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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#841

Post by ertian »

_y5hn wrote: post #643
ertian wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you stopped beating your wife yet? It's a loaded question, with no right answer. According to the article, the same speaker claimed that there was a culture of white supremacy at the company. There were demands to stop 'protecting' an exec who had expressed conservative views in the past. Do you now or have you ever had sympathy for the positions of the communist party? Well, do I mean the position that anybody…

It's especially troublesome for a wife-beater that wants to stay in power. People in power do all sorts of stuff, to stay in power and keep others down.

And people who seeking power do all sorts of stuff to gain it, including asking trap questions with no right answer and using the result as leverage to push people out of leadership positions.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#842

Post by blacktriangle »

KittenInABox wrote: post #771
blacktriangle wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

> after knowing people at Google who had to sit through HR bullshit like "how to respect your direct reports who sexually identify as Otherkin" Do you have sources for this, or anonymous blogs? Because I'd be concerned what "like" means here. It's obviously not literally this, otherwise it'd the word 'literal'. But to me, the ambiguity can be read (in bad faith) as "I think LGBTQ identities, broadly, are bullshit, an…

I'm not going to out a friend who still works there, but yes I did see phone pictures of a power point presentation literally mentioning "Otherkin."

Although I'm also just some random stranger on the internet, so take this post as you will.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#843

Post by throwaway789256 »

comte7092 wrote: post #836
throwaway789256 wrote: post #210

Earlier 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…

Your assertions don’t really stack up with the known facts of the situation. It seems that there was at the very least one instance of behavior that employees perceived as outwardly racist (the names list) and were seeking to address issues surrounding that behavior. On the outside, it’s hard to know much more about the details, but it also would appear that employees took issue with other somewhat minor slights that…

I think my assertions stack up pretty well with the facts.

The names list hasn't been clearly established as racist. If you have 10 times the European names as you have Asian names, is it racist against Asians, or were there "funny" names in all groups?

The perception of racism is not necessarily racism. That is precisely the point that is being argued. The claim of white supremacy does not mean that an organization is white supremacist. Big claims need big evidence. I haven't seen it.

Minor slights happen. They are inevitable in daily life no matter what your race, gender, sexual orientation or other identity. If you use minor slights to create an uproar in the context of your job, you are a bad employee who should be fired. Tying minor slights to genocide is one way of creating an uproar.

Singer had power and seniority at Basecamp. He once linked to a Breitbart page. While I differ with Breitbart on most issues, I do not see that as prima facie evidence that Singer is white supremacist or racist.

Just because Singer is a white male with authority does not make him, by definition, a white supremacist or a racist.

And if the only cure for that kind of "white supremacy" is replacing all the white males with any power or authority with people of other identities, then I'm opposed to that "cure," because it is a racist and discriminatory cure based on false generalizations about genders and racial groups.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#844

Post by SantalBlush »

JPKab wrote: post #833
andrewmd5 wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I rarely see talented developers doing this because they're too busy working. I love the privilege on display here. You can ignore racial inequality issues because "they are too distracting," meanwhile I have to wake up each morning, read yet another one of my brothers and sisters has been killed by police, and I still have to run my business. Your mediocrity exist in your complacently to the status-quo. On a daily…

You have no idea how much software I ship, but like your ideology, you make assertions without data. You act as if the only people who are killed by police are "one of my brothers and sisters". Let's unpack that, shall we? https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ Roughly 3/4 of people killed by police in the US are not one of your "brothers and sisters" if by "brothers and sisters" you are referring to humans who share you…

From the first website you link:

>Black people were 28% of those killed by police in 2020 despite being only 13% of the population.

You basically just proved the point you were replying to, that racial inequality exists in policing.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#845

Post by comte7092 »

throwaway789256 wrote: post #843
comte7092 wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertions don’t really stack up with the known facts of the situation. It seems that there was at the very least one instance of behavior that employees perceived as outwardly racist (the names list) and were seeking to address issues surrounding that behavior. On the outside, it’s hard to know much more about the details, but it also would appear that employees took issue with other somewhat minor slights that…

I think my assertions stack up pretty well with the facts. The names list hasn't been clearly established as racist. If you have 10 times the European names as you have Asian names, is it racist against Asians, or were there "funny" names in all groups? The perception of racism is not necessarily racism. That is precisely the point that is being argued. The claim of white supremacy does not mean that an organization…

Your assertion was that these people cannot accept race neutral, they’ll only accept anti racism.

With that framing, the perception of whether the list was racist does matter as it explains their motivation. Because they did perceive the list to be racist, it’s just not the case that they were taking issue with the idea of being race neutral.

Second, you are jumping to wild conclusions about what they were asking for. At no point did anyone say that “all white males with any power or authority” must be replaced. If that were true, it would stand to reason that they’d aim their ire at the entire leadership structure itself rather than on the one individual. Your blanket assertion may have some grounding in your personal experiences, but it is overly broad in this instance.

Finally, while the equivalence between minor slights and genocide has been made, that was not the reason why I brought it up. The reason why I mention minor slights is that, while they may be minor in isolation, when taken in context together they can reveal a pattern of behavior that is hard to explain to those on the outside, and thus is difficult to perceive to us as observers. In this instance it seemed that employees wanted to shave a forum to address this and were shut down.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#846

Post by jyounker »

shagie wrote: post #803
wyclif wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see that peculiar speech pattern here on HN! It's like they're afraid to say 'wife' out of fear of offending the woke mob. The same people who are OK with work being a constant struggle seminar.

I use "sibling" rather than "brother" or "sister" and "parent" rather than "mother" or "father" to reduce information leakage. "Partner" could find the same use. This isn't any woke thing - its just a "don't reveal information that isn't necessary."

^^^ This. So much this. My boss isn't entitle to know the details of my life, nor is the company, nor are my co-workers.

You earn the details of my life by being my friend, not through a contractual relationship.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#847

Post by KittenInABox »

blacktriangle wrote: post #842
KittenInABox wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after knowing people at Google who had to sit through HR bullshit like "how to respect your direct reports who sexually identify as Otherkin" Do you have sources for this, or anonymous blogs? Because I'd be concerned what "like" means here. It's obviously not literally this, otherwise it'd the word 'literal'. But to me, the ambiguity can be read (in bad faith) as "I think LGBTQ identities, broadly, are bullshit, an…

I'm not going to out a friend who still works there, but yes I did see phone pictures of a power point presentation literally mentioning "Otherkin." Although I'm also just some random stranger on the internet, so take this post as you will.

Thanks for clarifying! that sounds pretty pants-on-head.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#848

Post by jdlshore »

wyclif wrote: post #576
jdlshore wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Or maybe it also shows that being a fully-remote company can have downsides, such as coworkers not socialising enough and therefore not trusting each other? Who knows. DHH certainly has championed the "remote work for everyone" approach countless times.) I’d bet remote work was a strong contributor. People don’t form the same humanizing attachments remotely as they do in person, in my experience.

I agree. For the record, I am pro-remote work and was fully onboard long before COVID, but I also suspect that the erosion of social trust can be accelerated in a company by fully remote work. It's a tradeoff that a company can either handle badly or well. Did you read that comment about Basecamp employees "crying and screaming at their screens" after the Zoom meeting? That just sounds so much like people who are bot…

Yep, that line in particular stood out to me. It sounds like there was a lot of assuming bad faith going on. For example, taking DHH’s refusal to take a stance as condoning bad behavior, when it looked to me like he was trying to listen rather than talk, and also blindsided.

At the risk of armchair quarterbacking, the whole thing looks like a broken culture, and I get the impression nobody knew just how broken it was until now. Nor do I think any one person or action is to blame. I’d bet that it’s been festering for years.

It’s a fascinating case study, though, and I’m glad we have a view into it.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#849

Post by [deleted] »

SantalBlush wrote: post #844
JPKab wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea how much software I ship, but like your ideology, you make assertions without data. You act as if the only people who are killed by police are "one of my brothers and sisters". Let's unpack that, shall we? https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ Roughly 3/4 of people killed by police in the US are not one of your "brothers and sisters" if by "brothers and sisters" you are referring to humans who share you…

From the first website you link: >Black people were 28% of those killed by police in 2020 despite being only 13% of the population. You basically just proved the point you were replying to, that racial inequality exists in policing.

[deleted]

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#850

Post by BobbyJo »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #717
BobbyJo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then what does the word 'systemic' even mean?
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