I would be interested in how many people quit that were involved in the DE&I council: "Nonetheless, the DE&I council attracted significant support. More than a third of the company — 20 out of roughly 58 employees — volunteered to help. They began examining Basecamp’s hiring processes, which vendors the company works with, how Basecamp employees socialize, and what speakers they might invite to one of the all-remote company’s twice-yearly in-person gatherings." - from: What really happened at Basecamp - https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
251–260 of 1001 posts
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our experience when we issued our "No Politics / No Religion" policy at work was very positive. The few people who had an issue with it, subsequently quit or were terminated, and many of their co-workers actually thanked us afterwards for it. We didn't have to pay them to leave. One tried to use the company social media accounts to advance her politics, so we fired her, and the other person became frustrated that she…
I'm confused. Aren't such discussions banned by social norms everywhere for a very long time? I can't recall any public political or religious discussions at any place I've worked in decades.
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Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#253I have a different take on this, different than most comments here: I think that the founders/owners knew what they were doing based on reading their book and lightly following them. I have never been a customer. I know that I am just guessing, but they might have been making the lifestyle decision that they wanted a smaller and more focused company that was more joyful to manage/run. Also, I have some sympathy for a…
> Life is about so much more than politics As someone who isn't from the US, it is very hard to comprehend. There is a meme about Americans. You meet an American, and ten minutes later they are drilling you about politics. And I understand why US society is like this, I am familiar with US political history. But it is very, very, very weird at a personal level. Like why do this? You are breaking a person's whole real…
How recent is that meme? Politics has long been decisive in America, but it seems like only in the past 20 years has it become something people have been become forward and culturally tribal about. Does that impression hold up for non-Americans too?
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isn't what they said. What they said was: people who created the list went off on some weird tangent about the list being the first step towards genocide, if you have a problem with the list, you shouldn't contribute to the list (the subtle point here is that people who tend to be most active about these things usually feel guilty, management said the list was bad, management said it shouldn't have happened...wh…
[1] is a useful overview. Somebody posted the ADL's "pyramid of hate"[2], which links biased views and actions as necessary (but not sufficient) preconditions to genocide. Some people saw this as going too far since "obviously" anyone who contributes to genocide should be fired, while the whole point of the pyramid is anybody can perpetuate these really early preconditions (and at the end of the day we should encoura…
As a somewhat ironic illustration about how pyramids of behaviour work, in this case keeping a funny name list at work was a precondition for a third (or even more) of an already small company resigning.
That doesn't mean that keeping such a list 100% inevitably leads to losing so much of your workforce or that someone who points out that it could escalate that far (given enough time and poor handling) is "accusing" you of not wanting to retain your employees. What it means is that you should nip such things in the bud and thus simply never have to play the guessing game of "will this go catastrophically badly or not?".
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#255A 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…
Our experience when we issued our "No Politics / No Religion" policy at work was very positive. The few people who had an issue with it, subsequently quit or were terminated, and many of their co-workers actually thanked us afterwards for it. We didn't have to pay them to leave. One tried to use the company social media accounts to advance her politics, so we fired her, and the other person became frustrated that she…
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Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#256I have a different take on this, different than most comments here: I think that the founders/owners knew what they were doing based on reading their book and lightly following them. I have never been a customer. I know that I am just guessing, but they might have been making the lifestyle decision that they wanted a smaller and more focused company that was more joyful to manage/run. Also, I have some sympathy for a…
I'm kind of tired of the sanitization of work thing. Human beings are grimy, sweaty creatures. People make friends, people dislike other people, people speak with candor, people lie, people want to have sex with each other. "No being human at work" is ridiculous IMO. I value and understand the need for a professional environment, but it seems we are playing to the lowest common denominator and trying to create one size fits all rule sets to avoid overtly saying which problem we are trying to solve: that the politics of those people are toxic and they ruin everything they touch. You know what people I'm talking about. Everyone here knows what people I'm talking about. Why don't we just admit what's going on here and make the very specific rules we need to make to finally put a stop to it?
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#257A 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…
> they refused to take any action on it Is this true? My understanding is they said this was unacceptable and apologized for not stopping their employees from disseminating this list earlier. I guess people wanted a stronger disciplinary response to people who contributed the list and they refused?
They said it was unacceptable but denied that it was evidence of larger problems, basically.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#258Interestingly the employees who left have the best career prospects. Entire iOS team, head of marketing and head of product team. The 6 months free money is hard for anyone entering a strong job market to pass up. A lot of comments seem to think 1/3 left because of the no politics policy. 1 / 3 left because it would increase their wealth or give them the summer covid took away last year. How many people would leave y…
Then, I guess they are all lying on their social media accounts? I mean you can also leave and say nothing. I agree that it wasn't this one decision...but if you can make a generous severance offer and not only does your company implode but all your senior leadership leaves, then probably your internal culture isn't what you thought it was and/or something else stinks and/or they all felt that strongly about this one decision.
But even then...if you are a senior person that has been somewhere for the better part of a decade, you have surely both made and seen bad decisions made before. If you think that there is trust and mutual understanding and collaborative work is possible, you work through those.
(Not everyone in tech solely cares about money. And the ones that do siphon their way to certain gravitational points and/or do the jump ship every 2-3 years to negotiate a new salary and not a raise...)
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#259So all the free speech maximalists are here in force, right? …right?
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#260They 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 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.
The deal's almost too good to pass up.
I'll program and be professional at company A just as happily as I would at company B.
I'm already professional and apolitical at work, I don't feel I stand to gain much being otherwise.
So I think you'd be inadvertently discriminating against people who are simply interested in getting 2 salaries for 6 months.