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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#691

Post by prawn »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #686
prawn wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that they were doing exactly that in trying to focus the staff on work itself? I'd guess I lean politically with the founders and their departing staff, and I don't love the "silent majority" that gets spoken of, but DHH talked about having people approach him who were uncomfortable with having a workplace they felt was politicised. As a personal example, I work in a shared office space. If a vocal ten…

I think if you ask a lot of the people who were advocating for things like the DEI committee, the reason they were doing those things is because their lack of comfort with certain things (the name list is an example, but I'm sure there's others) made it more difficult to focus on work. They weren't looking to just argue about unrelated political topics. If you came across a list that contained names that were being l…

It would depend on my perception of their intent, but then I live in a place where I am in the majority so ultimately it's hard to truly judge that. The recaps didn't make it sound like there was a targeted ethnicity though (the information I saw to go by: 6/78 names were Asian; English and Nordic examples were given and then it's suggested the bulk were like that - but it's ambiguous as to whether that meant Caucasian, or that they were collated because they were similar examples). Notable names come from all cultures, in my experience (I often watch film credits looking for interesting names).

Assuming that it wasn't malicious or targeted, I'd expect the managerial response to be "Hey - this list is not really showing respect to our customers on a couple of fronts, so please wipe it ASAP. I understand that you weren't aware of why it's truly problematic, but you're aware now and I don't expect to see something like this again."

As I've said elsewhere though, I don't live in a place that feels as politically polarised, so I'm sure that's a serious factor.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#692

Post by prepend »

simondotau wrote: post #436
prepend wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hacker?

If Paul Graham doesn't rename this site "Hackex News" tomorrow, the woke brigade must cancel it immediately!

It’s tomorrow and not renamed. Surely, his silence on this issue means that he endorses the patriarchal dominance of hackers.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#693

Post by blacktriangle »

threeseed wrote: post #167
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?

The idea that it is "his" workplace belongs in the Mad Men era of business. If you want to attract and keep talent you need to listen to their views and involve in them defining the values of the company.

I'm not sure about that, after knowing people at Google who had to sit through HR bullshit like "how to respect your direct reports who sexually identify as Otherkin" the notion of a workplace with a hardline stance on none of this bullshit at work sounds highly appealing. Yes this new policy will cause some devs to avoid Basecamp. But there are many many devs who are sick and tired of woke culture infecting their workplaces who will likely flock to Basecamp and other such companies with similar policies.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#694

Post by listless »

thrownaway564 wrote: post #181
Tainnor wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Do we have any examples of this D&I stuff working? All I hear about are campuses and companies literally imploding. I never hear any places that were bad, and then got better. Is there any data at all to suggest that these ideas work and result in a better world?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#695

Post by Traster »

gustavo-fring wrote: post #603
js2 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the GOP is still cynically appealing to racism. The parties in their modern form began after their realignment with the civil rights movement. They haven't fundamentally changed since the sixties. Yes, I agree it doesn't persuade anyone to call them names. I don't excuse that behavior. But again, it isn't wrong to say that the GOP uses racism to this day to win votes.

Yes, political parties use racism and the language of demagogues to win votes. We learned that 2000 years ago. The trick is getting that there's no "party" attribute that determines that. Do you believe that the Democratic party doesn't use racist rhetoric? I don't even want to make this an us vs them whataboutism.

I think the thing you need to content with is the fact that when someone says the Republican party uses racism to win votes what they're doing is linking you to a wiki page with long and detailed documentation of the specifics of what they're doing and how.

Now, in response to that you sort of just wave around and claim all parties use racism. But that's not actually true is it, there is no similar concerted strategy on the Democratic side to stir up racism to drive votes- and this is born out in the numbers where one party has a very out of the norm demographic appeal.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#696

Post by Consultant32452 »

ceras wrote: post #521
rsanheim wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, you have an opportunity to experience what it feels like to work in tech as a person of color, or a woman, or any of the many other underrepresented groups in tech. Only those people experience every day at almost all companies, and can't escape it by leaving their existing company. Maybe see it as a chance to learn and grow instead of something to resent and run from?

As a URM in tech, that's not my own experience. There's rarely attention drawn to the fact that I'm a minority - and I like it that way. Heterogeneity is tough with this: some individuals like and benefit from initiatives that focus on their minority status, while others don't. No group is a monolith - individuals have different needs - not to mention that experiences can differ significantly, too. I think there's a…

I was living MLK’s dream of living in perfect racial harmony despite the fact that I was a minority and they took that away from me.

It might be forgivable if the studies showed that this hyper focus on race at work actually reduced racism, but it doesn’t. It’s just pure evil.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#697

Post by etchalon »

wyclif wrote: post #669
charlesu wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black is an overloaded term. It’s a race and an ethnicity. If you were to write about black people in Africa, it would be nonsensical to capitalize it because black doesn’t communicate any shared identity in that context. The right granularity is national, ethnic, or tribal. But Black is a cultural identity in the context of the United States. Blacks, or African-Americans, are ethnically distinct and have shared hist…

I disagree fundamentally with your take because I approach this subject academically instead of in pop culture terms. Both blacks and whites have distinct ethnic groups that are more granular. Just as whites are ethnically English, Irish, German, Scandinavian, Italian, etc., blacks are ethnically Akan, Cuban, Caribbean, Abyssian, Fulani, Zulu, Oromo, and more.

If you approached the subject academically, you’d have an informed take on it.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#698

Post by etchalon »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #619
etchalon wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also made their overall compensation package a lot loss less attractive with 10% profit sharing as a replacement for lifestyle subsidies.

Do you mean a lot more attractive? I would be shocked if the aforementioned lifestyle subsidies were valued by the median employee at even $1000/year; if the profit sharing came out to less than 5 figures in a normal year (again, for a median employee) I would likewise be surprised.

Humans are weird. I’ve found most employees seem to be be more attracted to guaranteed subsidies than to profit sharing. Not all, but most. Just my experience though.

Obviously, both is better.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#699

Post by etchalon »

asabjorn wrote: post #622
etchalon wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

… you’re literally doing the same thing you’re accusing them of. Creating an arbitrary binary and than applying moral judgment to it.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#700

Post by mumblemumble »

moduspol wrote: post #683
etchalon wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn’t change the fact that leadership then must either: * Accept the claim that the company is and has been supporting white supremacy, de facto surrendering decisions on anything an employee suggests might support white supremacy * Disagree with the claim The redefinition of white supremacy (as you’ve defined it) is a bad faith rhetorical tool designed to create these kind of situations. Leaders are under no…

So, two thoughts:

First, you're creating such a stark false dichotomy that it's hard not to wonder if it's somehow deliberate.

Second, saying that white supremacy is present in the company is not the same thing as saying that the company is run by white supremacists. The term functions very differently in the noun sense than it does in the adjective sense.

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