Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, DHH is very outspoken politically, and fairly progressive. Of course there was going to be a selection bias where they hired similar people. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to them, and they should have realized the backlash. Shockingly bad foresight.
I don’t know about progressive, but he’s definitely something. Here’s his last in-person RailsConf keynote: https://youtu.be/VBwWbFpkltg He’s promoting anarcho-communism in a RailsConf keynote.
“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. It’s about professionalism. Flame wars at work create a hostile environment where quiet voices are silenced. It’s the same reason HN bans political flame wars.
DHH is the guy who defended porn as a suitable metaphor for a CouchDB talk. I don't think professionalism is his north star.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
This pretty much nails it. The "politics" angle has been revealed to be a red herring by the subsequent accounts of everyone involved. The same contentious discussions would have happened had this policy already existed! I guess you could say the policy gives the founders a ban hammer to swing to end discussions they don't like. Separated from their justification, the 6 policies represent an assertion that Basecamp l…
1/3 of the staff that believes in things like that the “It doesn’t have to be crazy at work” title is ableist (see the Jane Yang post). Even when refers to a situation and not to a person. How radicalized you have to be to lose your capacity for critical thinking like that? If anything, Basecamp is a much better place to work now, without them
As a younger person, I made a similar change regarding my use of the word "retarded" to refer to situations I thought were nonsensical or illogical. I'm now embarrassed to have used that word so thoughtlessly, even though it was pointed out many times that it was an unkind thing to do.
Call it radicalism if you want, but I think it's just a matter of stepping back and reevaluating behaviors I took for granted. You know, literal critical thinking.
We're not yet at the point where people look at the word "crazy" as being wildly inappropriate in the same way as "retarded", but I think it's completely reasonable for people to raise the point that putting it in the title of a book that represents the whole company is not a good idea.
You're fooling yourself if you think Basecamp will be improved by losing 1/3 of its staff, including some department heads and long-tenured employees, as well as its nearly universally positive reputation.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would depend on how much I liked my job. My sense is that DHH is just a terrible boss. Note the "changes" [1] are not just "no politics" but also "no more committees" (of any kind at all; that is, no authority or responsibility except individually along line-of-report hieararchy), no more 360 degree reviews (no way to formally give feedback to your boss), and no more bringing up past decisions you disagree…
>no more 360 degree reviews (no way to formally give feedback to your boss) The reason they gave for removing these was that peer reviews were overly positive to the point of pointlessness. You could still give feedback to your boss without 360 degree reviews.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#805I 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…
I disagree. It’s about professionalism. Flame wars at work create a hostile environment where quiet voices are silenced. It’s the same reason HN bans political flame wars.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#806I 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…
Reading the official company stances, they all look like reasonable, well meaning changes. But then 1/3 of your organization quits? There must be more to this! And in fact its just a normal human squabble, with broken promises, public dressing downs, power assertions.
It can kind of put into perspective a lot of big policies in general. That almost certainly what we know today as pillars of reasoned thought, has originated by some basic human desires, and what we’re reading is only their rationalizations.
I mean it’s obvious of course, but this here is a _really_ good clear cut example of it.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no direct insight, but I'm getting a bit of a 'tip of the iceberg' feeling, like maybe there's some other stuff going on.
You can read the twitter thread from Casey. One of the issues was that one of the activist employees tried to link "making fun of customers' names" to "genocide". That was a big yike. And definitely a convo I wouldn't want to have.
I don't see what the big yikes is about that.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That’s not my experience watching friends go through the full cycle. The tech employment market for talented programmers appears to be the hottest I’ve ever seen and I worked through the late 90s tech boom where literal used car salespeople were being hired into tech only to be back selling cars by summer of 2000.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#809The problem with no religion and no politics is that it’s impossible to draw a line on what is politics or religion. Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political. Are they wrong for mentioning that they are gay (no), but to some at the company that may be trying to advance their gay political agenda. Idk what the solution is, but just blanket “No religion/no politics” is just a way to say you…
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#810It's very hard for me to take all the talk of the pros and cons of talking politics at work seriously when it seems like this issue was about a list of 'funny names' of customers, including a number of names from people of different cultures. Then someone posted this one page PDF: https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of... And DHH seems to have taken that pdf wildly out of context, calling it the…