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

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

#411

Post by ljm »

reachtarunhere wrote: post #176
klelatti wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really sounds like JF / DHH really didn't want to have to deal with the issue - minimal disciplinary action and then push all discussion away from official channels. But I guess that it reveals what probably should have been clear about Basecamp - it's a vehicle for the expression / gratification of the founders - financially, emotionally and intellectually. And the loss of staff / possible impact on the company (…

I don't see any issue with that. They get their gratification and the employees get paid for providing their work as a service.

I don't see an issue per se, but it makes it clear that they've got the money to live outside of the sphere of politics and society that their employees exist within.

They can afford to make it a non-issue for themselves. And so they have. An empathetic option was available to them (own up to the stupid silly names list) but they cast it aside.

As a consequence, they've lost a lot of respect both in their workforce and in the court of public opinion. I don't intend to put much stock in whatever else they have to say now.

And for me it's not about the politics at work bit. It's the rest of it that is getting less attention. Cringeworthy Huxley quotes, paternalistic benefits, etc. etc.

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

#412

Post by jarek83 »

Chatting with work-mates about some funny name is what probably most (all?) of us done and will be doing. A chat fades away in a minute after the laugh. But setting up a list like that which goes viral inside company? That's just plain childish. What an embarrassing thing for any mature person that had to acknowledge the list.

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

#413

Post by rodgerd »

dbt00 wrote: post #72
yosito wrote: post #60

Earlier 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.

They've lost their iOS development team, but kept the employees who think that spending their work hours pulling customer names from their production environment to make fun of them is a good use of their day. So much winning!

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

#414

Post by mempko »

coldtea wrote: post #280
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 n…

The only ones who made a 'power play' were DHH and Jason. They made it clear they don't want employee input, criticism.

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

#415

Post by easton »

sbierwagen wrote: post #182
notJim wrote: post #99

A 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.

Elsewhere in this thread it's said that in the compensation package there's a big payout if the company is acquired. Though I can't imagine how huge it would have to be that paying each employee six months of salary is cheaper.

They created that rule with the plan that Basecamp would never be bought out or acquired though. If they were planning something we would've heard something, although their business model/culture is basically the opposite of something that someone would want to acquire. It's biggest feature is that it doesn't feel like enterprise(tm) software.

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

#416

Post by blarg1 »

achenatx wrote: post #234

I run a small politics forum. I was able to get down to one rule that seems to work. No ad hominem or insults of any groups, people, or policies. People can talk about why they like things or why things will or wont work. People continually try to work around them and sometimes there are comments that are borderline. Most people are very respectful and libs and conservatives can debate. An example of trying to bypass…

> Most people are very respectful and libs and conservatives can debate.

Can you work on curing cancer next?

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

#417

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

sbierwagen wrote: post #182
notJim wrote: post #99

A 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.

Elsewhere in this thread it's said that in the compensation package there's a big payout if the company is acquired. Though I can't imagine how huge it would have to be that paying each employee six months of salary is cheaper.

I highly doubt losing 30% of the talent, including a big chunk of built up institutional knowledge, is going to make them a more attractive buyout target. Would you want to acquire a company with maybe a little too much internal political discussion? Or one that just spent a million of dollars to buy out their entire iOS team, low and high performers alike? To me it seems like I'd much prefer the company with the iOS team, all other things being equal.

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

#418

Post by shalmanese »

Important to note, the number is not the number of Basecamp employees leaving, it is the number of employees who have thus far publically tweeted they are leaving.

Of Basecamp's 57 employees, as of right now, there are 20 who have announced a departure on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_breeeeen_/status/1388198266651688963

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

#419

Post by rodgerd »

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…

The Rails trademark is entirely and exclusively owned by DHH, so whatever you may think, it is in fact, entirely his toy.

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

#420

Post by disgrunt »

deanCommie wrote: post #120
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…

> no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way; Agreed. But frequently calling that out IS what is deemed "political" by the person who was "just expressing an opinion", and "i just have a different ideology from you" > ; no one should really care much about other peoples’ politics. Some people's politics is other people's human rights. Would you want to wor…

Do you consider someone holding an opinion you find offensive to be a human right?
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