that managing a stressful, internally riven, company is worse than managing no company at all.
I for one would be glad if more companies mandated No Politics / No Religion" policies. As some one who used to bring up politics intermittently at work, I realized the error of my ways.
There is nothing to gain in bringing up politics. If they are in the opposite camp, now you have built a new trust barrier between the two of you.
Even if they are on the same camp, it is very rare to be perfectly on the same page and you will be damned for not being sincere / believing enough.
Creates a circular firing squad scenario akin to what President Obama warned against.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
Well, everyone is the good guy in their own story. While the policy seems reasonable to me, I'm sure they have their own internal justification for why their departure is a reasonable reaction.
If there was a cascading series of events that led to this policy announcement that turned them off to working at the company, it's not my place to judge them. On the other hand, if they are quitting simply because they can't engage in inflammatory political rhetoric at work then I certainly hope that I never to have work with any of these people in the future.
> There's a long list of things that would have you packing your desk if you discussed them at any other company.
Yeah, like pulling extracts of customer names to circulate and make fun of them. That mis-use of customer data, and tinged as it is with racial and xenophobic overtones, would have me sacked for misconduct in no time flat.
> and tinged as it is with racial and xenophobic overtones
This appears to be a kneejerk reaction that's separated from the facts of this situation. According to DHH:
"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." [0]
The overwhelming need to connect anything distasteful to racism or xenophobia is a relatively recent social construct that didn't manifest itself widely until we were all locked in our homes for a year during this pandemic. Before that, we could probably all agree that maintaining a list of customer names that are laughed at is a disrespectful and stupid thing to do.
> Any employer that abruptly told me I needed to watch what I said at work would lose me, too.
That's literally 99.99% of employers.
> I'm not saying I demand the ability to be rude and awful, or go on political tirades, or anything even vaguely like that.
Based on your initial response, it sounds like that's exactly what you're saying. They have a problem with employees not being able to speak about politics without some of them going on tirades, and some of them accusing others of acting in bad faith, and more assuming those that try to refrain are implicitly agreeing with one stance or another.
> 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.
And you can! And they did! These people were not only there by choice, they were given a very good way out if they didn't like the change. But I also hope none of them that left because they feel the need to proselytize at work don't come work with me.
But also, let's consider when the types of interactions being described at this company became "normal conversation".
> But I spend more time talking to people I work with than any other set of people.
Hopefully primarily about work, at least when working. They aren't paying you to talk about politics. If you're doing it outside work, nobody cares. Basecamp doesn't care either. They made that clear. Just keep it off their company communications. You can even talk politics privately with your friends if you work there, because they aren't going to turn you in (and if they would, then maybe you should consider why and maybe not bother them with stuff like that).
Most people aren't hired to speak their inner thoughts to the rest of the company. Most people don't try to. Somehow it's a problem when people are told explicitly what they should have already internalized, please don't.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I have very different political views from the vast majority of people I work with. 99% of the time, those topics never come up. But if they do, I have to shut my mouth and smile and pretend I find it amusing. To call this woke improv theater I have to do "no fun" would be an understatement. It feels like being gay in the time when that could completely ostracize someone, not to mention send him to jail.
But it's even worse because I care about my colleagues. We've worked hard together and produced some pretty amazing things. When I hear them sometimes say things that are frankly ignorant, bad-faith, uncharitable, etc. about their political out-group, I just have to shake my head.
Somehow I get through my day at work avoiding discussing much about my beliefs. We chat about our families, recent happenings in our lives, hobbies, trips, interesting articles we saw recently on HN, etc. Turns out none of those things is a terribly political topic. Maybe a small part of me wishes that the tables were turned, and the people I disagree with had to hold their tongues for fear of ostracism when "political" opinions arise. But in reality, I don't want them to feel this way either. I'd rather work at a place that strongly discouraged political chatter and activism using work resources.
I'd hope that we could at least get a balance where there enough companies like Basecamp or Coinbase that can meet my needs so that the companies like Google or Spotify can continue to meet yours, and we can sort into the places where we work best.
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.
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".
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?
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.
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).
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?
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).
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.
The problem is that a broad "no politics at work" ban also limits you from calling out bigotry as that would be seen as political as well. You need a more refined approach rather than an all out ban hammer.
How I'd respond to homophobia in the workplace: I will call it out and expect that person to get the hint and no longer make homophobic comments at work. If they repeatedly continue to do so afterwards then yes I'd expect them to be fired, but it will not be out of the blue or without warning.
No I would call them out if they make a homophobic comment at work & expect them to get the hint and stop. If they don't stop then yes they should be fired, and it has nothing to do with Islam.
You seem to expect this to be an inevitability but I've worked with plenty of Muslims in my 18 years career as I live in a city with almost half a million Muslim residents and I've never encountered a Muslim being homophobic at work.
I have in the past called out people making misogynistic comments at work & generally people do get the hint and stop doing that. If they don't then you've identified a problem.
See, but here is the rub. What if the comment is just "according to my islamic faith, my religious belief system does not support gay marriage".
For all I know, you would call this statement homophobic, but if you punished this person for saying this a couple times, it would absolutely be illegal.
> Nothing to do with Islam.
Yes it does. Many people, do not support gay marriage because it a part of their faith. And if you fired or punished them for stating that this is their faith, then it would absolutely be illegal discrimination on your part.
That's what I mean in the other branch about more refined approach than an absolute "no politics" hammer. Where/why would someone say that multiple times in the company slack (never happened to me despite working with lots of muslims and lots of gay people btw)?
If they say that as a reaction to a gay man posting somewhere "I'm out of office next week as John & I are getting married" than answering this with "with all due respect, as a Muslim I can't support you getting married to a man" is out of place. If they repeat after being called out that then yes that's a problem.
They have the very reasonable possibility of simply not saying anything but that may require developing a company culture where people learn if and when to do that - this may require some "political" discussion between consenting adults and that's fine!
Maybe someone asks them about their faith, in an informal setting, such as during lunch, and then they answer the question that was asked of them regarding how their faith applied to gay marriage.
If you then punished them for this, then that would absolutely be an example of illegal discrimination, on your part.
If they just answer respectfully when someone asks them specifically ("in my faith that's not allowed") but don't interject it themselves unasked for, over and over again when an individual mentions they are gay then that falls into "live and let live, you do you & I keep my opinions about your personal life to myself".
Again this is in no way unique to muslims, and is just as likely to be the case with similarly devout christians so I don't see why you need to focus on islam specifically. I've personally also worked with orthodox jews who I am sure hold a lot of opinions I disagree with and somehow they managed to never voice homophobic or misogynistic comments & I managed to never tell them what I think about interpretations of the bible as the literal word of god.
This is a situation which among reasonable people doesn't require outright ban of "political speech". You can cultivate a good company culture that deescalates flame wars without such a blunt instrument that may also have a lot of undesirable side effects.
It's not that cut and dry; There's a difference between disagreeing about [issues I don't have strong opinions about] and [issues I do have strong opinions about].
Now scramble those weakly / strongly held opinions for every individual...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Laughing about customer names != politics, that would not fly in the politics channels I've been in.
> an inclusive workplace is one where leadership doesn't have to monitor each channel
I disagree with this statement. Just because there are dedicated channels for a specific subject does not mean they should be unmoderated. There should be a code of conduct and at least light moderation / ability to report misconduct just like all other company communication mediums in shared spaces (i.e. not DMs).
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.
From my perspective that seems like an odd way to think of work. You have a life at work but it necessarily has certain constraints since you've sold your time, attention & best efforts to your employer.
Not many people have the luxury of not needing to work though. And from the employee's POV, you'd obviously want there to be as few constraints as possible that make the job boring/unpleasant.
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.
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?
It doesn't matter how they got unhappy and activist. Unless you want to spend your time making them happy (instead of building products), what matters is to get them out.
I'm a firm believer that you can help toxic people become normal (again). But it takes a lot of time and effort that you can't spend otherwise, and you might alienate others over it who don't want to suffer under the (maybe reforming) toxic person. The question is whether you want to help someone, or build products. Basecamp seems to have opted for not turning themselves into a SuperPAC/self-help group.
The trouble is, what made a senior group of people unhappy will also make a less senior group of people unhappy as they become more senior. Just like it’s good to be improving yourself personally, even though it takes a bit of effort and you can’t please everyone, so too should companies be trying to improve themselves. This is because there are such things as both a high-functioning company and a low-functioning company, and the difference isn’t that one wants to build product more than the other.
> This is because there are such things as both a high-functioning company and a low-functioning company, and the difference isn’t that one wants to build product more than the other.
I'm not sure about that. In my experience, it's about priorities, and some people find e.g. political activism more important than building products. When they have to decide between "more activism" or "more products", they value activism higher.
I don't think it's a junior/senior thing, and not everybody will end up where they feel like they + the company have "grown apart". In this case, from afar, it looks like most in the company (including the founders) where pretty political, but some employees got more radicalized and the founders (who essentially set the company direction) did not.
It's a kind of schism, but it's best for everyone involved to let it happen. I find that kind of generous buy-out a very good way to do it. Some have suggested that it's some kind of demonstration of power, but I don't see that: in a power play, they would've fired the problematic employees (and having worked with activist employees, I'm confident that everyone knew who they were), not given them a large bonus for leaving. They've extended the bonus to everyone (which is great as well, you're not rewarding the bad apples, to so speak), and I wouldn't be surprised if some took the offer purely because of the money.
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.
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).
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.
Yeah. That's pretty hard for me to understand. Why did they make that offer? Paying people to quit without any kind of bounds on how many may take the offer seems like a crazy business decision. They made a decision. They announced it to their staff. Anyone not on board would have been fired anyway, so where's the need for the payout? IIRC Coinbase made the same offer and it just seems like the kind of weakness that led to their problems in the first place. A company pays employees to do work, not to not do work.
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.
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.
I realize in this case it’s likely more complicated than that because people may have moral objections to the change in policy. But the first to jump out of a sinking ship are the people who are confident they can make their way to another boat.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe I'm just not a world class manager, but I feel like even if there were that kind of mismatch in priorities, it's hard to see getting rid of 30% of people at once being intended. Unless these people were all net negative contributors . . . although that hardly seems likely since they weren't selected on any performance-based metric, and the list seems to include some fairly high up people.
It seems like a real stretch to read this as anything other than a bit of a self-own. Even if you wanted to get rid of all these people eventually you'd probably want to do that more gradually.
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.
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.
No, exactly the opposite, every company I’ve ever worked for was neutral without ever needing to enforce it, but anything other than that would be a nightmare for me, so having it as an open statement about culture suits me.
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.
Loosing that many people is going to cause a hard time there.
I wouldn't call it SV culture. I think it's more the culture of people who are trying to use companies to promote their political ideals.
I grew up and first worked in a region where your employer was not your everything. People worked (often times with a diverse set of people) and then outside of work were part of other groups for their interests and ideologies. That separation enabled people from many walks of life to work together. I'd like to see more of this.
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.
Who says it’s a no politics work place? That’s not what the reporting this week suggests - just that it’s a “don’t disagree with the bosses” workplace.
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.
None of the "it was all their secret plan!" explanations make sense because whatever the plan, it could have been done more directly and easily (and probably more cheaply), and without all the drama and negative publicity.
If it was layoffs, you just do them. You don't explain and you don't create a large number of now-ex employees going to Twitter to say why you suck.
If it was downsizing to something more comfortable for the founders, again, more easily done with the same buyout package, and much less of a black eye by just saying "we want a smaller company, so we're putting our money behind doing right by everyone as we get what we want."
If it was getting rid of agitators, it's actually easier to fire them and deal with the lawsuits. Most companies have some amount of ongoing legal expense, and getting sued isn't that bad if you're not smoking-gun discriminatory. You can always file a lawsuit, but it's much harder to get somewhere with a lawsuit, and there's a reason corporate attorneys get big bucks--that Basecamp has to pay.
The best explanation is the most obvious one: they made a colossal blunder in handling this and have footgunned their company badly enough that there will now likely be a second wave of buyout accepters who are people who don't want to stick around to clean up the mess.
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.
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.
I highly doubt losing 30% of the talent, including a big chunk of built up institutional knowledge, is going to make them a more attractive buyout target. Would you want to acquire a company with maybe a little too much internal political discussion? Or one that just spent a million of dollars to buy out their entire iOS team, low and high performers alike? To me it seems like I'd much prefer the company with the iOS team, all other things being equal.
They created that rule with the plan that Basecamp would never be bought out or acquired though. If they were planning something we would've heard something, although their business model/culture is basically the opposite of something that someone would want to acquire. It's biggest feature is that it doesn't feel like enterprise(tm) software.
>This term has historically been used in America to describe black people who were considered to be acting above "their place", and is considered by some to have racist connotations when applied to black people and other people of color; sometimes, arrogant or presumptuous, invoking the same idea, are used as codewords for it.[3][4][5]
People are gonna wanna make this about politics, but my sense is that it's really just about the owners of basecamp are crappy tyrants to work for, that's about it.
I don't think it's really even about the specific policy.
Note that the "changes" [1] also include "no more committees" (ie, no more feedback/authority/responsibilty except through the line-of-report hieararchy), "no bringing up past decisions you disagree with", and "no more 360 degree reviews" (no formal way to give feedback to your boss).
I think they are basically changes to focus on... "insubordination". Do what we say, do your job as we say it, don't have an opinion.
I think people are leaving because they don't trust or respect or feel respected by the boss, not over a single particular policy -- although in part over how little he cared what his employees opinions were about the policy.
1/3 of the company had joined this D&I committee, which apparently felt that it’s scope included everything that the company did. The employees proved that they couldn’t be trusted to self-organize into a committee and keep it on topic.
And which employer/CEO would support efforts to impose hiring quotas, vendor/speaker blacklists and other limitations of their leadership of their own company?
Lack of diversity is certainly a big problem in society at large, but do "minorities" really have problems getting hired in the hot developer job market? Seems to be more of a supply issue than a demand issue perhaps.
At no point did I read that any committee was involved with this issue: it was all direct interactions between individuals and management. Can you cite where you read that the DE&I committee had involved themselves with this?
“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.”
> it's really just about the owners of basecamp are crappy tyrants to work for, that's about it.
Sounds pretty political to me!
Of course it's not just about the specifics of the policy. It's about the list and the leaders discussed and handled it. Rather than just taking the L they kept Posting Through It and alienated their employees.
I believe no committees is because Jason and DHH don't think they're productive.
Not bringing up past decisions you disagree with makes sense to me. What's the point in re-judging the past?
The reason DHH mentioned for 360 reviews was that they didn't contain any real criticism because you're critiquing your co-workers (I'm paraphrasing), and that makes perfect sense to me. I wouldn't want to criticize my co-workers unless I had a very strong relationship with them.
None of these changes feel like DHH and Jason being tyrants and stamping out employee insubordination.
The reason DHH mentioned for 360 reviews was that they didn't contain any real criticism because you're critiquing your co-workers (I'm paraphrasing
This part stood out for me. This is a very simplistic view, and I would expect more from company leaders.
Of course peer feedback is colored. But that doesn't mean it's without signal.
A statement like "Sandra is great, her work is consistently on time" can be ignored. It's essentially no data.
But a statement like "I couldn't have completed feature X without Susan. She did X, Y, and Z, and these things weren't even part of her job. Everyone needs to be more like Susan." Well... that statement tells you something. And you now have a basis of comparison between Susan's work and Sandras. Give Susan a bonus and Sandra a thumbs up.
For me, here's a common thread going through everything that's happened to Basecamp in the last several days and in laser focus today.
Today 1/3rd of the employees left Basecamp.
Also today: DHH is back to tweeting and fighting with Apple like nothing of note happened and it's just another day.
The original situation that sparked everything was brought about largely by dismissive and irresponsible leadership that disrespected and devalued the feelings of the other people the leader served.
Today's reaction is more of the same. To project to the public - whether pretending or legitimate - that 1/3rd of the company leaving barely registers with you? It's that same devaluing and disrespect, just shown off in a different form.
So to preface this response a bit...I don't know that for me as a leader, it should or would be about adding fuel to the fire or enraging more people; if I'm DHH, it's not the feelings of Twitter that I'm concerned with today*, it's the feelings of the people who have left my company.
My top answer here would be "nothing". =) Several hours after 1/3rd of your workforce leaves isn't the time to start going after Apple again like nothing of note happened.
Hypothetically (and this is off the cuff) if I had no choice but** to post something on Hey or Twitter - it would be something to the effect of:
"You've likely heard that a large number of people left Basecamp today. They were very talented people, great contributors, and I want to thank all of them for contributing to this company.
I still strongly believe in the changes we are making, but I respect that the people who have left today don't agree with those changes and have exercised the option to leave. As promised we have provided them with 3-6 month severance packages and wish them all the best in the future."
Again, I think the best thing would have been for David to have been quiet today instead of going on a blocking spree and posting about cancel culture the night before the all-hands; but at least this statement would indicate some degree of respect for the people that had given a lot of their time to Basecamp.
* and clearly from his rampant blocking behavior (to the point that "dhh block" is the second autocomplete suggestion of twitter), he definitely cares a bit too much about it today ;)
** again, there's always a choice =) Some of the best advice I ever received was "Before you hit send, sleep for at least 8 hours."
You've convinced me, I agree that they should have said nothing.
Don't think there's anything they could have posted that would have made it better. Does feel disrespectful that they didn't just refrain from posting for a day or two.
The company got lots of free press from this. There will be many who will agree with Basecamp’s stance.
Basecamp will easily hire new people.
There are many who would love to work at a top SV company with strong values and a good culture where they do not have to worry about being cancelled by their fellow employees for not towing the progressive line.
Other companies would have similarly good results proposing similar measures I would expect.
There is a large contingent of SV developers who are just plain toxic. They make themselves feel better and avoid feeling with their own personal issues by targeting others.
They problem is they do great things for the software community because they have a drive sustained by trying to fix everything around them instead of things they can’t fix about themselves.
So we need them, and enable them, but suffer the consequences. Which is where I think DHH and Freid got cut by the double edged sword.
Important to note, the number is not the number of Basecamp employees leaving, it is the number of employees who have thus far publically tweeted they are leaving.
30% of basecamp employees left → 70% stayed in spite of the 6-month severance. I think everyone should evaluate if the company we worked for offered a 6-month severance how many would stay?
> If you’re very employable it’s just a free 50% annual bonus
I’ve seen comments on HN going the opposite way , but let’s be honest for a minute : most of them will find work within less then a month.
We are looking at top talents from SV with years of experience as iOS engineers / executive those talents are hard to find and quiet rare regardless of the pandemic or not.
Honestly it’s just free money , I won’t deny the emotional aspect that may take time to recover but outside of that they’ll have no problem finding new jobs in the comings weeks.
Meanwhile I've worked at companies where the CEO was openly racist, the management rated female employees based on looks and published a top list, bosses threatening to fire people left and right... Yet, it all happened without anyone objecting or making a fuzz on Twitter about it. The difference? Not tech companies. I wish tech employees realize how privileged they are. Actually having a say in anything work-related is something most people could only dream of.
This is like when people who should be paid more complain about people advocating for a higher minimum wage. People in other industries advocating for things you don't have isn't the problem here.
To be honest, I'm a little surprised at how surprised people are by the number leaving. Not passing a value judgement here, I have no dog in this race, I'm just surprised. They've made a significant cultural change (deliberately), and there's a big turnover. And they made this turnover very easy (even attractive) to do, which can only be because they thought it would be a good thing. Say what you will about them, they aren't stupid - there's no way they didn't fully expect a big departure with a carrot that big. Big turnovers during big changes aren't uncommon. If we were talking about an acquisition, turnover of 1/3 wouldn't raise an eyebrow. The place I was at during an acquisition turned over 80% in a few months - that's big! My partner is a civil servant, and when there's a change in government, this kind of mass exodus in non-elected positions is considered par for the course. I imagine they're completely fine with the outcome and decided it was time to clean house. It's not like they're going to have a hard time hiring.
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.
$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.
>> Also getting a new job is a pain. I don't like doing it
Agreed. A pain, and also a risk. A huge part of job satisfaction is working for a manager that you respect, and you can't really know that until you've been through some shit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For the people who stay when one third of the team has left what’s your outlook?
Pro: high possibility of promotion and a new position
Con: way more responsibility and stress for managing a platform and rebuilding teams on the fly.
I think they’ll need to offer some form of compensation to reward the people who stayed on, because their lives will likely get a lot harder in the short term.
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.
When it’s enough people to make a decent sized company, senior management owns it either way: if they didn’t screw up now, they spent years hiring the wrong people and not doing anything about it.
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.
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?
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.
Same here, read it when it was posted elsewhere in this thread with an implication of “this’ll show you how basecamp management’s in the wrong” and that was the only part that stood out to me as wrong in their handling of this. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, as I read on, but it never did.
I read that as well, and even read the open letter that was included in that post. Seems like maybe Basecamp is better off without those employees who've decided to quit.
"As you know, I am writing this while on medical leave from Basecamp, a condition that was necessary in large part because of the extreme emotional duress I have experienced as an employee at the company."
> 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. =)
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!
We don't care what you think about the impact of our poor decisions.
We don't care what you think about diversity and inclusion.
We don't want to be a workplace that cares about your health or wellbeing.
And we are going to escalate any disagreement until you shut the fuck up.
A third of the company (and counting) has decided that this sucks and is leaving.
I'm not calling this an extremist plot. In fact, I think it's the exact opposite of a plot, hence "on a bender". I think this is someone who got angry at work, had the power to win a debate by fiat, and exercised that power, and is now learning the cost of that Pyrrhic victory.
> If someone wanted to come into work channels and constantly tell people about their religion
The conversations inside Basecamp weren't about that at all, so I'm not sure why you raise this example. They were about the way the workplace had been run and citing the shortcomings of those decisions.
Well, this might be contrarian but if I worked for DHH I might very well prefer this situation.
In fact I feel like I've been in and out of situations and I tend to prefer clear command chains: I do what I am told and those under me do what they are told.
The military is a perfect good example as is certain companies.
Maybe twice (including a decade ago and now) have I experienced self organizing teams that worked.
And a lot of people don’t need or want a workplace to “care about their wellbeing”. A job is not your mommy and daddy, they are not there to take care of you. They pay you money to provide a service. You should be able to take care of your own wellbeing like a normal adult.
I find it refreshing that you'd defend my right to make grand sweeping blog posts about the mighty weight on my shoulders, telling my employees what they can't talk about, and then in the next post I'm reposting long screeds from an internal message board of me picking on an employee and plaintively playing for the readers approval
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.
They've lost their iOS development team, but kept the employees who think that spending their work hours pulling customer names from their production environment to make fun of them is a good use of their day. So much winning!
> They've lost their iOS development team, but kept the employees who think that spending their work hours pulling customer names from their production environment to make fun of them is a good use of their day. So much winning!
Perhaps they’ve kept the employees who accepted management’s statement about the event and wanted to move past the issue.
On the contrary, anyone who would choose to stay doing exactly what they've been doing despite being offered 6 month's pay to leave is not a person who will try to positively change things around them, barring some other external factor preventing them from leaving. You probably don't want them on your team.
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).
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?
"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."
Four words come to my mind: “United States Healthcare System”
Even with an amazing buyout like this, I feel like you have to be in that relatively narrow space of “no spouse, no kids, good health, pretty young” to be able to walk away from health insurance.
While I agree that the US healthcare system is terrible, this shouldn't be much of a concern for people making software engineering salaries. One good thing the ACA did was make it reasonably convenient to exchange dollars for health insurance without the idiocy of your employer being a middleman, and you can't be denied or have rates jacked up for preexisting conditions.
Well, when I ended up using cobra the cost was roughly 5x what I was paying while employed. This got worse as one aged, and put a noticeable dent in the household budget. If some of those that walked were <= 26, can't they use their parent's insurance due to ACA? For those with a working spouse, free money. For those working in, say, Canada, catastrophic insurance isn't something that involves the employer.
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.
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.
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.
I don't pretend to know what the culture is like at Basecamp, nor do I have a dog in this fight, but as a general observation I have found the recent openness of people to discuss their feelings and opinions about anything and everything at any place, including at work, a bit...weird. I guess growing up an emphasis was placed on knowing my "place," so it is a foreign concept to me in that regard. I do not judge people who feel otherwise, but I cringe when I see it even when I agree with the sentiment.
I understand that there are often real issues at hand and positive movement that people want to make in the workplace, but it is career suicide, and always will be, to join a committee that makes demands of leadership.
I think part of it is how much work has encroached into our lives - long commutes and long work hours tend to prevent people from finding/existing in social spaces where it is appropriate to talk about these things. For many people, work is the only place in their life where they see other adults en masse (especially if they are parents).
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.
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).
> 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)
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.
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?
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?
> 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?
It's likely that until recently (maybe), that IE users were more likely to use JAWS and accessibility tools than other groups, especially if they couldn't afford upgrades to newer releases of JAWS or were stuck on enterprise computers.
> 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?
Yes, if the site is inaccessible. That said it's harder to claim that a game designed for a touch screen is inaccessible and discriminates against accessible users who prefer keyboards, perhaps, due to the hardware they use. The game might work better on a touch screen, like Fruit Ninja and might be very hard to replicate without a touch screen.
> Software bugs that may not be equally felt
Maybe. If the bug was a recent introduction of a non-binary gender field and only those with non-binary genders were affected, it could be considered inadvertent discrimination. It can also be considered a bug. Its severity depends on how long the bug remains in the system. If it's pushing a year, that's more likely discrimination in addition to poor QA practices and a likely inability to listen to user feedback.
> 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?
I think we need to keep in mind that just because something could be discrimination doesn't mean we can't forgive and move on. Mistakes are a fact of life, and nothing's perfect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to aim for shipping fewer bugs, it means when we can, we fix the bugs, we listen to users, etc. It's very possible that one user's perfect app will in fact be completely wrong for another user, so pleasing everyone is impossible. It's why ergonomics has been so hard, humans aren't all the same height, etc.
Sometimes you need settings for users to adjust software to suit their preferences, such as font size. And sometimes you make font size part of the game, and it's not adjustable. If allowable under law, being inaccessible can be a choice, or it can be inadvertent. It's true some folks can get really worked up on a topic they care deeply about. It's also true that it's just software, and new software will come along eventually with different features that may please some audiences more. Or less. It all depends. :)
[Edit: Didn't see that you started answering my last question before I wrote this, about the operational implications of trying to eliminate everything that could be considered inadvertent discrimination. Going to just leave this comment as is, as I do think the utilitarian/deontological thinking about product development processes is an interesting quandary in today's climate :) ]
Given this thinking about inadvertent discrimination, and that the word 'discrimination' is very much coded as a 'bad' thing, what should be done about it?
Should any website/product that launches without being perfectly operable for every single user be sanctioned in some way? If not, aren't we supporting inadvertent discrimination? Isn't any allowance of inadvertent discrimination a bad thing?
Should there be some sort of utilitarian calculation with it? Or is it strictly a deontological thing? There can be no discrimination, therefore, we must not allow or we should disincentivize product development processes which release versions before they are equally workable for everyone?
I'd also point out that organizations can have incentives align with accessibility and inclusion rather than discrimination, accidental or otherwise.
For example, having a textual version of a video or image makes your page more optimized for basic search engines.
Now, of course, the same incentives could lead to dark patterns, lack of privacy, or even dividing people further, perhaps becoming a platform for divisiveness.
Personally, I think that we can identify and mark certain dark patterns as illegal, outright. We can encourage plugins and browser settings to enhance privacy. The hardest question is how much we need everything to be perfectly accessible and to not cause further discrimination or harm. That last one is difficult. I think ultimately the best answer we have is to classify some bad actors like we would dark patterns. This forum is an example of how rules and community can lead to better civil discourse online, but it's not necessarily as diverse as it could be due to those same rules. I think there will always be an unregulated middle ground where no one takes responsibility until they (a) have to and (b) understand how to, and that's especially true of government services at local and regional levels.
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 security 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.
If we're using that example of inadvertent discrimination, I think it's certainly feasible to have non-political discussion around improving it.
What you described sounds like a product flaw. Customers/users won't want to use a product that delivers sub-optimal results. Any internal employee saying "hey, we have an error rate of X% for this Y segment, and they represent Z% of the user base" isn't engaging in controversial political discussion (in my opinion).
However, if an individual chose to describe this flaw in more loaded language, it could easily turn political and combative for the team.
If the “customers” were law enforcement - who already racially profile on the flimsiest of excuses - that might be seen as a feature not a bug.
If AI/ML says someone “fits the description” what better feature than being able to blame it on the computer? If law enforcement was willing to deal with the flaw, and if tech companies were willing to sell it to them, what’s to stop an unscrupulous company from continuing to sell it if they didn’t get push back?
'Never' is a strong word and doing a lot of work here, and I don't think the counterfactual can be proved one way or another.
I do think your comment here, with an unprovable statement about an immutable characteristic, stated with absolute certainty, would invite toxic political discussions.
Speaking with humility, and honestly trying to improve processes to yield better results, is the type of communication that I advocate for on teams I'm involved with.
There is speaking with humility, then there is just being downright, purposefully naive.
Of course they never would have shipped it if it didn't recognize white faces. And the big isn't in the software, the bug is that the companies producing this stuff don't have a single solitary person of color either working on the product or testing it that would have certainly noticed that it doesn't work on them or said they were an animal, etc.
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.
This (among other reasons) is why I quit a previous job.
The head of the department would often use politics as small talk leading up to meetings while waiting for everyone to show up.
There was literally no safe way to engage in the conversation- disagree, and you paint a target on your back today, agree and have a target painted on your back tomorrow when someone else is in charge (not to mention alienating people who might currently be on your team).
I think you’re right that this is one of the biggest downsides. It’s possible to feel people out by how they react if I point out discrimination in the product, and if that goes badly I might consider leaving the company before discrimination against me becomes a problem. But I would also say that most of the discrimination I’ve experienced is not really overt enough to be a good early warning system. At some point it becomes irrelevant to wonder “am I not getting promoted because I have X marginalization, or is my work actually not great, or does this person just dislike me specifically for no reason”; better, in my experience, to consider it one of life’s mysteries and try to find a new job.
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.
If my coworkers misgender me and aren’t amenable to correction, or otherwise overtly discriminate against me, I’m much more likely to quit and go elsewhere than to fight it.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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
Do you actually expect someone with those views to treat you fairly, though? I mean, I'm sure it's not impossible that this guy could leave his opinions at the door and fairly evaluate your performance, and evaluate you for promotion. But I certainly wouldn't expect that to be the case. You claim to have had such a manager once, so I won't deny your experience, but I doubt your experience is typical in that sort of situation.
> Outcomes are the evidence.
Yes! This is something I wish more people would focus on. Outcomes are what matter. That doesn't mean the ends justify the means, but it does mean that we should be taking actions not because they make us feel good (usually only temporarily), but because they are likely to give us the best outcomes.
Regardless, I really don't think most women are going to experience great outcomes with a misogynist boss.
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.
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.
> "sola scriptura" (which directly conflicts with Anglican and Methodist theologies) //
This seems like a misconstrual to me. Anglican and Methodist orthodoxy still has prima scripturum, which is only a very nuanced difference to sola scripturum; both in theory reject influences that are incompatible with scripture as the principle authority.
> 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). //
This is not what sola sciptura is about. This is absolutely orthodox in all mainstream Christian denominations, that faith alone is necessary for salvation. Either group would consider the NT's exortations such as "what then shall we go on sinning?" (St.Paul) or "faith without works is dead" (James-the-Lesser) as primary teachings.
I'd actually consider that things are the reverse of your suggestion, that [USA/Western] evangelicals have strayed away from the Scriptures as a principle source of inspiration and instead rely on the characters of leaders and on self-help style influences that don't match well with the revelation of Jesus in the NT. Certainly it only takes 1hr of reading NT to find that being financially wealthy is contradictory to Christianity - not impossible to get to heaven and be rich, but er, maybe as hard as getting an obstinate camel through a tiny gate!?! Prosperity gospel, bah!
Thank you for this... I've struggled for a while to sum up what I think is wrong with the dominant US form of Christianity, and this hits the nail on the head.
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?
Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything. I grew up not-quite-orthodox (in a stream of Judaism that doesn’t really exist anymore) and that provided a, in retrospect, very interesting slightly outsider vantage point.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
That’s not what I mean. When I see coworkers eating red meat on a regular basis, I believe they are committing a grave moral injustice. I do not believe that the work place is the right place to push them on that issue.
I can see why that's not a nice feeling but honestly, if you realize this is pretty much an alternative lifestyle, then it should be completely fine when told: "hey there's a team dinner", to mention the fact that you are meat-free.
What's wrong: if they decide to not care about that.
What's right: they accommodate your dietary preferences.
Don't think you should put the burden on other people to consider these kinds of things beforehand.
It's great if they do, but it's not an issue if they don't.
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.
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.
> 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.
How is that an ideal? What if this person gets promoted and ends up being your boss, and you keep getting passed up again and again for promotion before finally learning the real reason: your boss keeps tearing you down in promotion meetings because he's racist?
Wouldn't you want to know ahead of time? That way you'd know what to expect, and could make plans to switch teams or find a new job.
So you think there should be some sort of survey where you get to judge a persons morality and personal beliefs even if they have no want in sharing them with you - just so you can feel comfortable about there being a CHANCE you might get passed over for something and that the reason for the MIGHT be because they have some sort of bias against you?
When someone says ideally you wouldn't know it's because unless you and I are personally close ideally you wouldn't know any of my personal beliefs / views on morality or politics. They aren't any of your business and I shouldn't want / nor need to explain them to you.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> but it seems like only in the past 20 years has it become something people have been become forward and culturally tribal about.
It’s been about 20 years since the longest continuous period of partisan realignment (and thus absence of clear association of ideological groups with party labels) ended; since then, US culture has been reverting to the political tribalism that has been the historical norm (possibly toward a situation worse, in terms of daily life, than the historical norm, because historically there has been a much stronger geographic component to the tribal divide.)
The situation during the overlapping realignments triggered by the New Deal Coalition and Johnson’s support for Civil Rights was not a stable equilibrium.
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.
> The standard interpretation is that politics became more divisive in the mid-90s
No, its not, at least not as a step-change, which is what you seem to be arguing against.
The common interpretation is that it began to get sharply more divisive over time starting in the mid-1990s, not that the current level of division established itself then.
> for example, the Democrats seem to have settled on always electing a man and woman for P/VP.
2 sequential nominations (2016, 2020) is a pretty weak basis for a conclusion of “always”.
> The common interpretation is that it began to get sharply more divisive over time starting in the mid-1990s, not that the current level of division established itself then.
I didn't say anything about the current level of division, or the quantum. I am not arguing against a step change either. Again, I said that people believe politics became more divisive in the mid-90s. I understand that people need to read things into the statements of others...there is nothing here (you are focusing on the least interesting part of the argument).
And the "always" came after "Democrats seem to have settled on". I did not say anything about what happened in the past, and did not use that evidence. My point was that Democrats have said a system of gender and racial selection will be used in the future. I did not imply that some Democrats have the power to bind every other decision in the future, but that some wanted to use the system in the future.
> I didn’t say anything about the current level of division, or the quantum. I am not arguing against a step change either.
The examples you used from the 1990s make no sense at all as an argument against a change starting in the 1990s resulting in the current situation, though they make some sense as an argument against a rapid step change in the 1990s. “Misdirected but coherent” was, I thought, the most generous interpretation.
> And the “always” came after “Democrats seem to have settled on”. I did not say anything about what happened in the past, and did not use that evidence.
So what is your argument based on? Pure fantasy?
> My point was that Democrats have said a system of gender and racial selection will be used in the future.
(1) That’s not what you claimed, you said they seemed to have settled on a fixed 1 woman + 1 man ticket for the President and Vice President, not “a system of gender and racial selection will be used in the future”.
(2) The Democrats have not, in fact, said that anything other than the votes of the delegates at the nominating convention, without gender or racial quotas, will be used in the future to select presidential and vice-presidential nominees, and, starting with the 2020 election cycle, changed the rules so that party insiders who might want to impose such a quota-based system would not be able to do so over the votes of the delegates whose votes are set by the primary and caucus system, because superdelegates were banned from first-round voting unless their votes could not effect the outcome. So, insofar as that claim which you did not state was what you intended, it is false.
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!
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.
> 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.
edit: I didn't realize this happened so fast. Now I think it may have been a misstep.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I’m glad to hear that your forum is functioning well. That being said, your description of your policy on ad-hom./insults seems overly reductive to me.
If I said Trump (or some other political figure, I’m just following from your example) was a fascist, rather than a Nazi, then undoubtedly that would also be viewed as an insult by many. But it’s a position that I could try to defend by looking at the characteristics of fascist groups, and showing how they could also apply to Trump. Trump would undoubtedly never self-identify as a fascist, but if he fit all the conditions to be a fascist, then it seems naïve to say “Trump is a fascist” could not be a statement of fact just because he disagreed with the label.
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.
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.
"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.
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
> “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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I spent a lot of time reading about this... TLDR: Basecamp had a list of funny names which originated a long time ago. You can imagine that certain ethnicities have names which sound funnier than a common name, so these names go on the list. Some people think its racist, others don't. These people who don't think its racist still admit its rude/ unprofessional though, just not racist.
Anyway, there was too much political arguing going on in the company, and the founders offered people they can get paid a few months salary to leave, and some people are taking them up on this offer. "About one-third".
I don't see why the percentage is super significant. If the reason they are on the list had to do with their ethnicity, it's still bad and something that should absolutely be addressed.
Like 90% of the runtime of old racist Disney movies are fine and don't contain racial stereotypes, but that doesn't absolve the remaining 10% in any way, and if the movie was twice as long, the 5% of remaining insensitive content wouldn't be more justified.
From the outside it sounds like the "racist name list" is a bunch of ethnic group one laughing at ethic group two where in practice its actually ethnic group one laughing at other ethnic group one people. I feel like that perspective paints a slightly different picture. This means the percentage is of some import.
So they have an asshole list of "funny" names. When they get caught they argue that most of the people they are racists towards are white, So it's fine?
White people can definitely be racist towards other white people, you can easily find examples of that in Europe, so that is definitely a thing.
As an ethnic Norwegian, I'm not impressed over doing the list in it self, and then doubling down on the racism towards us by pretending it isn't. That makes it way worse.
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.
To some degree sure, that's probably inevitable, but I've never seen a situation where a significant percentage of people leave (for whatever reason) and there isn't a followup a day or two later that everyone needs to roll up their sleeves and work harder to make up for it.
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.
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.
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?
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"
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.
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.
Coin base didn’t have a ridiculous scandal that they implemented this against. If you read up on Basecamp this is all in response to their hilariously hamfisted response to the leak of an internal “funny names list” of their customers.
By "about to", I meant within a year or so. But call me crazy, if there's a considerable cash out event within a year for equity I hold, I hang onto it.
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.
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.
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.
Off the top of my head, Jane Yang, who I believe has quit, left non-profits and joined Basecamp to explicitly pursue a strategy of earning to give (https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/). That seems like she's "put her money where her mouth is," as you say.
What's your basis for believing these people don't really care?
Hi Femme, my basis is their career choice. There are plenty of non-profits hiring in tech and doing some great work. And yet, these individuals chose not to work in this space. The earnings-to-give model sounds awfully similar to trickle down economics. Or, “once I get mine, everyone else can have theirs”. I don’t believe that as an altruistic premise. It’s what people convince themselves of in order to continue to feel self-righteous without really sacrificing anything. It has nothing to do with whether these people care or not, it doesn’t matter. Because when push comes to shove, they chose an avenue in spite of what they claim to believe in.
If you haven't read much about earning to give, I recommend jefftk's blog.[0] That was where I first heard about the concept.
I found it interesting to see how much he and his wife had earned for charities by working lucrative jobs and donating a large percentage of their earnings.
And things have come full circle. Apparently the "racist capitalist system" (her words, not mine) ends up being the best way to support those who scored the highest in the oppression Olympics.
"Earning to give" is admitting that capitalism won, and is the most effective way at righting their perceived wrongs.
It's the same illogic right-wingers used to defend billionaires, low taxes, etc. since the late 80s early 90s. "But they donate more than anyone else! Philanthropy! Altruism!"
This is definitely a younger generation issue. The idea that the workplace should be a platform for activism just make no sense. It’s one thing to require your company to have certain ethical standards, that they follow the law, that they don’t descriminate, that they don’t have a culture of sexual harassment, etc.
But this is not about that (base camp already seems to be a positive work environment). So to assume you can use the companies resources for your own activism just comes across as entitled. It’s a disconnect with the other 99% of the workforce.. many of which are forced to pee in bottles to make their paychecks. The bubble of privilege these employees live in, and their blindness to it makes them look bad.
From the companies perspective, in a healthy democracy we are going to disagree. And there’s a time and a place for those disagreements. And the company can’t start to wade into those arguments. I can only imagine what trying to manage employees with differing viewpoints is like if they feel like they can both bring those views front and center to the office.
So I know I would be unlikely to hire these employees unless the did some growing up.
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.
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...
Assuming this is true, all this tells me that this is a great time to apply at Basecamp. Not only they promise a politics-free environment—a huge bonus by itself for me—but they're likely to be laxer than usual in their standards, for a while anyhow.
Similar thoughts from me. If I wasn't happy in my current job, I'd have sent Basecamp my CV yesterday.
And incidentally, one of the things I appreciate about my current company is that there isn't any politics at work. Seriously, I can't imagine anyone at my company getting into political debates on company time. Why bother? If anyone at my workplace started dragging colleagues into contentious political debates of no direct relevance to the job, I'd consider that not only unnecessary but staggeringly unprofessional. How common is this at other companies? Is it a US vs UK thing?
Intimate access to top leadership seems commendable in small in person companies. But the types of skills you have paling around the office like you’re “one of the team” are different than those when you’re faced with essentially a PR crisis. Your every word, especially when written, will be scrutinized. It’s not time to just craft your own feelings into a message. DHH seems like he would have been best suited to not be so authentic with his true feelings and consulted some professionals here instead of taking it into his own hands...
Our work implemented a similar policy as well because politics was being brought up all the time and it was becoming a nuisance and some employees were basically harassing other employees.
I have no problem with people being activists in their private life but when you go to work, you have to work. You can't be an activist while at work and causing a hostile work environment for others.
I agree with the policy and think every company should do the same. Since the policy has been implemented, our work environment has improved significantly.
Turns out subtweeting your entire workforce is dumb. Report at 11.
The issue is that the most senior people probably left first, since they’re more marketable and have more connections. A non trivial chunk of the remainder probably want to leave, but haven’t yet.
Also, I don’t think Basecamp is ready for a world where remote first is a game changing hiring advantage; that’s de rigueur nowadays, and there are a ton of companies ready and willing to snatch up engineers who have no interest in returning to an office.
Imagine being such an insufferable CEO/CTO that 1/3rd of your company quits after you blindside them with new policies and benefit changes in a public blog post.
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:
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:
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.
Good. Can we please stop with politics in the office. We have laws against discrimination, use them if there’s an issue. Otherwise can we work together to build better products (and in turn world)?
I’m so sick of politics in my office and “inclusion” which really just breeds resentment.
I’m sure basecamp discovered what most places discover - working together is better. Anything that divides us should be removed.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
As a dev in the midwest, there are a lot of midwest tech companies where I wouldn't want to mention that I'm gay, or bring up anything about my personal life with my wife. (And Basecamp is also a midwest tech company.)
If a company I worked at went full no-politics at work after two minor incidents about the founders use of ablest language, and the acceptability of making lists of "funny" names, then I think I'd probably not know where the line is for them.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Wouldn't the ideal situation be firing someone for _acting_ as a homophobe (which a no-politics rule encourages), rather than _being_ a homophobe (or having any other undesirable trait)?
I think you focusing on a word that's not that important.
How do you define what's a fireable homophopic offense. You need to discuss it, you can't shut it down because its political and uncomfortable to discuss. You need to listen to the people that are being made uncomfortable and have these discussions. "stop being political" is making a decision, it's the side of no change.
Maybe I'm under the misunderstanding that "no politics" doesn't also apply to e.g. reporting inappropriate workplace actions to HR.
If you see a homophobic (or racist, or sexist, or inappropriate, etc) offense, you should absolutely report it to your superior and/or HR, and AFAICT Basecamp's changes don't say you shouldn't. It sounds like they're just banning discussions in the open channels with coworkers ("Hey everyone, do you think what Bob did was homophobic?").
Of course, I might be misinformed on 1) whether you're still allowed to report workplace offenses to HR, and/or 2) whether company-wide conversation about your coworkers' potential offenses is actually a positive thing to allow.
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.
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”
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.
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!
If you're looking to compared 'lived experience', I literally grew up a visible minority in SE Asia, and have been a foreigner compared to the dominant group at work for most of my adult life.
Were there people that didn't like me because I wasn't like them? Sure. They weren't the majority, most people are just fine no matter where you go in the world, and I'm doing fine myself.
Learning to come to grips that you aren't going to like everyone (and that it is mutual) is a large part of the lessons of becoming an adult. Learning to appreciate the fact that most people genuinely are able to treat you professionally at work regardless, no matter what the social media crowds say, is just as important.
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)
Maybe this is true in a minority of workplaces, but almost every person reading this can think of a coworker who cracked a sexist or rascist joke.
That doesn't count the plurality is people smart enough to keep it to themselves and just let it influence your ability advance.
Sure, and those workers have it great. What about all the other people who have to put up with the other work environments?
EDIT
Also, it is very difficult to suss out this type of before being hired. Most people at least pretend to be professional until they get comfortable.
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.
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.
Which is fine, but small/personal talk is extremely common at work, and many people would find a workplace completely devoid of it to be rather cold. I don't think most people saying 'no politics' want to take that as far as banning all talk of anything not directly related to the task at hand.
Small/personal talk is best done in small, personal social settings. If two co-workers who know each other well are enjoying a conversation between themselves, great! I mean that. I have friends at work, too.
But personal talk absolutely does not belong in larger meetings or workplace discussions where you're trying solve work issues. It's a distraction at best, and unprofessional in general.
I guess I was thinking of something in between a private conversation and a meeting. Things like chatting in a shared office (which I know is a distracting no-no in some contexts, but not all, at least when it comes to a slightly extended greeting/farewell), or in the kitchen/corridor/doorway/photocopier room. Anywhere people naturally gather and mingle when they're not necessarily in full work mode. Depending on the workplace, that sort of thing is very common and a ban would seem weird and draconian.
It really is easy enough in practice. As tech folks, I know we as a group naturally hunt for edge cases, but I can say with complete confidence that everywhere that I've worked that put the kibosh on politics/personal during everyday business discussion was a much more humane place, for everyone, to work than one where such limitations weren't present.
How about 'I'm taking paternity leave'? That's them telling you something x-rated they did 9 months ago and it will definitely change how you solve problems.
Discussion about the details of your paternity leave, how long you're planning to be away, and contingencies if you need more time: Yes, and congratulations!
Discussion about the details of the sexual act that led you to needing to take paternity leave: No, don't care, not interested, not relevant.
I mean this politely- please stop assigning the worst possible interpretation to what I'm saying. It goes against the spirit of discussion, and doesn't generate insight.
I don't receive it very politely. It's clearly condescending, and from my perspective you are the one reading uncharitably. I explicitly didn't assume either interpretation of your statement; my point was that it was either extreme or, as far as I understood the thread of this discussion, irrelevant. (This subchain began with someone pointing out that one's sexual orientation will naturally be revealed in a work context.)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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".
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.
mkl's point is that in the "woke religion" (for lack of a better term), a person who has transitioned is considered to have always been the gender they transitioned to, even before they began the transition (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Page, where he is referred to as a "he" even in events before the transition).
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.
>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.
Being vocal about apple's business practices isn't necessarily political. It sounds more about business to me.
Oh come on. I thought it was a given that "no P/R" means "no ugly P/R" – e.g. don't shit on your co-worker for being Muslim, don't shame your co-worker for voting for Trump. But it is fine to mention that you are fasting for Ramadan. Basically I think they should've just used HN's commenting guidelines instead of saying no politics.
"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.)
Well, you're always bound to an obligation to be professional at work. If someone gets a legal name change, you would be expected to use the new name. Even if you thought that new name was funny, you'd be expected not to laugh at it and not to make fun of the person for having it. Pronouns really aren't any different.
The trans person is "dictating other people’s words" in one, very limited context: when referring directly to that person.
Given that the only obvious reason to actively refuse to use their preferred pronouns amounts to a pretty deep attack on the legitimacy of their identity, you can see why it would not feel like a trivial thing.
You might be similarly intent on insisting that people call you <actual name> rather than <offensive nickname>; that's just as real an example of "dictating other people's words".
> The trans person is “dictating other people’s words” in one, very limited context: when referring directly to that person.
Which, to be fair, everyone with names and/or pronoun preferences (including a preference for the pronoun that is associated with the gender one is assigned based on the appearance of one’s genitalia at birth) tends to do, its just that when either the name or pronoun preference conflicts with someone else’s ideological view of the world, then the person who is trying to impose their ideology over other’s identity projects the other person’s identity as a “political position” and an imposition on liberty.
Yeah, I realised shortly after posting that comment that there's no need to reach for a metaphor or analogy; almost everyone insists on having a certain set of pronouns applied to them. Usually there's no friction because people instinctively use the ones we prefer, but that doesn't mean we're not ready to make the demand if necessary. (Try calling a random male colleague 'she' -- or a random female colleague 'he' -- for a week or two, and see how it goes down.)
Many people call me by a common nickname, I personally never cared one way or another. Also I've found other folks who were really annoyed by it kinda boring, so there is precedent. (Guy who would insist on being called David if someone happened to say Dave.).
In general I find it more productive to focus on myself than demand others conform.
> Many people call me by a common nickname, I personally never cared one way or another.
This misses the point. If you would be bothered by an actually offensive nickname, surely you can empathise with trans people who feel the same way about pronouns. If you are truly unoffendable, great, but you must realise that you're unusual in that respect, and that trans people are far from the only ones 'dictating' how others refer to them.
I was just commenting on what the argument was. When someone tells you what their pronouns are and then you're expected to use said pronouns, then that's where people feel they're being forced to use specific pronouns.
But since you asked, no I don't talk about myself in the third person.
I mean yes, you are forced to accept the preferred pronouns when referring to any person. Where is that not already an expectation? When I was young, there was a particularly tall and broad-shouldered girl in one of my classes that some of the bullies used to call a boy. They would intentionally say he/him when referring to this girl. She obviously did not like that. Is it wrong of the teacher to punish them for doing this, forcing them to use the correct pronouns?
This is a good example, I think. Just about everyone insists that other people use their preferred pronouns; it's just that most of us are lucky enough that ~everyone automatically does so.
If you would complain if a colleague persistently referred to you as 'she' (if you're a man) or 'he' (if you're a woman), your real argument is not that nobody should be 'forced' to use a certain set of pronouns when referring to another person.
As a matter of public policy, in a professional setting, it is appropriate that you be required to use the name and pronouns people ask you to use. These are matters of basic identity, and if you have a religious objection to it that's a matter between you and your god(s). You don't get to externalize the costs of your religious beliefs onto other people.
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.
> 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.
Chatting with work-mates about some funny name is what probably most (all?) of us done and will be doing. A chat fades away in a minute after the laugh.
But setting up a list like that which goes viral inside company? That's just plain childish. What an embarrassing thing for any mature person that had to acknowledge the list.
I think at root this might be about authority. Today's SV culture seems to challenge authority and hierarchy (the boss, management) in favour of the team, flat organisations, and fair play.
When the boss makes a decision then, the boss often gets challenged and the challengers feel right doing so. Disruption, innovation.
All this is new but we think it's normal now!
Businesses used to have clear lines of authority, heirarchy and the boss was on top, made the decisions and was generally obeyed.
I wonder how management academics will write about this period of time in 20 years or so.
Thought they had an economic meltdown when I first speed-read the headline.
But this is _way_ more interesting than that; a culture shakeup — and since Basecamp are usually trailblazers in so many areas, I’m sure we’ll see many more orgs doing similar realignments in the months and years to come.
Knowing Jason and (having also met) DHH, I know they usually do things (esp the significant things) with the utmost consideration. So I’d be shocked if this wasn’t a long time in the making.
And I won’t have to wonder about the topic of their next book any longer.
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.)
Which free speech activists have been advocating that employees shouldn't have to do work when they're at work? None, because believing that isn't a part of free speech rights, and Basecamp made it clear they didn't care what employees said off company time, so it's an irrelevant strawman.
The old-fashioned dictum, "don't talk politics and religion at work" is very much worth following. I hope plain old professionalism comes back into fashion --- we can all use a return to norms that have existed for a very long time, and for very good reason. Free political and religious association can proceed unhindered outside the office, while the sanctity of work and common courtesy is preserved at the workplace.
I've never used Basecamp, I don't have an opinion this way or that on DHH or the Jason (they are Parve to me - not meat nor dairy). But that list of changes doesn't sound too radical to make me believe people left because of those changes. The changes are actually reasonable. People more likely left because they were given a hefty lump sum of cash but didn't want to admit it.
Doesn't Basecamp have something like ~50 employees? It's a very small company. The concerns around the current issues scale to larger companies just the same. But saying "1/3 of employees" doesn't really amount to that many people, in this specific case. It feels more hyperbole and click bait to phrase it that way.
I think the impact of this statement would be more interesting with a big company. If Amazon or Microsoft were to lose 1/3 of their workforce, that would be something big. But knowing the size of Basecamp, it just kind of makes me shrug.
I'm guessing that Basecamp will be easily able to replace those people that took the buyout and will probably just be better for it in the long run.
[edit: removed unnecessary comment-on-voting, per HN guidelines]
Basecamp isn't a typical company, it has an outsized influence on work culture, development trends, etc. Its CTO is the creator of Ruby on Rails with nearly half a million Twitter followers. One of the people resigning, George Claghorn, also resigned from the Rails core team.
Fair point, I think. It's a very impactful company, for sure. But again, the hyperbole around "1/3 of employees" is just too much for me to take seriously. That's 15-20 people? Not that interesting of a story, even for the influence of Basecamp.
When someone said, corporations are people, it got a lot of flack. And yet, corporations then became people, finding it necessary to have and voice strong political opinions.
It looks like some companies are now going back to focusing on being companies, and less people.
Will be interesting to see how many of these employees take the severance when the company asks them to sign an NDA in exchange, which would likely includes a non-disparagement clause, and would also mean many of these tweets would need to be deleted.
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"
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)
Incentivises potential agitators to leave peacefully and on good terms. If you implement a no-politics policy in a politicized workplace without an easy to use escape hatch, you risk creating a fifth column in your company acting against your interests. It may seem expensive in the short term, but it saves a headache later on.
The alternative is the gory legal and political process of executing a targeted purge which may create controversy, sympathy, and miss more quiet actors.
Six months runway of a senior basecamp salary for no points has gotta be the best funding deal IN THE WORLD. like 10 times better than any incubator deal. Is it any surprise a bunch of people took it and left? I expect a not-insignificant number are happily starting their next ventures, regardless of their politics. My current job is probably the only one I've ever had that I would not have taken six months pay to leave.
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.
A lot of people discussing this appear to be unfamiliar with the values and history of Basecamp, and might benefit from reading their company handbook for background
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook
If I were interviewing and someone came to me from the Basecamp buy out, it'd be an incredibly clear red flag and no hire decision. If someone cares more about political activism at work than the well being of the company, it's not someone I want on my team.
*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.
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
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.
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."
One thing that I am wondering about amid all these departures is how would Basecamp operate on day-to-day basis when 1/3rd of their staff is leaving all at once. It's gonna be tough times ahead for Jason and DHH.
It sounds like working there has become a distraction to working there, which means that working there has become fratcally stupid. Quitting sounds like a reasonable position to take.
It should be made known that "about one-third" of basecamp employees would be what 15-16 or so?
It's not difficult to imagine that you'd have a handful of people who felt politically / socially strong enough to take the buyout for their stated reason and another handful that saw 6 months of pay and a high demand job market and went for it as well.
1/3 sounds like a big deal if you are thinking basecamp is a massive company but in reality they are less than 60 people last time I checked.
If I have a company with 2 other people and one of us leaves due to some sort of dispute, that's also a 1/3 but has a very different feel than if a 1000 head count shop loses 333 people.
I can see an exodus of 33% of the workforce creating ripple effect in the coming months through burnouts. As a founder I’d be very concerned about the next 6-12 months
6 month salary? They would be foolish no to do it. I am not sure what the management was thinking when they offered this much of a buyout. 1 month 2 tops
Sure & JF+DHH aren't? What a shitty workplace if you can't even talk about issues impacting the society. Kinda like keep your head down & keep working, nothing happening outside impacts us.
Maybe Basecamp isn't for everyone, they wanna focus on work and not have everyone constantly arguing and fighting on politics. I understand not everyone likes that.
If that is the case then they should outright ban verbal communication since you can't filter what comes out of people's mouths but you can preemptively filter out text/have stored data for later analysis, which is what basecamp would love to do.
hate to say this, but who cares? it’s a 60 person company with an ok product, not some herald of the industry. are we going back to the days of valleywag? this is social media distortion and amplification. a valuable discussion should be had around that instead.
> Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
My take on this (and other problems with political speech and upset about perks) is a gradual encroachment of the workplace into the Third Place ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place ).
Back with the DotCom boom, there was an attempt to make the workplace a "club" - a place to hang out. Beer bashes, pool, foosball, ping pong tables... all of that. Yea, I'll grant its nice to relax to... but if you're staying late to play foosball with a coworker, that's the encroachment.
It may have made us more productive - gotten a few more hours a week of work in or kept some of the more vagabond-esque engineers around for a few more months.
But it also made the workplace a place to be rather than the third place and in doing so, also took some of the other things that the third place was too... but the workplace does the third place poorly... and it can't do it well.
The third place needs to be a neutral ground with no ties to those who are there. The coffee shop book club doesn't force anyone to be there. But the workplace, you need to be there for a pay check. If the book club gets bad, you can leave - not so with the workplace.
The third place needs to be level - with no status beyond "regular". The workplace has managers and leads and HR... it has CEOs and founders and a legal department.
While the workplace are sometimes saying "we are a community" - we know in our orgchearts that HR is there to protect the company, not organize book clubs and beer tastings.
This has become even more of an issue with the pandemic-wfh. The traditional third places are closed, or have limits on how many people can be there at once - and you've got to be 6' away from the other people. So we've got virtual third places. Some of the slack channels that I'm on have lit up over the past year.
And so, those companies that have encroached the most in the past are seeing it even more now. Where before the water cooler discussions of five minutes of politics are now immortalized in slack channels and message boards. Where people who would like to go to the coffee shop and pontificate about the wrongs of the workplace and politics are now forced to do it on message boards and slack channels.
Those companies that have gone further into the third places but don't have the ability to moderate the tone or power differentials are seeing it more. Those companies where the power gradient from most distant worker to the CEO is the steepest are even more likely to see it.
Larger orgs, with offices, can more easily move people who discuss and disrupt with politics further apart. Those smaller ones that are all remote? where everyone is on the same slack channel? Where the most distant employee to the CEO is only one or two managers apart? Yea... they're more likely to have trouble when the third place norms get too established in the company.
So, employees create a list for making fun of people.
Employees start to fight each other because they take offense.
Company states at work, you're supposed to work, not to discuss politics.
Th bad actor is the company so we all leave. (??!!!)
Honestly, I don't get it. I think it is a cultural thing in the US, due to the long term racism issues ,etc. And how extremely easy is for Americans to feel offended. Sorry if that hurts, I accept your down otra but would appreciate what I am missing.
As somebody from a first world european country, we go to work to work. If we're developers we're expected to do development.
We like football (soccer) and some like politics and discussing controversial stuff, but we do that in the proper forums. For football it is the pub. For politics ist is elections, friends and family.
Business are business and we're there because we need money and a profession we like.
I feel these problems happen only in America, it sad to see this going on.
You missed a midpoint here, when employees stated that the list could be racist towards people with Asian heritage, the cofounder doubled down on it, claimed that only 10% could be, and well actuallyed it all and then shut down any communication or talk about it. It was crappy management that didn't listen to problems
Yup. It was a founder acting instigating and fanning the slightest flames of political disagreement. Your job, even if you disagree with the person your talking to, is to at the very least genuinely acknowledge the persons perspective and try and deescalate. Instead DHH seems to have continually doubled down and made things worse.
As the boss, it’s your job to get people back to work. It seems like DHH, more than anyone, was causing the infighting. It wasn’t coworkers talking politics, and fighting amongst themselves, it was a boss handling criticism extremely poorly, and doubling down on defensiveness until he had to mandate his employees shut up, or quit.
Thanks for the explanation. It is a difficult situation to understand from the outside tbh. I agree dhh looks like the person that, if you agree with his points of view, everything is awesome. The moment you don't seems you'll have a hard time convincing him otherwise.
So I do think the first one that should shut up (at work) ranting about politics is himself, and provide an example for others. I hope from now, with whatever number of employes they end up with, they get back to work.
Sorry, I think that's the right thing to do. And should have been done a lot erlier. Like 10 years ago when the list first started. And I'd also consider firing everyone that contributed names to that list, and that I can find public conversations making fun of people names. I don't care if they are male, white, black or whatever. That doesn't matter. Making fun of peoples names, weight, religion or whatever is wrong. No discussion. You're fired for this.
This is the real shameful thing here, from my biased european point of view. This is the intolerable part.
Now, shutting these discussions off *from work* is the right thing to do in my opinion. Because they literally have no end, and the company is a business, which needs to build products, which needs to sell, so you have your money. If you spend your day discussing politics, you don't make money.
Do you want to discuss politics? Do you really want to discuss these societal problems? I'm all in for it, lets grab a beer at 6am pm at the pub across the street and come up with a solution for these problems. Let's found a political party or an association or whatever we want to do to fix problem.
At least here, in europe, the moment you propose to do these things out of work hours, you 1) See 80% lose interest in their principles and prefer to go home and enjoy their kids and 2) You get to meet with the 20% people with the real interest in fixing things for a better world.
I insist in my opinion. It is not that these things should not be talked about, dismissed, or whatever. These are important things for the future. It is that your workplace *is not* the place for this.
You completely omit the company's actual response. If the company had shut down the list as being unprofessional and that "work is for work" we wouldn't be here. So I don't really get your point. Are you saying in the EU that if such a list were circulating, the business would take a stance that the list has a place in the workplace? That seems to contradict your statement that "work is for work" And, honestly, mocking your customers even if it isn't offending employees seems like something management should discourage.
The problem was the initial complaint included references to something called the "Pyramid of hate" which asserts that larger conflicts and discrimination start from innocuous biases and insensitive remarks and DHH took great offence to using that image WHILE apologising for the list being circulated. He felt using that image was "catastrophizing". When people disagreed, he became vindictive and lashed out, dug up message logs of an employee to dismiss their complaints. This disturbed employees which resulted in anonymous HR complaints. And this in turn led to the situation we have now. Keep in mind, all of this seems to have been going on as they were trying to fix diversity issues in the company
My reading of this seems that the internal group seems to have badgered management which was probably unprofessional and stoked some sentiment but instead of DHH simply accepting criticism and trying to diffuse the situation, aggravated it and made it far worse and instead of trying to fix the issue, shut it down completely
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.
I used to work in a horrible outbound call centre a very long time ago and kept my own list. It cheered me up in an otherwise soul destroying job that had the most awful manager I've ever experienced in my life.
The list itself is lost to the sands of time but I remember at least three:
Mr and Mrs Hunnybun (yes, that was the spelling), Miss Cumcup, Dr Strangleman
It's never been professional or a good place to have political discussions at work because it's awkward and causes problems. And a racist list of names doesn't set a good example either.
As long as employees aren't told what opinions, beliefs to hold, and causes to rally behind, carry on.
To not be able to express an opinion related to work, or say, the weather, would just be ridiculously-insane.
Complaining does lead to more complaining, winging, and whining. It's best to not tolerate it but to do so softly: tease and suggest action. Complaining about what is "wrong" is sometimes rooted in a shared experience observation but it can just as well be people passively seeking others to fix things for them. The point being one could spend that time and energy complaining working to try to fix it.
I am sure many of these people will land on their feet, but I would absolutely not hire someone who quit their last position because they were told to stop talking about politics at work.
Is there any place where you can exist, in 2021, without having political viewpoints crammed down your throat?
Some people just want to work. If you want to change the world go do it outside of business hours.
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....
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.
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.
HN will look back at this as one of the better choices Basecamp made, but for now they will grill DHH and Jason Fried over the coals because how dare they.
The simplest filter to avoid hiring these Woke cult people in the first place is to check for pronouns in their Twitter bio. You can see it in the tweets from people leaving Basecamp. I'm not against using preferred pronouns in the workplace, but when it's in their bio that says a lot about how far down the Woke rabbithole they've gone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It can be seen that way. But it can also be seen this way: I agreed to come work for this company, and now, I have to deal with unwanted evangelism from my coworkers. They should be free to say whatever they want on their own time, but I shouldn’t be forced to listen to it / deal with it when all I want to do is the damn job I signed up for.
Maybe it’s the captive audience that is the distinguishing factor. I’m not sure.
For example, I work on a software platform where our customers regularly host content that I find offensive and sometimes even disturbing. But I’m not forced to watch/listen to it, so I’m fine with it.
If you're into understanding Gramsci's thought and the long march through the institutions and its influence on modern American life, you might enjoy this essay from Stanford's Hoover Institute written 20 years ago, when all this was just getting started: https://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-war
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
Why has nobody at/leaving Basecamp posted the "Best Names Ever" list so we know what we are talking about?
I make up my own mind what is funny and what is offensive.
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. =)
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.
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.
I had a different interpretation. I'm not disagreeing with you because anyone outside of the company is left kind of guessing, but it's making me realize that people's varying reaction might be different interpretations of what Basecamp's "no politics" rule really means.
I've read everything DHH and Jason Fried have posted in the last few days, and my impression that politics directly related to the company and products are fair game for discussion. It seemed like DHH and Fried were forbidding people from connecting those discussions to larger social movements.
DHH was appreciative that people raised the issue of the Funny Names List, but he objected to people connecting it to the Atlanta shootings or genocide:
>I was dismayed to see the argument advanced in text and graphics on [Employee 1’s] post that this list should be considered part of a regime that eventually could lead to genocide. That's just not an appropriate or proportionate comparison to draw.
>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.
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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127&p=5
(Posts like this will go away once we turn off pagination.)
Edit: as long as this is at the top, I'll include the related links that users have helpfully been mentioning:
What Really Happened at Basecamp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708 - April 2021 (15 comments)
Changes at Basecamp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944192 - April 2021 (762 comments)
Behind the Controversy at Basecamp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963975 - April 2021 (32 comments)