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Basecamp Employee Handbook

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Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#121

Post by kcorbitt »

sotojuan wrote: post #102
dejv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of 11 month old, I can't imagine how people can live with just 6 or even 16 weeks of maternity leave. Even after almost one year it feels like care is (at least) full time job, which would be quite hard to outsource. In my EU country you will get up to three years of paid maternity leave per child, so I guess I am just spoiled.

Whenever I am ready to have children, I'm going remote. It's far from a perfect solution, but at least I'm close to my children.

Speaking from experience: try this for a few months before you commit to it! I worked from home for 2 years, but 6 months after my son was born I chose to switch to a job with an office. It was impossible to get anything done at home with the constant interruptions (even though I wasn't the primary caregiver). My work and family lives are both loads better now that I have proper separation between the two.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#122

Post by cdcarter »

fooster wrote: post #105
herge wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's paid out of unemployment insurance funds from the government.

I know how the leave is payed for (although most companies top up the meagre payout from the government). My question was to the point: > 50 person companies can't as a rule guarantee year-long parental leave That is clearly not legal or even true in most civilized countries.

The company isn't guaranteeing it. The government is.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#123

Post by VLM »

themcgruff wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the job req, it mentions the expectation is for 5 minute response times when you're on call (from alert to being online) and that you're on call one week a month. Is the compensation provided in line with essentially working 24 hours a day for a week once per month? https://basecamp.workable.com/j/A5A189B311 "We have a shared on call responsibility which is about 1 week (5 week days, and 2 weekend days) a…

(I run our Ops team.) The time burden goes down with the more people we have. It's still a burden though -- and our compensation (in theory) reflects that. FWIW We're doing everything we can to make this "work hours only" M-F, which we could solve by hiring tons of people immediately, but we also have other ideals like keeping the company as small as possible that we want to realize too. There's an open and ongoing d…

How do you even, like, commute to work on a 5 minute online time? Even stuff like essential food shopping, I can sometimes be more than a 5 minute walk away from the car and laptop. Or going to the bathroom.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#124

Post by bbcbasic »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #110
dejv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of 11 month old, I can't imagine how people can live with just 6 or even 16 weeks of maternity leave. Even after almost one year it feels like care is (at least) full time job, which would be quite hard to outsource. In my EU country you will get up to three years of paid maternity leave per child, so I guess I am just spoiled.

I think even 3 years is a little problematic. What are you supposed to do, take care of your child until they're 3 years old and then just go back to work? Every company should be legally obligated to provide 18 years of paid leave for each child a worker has. Anything less is signaling that they value money over the personal and family life of their employees, and it's ridiculous that I still haven't found a country…

why not set up your own business that offers this? Blaze the way.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#125

Post by BinaryIdiot »

mtrpcic wrote: post #26
josefresco wrote: post #19

37receipts@gmail.com - is there any risk to putting information like this "out there"? Sounds like an invitation for a phishing attempt.

I dont understand why they wouldn't do "receipts@37signals.com" and have it be an email address that only accepts internal mail.

I was wondering this very same thing. Even on my small side project I have all sorts of specialized rules for certain types of email addresses.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#126

Post by ThrustVectoring »

tptacek wrote: post #16
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't go that far, but I do have all my hardware encrypted (MBP, iPhone, iPad) and I power these things off so that they will be unable to trivially decrypt them when I go through customs. I wish iDevices had a thing that would let me "double click" the power button to passcode-lock the device and disable TouchID until unlocked again. I don't use the TouchID on my MBP at all.

That's not enough: they can demand that you unlock the device at the border, including powering it on. If your battery is depleted, they'll give you a charger and wait. If you refuse, they can and will confiscate the devices. You can't outsmart them: for pretty much every major country, they're better at this than you are. They can do all of this even if you're a citizen. In the US, citizens (and, to a lesser but sti…

IMO the only reasonable course of action is to have a good backup/restore system, and completely wipe your device before and after exposing it to hostile agents. When asked to explain why, say that it's a mandatory policy from your employer in order to maintain a secure working environment.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#127

Post by epsilongreedy »

Is it just me or are their "real" benefits pretty poor?

Health Care: no vision, I assume no dental. 25% copay on the PPO is on the higher end too, no?

401K: Not matching up to max. Certainly not all companies do, but still. I guess it's rare for startups.

Equity pool: (1) What happens on year 6? You don't vest any more equity? (2) This feels to me like it would not reward tenured employees as much. If you joined the company at 10 people and it IPOs at 300, you would be diluted significantly more than if you started with 1-2% of the company and diluted at investment rounds (I know they don't like to take on investor money, but just for comparison)

Seems like if you decide to work at Basecamp, you are trading some "real" benefits for the unique company culture.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#128

Post by tptacek »

mtberatwork wrote: post #100
SwellJoe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals. I'm pretty much always on the side of workers in any discussion of labor vs. employers...but, there's also small business to consider. I think there's some kind of happy medium to be found, where workers are treated well and small businesses can survive long enough to become somewha…

> That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals. As others have pointed out, maternity/paternity leave in other Western countries are heavily subsidized through government assistance programs. The costs are not completely shouldered by the business.

Many of those countries also increasingly have a two-caste system of fully-fledged full-time employees and "temp" workers of various types. If you want Salaryman culture, like they have in Japan, you can set pretty arbitrarily high expectations about leave and job security.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#129

Post by BuuQu9hu »

tptacek wrote: post #16
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't go that far, but I do have all my hardware encrypted (MBP, iPhone, iPad) and I power these things off so that they will be unable to trivially decrypt them when I go through customs. I wish iDevices had a thing that would let me "double click" the power button to passcode-lock the device and disable TouchID until unlocked again. I don't use the TouchID on my MBP at all.

That's not enough: they can demand that you unlock the device at the border, including powering it on. If your battery is depleted, they'll give you a charger and wait. If you refuse, they can and will confiscate the devices. You can't outsmart them: for pretty much every major country, they're better at this than you are. They can do all of this even if you're a citizen. In the US, citizens (and, to a lesser but sti…

I think there's still an option you are not considering. You can still use truecrypt (veracrypt now I guess) to encrypt all your information as a hidden volume (plausible deniability).

1. Create a hidden volume, hide it somewhere in your filesystem. They will be lucky if they find it (they might find it tho).

2. If they find it, give them the password which will show a bunch of family videos and some p0rn so you have an excuse to hide it.

3. lulz at them when you leave.

4. Use the other password to decrypt your real family videos and p0rn.

Am I missing something?

P.S.: Obviously, for a 5GB volume, once decrypted with the mock password, do not just store two text files...

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#130

Post by tptacek »

goseeastarwar wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 person companies can't as a rule guarantee year-long parental leave; that's just not realistic. They can do their best to make it work, but no company of this size in this kind of market can make promises like that.

I think it's fair to say that given DHH's lifestyle, Basecamp can afford to do this. No judgement on how David choses to spend his time or money, I just think it's a little disingenuous to act like they're a normal startup. It's a well-oiled lifestyle company that prints cash.

This is not remotely fair to say. To promise a year of leave for all employees, you have to be able to add headcount to cover the absence. It's not simply a year's cash salary we're talking about; it's a potentially uncapped obligation.
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