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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”

#821

Post by tomjen3 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #745
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…

He’s now complaining about cancel culture on Twitter, which is extremely political.

He explicitly said that they were welcome to use some other platform, just not the company one.

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

#822

Post by croh »

hogFeast wrote: post #153
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 isn't what they said. What they said was: people who created the list went off on some weird tangent about the list being the first step towards genocide, if you have a problem with the list, you shouldn't contribute to the list (the subtle point here is that people who tend to be most active about these things usually feel guilty, management said the list was bad, management said it shouldn't have happened...wh…

> once an organization reaches a certain size, these discussions become impossible because the average level of a discussion is just so terrible (and there will always be a minority who actually don't want to engage with anyone else, they just want to burn it down)

I can relate with this based on my experience. Setting proper goals and incentive solves not all but many problems. But with big enough and diverse crowd there will be always some issues.

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

#823

Post by throwawaybchr »

The people who want to do their political activism at work in 2021 are all exclusively democrats. Framing it this way is important. Calling it "politics" is limiting because this is just a small manifestation of a larger issue with society in the west, driven by these social constructionist folks who are in a state of perpetual grievance

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

#825

Post by bennysomething »

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…

I'm not sure I'd want to hire someone who left their previous company because they felt they had the right to brow beat other staff with their political opinions.

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

#827

Post by croh »

grey-area wrote: post #530
digitaltrees wrote: post #499

Earlier 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.

I think most would agree more professionalism would be nice, in fact getting rid of a list of funny customer names (as employees suggested) would be more professional, not less. But again, that's not really what the core disagreement is here - that's not IMO why people are quitting - it sounds like most of the company agrees that is a good idea. They are quitting because the founders decided to assert their power nak…

> that is to break the social contract between employee and employed.

Well actual contract is do your job and get paycheck. People try to ignore other stuff you do until it becomes mess.

> In doing that they declared that they alone decide the rules, they alone decide what is acceptable to say and what is not.

Well legally yes as long as they dont brek any law. If you read correctly they consult labour lawyer for their words

> you'll lose your best employees as they decide they don't really want you to decide everything about their waking hours without consulting you

You're honestly exaggerating situation. Nobody want you to consult with them for anything. They expect you to work in office hours.

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

#828

Post by randomsearch »

Trasmatta wrote: post #123
baron816 wrote: post #90

The proposed changes are wholly reasonable, and definitely not that different from 99% of the companies out there. The real problem is that they’ve spent years hiring for a type of person where this sort of thing is anathema.

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.

tbf, when basecamp set out woke twitter wasn't a problem.

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

#829

Post by Barrin92 »

coldtea wrote: post #331

It's sad that the target for those employees' "political disruption" is Basecamp. One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so, pays well, embraces remote work, gives back to open source (RoR, etc.), and has good products, with no shady anti-consumer practices, that people actually like and pay for (as opposed to somewhere where they sell…

>One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so, pays well, embraces remote work[...]

yep, the best gilded cage around. You aren't allowed to have any opinions when you show up to work, but man the dental plan is amazing!

Peter Sloterdijk once said that the person we're going to be building statues in a 100 years will be Lee Kuan Yew, for his construction of a prosperous country that is also devoid of any freedom or political expression. That's the tech CEO ideal in the valley as well if they had it their way.

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

#830

Post by randomsearch »

danjac wrote: post #18

I wouldn't be surprised if this will become a case study in future in how to self-destruct a successful company with a single bad communication, much like Gerald Ratner (although this may be due to long-term grievances we're not aware of).

I suspect that this opinion is held mostly by those who support the departing employees. Does that describe yourself?

I think it _is_ an existential risk but having observed some of dhh's personality traits, I expect he just lost patience and said "that's it - either they go or the company does" and is quite willing to gamble the future of the company on the basis that managing a stressful, internally riven, company is worse than managing no company at all.

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