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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#171

Post by gowld »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #143
jariel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite the right example though. CRT definitions of 'White Supremacy' are not about 'people acting deliberately' to support it. CRT laments that 'regular people' doing 'regular things' act unconsciously to support oppressive systems, hence 'White Supremacy'. Making a film about 'something' and hiring those people you know to make it, who by virtue of your social network might be 'mostly white' - would be an…

The problem lies in the assumption that we live in a society which is systemically racist. The people not dismantling the system are not white supremacists, they just don't believe we have systemic racism. I'm definitely not a white supremacist (I'm not even white) and I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. Sure, I met a bunch of racist individuals, but that doesn't prove systemic racism.

> I can't find a single instance of systemic racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

systemic: > relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part.

How many racist people are needed before it's not a particular part"?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#172

Post by rtpg »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #120

God sounds like they needed to clean house if this was the kind of shit going on at work. Hopefully they can actually focus on the company goals after all this blows over.

> “My honest sense of why everybody is leaving because they're tired of Jason and David's behavior — the suppression of voices, of any dissent,” one employee told me. “They really don’t care what employees have to say. If they don't think it's an issue, it's not an issue. If they don't experience it, then it's not real. And this was the final straw for a lot of employees

Sounds a hell of a lot like the house cleaning needing to happen is at the top.

That quote is the clearest indication that this isn’t a politics issue, it’s a management issue. This sort of “I don’t think it’s an issue so let’s not handle it” attitude applies just as much/more to actually getting work done. Classic bad manager 101 stuff.

You can have good success by being a bad manager of course! My bet is that there’s a lot of great ICs that counteract whatever messy people mgmt stuff is going on.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#173

Post by vcavallo »

Tainnor wrote: post #149
jokethrowaway wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen it happen in a company which was doing just fine. It happened randomly and completely out of the blue: one software engineer mentioned he didn't believe in the gender gap and he was promptly replied 1000 words essays by other leaders in the company shutting him down, to show that "we don't tolerate certain behaviour". Guidelines were created to avoid future political discussions in the workplace. No-one lef…

Maybe. But this is (was) a 60-person company. That's about the size of the company I'm currently working at. In other words, you should know everyone and interact with a sizeable chunk of these people somewhat regularly. It strikes me as very odd that you would suddenly so fundamentally distrust your co-workers with whom you share so much. But I'm also not in the US and maybe this is just the current climate over the…

> It strikes me as very odd that you would suddenly so fundamentally distrust your co-workers with whom you share so much. But I'm also not in the US and maybe this is just the current climate over there.

Yes, it absolutely is the climate here. it’s awful. tribalism, division, distrust and eagerness to demonize anyone who doesn’t tow your line.

we’re doomed

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#175

Post by threeseed »

prawn wrote: post #165
gowld wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Seems OP's reaction is like what is rife in Australia as 'tall-poppy syndrome' and cutting down prominent achievers. We collectively dislike promoters, but isn't doing something like writing a book to draw attention to your SaaS product exactly the sort of thing a founder should be doing? Especially given it worked in bringing them customers and attention. If you think they're too confident in their assertions, it's…

We celebrate sports stars, CEOs from Atlassian/Canva/etc.

It's not about being successful. It's about not having an ego and acting like you're better than everyone else just because you are successful. Americans are much more willing to tolerate this behaviour than Australians.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#176

Post by somedangedname »

fallenfromgrace wrote: post #29
eloff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

I was struck quite a bit by “I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.” The context it was said in made the statement rather jarring. I am all for their initial stance of "no politics" etc, but their all-hands was a face palm all around.

It's jarring because you're hearing an opinion that challenges a fundamental part of your world view.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#177

Post by Tainnor »

prawn wrote: post #165
gowld wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Seems OP's reaction is like what is rife in Australia as 'tall-poppy syndrome' and cutting down prominent achievers. We collectively dislike promoters, but isn't doing something like writing a book to draw attention to your SaaS product exactly the sort of thing a founder should be doing? Especially given it worked in bringing them customers and attention. If you think they're too confident in their assertions, it's…

That doesn't imply that I have to like his self-promotion book. After all, if I'm to read a book I want to get something out of it. As I already mentioned, the book has good parts, but it reads quite jarring in many places.

Also, I guess this is personal, but a little humility is good for everyone, IMHO, and doesn't necessarily contradict a healthy dose of self-confidence either. DHH seems to have little of it — at least judging from his books and also from his Twitter.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#178

Post by kbenson »

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…

> Honestly, in this story everyone looks like a big child.

I agree for the most part there. Less so the founders, I think there sin runs more along the lines of being extremely naive (but in a way a lot of people might be, especially when the alternative might be to accept you're screwed).

> something must have gone fundamentally wrong much earlier. These levels of tension and distrust don't just arise out of nowhere.

Well, the tensions exist because they're being pushed for by large influences societally for political gain. The problem is they promoted a workplace environment where it was considered okay to bring it in, as well as to poke fun at clients (which is what kicked it all off).

I see this as an example of the cost of free doughnuts.[1] It's well known that we value the loss of something as more than the gain of something, and we value free things for far more than they're worth. Employees were given free reign for a long time in ways that weren't all that conducive to a diverse work environment or to respecting clients. Now they are being told not to do things that most work places already expect you to know enough not to do, either by explicitly telling you or by culture, such as don't blast your political views out to everyone, and don't be disrespectful to the clients, as that's where your paycheck comes from. My guess is the majority of people that leave if honestly reflecting on this in a few years would acknowledge that maybe announcing and focusing on your differences with those you need to spend time with is not as good a strategy for a happy and productive workplace as focusing on your similarities.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#179

Post by dools »

throwawaysea wrote: post #43

This author, Casey Newton, seems to be trying to push a narrative that Basecamp damaged itself by banning politics at work. But the anecdotes in here convince me that Basecamp did the right thing. The people involved in this exchange with Singer seem unhinged - demanding that someone declare that white supremacy exists at work? This type of cultish demand-oriented discourse is unacceptable in professional organizatio…

Tucker? Is that you behind the throwaway?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#180

Post by moduspol »

Tainnor wrote: post #149
jokethrowaway wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen it happen in a company which was doing just fine. It happened randomly and completely out of the blue: one software engineer mentioned he didn't believe in the gender gap and he was promptly replied 1000 words essays by other leaders in the company shutting him down, to show that "we don't tolerate certain behaviour". Guidelines were created to avoid future political discussions in the workplace. No-one lef…

Maybe. But this is (was) a 60-person company. That's about the size of the company I'm currently working at. In other words, you should know everyone and interact with a sizeable chunk of these people somewhat regularly. It strikes me as very odd that you would suddenly so fundamentally distrust your co-workers with whom you share so much. But I'm also not in the US and maybe this is just the current climate over the…

We also may be reading a lot into how large this committee was.

If I were at a company of ~58 people, and ~20 of them were forming a DE&I committee to evaluate the company's vendor relationships, speakers, etc., I'd be tempted to join just to get the potential target off of my back. They're not going to fire 1/3 of the workforce, after all.

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