How Basecamp Blew Up • Hacker News Board

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#151

Post by aaroninsf » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

There will be a string of such explosions. Many of them.

Those with historically unassailable, unnamed, and most sensitively, unearned, prerogatives, become understandably if unfortunately upset when this state of affairs is questioned.

While they retain a platform and resources to do so, they lash out.

The details will vary; the attempts at spin and chaff will vary; the root issues are no mystery.

We're in a moment of cultural shift.

Those who perceive themselves rightly as historical "winners" are going to fight "loss" of status, control, hegemony, pick a word.

All the more so, to the extent that they are prone to understanding the world in terms of zero-sum games.

(As others have noted, the Basecamp trashfire has nothing to do with "politics," that's one transparent attempt at spin.)

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#152

Post by csours » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

> "But as much as the conversation about Basecamp’s moves has been framed as “politics,” it seems important to remember that the entire affair began when a third of the company — not all of whom are among the 20 who have departed so far, by the way — volunteered to help the company become more diverse and equitable. It was only when their committee dug a skeleton out of the company closet — that list of names — that Fried and Hansson moved to shut the whole thing down."

I've shared and laughed at funny names in the past, as recently as last year. I can't imagine an official or permanent list such as the one pointed out here.

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It's really fucking hard to talk about stuff like this online or big groups. I would encourage people and companies to have small, offline discussions and start with humility and empathy as the guiding principles.

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I've typed and deleted all of this three times. Anything I say feels like not enough. People are people.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#153

Post by jf » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:32 AM UTC

nate wrote: post #17

whitepoplar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you speak a little more about your impression of the company while you were there? I know you didn't want to talk about it after you left, but so many of us are/were curious, especially as to how Basecamp's private image compares to its public image.

It's tough to get it all down here in a comment. Maybe now this is all out I'll share more in some channels soon. I will say that last comment in Casey's article: “They don't want to deal with people, which is something you have to do as a manager … Jason and David just threw us away.” That could easily have been written from someone at Highrise. (It wasn't. But it could have been) We killed ourselves to turn that th…

Thanks for sharing your viewpoints Nate. I appreciate that you’re willing to tell stories in public that most people would only tell over beers

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#154

Post by joeblow21 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

Sounds like they cleaned house not “blew up”

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#155

Post by klyrs » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #128

klyrs wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, when did racial equality become an inherently political topic? Especially racial equality inside the workplace. When in the history of the US has racial inequality not been an inherently political topic? At its founding, the statement "all men are created equal" was highly contentious.

Also a massive lie of omission, seeing as how slavery was legal when that was written and would remain so until the Civil War.

I just re-read that particular bit of history... apparently Jefferson wrote that with aspiration to abolish slavery, despite being a slaveholder himself. And of course, gender equality didn't even get that much consideration

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#156

Post by moduspol » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #142

moduspol wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that we're now so far down the list of transgressions that "list of funny sounding names poorly handled by management" is being touted as some egregious sin justifying claims of white supremacy at the company. It was a bad idea and it wasn't handled well. But geesh.

So you just missed that whole section which starts with - unprompted - the Head of Strategy deciding to go on a long rant about their own political views in a company meeting? Like it really doesn't matter what led to that meeting, because I've not seen a version of events where somehow that becomes not a disaster on your "so anyway we announced a policy about you in a blog post where we insulted a whole lot of you r…

Those things all came after.

The only justification for the DE&I committee is this list. The only other evidence of white supremacy is (lol) one guy saying he doesn't think it's there in the company.

Usually there'll be at least a claim of someone using the N-word, or employees of different races being treated unfairly. We can't even get that! This list existed, and was not handled well by management, and that's enough to accept that simply claiming the company is not white supremacist is too political.

Oh but the guy did share a Breitbart link once, I think, so the whole company was basically a half step away from burning crosses on lawns. Give me a break.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#157

Post by ashtonkem » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #124

Honestly, in this story everyone looks like a big child. I would maybe be more sympathetic to DHH if it wasn't the guy who was so opinionated he pushed through Rails features that everyone else disliked or co-wrote several books on company culture that are glorified ads for basecamp (although "it doesn't have to be crazy at work" is still a thought-provoking read, at least in part). I can only imagine that he might b…

> I think that, no matter your political views, if a situation gets out of hand that bad over matters that aren't even really directly related to workplace concerns, something must have gone fundamentally wrong much earlier.

Remember, the proximate cause here was something that directly related to what happened at work.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#158

Post by ncallaway » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #116

darkwizard42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laughing at names did not lead to genocide and no one implied that. What someone did was share why it was important to treat this seriously and not let it slide... lest the offending behaviors continue to escalate. An example was shared from social science on a pyramid of normalization where such behavior eventually gets normalized. Classic and indisputable example might be Germany in WW2. It wasn’t like citizens wok…

It is hard to argue that showing the pyramid of hate doesn't imply that laughing at names leads to genocide. That's very much the overt message - it's not even an implication.

> It is hard to argue that showing the pyramid of hate doesn't imply that laughing at names leads to genocide.

I don't find it challenging to make that argument at all.

"Laughing at names leads to genocide" to me implies that laughing at names is a necessary and sufficient condition to a genocide.

The pyramid of hate, to me, implies that laughing at names is a necessary but not sufficient condition of genocide.

Therefore showing the pyramid of hate does not imply that laughing at names leads to genocide, as it lacks the sufficiency condition.

Not so hard to argue.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#159

Post by gowld » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #124

Honestly, in this story everyone looks like a big child. I would maybe be more sympathetic to DHH if it wasn't the guy who was so opinionated he pushed through Rails features that everyone else disliked or co-wrote several books on company culture that are glorified ads for basecamp (although "it doesn't have to be crazy at work" is still a thought-provoking read, at least in part). I can only imagine that he might b…

It's weird to criticize someone who wrote several books like "it doesn't have to be crazy at work" as "ads for basecamp" and then proceeded to run basecamp (his workplace) as a not-crazy environment. What else would you expect?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#160

Post by throthro111 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:39 AM UTC

I feel bad for everyone involved. This story made me realize that working at Basecamp is not something I would want to do in the future, primarily because DHH and Fried are so egotistic.

However, it also makes me face the reality that I would not want to work with many of the people that resigned. Resigning over a random employee refusing to say that "white supremacy exists" is absurd. I imagine myself working at some of my earlier minimum wage jobs in college and putting forth such a requirement to my managers then. It's a non-sequitur.

When I talk to my family and non-tech non-coasts non-city friends about the sort of political polarization I encounter at my high-tech Seattle job, they often think I'm messing with them, that I'm being facetious or exaggerating. Unfortunately, I'm not.

It's all so tiresome. The increasing politicization of everything, and tech being at the center of it, made me realize I have no interest anymore in climbing the corporate ladder. I realize that my lack of political fervor is a liability. I wish I cared more about these things, I really do, but I don't.