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?
This is of course the worst take. When I was in 4th grade we had to read a short story about a society that enforced sameness, it wasn’t the giver where they did it genetically, rather if you were smart they’d fix headphones to your ears that played a loud obnoxious noise so you couldn’t think, if you were tall or athletic they crippled you, basically they brought everyone down to the same bad level... That’s the soc…
How Basecamp Blew Up
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#712I'm among those with mixed feelings. - list of funny names that is kept in some persistent form and circulates the company with full acknowledgment of the head people: Childish and extremely unprofessional, but still a typical mistake rather than a colossal disaster; - politics and racism issue: looks like typical misunderstanding but on a very fragile subjects. Very easy to get into drama scenarios with this mix. Ve…
They made a mistake.
I think they made more than one mistake. Overall, I think this situation really paints Jason in a bad light; I used to use Basecamp, but I actually know him more from all his interviews and writings about management and leadership.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reform the Police had been the modus oparandi for fixinf policing for >50 years. It hasn’t worked. That is why more absolute language has been used. Policing organizations/unions/departments have refused to change, evolve, or improve their behavior.
Perhaps then the slogan should be closer to "Replace the Police". Something that represents both the dismantling and rebuilding of police forces. Personally I'm a big fan of requiring a much, much higher standard of training than police have now. Especially when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. The best way to minimise the consequences is to ensure that we have maximised their skill potential with the forms of interv…
There's probably a larger group of people that want to see portions of the police budget reallocated than the police disbanded and reformed. There's really not a great term that perfectly captures what everyone wants, but at least some common ground is "less funding", which "defund" is at least close to if you squint.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
This dynamic is playing out in thousands of companies and startups across the US. Many people in the US, the woke, have redefined "white supremacy" and "racism" to mean most inequalities and behavior that they don't like: They do not accept non-racist environments, only anti-racist ones. They do not accept that businesses be politically neutral. Businesses must take political stances internally and publicly. To do an…
>They do not accept non-racist environments, only anti-racist ones. They do not accept that businesses be politically neutral. Perhaps they are the ones working toward a politically neutral, non-racist environment, and it is you who won't accept it. In truth, I don't believe either they or you could properly identify what a politically neutral environment really looks like, and you're probably all unreliable and serv…
No you really don't get it.
At my company that I was formally employed at before moving on to my current startup, we had a minority of employees very aggressively and vocally demanding that the CEO issue an anti-racism statement after the George Floyd murder. A statement was issue condemning what happened and racism. They were not satisfied with this and demanded that the exact words black lives matter be used and also that a donation to the BLM organization be made.
The company sold data analysis software targeted at Excel power users. It didn't have any offices in Minnesota. The idea that the company needed to make these statements was insane. They don't control police forces in Minneapolis they don't control police forces anywhere.
It is literally not their business to comment on these matters.
And something I have repeatedly stated and noticed is that the employees making these demands are mediocre at best. I rarely see talented developers doing this because they're too busy working.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#715Earlier 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.
You're clearly not looking very hard. As a super simple example, look at the countless studies that have shown that signifiers that point towards you being black on a resume (your name, school, etc.) have a measurable effect on getting interviews. That's textbook systematic racism.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> First, you're creating such a stark false dichotomy that it's hard not to wonder if it's somehow deliberate. Perhaps you might enlighten us as to why this is a false dichotomy, and what other options there are. > Second You cannot run a company that perpetuates white supremacy without implicitly supporting that white supremacy, whether you know it or not. I've already been clearly told that malice and intent are no…
Honestly, nah.
Since we've already touched on the subject of "bad faith rhetorical tools," getting on other people's cases for acknowledging that the English language is soaked in polysemy isn't exactly an encouraging sign. It's difficult to have an enjoyable conversation with someone who's brandishing a cape.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#717Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/05/05/veil-dar... "The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when “a veil of darkness” masks their race." > Creating that database enabled the team to find the sta…
Aggregating everything and taking an average doesn't prove 'everything is racist', it just proves some portion of people are. It's not traffic stops, 'the police', or 'the system' that is racist, it's individual cops making the decision to pull over one person and not another. If this were an example of systemic racism, there would be a systemic fix, but there isn't. The only way to fix this would be to wipe out or e…
The claim they were contesting was that the poster couldn't find "a single example of systematic racism". Countering that doesn't require that every single person isn't racist, just that racism exists and has a measurable impact.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
> First, you're creating such a stark false dichotomy that it's hard not to wonder if it's somehow deliberate. Perhaps you might enlighten us as to why this is a false dichotomy, and what other options there are. > Second You cannot run a company that perpetuates white supremacy without implicitly supporting that white supremacy, whether you know it or not. I've already been clearly told that malice and intent are no…
Honestly, nah. Since we've already touched on the subject of "bad faith rhetorical tools," getting on other people's cases for acknowledging that the English language is soaked in polysemy isn't exactly an encouraging sign. It's difficult to have an enjoyable conversation with someone who's brandishing a cape.
No good faith conversations starts by redefining the other side as white supremacists. But I think you know that.
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#719I'm among those with mixed feelings. - list of funny names that is kept in some persistent form and circulates the company with full acknowledgment of the head people: Childish and extremely unprofessional, but still a typical mistake rather than a colossal disaster; - politics and racism issue: looks like typical misunderstanding but on a very fragile subjects. Very easy to get into drama scenarios with this mix. Ve…
They also kept an outspoken Islamophobe on the team for over a decade
Re: How Basecamp Blew Up
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
This dismissal of people as "unhinged", "cultish", and "lack of mental balance" at best unsympathetic and at worst callous. As others have pointed out, it's not really possible to compartmentalize yourself from "politics" unless you are represented by the majority and what is and isn't "politically acceptable" at work has always been fluid and changing. The fact that they have chosen these words to describe their fru…
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.
I don't think the existence of the list is really the problem, it was just the spark that lead to all this. Everyone, including DHH and Jason agrees that the list was a bad idea. It was the arguments that sprung out of that, and then the ridiculously heavy handed policy changes that started all of this. The list itself doesn't matter, it's becoming increasingly clear that there were pre-existing tensions and there would have been some other event that kicked this off if the list didn't.