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.
“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
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Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#92A 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 a…
Is Bigbuttson an actual name? That is funny to an English speaker.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#93I 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…
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.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#94I 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).
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.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#95I 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…
Agreed
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#96I 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).
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.
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...
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#97WTF Twitter? 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.
You mean a modal on HN??
That has to be a bug in browser. Maybe even security bug?
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#99A 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.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#100If 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 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.