131–140 of 1001 posts
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 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
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…
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 a…
Is Bigbuttson an actual name? That is funny to an English speaker.
Didn't Coinbase do something similar and only have 5% take the buyout option? How is this so different from what Coinbase did?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I spend more time talking to people I work with than any other set of people. Aren't they a remote company?
"Changes at Basecamp" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944192 ( 4 days ago, 774 comments ). Which is a feel good piece about management philosophy ( a bit back to our roots ) and does not mention layoffs once.
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
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 a…