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Changes at Basecamp

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#321

Post by tshaddox »

imgabe wrote: post #289
drewbug01 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banned talking about politics, and my entire point is that my participation in idle chit-chat, when it indirectly confirms my sexuality, is coded as political and thus off-limits. And that this tends to get weaponized against disadvantaged groups.

I don't doubt that there are people who will try to claim that any mention of a same-sex relationship is political. Based on everything Jason and DHH have ever said or done, do you think that their intent with this policy is to forbid people from mentioning their same sex partners? Do you believe that they would take seriously any complaint in that regard? There is definitely a spectrum of behavior contained in "poli…

I have no idea who Jason and DHH are beyond this announcement, so I have no idea which political discussions they intend to prohibit in practice. But clearly there have been some political discussions there that they intend to prohibit now, so it’s not crazy to give same-sex marriage as an example of a prominent divisive highly-charged political topic in the United States. What’s a better example that you think these two people would intend to prohibit?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#322

Post by wmf »

valyagolev wrote: post #21
agd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context is the same as many other companies - employee activists creating strife and division internally and causing other employees to feel uncomfortable.

thanks for the inference. I wonder about the particulars, though

At Coinbase, employees demanded that the company take an official public position on Black Lives Matter. Probably the same was going on at Basecamp.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#323

Post by mempko »

ehershey wrote: post #269
mempko wrote: post #111

The "no committees" takes away autonomy. The "no politics" takes away purpose. All you are left with is mastery. They just killed intrinsic motivation. See Daniel Pink.

You’ve got it exactly backwards. Committees take away autonomy by introducing external influence. Politics by definition is guiding policy, not acting with purpose within the confines of policy.

For any given decision you make, you either only affect yourself or you can affect others. Similarly there are people making decisions that could affect you. In the situation where a decision could affect you, wouldn't you want to participate in that decision? That's what democracy allows you to do.

committees increase your autonomy because you can participate in decision making that could affect you.

obviously if it ONLY affects you and nobody else, then a committee should not be involved.

The alternative is someone unilaterally making decisions for many people, and where I'm from, that's called authoritarianism.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#324

Post by madeforthispost »

Had to make a throwaway because I was nervous to discuss opinions even remotely related to politics with my personal account, but wanted to share regardless.

This is an interesting move and I really don't think we are getting the whole story on what caused such a drastic change. It's interesting because, for the most part, I think it is safe to assume that most basecamp employees are liberal leaning, including the founders. My first thought was, why not just deal with these specific problem employees individually? Well, surely they must have tried. I can't imagine going public with such a drastic change if they didn't first at least try to correct the behavior of misbehaving employees. What's misbehaving? I would classify that as slinging personal insults/threats across the room. Would you fire these employees if they didn't stop this behavior? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like something basecamp would do. In fact, it might make it _worse_ for them from a PR perspective if they did this, even if the employees were completely out of line for what is appropriate workplace conversation.

So not sure. In this situation, I would give them the benefit of the doubt(other than on the poor communication). I've never worked at a place where politics was discussed heavily in either work chat or in person (outside of friends talking with friends, which IMO, is perfectly acceptable), but I've seen some conversations (such as the leaked Github chat) that are just plain toxic and I wouldn't feel comfortable rebuttaling extreme views without fear of retribution. I personally don't think that people should have to deal with that in a work environment, but just my 2c. I guess it's just where do you draw the line, and internally, they must have hit that point.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#325

Post by Spooky23 »

tyingq wrote: post #213
stephsmithio wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I hear the, "But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion", it's kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, "But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy." F…

I don't feel like it's a strawman. I don't know the culture there, but what about: - Talking about unions, or pay equity (Might be illegal to ban either) - "Hey Jodie, my partner and I are marching in a Gay pride parade this weekend, wanna come?" (Is that political at Basecamp?) - Some ex-military employees form an informal group to welcome and mentor new employees coming out of the military. (Is that political?) - O…

The whataboutism is the precisely the issue.

No actual union will encourage or allow union business on company forums, for example. If you want to talk to Jodie about marching in a parade, give her a call or message her offline.

I’ve worked for employers where it is illegal to discuss politics with their systems. Honestly, it made for a great work environment... I don’t need to know or care whether you’re a Baptist minister, a drag queen or both in your spare time. I just need to work with you.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#326

Post by cozuya »

kiawe_fire wrote: post #311
drewbug01 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely But this isn’t what I’m saying: I’m saying that plainly anodyne workplace chitchat that anecdotally confirms that I am a gay man is coded as political speech by many people. I don’t know if you misread me or not, but if you didn’t then it…

I don’t think I misread you, and I think I fully understand what you mean - to some, simply saying “my husband and I” triggers the feeling that you’re shoving an agenda in their face. I get it, and I don’t disagree at all. But you immediately lept to “conservative politics” as the one opposition that might object to the very existence of somebody. Clearly, without any context, if ever a word were to be said about thi…

[flagged]

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#327

Post by spondyl »

izgzhen wrote: post #287
spondyl wrote: post #88

Does this mean that all workers and contractors will be treated the same, and given free range data access, regardless of the politics of their home country (ie China or Russia)? This seems like one area that is usually unavoidable in tech companies.

What is banned is discussion of society and politics, not their existence.

I'm making a silly, unfair comparison to be sure. It's just an interesting line of thought, not necessarily a credible one ;)

I can imagine that the first time such policies came up could have come from security or legal teams discussing foreign politics around the water cooler and thinking "We should perhaps have some policy in place, just in case".

Fundamentally, that's no different than say; implementing a D&I policy or climate actions in response to employees discussing news stories on Slack, in my mind anyway.

Just going off first principles, as us HNers love to do, I can imagine if you never had political discussion in the first place, policies such as "offsetting perceived risk of foreign governments" would never be bothered with until they're actually tangibly impacting you (ie literal foreign spies or whatever)

The whole thing is kinda moot anyway since I'm sure HR and legal teams will be discussing these things in some capacity unavoidable, just not in view of other employees.

Perhaps even more importantly, what defines "politics" is extremely vague in the first place.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#328

Post by [deleted] »

hderms wrote: post #238
drewbug01 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area has always been a bit ahead of the curve there - but my point isn’t just an LGBT thing... that’s the example most relevant to me personally. People of color could probably talk about similar issues related to this kind of policy. Of note: Basecamp was at least until recently based primarily in the Midwest, in Chicago. Bay Area culture influences them in the same way it influences all tech culture, but th…

Chicago is pretty LGBTQ friendly. It's culturally more midwestern than say, NYC, but it's not like we're talking about St. Louis here.

[deleted]

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#329

Post by imgabe »

tshaddox wrote: post #321
imgabe wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that there are people who will try to claim that any mention of a same-sex relationship is political. Based on everything Jason and DHH have ever said or done, do you think that their intent with this policy is to forbid people from mentioning their same sex partners? Do you believe that they would take seriously any complaint in that regard? There is definitely a spectrum of behavior contained in "poli…

I have no idea who Jason and DHH are beyond this announcement, so I have no idea which political discussions they intend to prohibit in practice. But clearly there have been some political discussions there that they intend to prohibit now, so it’s not crazy to give same-sex marriage as an example of a prominent divisive highly-charged political topic in the United States. What’s a better example that you think these…

To me it seems very clear that merely mentioning the fact of a same sex relationship is not a political statement.

If person A mentions they are in a same sex relationship, then person B goes on a rant about how it should be illegal and how dare you bring it up, then to me person B is the one making the discussion political, not person A.

I do see how if person B is the boss, this would be a problem, but I don't think Jason and DHH are that person B.

As an example, here is a Twitter thread about another organization that dealt with an excess of "political discussion"

https://twitter.com/graceisforyou/status/1386739669866455043

That is the sort of thing I imagine Basecamp is trying to prevent.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#330

Post by madeforthispost »

madeforthispost wrote: post #324

Had to make a throwaway because I was nervous to discuss opinions even remotely related to politics with my personal account, but wanted to share regardless. This is an interesting move and I really don't think we are getting the whole story on what caused such a drastic change. It's interesting because, for the most part, I think it is safe to assume that most basecamp employees are liberal leaning, including the fo…

I guess, I have more to say. This is such an interesting choice from so many perspectives. Thinking about it more, I think the blanket banning of all political discussion is kind of a silly notion. Now, as many others have already pointed out in this thread, employees may be wondering what's okay to discuss at all. But like they said in the post (and as others have seen from internal leaked chats), political conversations and opinions can get out of hand and become extremely toxic. Fast. It's a bit surprising how they handled this and how they possibly figured it could go over well. Especially considering their apparent already open political discussion friendly environment. Like I said before, I've never been involved in a company that has active public political discussions. To me, this does actually seem like breeding grounds for toxic coworker relations. However, as I already stated, it seems like this was already part of their internal culture. I think the right decision would just be to ban toxic arguments (and also define what a toxic argument is), and settling on a "agree to disagree" type of policy. Idk. Tough one.
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