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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”

#481

Post by dang »

taftster wrote: post #460

Doesn't Basecamp have something like ~50 employees? It's a very small company. The concerns around the current issues scale to larger companies just the same. But saying "1/3 of employees" doesn't really amount to that many people, in this specific case. It feels more hyperbole and click bait to phrase it that way. I think the impact of this statement would be more interesting with a big company. If Amazon or Microso…

> I'm guessing not the most popular opinion, let the downvotes commence.

Please don't break the site guidelines like this. Your comment would be just fine without it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#482

Post by philistine »

DSingularity wrote: post #436
jimmaswell wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is exactly the point! We tolerate war in the world because we tolerate smaller bad things. If we stop tolerating the smaller bad things, we can build a better society that no longer tolerates the really bad stuff.

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

#483

Post by predaking »

grey-area wrote: post #479

I don't think this is really about making fun of people's names, or holocaust references. It's about power. The managers at basecamp were unhappy that their employees asserted power over them in the workplace, and decided to assert their own power in turn over what they view as their personal fiefdom and retract some of the freedoms they had so graciously granted their workers, because those ungrateful workers actual…

Oh man, 100 thousand percent agreed with this. I'm not sure why this seems to have escaped the notice of a lot of the discussion here. If you suddenly are confronted with the fact that the company you worked for isn't what you thought it was, you're left with a pretty significant choice to make. If I had something like that happen to me, I wouldn't have needed the severance to bolt.

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

#484

Post by tomp »

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…

> 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.

After reading the article linked here in the comments a few times - "What really happened at BaseCamp" - I actually think that people who make a fuss about the list are dumb-ass. I mean, it's a list of funny names! Put mine on it, if you want! Anyone who takes offence to it, needs to chill out, forget about woke Pyramid of Hate and stop bothering other people

(for the record, pre-Nazi Germany had hate speech laws, and Hitler did write strong anti-semitic messages in his first book long before coming to power - this idea that "jokes will escalate to genocide" is pure woke fantasy & narrative that they use to promote their cause and bully other people into submission)

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

#486

Post by syshum »

cafed00d wrote: post #478
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…

> The 6 months free money is hard for anyone entering a strong job market to pass up. Money is a funny business. I'm convinced that anyone who's a skilled software engineer makes more money than they ever imagined after 5-6 years of working at a regular tech company. All the RSU upside, bonuses yada yada. Folks who worked at Basecamp are top-notch programmers with close to a decade or more of experience. I'm certain…

>>I want to live in a world where people take responsibility everywhere and not shy away from topics meant to drive morality/politics forward.

This is a problem given that politics is not universally agreed upon and if we can not work together with different politics then we can not have a pluralist society, which increasingly seems impossible as both "sides" of this debate want to sort people with differing politics as "immoral"

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

#487

Post by taftster »

dang wrote: post #481
taftster wrote: post #460

Doesn't Basecamp have something like ~50 employees? It's a very small company. The concerns around the current issues scale to larger companies just the same. But saying "1/3 of employees" doesn't really amount to that many people, in this specific case. It feels more hyperbole and click bait to phrase it that way. I think the impact of this statement would be more interesting with a big company. If Amazon or Microso…

> I'm guessing not the most popular opinion, let the downvotes commence. Please don't break the site guidelines like this. Your comment would be just fine without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair. Thanks for the reminder. Should I edit?

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

#488

Post by jrochkind1 »

grey-area wrote: post #479

I don't think this is really about making fun of people's names, or holocaust references. It's about power. The managers at basecamp were unhappy that their employees asserted power over them in the workplace, and decided to assert their own power in turn over what they view as their personal fiefdom and retract some of the freedoms they had so graciously granted their workers, because those ungrateful workers actual…

bingo.

I think they realized the boss didn't respect them and wouldn't tolerate dissent, and that therefore they didn't respect the boss.

More than about "talking about politics at work".

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

#489

Post by reboog711 »

alistairSH wrote: post #453
Semiapies wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a lot of rather wishful thinking here and on Twitter along the lines of that the people who left are all woke layabouts or whatever and that this is some genius management move. No explanation of how to reconcile these ideas with the fact that so many of these people who left were in leadership positions.

I dunno. I could find a job in a few days or weeks. But, finding a job I want to do for many years probably takes a significant portion of that 6 month period. Now, if I was already half-way out the door? Or also felt strongly about the no-politics stuff? You bet I'm taking the money and not looking back.

It usually takes me years to find a job I want. That is why I'm always looking.

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

#490

Post by [deleted] »

andkon wrote: post #262
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…

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…

[deleted]
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