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Changes at Basecamp

world.hey.com

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#191

Post by chipotle_coyote »

There's a great blog entry I just read about this, "On Politics At Work". I think the author effectively hits on a real problem with a lot of these discussions.

https://json.blog/2021/04/26/on-politics-at.html

To some folks, "politics at work" means "endless battle royale political debates among coworkers in a Slack all day long; why wouldn't you be against that?

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt and assuming they're trying to stave off the former. But it's not that easy to do that without also affecting the latter, because if you ask questions that boil down to is our company discriminating, even unintentionally and do our LGBT and minority employees feel as safe and valued as our straight cis white employees, someone will be super upset that you're "bringing politics into the workplace." (I guarantee someone reading this is thinking "ugh, 'cis' is a slur, why you gotta be so political," and, bang: somebody has just made recognizing the existence of trans people into something inherently political, and now we get to argue over whether that somebody is me or the cis-is-a-slur guy.)

Here's a thought: if your goal is to try to keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work, then don't say "don't be political." Say "keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work."

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#192

Post by mdoms »

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?

What do you mean "what about"? Isn't it obvious - you don't talk about these interests at work. What's unclear about that? Is there something in your employment contract guaranteeing you the right to talk to your coworkers about anything that interests you? How would you feel if I spoke to you at the watercooler about my hypothetical interests in the supremacy of the Arian race?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#193

Post by drewbug01 »

markmark wrote: post #142
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…

But isn't the place to discuss those issues, if they are impacting you at your workplace, with your manager, HR or your union? Not to start a thread on the work discussion forum?

I don’t think so, for a variety of reasons. But one of them is that managers and HR reps are often keen to just make a problem “go away” - so coworkers agitating over that problem is often required for any substantial change.

Notably, the US tech workforce is almost entirely in unionized, as well - so that avenue isn’t available.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#194

Post by mdoms »

david38 wrote: post #129
PascLeRasc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine is a software engineer in a conservative industry, and their company brought out the same "no politics at work" last summer. Their benefits package has some language specifically referring to only extending health insurance coverage to hetero spouses, and only permitting time off for a new child if the employee gave birth to it, so nothing for adoptions, fathers, or surrogate births. People have been…

I find it strange that even a hyper conservative company would prohibit time off for adoption. I took one day off for the birth of my first daughter. I was in college. I couldn’t afford more time.

It seems strange because the comment is an obvious lie.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#195

Post by [deleted] »

mwcampbell wrote: post #155
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…

> You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth. I don't understand how banning discussions on politics in official company communication channels leads to that. On the contrary, doesn't such a policy create a safe space for the people you're talking about to work together with other people who have different views?

[deleted]

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#196

Post by rtpg »

bsima wrote: post #186
rtpg wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Should I pay for recruiter fees out of my own pocket if I want to send a recruiter to an HBCU while I'm at it?

I'm not going to do a diversity spiel, but I have had the "would be nice for our team to have different kinds of people" discussion before, and part of solving that can involve more focused recruiting efforts (including stuff like sponsoring those kinds of events). It's totally a work-related thing. Why would I pay out of pocket to help my company hire?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#197

Post by itsangaris »

markmark wrote: post #78
mempko wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is a creative act. This kills creativity and will kill any company culture. Basecamp might as well become JIRA at this point.

Atlassian's market cap is almost $60B, Basecamp will be pretty happy if this small change leads to that sort of success.

Not defending this Basecamp's policy, but their goals as a company are vastly different than Atlassian's, so it's not really a fair comparison. Which do you think indexes higher on employee happiness?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#198

Post by rexreed »

How does the 10% profit share work?

Do they take 10% of profits and divide them equally among all employees? Contractors? Full time? Part time? Interns?

Does someone know how the profit share works?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#199

Post by babesh »

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…

I worked in tech over twenty years ago and I knew multiple same sex couples back then. It wasn’t an issue at all. This was the Bay Area. May have been different elsewhere. It is still not an issue in the Bay Area.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#200

Post by drusepth »

detaro wrote: post #164
drusepth wrote: post #139

I wasn't expecting to like these changes after seeing a ton of tweets from rubyists I respect criticizing them, but after reading them... I love them all. Companies becoming vocal political entities over the past few years has been mind-blowing and I'm glad to see companies starting to reel it back and get back to, well, being companies. They make products; they don't need to have opinions on unrelated things. IMO pe…

> IMO people (even the people in charge of companies) can (and should) have political opinions! _Companies_ shouldn't. I'm not sure how this meshes with this post? Basecamps founder has been politically active in a role representing the company, by talking to congress about big techs market power (i.e. Hey's fight with Apple). That part is not what they are banning here.

Part of this post's change is that Basecamp (as a company) is pulling back on publicizing political stances that aren't directly related to their business.

From the follow-up post @ https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...:

>Next, Basecamp, as a company, is no longer going to weigh-in publicly on societal political affairs, outside those that directly connect to the business. Again, everyone can individually weigh-in as much or as little as they want, but we're done with posts that present a Basecamp stance on such issues.

>Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products. This means topics like antitrust, privacy, employee surveillance. If you're in doubt as to whether something falls within those lines or not, please, again, reach out for guidance.

The founders obviously have strong political opinions on a lot of topics and I think it's great that they're going to express more of them personally instead of expressing them through Basecamp (company).

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