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

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

#331

Post by coldtea » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

It's sad that the target for those employees' "political disruption" is Basecamp.

One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so, pays well, embraces remote work, gives back to open source (RoR, etc.), and has good products, with no shady anti-consumer practices, that people actually like and pay for (as opposed to somewhere where they sell ads and attention).

It's like these people took a stance against the nicest possible employees this side of a hippie co-op.

Those leaving: (1) given the IT demand, will get a job elsewhere pronto, (2) will get the money of the buyout, and (3) will get to play the principled martyrs, too. It's a triple win for hypocrisy.

At some point in the future, this will be marked as a time when cancel culture jumped the shark in IT.

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

#332

Post by Rapzid » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #146

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…

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…

> We later discovered that one of them had been considering reporting us to the state financial authorities because she didn't agree with our policy of accruing interest on client debts

Wow, and I thought the HR complaint against David was nuts. Sounds like basecamp was infiltrated by Ben Kuchera's or Randi Harpers. Can't recall the name of the person GitHub miss-hired.. Recall a few years back seemed like everyone was hiring "diversity consultants" or something only to find out they were creating toxic environments by seizing political power via threatening to "cancel" anyone that didn't think and say the right things. This set them up as a type of "thought leader", or perhaps even a cult type leader, where they controlled things..

That was a weird trend and perhaps the tail end of an age in the post-gamergate era.

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

#333

Post by bdowling » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #300

ipaddr wrote: post #152

Interestingly 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…

heres the list of folks who have publicly announced their departure: https://workflowy.com/s/basecamp-resignation/qrBBdTQydmTKLu0... probably has more context to each in their threads

I read the first tweet in each of those resignations. Out of 19 resignations, most give no reason for quitting. Five or so tweets cite "recent changes and new policies" as the reason. That reason is so vague that it may refer to the new policy of paying 6 months severance to employees who want to quit.

edit: Excellent point below that the severance agreements probably included a non-disparagement clause, which would restrict what those who took the deal would feel safe disclosing publicly.

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

#334

Post by wwwdonohue » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

mhneu wrote: post #290

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…

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” -Elie Wiesel Choosing to not discuss politics is fine. But if you do that, you’re making a choice: you’re choosing to take the side of those who prefer political decisions to be made by a small elite, without feedback from people like us. You’re choosing not to weigh in.

But do we really have to draw these lines at work, during work hours? The office is not a public square. It’s not a place where you give feedback to people in power...

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

#335

Post by otachack » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

arcturus17 wrote: post #319

mhneu wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” -Elie Wiesel Choosing to not discuss politics is fine. But if you do that, you’re making a choice: you’re choosing to take the side of those who prefer political decisions to be made by a small elite, without feedback from people like us. You’re choosing not to weigh in.

You’re free to discuss politics outside of the workplace to your heart’s content, gather with other activists and even found your own political organization in your free time. You’re also free to quit your job and devote yourself entirely to, you know, politics. So I don’t buy any of your argument.

I totally get your argument but how do we address issues where there's implicit bias being applied to our work? AKA mostly white, males programming in potentially biased features.

Work is not a politically/religiously clean room environment whether we like it or not.

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

#336

Post by haihaibye » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:37 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?

Purging overly political employees is probably illegal, so they made a policy then offered $ to voluntarily self select themselves out.

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

#337

Post by rubatuga » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:37 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…

I would say it's actually hard to make jokes that aren't at the expense of others. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it.

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

#338

Post by hire_charts » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

xbar wrote: post #289

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Workplace is inappropriate for politics" is a really ahistorical stance to take. All the things that you enjoy nowadays (8 hr work day, 5 day work week, no child labour, etc) came about as a result of organized politics at the workplace.

Nope. Those are all the results of laws which came from politically elected officials who made policy. None of my employers limited work hours or work days or children at work because of political discourse in the office. Nor did historical companies from 3 generations ago when such laws were passed. All of those laws were created because companies did NOT implement such limits.

Who do you think convinced the politicians to make it happen? Lobbyists? (Ha.) It came out of labor movements! Strikes and walkouts! In 1867 workers shut down the entire Chicago economy for a week! (Congress then passed an 8-hour law in 1868, but that was just one step along the way.)

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

#339

Post by drailsusers » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #34

marbletiles wrote: post #29

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…

Maybe Rails will survive but what about Turbo and the rest of the Hotwire framework? Turbolinks was pretty much abandoned and Turbo is short of a proper release with the lead developer leaving.

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

#340

Post by rufus_foreman » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #66

fighterpilot wrote: post #35

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.

$273k means you would be hitting the top marginal federal income tax rate and also the net investment income tax. If you are in a state with high state income tax rates, your additional $100k nets you $50k. Of which maybe $10k goes to replace the post-tax income you lost for the month you spent looking for a job.

$40k in the bank is a nice bonus, but I wouldn't quit a job I liked for it.