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Changes at Basecamp

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#181

Post by rtpg »

drewbug01 wrote: post #145
nerdponx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with what you said about American conservatism; it's an interesting idea at least. But what's an example of a political issue that would affect someone's work at Basecamp? So you do a lot more than just cut out “distracting” conversations this way. You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth. I can't think of many political topics…

It wasn’t that long ago that even in tech, you couldn’t mention same-sex spouses without backlash. And that’s still the case today in other industries (particularly ones that don’t have a sizable internet culture influence like tech does). So like to apply that specifically to a work context: that’s saying “no watercooler chat about what you and your spouses got up to over the weekend” because your spouse existing is…

Another basic example: imagine working at Basecamp and being like "Can we sponsor Django Girls?" (whatever the Rails equivalent is) Like maybe you want to have a more diverse team and this is one way of trying to recruit for it.

Without these "oh politics is sin" things, the bosses saying no might require them to justify it. Instead they can now weasel their way out of this kind of stuff, and basically shield themselves from criticism on this front, even if people internally might want to change [0]

Lots of conservative ideology is around this, trying to turn some subjective defense of beliefs into like... some objective rules about not doing X/Y/Z (basically maintaining the status quo). I'm not saying the decision makers are conservative, but that's what the result is going to be here.

(tbh I think there are good reasons to minimize discussions about current events into places where people aren't forced to be exposed to them at work. I know I don't want to, just cuz I'm already exposed to it a lot. But there's a difference between banning politics talk and just asking people to keep it in certain areas IMO)

[0] https://basecamp.com/about/team they don't have the engineering/non-engineering split here, but 50-odd people and they have 3 Dans + 3 Jasons. There are definitely companies with more absurd balances and the people at Basecamp probably would like to see improvements! But this kinda stuff makes it harder.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#182

Post by SirSourdough »

rangoon626 wrote: post #119
ashtonkem wrote: post #112

Taking away wellness benefits seems unbelievably petty and foolish. These are relatively cheap compared to payroll, but are fantastic for morale. Taking them away on top everything else feels like he’s just willfully poking his own employees in the eye with a stick for no good reason. Also, posting this publicly feels like a very, very bad idea.

Providing gym memberships is kind of problematic, if not outright insensitive. Body positivity is a thing and self-love can be expressed in more ways than just this one.

I don’t think that promoting exercise as a component of healthy living makes a statement on body image. People who exercise have all types of bodies, all of which are acceptable.

It is paternalistic to “force” people to go to the gym to receive this compensation for their work. But there’s also plenty of research showing positive benefits of exercise on overall well-being for it to make sense for businesses to incentivize it from a worker performance perspective without body image entering into the discussion.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#183

Post by throwaway3699 »

mempko wrote: post #76
agd wrote: post #11

Think we'll see a lot more companies coming out with statements like this. Who wants their work slack to look like the worst parts of Twitter and Facebook? With employees cancelling each other and demanding they recognise various political points? Not me. You can tell there have been a lot of difficult discussions with various employees behind the scenes. It's all a distraction. Work should be about work.

Yet politics is one of the few places you can impact your workplace. Most companies in the US are authoritarian and it's in politics you can have some say. Democracy at Work is the next stage of work. The "shut up and work" kind of work is a dead end.

1. You start a 'democratic' company 2. You make a controversial decision or series of decisions 3. You lose 'voted out' 4. Turns out your controversial decision would've been [firing a few employees/getting acquired/insert unpopular thing here] to keep the company afloat, and everything goes belly up

It's the same reason unions only work in the biggest, most established companies. Everything slows to a crawl otherwise.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#184

Post by nemo44x »

tshaddox wrote: post #117
exegete wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you described is talking about personal interests and activities, and I agree that is the kind of stuff that is easy and fun to talk (and hear) about with others. I’m starting to think many people don’t have personal activities and interests and don’t know what to fill in small talk with other than what they saw on social media or the news.

What about people whose personal interests and activities directly involve politics? Like people interested in political analysis or reporting, or people interested in competitive policy debate, or even people who actively do advocacy work in their free time? Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?

There’s a lot of things that aren’t political per-se you shouldn’t share with the broader group.

For instance, maybe my family has a history of killing wild animals for food. I wouldn’t share our kill shots with my company the same way I would with friends that are interested in hunting. Because I know it’s something a good chunk of people don’t want to see and it’s unnecessary to share.

Now imagine I had a few friends in the office who too supported this. And we went out of our way to not only share pictures of these killings (which are all legal) but started to intimidate people that didn’t like to see them.

And then we go a step further and plan a trip to Africa to hunt lions - all legal and on the up and up. And we share these relentlessly. And we don’t stop there. We post Big-5 trophies and endless shots of venison being butchered.

We also begin to loudly advocate NRA membership for colleagues and use company resources to recruit social events where we all go shooting together. We go further and decide we want THE COMPANY to support our gun rights. We walk out and protest our CEO who “doesn’t have the balls” to take a measly pheasant.

Who wants this?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#185

Post by bsima »

drewbug01 wrote: post #145
nerdponx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with what you said about American conservatism; it's an interesting idea at least. But what's an example of a political issue that would affect someone's work at Basecamp? So you do a lot more than just cut out “distracting” conversations this way. You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth. I can't think of many political topics…

It wasn’t that long ago that even in tech, you couldn’t mention same-sex spouses without backlash. And that’s still the case today in other industries (particularly ones that don’t have a sizable internet culture influence like tech does). So like to apply that specifically to a work context: that’s saying “no watercooler chat about what you and your spouses got up to over the weekend” because your spouse existing is…

> because your spouse existing is a “political” concept

The point is to explicitly not politicize these conversations and instead talk and relate on a human-to-human level

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#186

Post by bsima »

rtpg wrote: post #181
drewbug01 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t that long ago that even in tech, you couldn’t mention same-sex spouses without backlash. And that’s still the case today in other industries (particularly ones that don’t have a sizable internet culture influence like tech does). So like to apply that specifically to a work context: that’s saying “no watercooler chat about what you and your spouses got up to over the weekend” because your spouse existing is…

Another basic example: imagine working at Basecamp and being like "Can we sponsor Django Girls?" (whatever the Rails equivalent is) Like maybe you want to have a more diverse team and this is one way of trying to recruit for it. Without these "oh politics is sin" things, the bosses saying no might require them to justify it. Instead they can now weasel their way out of this kind of stuff, and basically shield themsel…

> "Can we sponsor Django Girls?"

Sure, just do it with your own money, not company money

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#187

Post by detaro »

nemo44x wrote: post #184
tshaddox wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people whose personal interests and activities directly involve politics? Like people interested in political analysis or reporting, or people interested in competitive policy debate, or even people who actively do advocacy work in their free time? Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?

There’s a lot of things that aren’t political per-se you shouldn’t share with the broader group. For instance, maybe my family has a history of killing wild animals for food. I wouldn’t share our kill shots with my company the same way I would with friends that are interested in hunting. Because I know it’s something a good chunk of people don’t want to see and it’s unnecessary to share. Now imagine I had a few frien…

> And we went out of our way to not only share pictures of these killings (which are all legal) but started to intimidate people that didn’t like to see them.

And your managements only way of reacting to that is banning all potentially political talk? Really? My boss would go "go make a #hunting channel and keep it there". And I presume if I tried to get him into gun rights activism the response would be "no, stop pestering us about it", repeated more firmly and with consequences if I kept it up.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#188

Post by drusepth »

tshaddox wrote: post #117
exegete wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you described is talking about personal interests and activities, and I agree that is the kind of stuff that is easy and fun to talk (and hear) about with others. I’m starting to think many people don’t have personal activities and interests and don’t know what to fill in small talk with other than what they saw on social media or the news.

What about people whose personal interests and activities directly involve politics? Like people interested in political analysis or reporting, or people interested in competitive policy debate, or even people who actively do advocacy work in their free time? Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?

>Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?

I think you're way more likely to find coworkers that get mad or upset over the advocacy work you did over the weekend than you are to find coworkers mad about you building a drone.

One of these topics seems to have a much higher chance of negatively affecting either you or your coworker in the workplace.

If you're enjoying some watercooler conversation with a coworker, would you prefer them chatting about the drone they built or the door-to-door-campaigning they did for 2024, or the protest they were at against ?

Even if you're fine discussing advocacy work for a cause you disagree with (like any adult should be), there's also a chance you're going to alienate or upset your coworker by not agreeing or being on "their side".

Talking about building drones doesn't have the high-stakes social stigmas that can have lasting, chilling effects in the workplace that a lot of tangentially-political topics do.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#189

Post by drewbug01 »

jiofih wrote: post #167
drewbug01 wrote: post #81

Issues that directly impact me and mine at my workplace are considered “political” by those of more conservative mindsets. That’s the really ugly flip side of this, and I know it’s been said elsewhere but: conservative politics in the US make some people’s entire existence political, full stop. So you do a lot more than just cut out “distracting” conversations this way. You uninvited certain people entirely, and in d…

> some people’s entire existence political, full stop > you uninvited certain people entirely Can you elaborate on this? I What makes a person unable to work without bringing those political issues up?

Not unable to work; unwelcome at work.

I mentioned it elsewhere, but saying “my husband and I went to [insert benign weekend activity here]” is now a potentially political conversation because there are people in modern, 2021 workplaces who thing that being gay at all is a “political” issue.

So again - not that I can’t work, but I’m unwelcome at work. Even if the company would never enforce the policy that way: they could, and I have to worry about it. And not too long ago, companies did enforce it that way.

(Just to continue with one specific example, I don’t think the problem is contained only to this one example)

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#190

Post by stonogo »

xiphias2 wrote: post #158
detaro wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that no, we do not know what they are referring to. Lots of murky lines, lots of people with bad experiences that what for them is essential is considered over lines, worry that it'll be used to silence internal discussion of things the company does, ... (and of course if you impose it on a company used to something different, it's potentially a massive culture shift) The "you can take it to pr…

Blacklist/whitelist, main vs master, is there a bias in promoting women, what are the rules for dating a colleague, is an anti-bias training needed are all topics that are divisive, though some of them are easy to solve (David has strong opinions for naming variables, remote working solves the dating problem and no peer reviews means that less talk needs to be done about promotions).

>remote working solves the dating problem

if only.

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