“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today” • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by irrational » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #214

koheripbal wrote: post #146

Earlier 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.

I suppose it depends on what you consider public. I once worked on a team at a Fortune 500 company where the majority of team members were Catholic. They’d often bring up religious topics while chit chatting before meetings started. I’m not Catholic, but I didn’t care. It’s not like they were ever trying to convert me or anything. I treated it like they all belonged to the same book club.

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

#272

Post by afavour » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #172

koheripbal wrote: post #146

Earlier 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've noticed an overlap between activist personalities and attention seeking personalities. Some people, either consciously or subconsciously, enjoy the dopamine hit from anger and confrontation and they will seek it out at work.

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by moistbar » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

grumblestumble wrote: post #219

corey_moncure wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someday you will look back on a world where it was okay to laugh at things, and perhaps you will even remember writing this comment.

I'm generally perceived as a pretty funny guy, I joke around with both my reports and those I report to, and, yes, even with customers all the time. I've found that I don't need to diminish others to do this, there's plenty of other crap to joke about, like the quality of our products, how long it takes to get stuff done, the UX of the tools we share, dumb programming trends. It's easy to laugh without it being at th…

Joking about the quality of your products is hurtful to the people who made them. Joking about dumb programming trends is offensive to the people who find them useful. You're still happily diminishing people, only now you won't even do it to their faces.

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

#274

Post by ezekg » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

Wolfr_ wrote: post #118

mark_l_watson wrote: post #105

I 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…

If that's really their intent why not do a layoff round with a bigger severance package for 10-20 ppl to get back to 30 people, it would be less painful than this PR disaster?

All press is good press?

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

#275

Post by 542458 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

Wolfr_ wrote: post #108

version_five wrote: post #79

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…

I think if 1/3 of your company leaves there is short-term morale loss for the ones that remain. But the loss of internal IP will be devastating. Especially if you are not big on docs and have that “just be smart and ship” approach that Basecamp has. Basecamp has a real problem hand here... they probably never expected this.

From what I’m seeing basically the entire iOS team is gone, and that app is nontrivial. It’s going to be a nightmare to get new developers up to speed without any of the existing expertise around.

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

#276

Post by kbenson » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

jolux wrote: post #257

JamesBarney wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Which, until I see more of the discussion and the list in question, I'm inclined to believe given the blog post someone else posted where they outlined the problem and their specific response.

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

#277

Post by tashoecraft » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

Baeocystin wrote: post #267

tashoecraft wrote: post #241

The problem with no religion and no politics is that it’s impossible to draw a line on what is politics or religion. Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political. Are they wrong for mentioning that they are gay (no), but to some at the company that may be trying to advance their gay political agenda. Idk what the solution is, but just blanket “No religion/no politics” is just a way to say you…

It genuinely isn't difficult in practice. Be polite and professional to your co-workers. That's it. If someone is gay, straight, whatever, it doesn't have any bearing on their work, so it's not something that's discussed. I have literally zero desire to hear about anybody's sexual relationships at work. If someone thinks that the mere presence of a gay person is an agenda, then they fail rule 1, which is be polite an…

Work is not someplace you go and leave all your personality at the door. We’re humans, we share about our lives. You act like describing someone’s “sexual relationship” is x rated, but merely stating “my wife/husband” reveals their sexual relationship and 100% will come up in work.

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

#278

Post by stormbrew » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

Baeocystin wrote: post #267

tashoecraft wrote: post #241

The problem with no religion and no politics is that it’s impossible to draw a line on what is politics or religion. Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political. Are they wrong for mentioning that they are gay (no), but to some at the company that may be trying to advance their gay political agenda. Idk what the solution is, but just blanket “No religion/no politics” is just a way to say you…

It genuinely isn't difficult in practice. Be polite and professional to your co-workers. That's it. If someone is gay, straight, whatever, it doesn't have any bearing on their work, so it's not something that's discussed. I have literally zero desire to hear about anybody's sexual relationships at work. If someone thinks that the mere presence of a gay person is an agenda, then they fail rule 1, which is be polite an…

> I have literally zero desire to hear about anybody's sexual relationships at work.

So you shut it down when people talk about going on a date with their spouse or talk about their kids?

Because literally, this is the bar a lot of homophobes exist at to consider a conversation about a gay relationship 'political' or even religious, and they will act on it.

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

#279

Post by fallingknife » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

tashoecraft wrote: post #241

The problem with no religion and no politics is that it’s impossible to draw a line on what is politics or religion. Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political. Are they wrong for mentioning that they are gay (no), but to some at the company that may be trying to advance their gay political agenda. Idk what the solution is, but just blanket “No religion/no politics” is just a way to say you…

> Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political.

It's not, though. I've worked with a lot of gay people, and none have ever brought politics into work. This is just a BS argument by the people who do. There is a legitimate point about where do you draw the line (e.g. is bitching about CA taxes "politics"), but this is not it.

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

#280

Post by coldtea » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

grumblestumble wrote: post #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 a…

>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.

The list is not the issue here.

In an ideal world, the list would be seen as an innocent inside joke, and be totally not newsworthy. But millenials (not all: some, enough to change the culture around this) don't know how to take a joke. Like the children of hippies turned yuppies, Gen X successors turned prudes.

If you have a name like Jonathan Lovesturds, sorry, but the name is funny, and you should be expect people to ocassionally make fun about it, including in companies you deal with. It is what it is, and it's not the end of the world, nor some huge abuse (my surname had pun potential, so I got some of this as a kid, big effin' deal).

The "politics at work" thing would be relevant and legit if it was for e.g. unionizing, abuse of power from some higher up, the company doing shady business (e.g. Google and military deals, Facebook etc.) etc.

But in 2021 this more often than not degenerates in people making a power-play, abusing identity politics and other fashionable talking points, to increase their influence in the company, attack others they don't like, and so on.

Pretending the list was about "racism" (when it had absolutely nothing to do with that, aside from: "also contains a small percentage of foreign names that sound funny on top of the anglosaxon such") is also in this very vein.