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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”

#431

Post by themacguffinman »

DiNovi wrote: post #400
coldtea wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In an ideal world you don’t work at a company that maintains a list of customer names to laugh it. And if you did and someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list and they tell you why, you don’t self-immolate. Pretending this list and subsequent lack of discipline isn’t about the founders vanity is very ignorant

> And if you did and someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list and they tell you why, you don’t self-immolate.

This isn't accurate. DHH openly admitted that the list circulating was a big failure that fell on the founders and the company, an admission that was positively received by most employees. The explosive part of the scandal starts when some employees insisted that the list contributed to genocidal attitudes and DHH rather aggressively pushed back on this point, saying that this is an unproductive escalation of the discussion (and then DHH himself ironically escalated the discussion even further).

> He told me today that attempting to link the list of customer names to potential genocide represented a case of “catastrophizing” — one that made it impossible for any good-faith discussions to follow. Presumably, any employees who are found contributing to genocidal attitudes should be fired on the spot — and yet nobody involved seemed to think that contributing to or viewing the list was a fireable offense. If that’s the case, Hansson said, then the pyramid of hate had no place in the discussion. To him, it escalated employees’ emotions past the point of being productive.

Pointing out the problematic nature of the list was not the trigger for this. The trigger was a specific accusation made about the political impact of the list. The founders were clearly trying not to be a company that maintains a list of customer names to laugh at.

[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...

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

#432

Post by sircastor »

rsj_hn wrote: post #390
baron816 wrote: post #181

What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions. People have their families, their jobs, and maybe a couple of friends and that’s about it. They need an outlet to push the ideas and causes they care about. The workplace is one of the few places where they can feel like they’re having an impact, but that’s not really appr…

> What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions. Why should workplaces serve as political-outlet therapy locations because people can't think of other organizations to use for this purpose? There are, in fact, countless numbers of political organizations and groups in the U.S. and you are free to start your own if you…

I think this is a side effect of American obsession with work. We really build our identities and lives around our jobs, and our corporations want and expect is to be there all the time.

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

#433

Post by throw14082020 »

I spent a lot of time reading about this... TLDR: Basecamp had a list of funny names which originated a long time ago. You can imagine that certain ethnicities have names which sound funnier than a common name, so these names go on the list. Some people think its racist, others don't. These people who don't think its racist still admit its rude/ unprofessional though, just not racist.

Anyway, there was too much political arguing going on in the company, and the founders offered people they can get paid a few months salary to leave, and some people are taking them up on this offer. "About one-third".

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

#435

Post by mfer »

distribot wrote: post #378
mfer wrote: post #159

Another way to look at this is... job openings are coming to Basecamp and people know the culture is a no politics at work place. I bet a lot of people will sign up for that. Enough to fill the openings.

Not really a buyers market rn. Maybe this ideological position will specifically attract people who feel alienated by SV culture, maybe not. But there's no way that losing a large fraction of your engineering team is anything but a disaster.

Loosing that many people is going to cause a hard time there.

I wouldn't call it SV culture. I think it's more the culture of people who are trying to use companies to promote their political ideals.

I grew up and first worked in a region where your employer was not your everything. People worked (often times with a diverse set of people) and then outside of work were part of other groups for their interests and ideologies. That separation enabled people from many walks of life to work together. I'd like to see more of this.

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

#436

Post by DSingularity »

jimmaswell wrote: post #370
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…

To me the world's gone crazy where the word "deplorable" is unironically attached to some people making fun of some names. Unprofessional is the furthest I'd take it. Something you get a finger wag for. As a customer why would I even care if someone on the other end thought my name was funny as long as my shipment arrived? This generation truly is absurdly sensitive.

Especially when you juxtapose superficially-and-barely offensive things like this with ongoing things like war which are truly deplorable in real human suffering they cause.

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

#437

Post by Dah00n »

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…

>1 / 3 left because it would increase their wealth or give them the summer covid took away last year.

Citation needed. Did you talk to all of them? I have only seen people say the opposite.

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

#438

Post by Kye »

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…

Quite a few who left said the policy was the reason when they posted about leaving on Twitter.

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

#439

Post by rodgerd »

tdfx wrote: post #269
_jal wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Any employer that abruptly told me I needed to watch what I said at work would lose me, too. You don't already feel this way? There's a long list of things that would have you packing your desk if you discussed them at any other company. Society has already decided certain extreme positions are too brand damaging or disruptive to tolerate. This policy seems to reflect that a not-insignificant portion of the populat…

> There's a long list of things that would have you packing your desk if you discussed them at any other company.

Yeah, like pulling extracts of customer names to circulate and make fun of them. That mis-use of customer data, and tinged as it is with racial and xenophobic overtones, would have me sacked for misconduct in no time flat.

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

#440

Post by throwaway526874 »

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.

> getting too uppity

Uppity has a racist history.

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