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.
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
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.
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.
> “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.”
> 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.
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.
*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."
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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'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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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 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.
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.
>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.
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.
I'm sorry, my life is surrounded by extremely liberal people but I've never seen anyone 'demanding someone wear a BLM thing". Similar to the "war on Christmas" I think that someone made that up.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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?
> 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!
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."
Wealthy, privileged people making storms in teacups over trivial shit - like we have here, a list of funny names somehow being a 'racist' endeavour rather than having a joke with your colleagues - describes a good chunk of our industry, unfortunately.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
Right wingers only support free speech in the workplace when it's speech they agree with, such as James Damore. It's politics all the way down, not a principle.
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.
> For example if you work at Google or Facebook and you speak up against affirmative action hiring practices or transwomen in women's sports, you will be fired. The excuse will be that these opinions are "hate speech" or that they violate some policy of discrimination at work place or made someone feel "unsafe" or whatever else.
It's ridiculous isn't it, how these flawed stances became some sort of woke orthodoxy in recent years.
Another jarring instance of this is, they'll all go on about how important mental health and neurodiversiry is and blah blah blah, but as soon as the office autist steps out of line and says the 'wrong' thing, they all pounce on him relentlessly and without mercy. I mean, just look at how RMS was treated, simply for expressing his honest opinions. Hounded out of his job.
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
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. =)
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
Facebook use after acute social stress impair recovery of cortisol levels. I translate it as "Facebook use after social altercation makes stress longer".
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 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.
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'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.
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.
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?
> 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".
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
"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.
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.
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.
Anyone going on a political rant is "a toxic person" in the workplace. It's always interesting to see the sheer prevalence of downvotes without reasoned response on hacker news. Completely disappointing.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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'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?
No, it's not a big deal. It's trivial shit.
I recognize that some of their more hypersensitive, humorless employees thought it was a big deal, comparing it to the pyramid of genocide or whatever. But these people are clearly overreacting.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
“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."
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?
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?
>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.
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.
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.
> 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"
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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]
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).
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?
> 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)
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.
Too much of politics is about racism and similar identarian issues these days, at the expense of more fundamental topics.
For example, BLM should really have been about police brutality and police abuse in general. It's not just black people who get regularly shit on by the cops. But by making it all about race, the more general point is missed and no progress is made.
Another example, you get Biden paying lip service to trans rights, but nothing about introducing Medicare For All - which would actually make things better for everyone, including those with gender dysphoria who require access to healthcare professionals.
Of course, people who see all the country's problems through an identity politics lens don't like it when you point out things like this.
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.
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.
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?
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.
'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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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. (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> "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!
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.
> Some people's politics is other people's human rights.
Yeah but this all started because some of the more hysterical employees started saying nonsense like: a list of funny customer names is the first step towards genocide. Some people's politics are just retarded.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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'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?
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.
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 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.
Sounds good for Basecamp's remaining employees, they can seek out new colleagues who don't throw a tantrum when being politely asked not to bring their politics to work.
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
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 542 ms ] threadWhich is a feel good piece about management philosophy ( a bit back to our roots ) and does not mention layoffs once.
And I searched the HN comments, and nobody seems to have uttered the words leaving or layoff.
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.
> 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.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
Edit: as in, this is misleadingly phrased as if it’s a large collective action
More importantly, this 20 people includes senior employees which cannot easily be replaced.
> The entire iOS team is out, Head of Design and one of the oldest hires is out of the team and the Rails Core Team as well.
https://twitter.com/agisilaosts/status/1388213430004375555
A small company may actually weather this worse than a large company. Basecamp has run lean for years. Some of those big tech companies like Microsoft often weather huge layoffs with no real ill effects. But they often get really bloated when the economy is rocking and then lean out every now and then.
But this is monstrous. I've never seen this many people leave at once.
There is no way this is good for Basecamp.
via https://twitter.com/RogersKonnor/status/1388212747947679744?...
Which is fine, but it's for the best for everyone to end that mismatch.
The resignations feel less less like a result of a mismatch and more like result of a slap in the face from mismanagement.
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.
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.
Firing them is a good way to tip them over it.
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.
> Yesterday, we offered everyone at Basecamp an option of a severance package worth up to six months salary for those who've been with the company over three years, and three months salary for those at the company less than that. No hard feelings, no questions asked. For those who cannot see a future at Basecamp under this new direction, we'll help them in every which way we can to land somewhere else.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
In the case of your other example of black and Jewish people: it’s already inappropriate to be racist at work.
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).
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.
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.
EDIT: I think the current top thread already better formulates my opinion so I suggest reading that instead of continuing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001075
Your position is probably straight up illegal by the way.
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.
EDIT: I think the current top thread already better formulates my opinion so I suggest reading that instead of continuing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001075
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.
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.
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 is very much possible, that according to the law, you are engaging in illegal discrimination against certain religions.
> I don't see why you need to focus on islam specifically
Well, the important reason why to focus on certain groups, is because of the possible illegality of your actions. Thats why.
> Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
When it comes to discrimination and freedom of religion, the ACLU[2] has this to say:
> Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today.
[1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=55...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion...
Now scramble those weakly / strongly held opinions for every individual...
Aren't they a remote company?
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
I have trouble imaging how a response to an apparent social cohesion issue that results in 1/3 of the office immediately walking can be considered a good outcome.
It sounds more like a corporate schism to me.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
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.
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.
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.
The next article will be “Influx of resume’s for talent that prefers to work and be free from the thought police”
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.
> I cannot believe the kind of childish simplistic thinking going on in this thread
Yes.
(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.)
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.
https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn/status/138813100953171968...
https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/1388146129284603906
I agree with you, and I wouldn't be that surprised to see this manifest as a Rails fork.
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.
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.
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.
One of the issues was that one of the activist employees tried to link "making fun of customers' names" to "genocide".
That was a big yike. And definitely a convo I wouldn't want to have.
I don't see what the big yikes is about that.
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?
Yikes. Big yikes.
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.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708
> “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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 tell on yourself when you use language that suggests that the people who participate in these discussions and contributions are disingenuous [1].
People are not being harassed to virtue signal. People are being harassed to be explicit about the contents of their character.
Those that refuse or think that the others are being disingenuous are also communicating something.
[1] Virtue signalling is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.
>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.
Cut the maudlin allusion to Dr. King. Your character is revealed by your actions, not by whether your Instagram profile is set to a black square.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner
Time will tell which prediction turns out to be the outcome.
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 would be tempted by that offer regardless of any other circumstances, especially in today's competitive jobs market.
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.
> In addition, we recently introduced a 10% profit sharing plan
If so, it's hard to say for sure how lucrative it would be either, especially if you aren't privy to the details of what they say they are offering.
But if so, nobody's gotten it already, you'd have to stay to get it.
https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5
$40k in the bank is a nice bonus, but I wouldn't quit a job I liked for it.
It reminds me of people flippantly declaring "just sue!" as if it's an easy or pleasant thing to do.
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.
https://basecamp.com/handbook/08-benefits-and-perks#employee...
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?
Does anyone add in randomness (dice?) to actually enforce the feeling that profits/bonuses can swing wildly?
"This Program does not have any set expiration date, but the company reserves the right to amend it or cancel it at any time. You forfeit your shares in the profit sharing program if you resign or are terminated from Basecamp."
So not equity. Profit sharing.
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.
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?
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. =)
This one?
https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1387731297980854272?s=21
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!
If you saw a link posted and see that as rage, it kinda proves the point.
Did you read the NYT article or listen to the podcast? It was very reasonable.
https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
When I read that, I see business leaders who engaged for months then asked people to move on when they realized it was never going to go away.
Searching the chat logs and posting in front of everybody was a jerk move for an executive, absolutely.
Everything else seems entirely reasonable.
Just from the open letter (https://janeyang.org/2021/04/27/an-open-letter-to-jason-and-...) take a look at the kind of attitudes they have; these are some serious snowflakes:
Shrill wokescolds are taking over our workplaces.
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.
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.
Perhaps they’ve kept the employees who accepted management’s statement about the event and wanted to move past the issue.
Please don't put words in my mouth. I said nothing of the sort.
I don't know if a full third of a company leaving at once can really be explained away as people they didn't really want on the team.
I'll program and be professional at company A just as happily as I would at company B.
I'm already professional and apolitical at work, I don't feel I stand to gain much being otherwise.
So I think you'd be inadvertently discriminating against people who are simply interested in getting 2 salaries for 6 months.
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.
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.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-covid-19-relief-pac...
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.
EDIT: Looks like it bounced back and forth. I'm still getting downvoted on this comment though....
The better question is how this post got 120 points while not being on the front page.
EDIT: Looks like dang unflagkilled it.
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.
And anything thats unchallenged is going to slowly devolve until it's unfit for purpose.
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.
In which case, not sure not offering the package would have gone well.
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's ridiculous isn't it, how these flawed stances became some sort of woke orthodoxy in recent years.
Another jarring instance of this is, they'll all go on about how important mental health and neurodiversiry is and blah blah blah, but as soon as the office autist steps out of line and says the 'wrong' thing, they all pounce on him relentlessly and without mercy. I mean, just look at how RMS was treated, simply for expressing his honest opinions. Hounded out of his job.
No dissent allowed in this new religion.
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.
Unfortunately he won’t read them.
I don't know how folks don't understand that - % and pure numbers tell different stories depending on scale.
If my hard drive has 5% remaining on it my reaction is going to be totally different if its a 250GB HD or a 10 TB HD.
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.
How is it reasonable to enforce "no politics" when the company's culture is based on a niche political tendency?
The more reasonable interpretation is "no politics that looks different from our existing politics"
but also i think the founders kinda blindsided all the employees with the announcement which probably made it worse.
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.
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.
Here: https://archive.is/UJrNo
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22412714/basecamp-employe...
Or maybe it's because those people were upset that discussing politics was not part of their job description?
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...
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?
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.
If I was working with someone with that last name I definitely wouldn’t bring it up.
See paragraphs below "So I replied:" ...
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.
However, losing 1/3 of your staff overnight over an issue like this does somewhat undermine the JF / DHH narrative of extreme managerial competence.
Not sure that comparing 15 or so talented and apparently hard working staff to gangrene is really the most appropriate comparison.
"..looking to get rid of them". Hmmm.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
and
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-politic...
[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
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.
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).
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 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.
I'd love to hear some, that sounds great.
Hah, cool.
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-names-that-sound-f...
—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevy_II_/_Nova#Urba...
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.
Well I imagine the list had a lot of people from certain ethnicities...
> Out of the 78 names listed on the last version we were able to recover, just 6 names appear to be Asian.
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.
My assumption is that levels plummet
Facebook use after acute social stress impair recovery of cortisol levels. I translate it as "Facebook use after social altercation makes stress longer".
Thanks for idea!
Those attention seeking personalities are just the ones who get your attention and stand out.
I've noticed an overlap between attention seeking personalities and people who get noticed for...well, anything.
But that’s kind of the nature of “attention seeking”.
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.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/nation-div...
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.
[1] https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-po...
...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.
[0] https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/can-black-people-be-rac...
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.
Is it racist subculture or something? It just sounds absurd compared to saying 'racist'.
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.
I'm sorry, what!? The author of "How to be Antiracist" is considered a "neo racist" by how many?
Kinda like how you will see a pastor rail against homosexuality, and then it turns out they have a boyfriend on the side...
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" and all that.
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?
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.
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.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/15/supreme-court-rules-workers-...
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLlpOAGRsQ
Or can we all assume that my point is 100% valid and the dissenters are too incapable of providing a proper rebuttal? Rhetorical question, btw.
I've seen that one before. It usually seems to involve throwing chairs.
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.
Even full MBA programs do a poor job at this.
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.
(not saying at all if this was appropriate or not)
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.
https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...
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."
What do you do when a (previously-complicit) employee keeps an issue going on and on and on?
A little 'hey, get off your high horse, you were involved too' doesn't go amiss.
(As a first, second or even third reaction it's not great - but it sounds like there had been a lot of talking preceding this).
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
This feels like a statement along the same lines as "just don't be poor".
If it's so easy to manage, how come so many people screw it up?
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.
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.
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'
Tail end of an age. But yes, we are in a new age now.
Yep. Most companies were hiring 'Chief Diversity Officer' types to inoculate themselves from the mob. Instead, the people they hired are leading the mob.
They basically let the vampire in.
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.
"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.
Coraline Ada Ehmke?
https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/
This is all covered under US employment law.
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.
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.
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.
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] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec... [2] https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...
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?".
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.
And that is not what the post you’re replying to said.
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.
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.
They were amused by a double meaning found in an arrangement of alphabetic characters.
It's really not a big deal.
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.
No, it's not a big deal. It's trivial shit.
I recognize that some of their more hypersensitive, humorless employees thought it was a big deal, comparing it to the pyramid of genocide or whatever. But these people are clearly overreacting.
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.
You just have to have that mindset. Make fun of yourself instead of others, for instance.
> 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.
Edit: nm, answered in other comments.
What list? I don't see anything about that in the tweet, or in Basecamp's blogposts the other day...
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?
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.
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.
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.
Pretending this list and subsequent lack of discipline isn’t about the founders vanity is very ignorant
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.
[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
It just works.
Hey customers might notice a difference.
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...
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.
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...
Oh, the humanity...
And to many people, this is going to make Basecamp appear more attractive not less. They won't have a hard time filling seats.
It just takes a crisis to find out...
And has little to do with failure in personal relationships or management. Many people are inherently shitty.
> 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.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
In particular he wrote:
> 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.
> 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.
[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
In an ideal world, that would be the very bottom of bad things in the world, well below "annoying ringtones".
>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.
In the sense that moisture in the air is the other end of the spectrum of waterboarding.
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.
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'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.
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."
[0]https://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146862081/the-history-of-the-...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
[2]https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/federal-bure...
For example, you go to work and some of your more braindead colleagues are earnestly insisting that keeping a list of amusing customer names is the first step on the road to genocide.
Do you: (a) get involved in this nonsense, knowing from past experience how furious they'll get if you disagree, or (b) ignore this stupidity and get on with your job?
Personally, I'd pick the latter.
Work is not a politically/religiously clean room environment whether we like it or not.
What kind of implicit bias do you mean?
Compared to the US population, white people are significantly underrepresented [0] in US software development jobs and overrepresented by Asians. "Most" is technically true at > 50% but it is hardly reflective of US racial demographics.
sources:
https://www.zippia.com/software-engineer-jobs/demographics/
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
[0]: as are black and hispanic people
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
my experience is that most workplaces and social spaces I'm in are systemically liberal, "reality has a liberal bias" abounds
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.
All companies want as many customers as possible. It would not be hard to make a case for something that would create more customers.
And I'm saying this as somebody who's very critical of how Basecamp has handled this situation.
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"
2. You discussing politics with your colleague has 0 effect on political decisions.
If the trouble with the world is too much polarisation, perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to take a side.
Or maybe people keep their friend groups so tightly curated by ideology these days that the only chance they have to argue about politics is at work?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nope.
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.
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.
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.
Source: Worked at basecamp at the time.
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)
> 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.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
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.
Most likely is that they are all just hypocrites.
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.
The real problem is that they’ve spent years hiring for a type of person where this sort of thing is anathema.
It's only recently that parts of the progressive movement has radicalized.
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).
Many liberals like DHH who don’t stay up to the minute eventually get cancelled.
The US left is unrecognizable from just a few years ago. I couldn’t imagine being able to dissent on anything in public.
And who knows what will be outlawed in the future.
Hopefully it all collapses somehow.
> Both founders are also active — and occasionally hyperactive — on Twitter, where they regularly advocate for mainstream liberal and progressive views on social issues.
What did they expect?
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.
Here’s his last in-person RailsConf keynote: https://youtu.be/VBwWbFpkltg
He’s promoting anarcho-communism in a RailsConf keynote.
This is dead on: the real issue here is not politics vs. not-politics at work—Basecamp is having a crisis because expectations were broken.
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.
Uppity has a racist history.
>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]
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).
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)
Politics isn't ONLY about racism.
Politics isn't ONLY about NOT racism.
If you ban politics, you also ban politics about racism.
But if politics was about whether the city should spend a budget surplus on a sidewalk upgrade or a new park bench, then nobody would even think about banning those discussions.
So when you ban politics, you ban politics about racism. Because those are the controversial ones.
And less abstractly, more concretely, about the basecamp situation, the politics that led to this ban were explicitly politics about racism.
For example, BLM should really have been about police brutality and police abuse in general. It's not just black people who get regularly shit on by the cops. But by making it all about race, the more general point is missed and no progress is made.
Another example, you get Biden paying lip service to trans rights, but nothing about introducing Medicare For All - which would actually make things better for everyone, including those with gender dysphoria who require access to healthcare professionals.
Of course, people who see all the country's problems through an identity politics lens don't like it when you point out things like this.
Racism isn't the only controversial political topic out there.
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?
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.
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.
It would never have shipped with a product flaw that frequently caused it to classify white people as something insulting.
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.
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.
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?
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. :)
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?
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.
Would you rather have known about that risk early, or after a few years of not getting promoted?
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).
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.
I honestly wish these people would just fuck off and mind their own business.
Completely fed up of their stupid woke shit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Could you highlight some of the characteristics that you consider go along with this.
"Deeply protestant" to me brings to mind the Quaker (a Protestant denomination) Cadbury & Fry chocolate companies. They did things like build municipal buildings, housing, schools. Fry family members addressed prison reform (Elizabeth Fry) and studied and acted to counter poverty and it's causes, for example. They reduced working hours too!
Sure, it was paternalistic, and they grew wealthy from their employees, but it seems they acted benevolently and genuinely tried to make a difference in their communities and for their workers.
https://medium.com/@cafonline/meet-the-philanthropists-sweet... gives a brief view.
What we hear of USA this side of the pond and these sorts of attributes don't seem to mesh.
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!
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.
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.
Yeah but this all started because some of the more hysterical employees started saying nonsense like: a list of funny customer names is the first step towards genocide. Some people's politics are just retarded.
Ideally, you wouldn't even know this was the case.
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.
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.
I don’t think I should be 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.
I can't quite tell, did you go to the chicken place? Have things improved?
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.)
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.
Which is the alternative lifestyle, mine or the one where everyone at a company eats chicken with rubber gloves?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just a terminology difference I think, so we basically agree.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Simple points of comprehension here.
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.
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.
I agree with this but plot twist: in a world where “silence is violence” you cannot choose to simply opt out.
While this sounds good in principle, there are still lots of people offended by others' personal choices and mere existence, and who do consider these political issues.
Examples:
https://twitter.com/JillWohlner/status/1386767595374850061
> As a gay woman, you tell me I can't have a 'political or societal conversation' and that sounds a lot like I can't talk about my wife at work. Bc being in a gay marriage is a f'ing political statement to people.
https://twitter.com/liatrisbian/status/1386774755286601728
> And as a non-binary person, telling me to not have political or societal conversation at work sends me the message that I should hide who I am and can’t have conversations around pronouns etc.
> In fact, I have been told to not have those political or societal conversations. Worded the exact same way as that basecamp post.
> You know what that lead to? Not daring to say a fucking word while being misgendered all the time.
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.
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!
> ...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.
I mean, look at the state of this whiner: https://twitter.com/dankim/status/1387378826364260354
"In my entire professional career of 20+ years, I have never once cried at work until today."
An absolutely pathetic child of a man. Asked not to rile colleagues up with divisive political discussions, and then literally cries about it.
Divisive was not a factor.
We didn’t have lists but funny names and stupid customers were frequent topics of discussion
God knows what my name means somewhere else.
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
so I guess it was something like that.