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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#361

Post by pedrosbmartins »

bulletsvshumans wrote: post #305
pedrosbmartins wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that even a valid comparison? It is logical that making fun of people for characteristics related to race could be escalated to more serious racist behavior, and therefore should be discouraged. But where is the logical connection between criticizing inequality and committing genocide?

In the case of Cambodia, I think the connection being suggested is that the genocide targeted "professionals and intellectuals"[0], essentially the bourgeoisie, or the wealthy (it was a communist revolution). So criticizing inequality is being framed as a slippery slope to killing rich people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

Well, I'd argue that the gap between making racist remarks and committing greater acts of racism is a bit smaller than the one between criticizing inequality and emulating the mass genocide of a communist regime. Although the other OP did bring up the Nazis, so I see where he was coming from.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#362

Post by nemothekid »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #356
nemothekid wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An equally valid hypothesis is that harmlessly blowing off low-level steam prevents the atrocities higher up in the “pyramid”. Things only really get bad when people are encouraged to form and defend identities around characteristics like race, religion, national origin, etc. I'm sorry - I need help in understanding how this "equally valid". To me this seems like a justification ex post facto to defend "jokes", but…

I want to help clarify but I’m having trouble parsing your question. Can you please rephrase?

>An equally valid hypothesis is that harmlessly blowing off low-level steam prevents the atrocities higher up in the “pyramid”.

On what basis are you making your claim that allowing people to openly make offensive jokes prevents higher level atrocities?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#363

Post by arp242 »

Tainnor wrote: post #343
arp242 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it probably also enabled them to get up & running with a MVP fairly fast and low-cost. No one knew it was going to be the big success from the get-go, and most new companies fail. In hindsight, it was probably a bad choice. At the time however, it was probably a good one. Besides, things like AirBnB are the exceptions. Most sites don't get anywhere near the traffic they get, and Rails is often a go…

> Is it imperfect and are there trade-offs involved? Of course, but there are with anything. No disagreement here. But the argument was made that Rails "scales pretty well" and I believe this is wrong — and I don't even mean in terms of performance (that probably too), but also in terms of architectural complexity. All these problems are solvable of course, but Rails makes it IMHO harder than some other technologies.

I haven't significantly worked with Rails since 2015, so I'm not up to speed with the current state of things, but in general I found that architecturally Rails can scale mostly okay, although it can be a bit tricky if you're not very familiar with the Rails internals, but it's not overly complex either in my experience. I was never a Rails super-expert either, and I managed to bolt on plenty of stuff for customers' specific needs, and the results worked fairly well and weren't too overly complex.

I don't doubt there are certain roadblocks though, and that some things fairly "simple" could be very hard and complex in Rails. I just never encountered them.

I've certainly seen a lot more overly complex crappy bespoke solutions when Rails + a few modifications would have been much better. This is like the old Greenspun's tenth rule: "any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." – there are a lot of "ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementations of half of Ruby on Rails" out there.

Right now I mostly write web stuff with Go, which is the exact opposite of Ruby/Rails in almost every way. In spite of being so different, I'm fairly comfterable with both approaches, and I'm not entirely sure what I prefer yet (even though I've been doing this in Go for 6 years now); I certainly spent a lot more time on basic stuff that Rails just provides.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#364

Post by bhupy »

michaericalribo wrote: post #352
bhupy wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn’t a helpful approach. Prescriptivist appeals to the dictionary and dismissal of others’ viewpoints are not ways of listening to the perspectives of others or empathizing with different experiences, and seem to be actively preventing constructive discussion in this case. Agreed. On the flip side, I think it’s just as unhelpful an approach to co-opt a generally understood word (or phrase) and then (unbeknown…

I hear you. It can be counterproductive to use a totally unfamiliar jargon, especially if it trips the audience up and limits mutual engagement in favor of linguistic squabbling. That said, I respectfully disagree that it’s “just as unhelpful.” Pedantry over definitions distracts from the underlying issues, while new and inventive and nonstandard usage of language can spur critical analysis and jolt us out of our fam…

> Pedantry over definitions distracts from the underlying issues, while new and inventive and nonstandard usage of language can spur critical analysis and jolt us out of our familiar understanding.

I understand that that’s the intention behind this strategy, but in practice it actually comes off as a shock-and-awe guerrilla tactic to argumentation that alienates rather than invite collaboration. Again, if the goal is actually to get people to buy into new ideas, attacking them (which is implicitly what happens when you expansively redefine “white supremacy”) is just not a good strategy.

> Telling someone “defund isn’t used that way” shuts down the conversation.

Right, and it sounds like the goal is to maintain open conversation! Constantly demanding that people use your definitions and argue with you on the terms that you unilaterally set is an awful way to maintain open dialogue/conversation with people that might otherwise be open to changing their minds. Insisting that people simply must accept whatever new rules of engagement is en vogue just exacerbates polarization and mistrust.

So yes, it’s just as, if not more unhelpful.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#365

Post by nikolay »

CydeWeys wrote: post #248
nikolay wrote: post #227

I can't believe why this is so abuzz as it's their company, their rules - as long as they don't violate laws at any level, they can do whatever makes them happy at their own company! Employees get paid to do certain job, they don't do this for free. Basecamp is a business, it's not a charity or an activist collective - unless the owners want it that way! Employment is at will and can be terminated on either side at a…

Just because something might be legal doesn't make it a good idea to do it.

What's a good and a bad idea is very subjective. Let them run their business the way they want! Pretty much everywhere else in the world political polemics are not allowed at work as they can divide the workforce and some people could feel harassed by hearing non-work-related stuff they wholeheartedly disagree with!

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#366

Post by shkkmo »

mpyne wrote: post #289
JPKab wrote: post #209

"But Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, had been taken aback by an employee post which argued that mocking customer names laid the foundation for racially-motivated violence, and closed the thread." Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. At some point can we all admit that the most narcissistic, dramatic people are overly-indulged by this garbage? I'm at a startup n…

> Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. This isn't the argument actually being made here, so if that's what DHH thought when he shut the thread down then that might explain part of the outcry. The argument is simply that the behavior everyone claims to decry (e.g. racial violence) starts somewhere , far below violence. "Funny names" turn into off-color jokes. Off-color jokes turn i…

Is there any evidence for this progression or that censorship halts this progression?

In mind, there plenty of other good reasons to promote good workplace conduct and prohibit racist speech.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#368

Post by thrownaway564 »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #360
thrownaway564 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture here is getting bad. We have an "inclusion council" that hands out these diktats. The word ban list (not blacklist!) is approaching 100 words including husband, housekeeping, normal, hacker and meritocracy. Worse part is we're a security company edit: "here" is okta, not basecamp

> husband Yup. Pro tip: If you're at a SV-influenced company and you find yourself talking about your personal life, don't say "husband," "wife," "boyfriend," or "girlfriend;" say "partner." That signals that you're an Ally rather than an Enemy. You'll notice other weird speech patterns too. Pay attention to them; they're meaningful.

Truth. from the "guidance" page:

"More inclusive: Spouses/partners Less inclusive: Wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends"

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#369

Post by vimy »

edoceo wrote: post #359
JPKab wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Where do you think this ideology and hypersensitivity originated?

I'm curious, was it academia? I mean, is there an origin story? I don't even know what terms search.

https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/what-is-critical-race-theo...

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#370

Post by javagram »

dools wrote: post #184
baggy_trough wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t follow. Why would you be suspended for that?

Because anyone who claims reverse racism exists is a defacto racist (even if they would deny it) becaus they obviously don't understand how racism works. If I had someone saying that shit in my company on a Zoom call, I would excuse myself, remove them from the call, schedule a 1 on 1 meeting with them, and explain to them that they need to take training on what racism is and how it is perpetrated, or leave.

Of course "reverse racism" exists (although, it certainly may be much less of a problem in the USA than non "reverse" racism). Discriminating against someone because of their race because you believe their racial group or background is privileged is still racism and the application of a stereotype. Just because they're White, Hispanic, or Asian (depending on the type of "reverse racism" we're talking about here) shouldn't give you an excuse to be racist against them. Edit: and also it would be illegal if the company is foolish enough to put it in writing and clearly state they are discriminating against people of a specific ethnic or national background, regardless of what background it is or if you personally believe that background is privileged.

Fair enough to say that speaking this out on a company zoom call in a lot of places would get you in trouble though and speaks to a lack of understanding of tech workplaces - it's only smart self-preservation to stay far away from politics, especially racial politics, in company workspaces unless you're sure you're 100% aligned with the currently dominant creed.

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