421–430 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Bigbuttson an actual name? That is funny to an English speaker.
Just as funny as something like Takeshita, which is a real Japanese surname. If I was working with someone with that last name I definitely wouldn’t bring it up.
I have my own tribe, consisting of my family and friends, and they won't fire me when the economy goes south.
Sure the targeting might not be quite optimal, but if it gets the job done...
If a third of the people were willing to leave the company over a decision, it sounds like there was a real, meaningful mismatch in priorities. Which is fine, but it's for the best for everyone to end that mismatch.
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…
That's literally 99.99% of employers.
> I'm not saying I demand the ability to be rude and awful, or go on political tirades, or anything even vaguely like that.
Based on your initial response, it sounds like that's exactly what you're saying. They have a problem with employees not being able to speak about politics without some of them going on tirades, and some of them accusing others of acting in bad faith, and more assuming those that try to refrain are implicitly agreeing with one stance or another.
> Telling me I have to avoid entire categories of normal conversation is itself authoritarian politicization of the workplace, and I'd happily tell him to go fuck himself, too.
And you can! And they did! These people were not only there by choice, they were given a very good way out if they didn't like the change. But I also hope none of them that left because they feel the need to proselytize at work don't come work with me.
But also, let's consider when the types of interactions being described at this company became "normal conversation".
> But I spend more time talking to people I work with than any other set of people.
Hopefully primarily about work, at least when working. They aren't paying you to talk about politics. If you're doing it outside work, nobody cares. Basecamp doesn't care either. They made that clear. Just keep it off their company communications. You can even talk politics privately with your friends if you work there, because they aren't going to turn you in (and if they would, then maybe you should consider why and maybe not bother them with stuff like that).
Most people aren't hired to speak their inner thoughts to the rest of the company. Most people don't try to. Somehow it's a problem when people are told explicitly what they should have already internalized, please don't.
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.
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.
If it was layoffs, you just do them. You don't explain and you don't create a large number of now-ex employees going to Twitter to say why you suck.
If it was downsizing to something more comfortable for the founders, again, more easily done with the same buyout package, and much less of a black eye by just saying "we want a smaller company, so we're putting our money behind doing right by everyone as we get what we want."
If it was getting rid of agitators, it's actually easier to fire them and deal with the lawsuits. Most companies have some amount of ongoing legal expense, and getting sued isn't that bad if you're not smoking-gun discriminatory. You can always file a lawsuit, but it's much harder to get somewhere with a lawsuit, and there's a reason corporate attorneys get big bucks--that Basecamp has to pay.
The best explanation is the most obvious one: they made a colossal blunder in handling this and have footgunned their company badly enough that there will now likely be a second wave of buyout accepters who are people who don't want to stick around to clean up the mess.
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.
Even with an amazing buyout like this, I feel like you have to be in that relatively narrow space of “no spouse, no kids, good health, pretty young” to be able to walk away from health insurance.
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…
One of their iOS devs who left has been incredibly vocal about how he no longer felt like this was somewhere he could work because of this policy and its effects, so I think you're plainly wrong (or insisting that there's no way we could take a person at their word). https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn It's a lot more likely that the 1/3rd that left both left because they were unhappy with the policy, and because they…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, I know the message in the original communication was very appealing to a lot of people, so they could get more interested candidates because of that. I wonder if what you'll see is companies sorting into "politics encouraged" vs "politics discouraged" environments, and will be interesting to see the outcomes of these different types of workplaces.
I don't think the public blog posts written by the leaders was the "original communication". There was a lot of internal drama[1] that led up to it (and IMO, some poor decisions made). Perhaps that's what you were referring to as appealing to a lot of people, if so, then yowsers... 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708
> “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’
I had originally thought it was more in line with the Coinbase decision, which was more specifically about taking a stance with respect to the BLM movement, which is an external political discussion, vs. what to do about sensitive issues within your company. Discussing how to handle issues like the "Best Names Ever" list that are internal to your company isn't "politics", it's called running a company.
Employees think they can act like unionized and destroy startups over their political sway - - that is BS.