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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#621

Post by jolux »

qtt wrote: post #588
js2 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republican party has cynically been using race for fifty years to split the working class vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy So for someone to say they aren't Republican because they aren't racist is hyperbolic, but it isn't wrong. What is Scary Gary?

If you read that Wikipedia page, under the Scholarly debates section, the existence of a "Southern Strategy" at all is debated. Nixon never claimed to have a Southern Strategy - he was focused on a national strategy that included the South. Notably, in his 1972 election, he carried 49 states - indicating that he did indeed have an inclusive national strategy. The more likely explanation to contemporary GOP success is…

You should look at the political career of Lee Atwater if you haven’t, he was a Republican political consultant who was uncharacteristically candid about his methodology. At the very least, he thought Southern Strategy-style tactics were politically successful, and he may have been mistaken, but I think it’s hard to argue they didn’t exist.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#622

Post by asabjorn »

etchalon wrote: post #456
moduspol wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you avoid being framed as “us vs. them” when you are being openly called a white supremacist? What you’re describing is “appeasement.” Presume they’re operating in good faith and that maybe they’re kind of right. So you cut a compromise, and sure enough, the white supremacy is still there! And what do they recommend? More appeasement. I agree it was a management problem, but the problem is it wasn’t identified…

No one was calling anyone a white supremecist in the conversation. They were likely talking about white supremacy as a cultural and political force in the context of how the policy could perpetrate it.

You are correct activists use this undeclared redefinition of the term white supremacy to mean "someone that does not have a social justice activist mindset". Which is exactly the issue.

Why? It is a tool to utilize confusion to remove the targets moral authority. Both yes and no are bad answers that make you loose moral authority, which is the point of the power tool.

Never trust anyone that uses such a tool, as it shows that the activist attacker is willing to smear individuals they disagree with using deceptive language in order to reduce the unlucky targets moral standing. Is this someone that is worthy of trust?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#623

Post by simondotau »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #609
simondotau wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within the context of Basecamp internal company chat, demands that employees must prove they're not A Bad Person by repeating an particular string of words (as though that would prove anything anyway) is an incredibly minuscule issue indeed.

How is this related to the GP comment?

It sounds like the two of us have different ideas about what the GGP referred to as the issue when they said "You cannot build a solid baseline on an employee who can implode any second on the most miniscule issue."

I'll leave it to the GGP to clarify.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#624

Post by gustavo-fring »

jolux wrote: post #621
qtt wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read that Wikipedia page, under the Scholarly debates section, the existence of a "Southern Strategy" at all is debated. Nixon never claimed to have a Southern Strategy - he was focused on a national strategy that included the South. Notably, in his 1972 election, he carried 49 states - indicating that he did indeed have an inclusive national strategy. The more likely explanation to contemporary GOP success is…

You should look at the political career of Lee Atwater if you haven’t, he was a Republican political consultant who was uncharacteristically candid about his methodology. At the very least, he thought Southern Strategy-style tactics were politically successful, and he may have been mistaken, but I think it’s hard to argue they didn’t exist.

He's famous for spreading racist rumors about McCain (he had adopted a darker-skinned girl) during the 2000 primaries. There's a documentary about him. Boogeyman? Something like that.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#625

Post by sol_invictus »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #570
sol_invictus wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite the opposite - it's a fool's errand harboring fragile employees who are willing to make such a show about a email containing juvenile name calling. You cannot build a solid baseline on an employee who can implode any second on the most miniscule issue. This will hurt Basecamp in the immediate term but over time they will be better off.

This comes off as though you didn't even read the comment you're replying to. I don't see how you can, in good faith, frame their point as "the most miniscule issue".

Lets try it the other way around - convince me that the issue at hand isn’t way overblown. I promise to try to be as objective as possible.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#626

Post by Ygg2 »

ipaddr wrote: post #554
newacct583 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know the context, but as to your second item... when did denouncing white supremacy become something controversial? I know what you're really saying, which is that people on the right feel persecuted by being implicitly accused of being racists. And... y'know, that's fair. Probably 90% of the time in arguments like this that's an unfounded accusation made in bad faith just to score points. But still... the t…

Demanding you denounce a minority population is how we got into this problem in the first place. Don't you see you are creating white supremacy by demanding everyone persecute it? You create the demand.

I don't think it's going to increase demand by persecution.

Maybe if being racist becomes the new underground lifestyle like being goth, etc.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#627

Post by ashtonkem »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #568
ashtonkem wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not seem correct to me. It’s not a “story telling phenomenon” that DHH and Jason Fried are perceived as industry thought leaders, it’s the result of both repeated actions on their part, plus some luck. Those two didn’t accidentally end up in the public conversation, they wrote five books about working, plus god knows how many blog posts, talks, and more. That is explicitly attention seeking behavior, and it…

It’s also content marketing (both the blog and books)

Yes, it can be that too. I’m just saying that you’ve got to take positive steps towards where they’re at, culturally. It’s not an accident, even if there is certainly some luck and mixed motives.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#628

Post by Nevermark »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #550
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. Adults understand that dehumanizing someone is one path along the road that ends in violence.

Almost anything, including serious innocent misunderstandings, can be "one path along the road that ends in violence".

We all know that smaller things can lead to bigger things, but the smaller thing is not the bigger thing.

Unless the transitivity is close to 100% then unbounded conflation just introduces its own unjust currents, turning attempts at constructive change into a bog of dysfunction.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#629

Post by ashtonkem »

Igelau wrote: post #251
chris11 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article asked Singer for a comment, and printed his full reply. > I objected to an employee’s statement that we live in a white supremacist culture. White supremacism exists, and America’s history of racism still presents terrible problems, but I don’t agree that we should label our entire culture with this ideology. His reply was focused on white supremacy in America, he didn't mention a misunderstanding about r…

> The article asked Singer for a comment, and printed his full reply. And in the meantime his interlocutors have acted to remain anonymous... I grant benefit of the doubt to Singer.

I’d remain anonymous too, I wouldn’t want to be harassed by the Breitbart crowd who’ve picked their sides on this one.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#630

Post by midrus »

“...They just want to build cool shit all day,” the employee said. “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's... a win?? I mean, I've worked at some companies where some employees, specially some which basically are activists disguised as developers/PMs/etc cause 90% of the management work because everything is an issue to them. It's tiring, really tiring, and some of these people have negative value for the company actually, from my point of view as a developer anyway.

I'm a developer. I love my profession, I want to build cool shit all the time, and learn, and progress. I want to build a great product and, if possible, earn a ton of money. I don't want to go to the office to discuss the issues of the society or try to fix the world. I do that on weekends and after work, in the right forums. I do not force my coworkers to "take sides"... either you're a racist or you're this other thing or if you don't say anything then that's conceding.. WTF!!! I just want to work, learn, and earn money. Fix the world in some other place, please.

Hope this makes basecamp even stronger in the long term.

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