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“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

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Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#81

They offered a severance of 6 months salary if you've worked there for 3+ years... I would be tempted by that offer regardless of any other circumstances, especially in today's competitive jobs market.

People are also going to be tempted to not deal with the backlash of staying onboard despite a fairly generous buyout offer.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#82

They offered a severance of 6 months salary if you've worked there for 3+ years... I would be tempted by that offer regardless of any other circumstances, especially in today's competitive jobs market.

I suspect many people would leave many jobs if offered a comparable payout, particularly if their skills are valuable

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If you liked “How to build a blog in 15 minutes with Rails,” check out the sequel, ‘How to destroy Rails in 15 minutes with a blog.’”(From https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1388174804985868289 )

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…

At least two developers resigned from both Basecamp and the Rails core team today.

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.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#84

If a third of the people were willing to leave the company over a decision, it sounds like there was a real, meaningful mismatch in priorities. Which is fine, but it's for the best for everyone to end that mismatch.

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.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I liked the job I would take it. Six months paid holiday would be too good to pass up.

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.

[deleted]

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#86
post #3

Isn’t that only 20 people? Edit: as in, this is misleadingly phrased as if it’s a large collective action

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."

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#87
post #18

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).

Depends

I will be looking and reaching out to them soon. A) they are now looking for a lot of people. B) I fully agree with their idea about apolitical work spaces, and I know a lot of folks that do as well. I have quit jobs due to the BLM fanfare, you are either with us or against us mentality in the workplace where I just wanted to do my job and get paid to do so.

edit: I chose BLM because it was the big thing last year. Not a racist thing, but being 5000km away from all that, and still have people 'demanding' me I wear/use BLM support things was too much.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#88

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 thi…

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.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#89
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.

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