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“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

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Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#191

Post by danjac »

deanCommie wrote: post #150
odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends I will be looking and reaching out to them soon. A) they are now looking for a lot of people. B) I fully agree with their idea about apolitical work spaces, and I know a lot of folks that do as well. I have quit jobs due to the BLM fanfare, you are either with us or against us mentality in the workplace where I just wanted to do my job and get paid to do so. edit: I chose BLM because it was the big thing last…

If I was DHH and Jason I would be extremely wary of any applications coming in right now. When your policies are being celebrated by Breitbart and other alt-right trash publications, you are going to attract a lot of folks with extremely questionable integrity. Not saying you're one of those, but if you can't recognize your point in history and are quitting your job over "BLM fanfare", then you also know the answer t…

They're going to end up recruiting from the brain trust that gave us Parler.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#192

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

uomo wrote: post #107
4ndrewl wrote: post #73

I guess it's important to note the scale here. About a third of Basecamp employees is ~15-20 people?

According to the Verge, 18 employees (out of 57 total) have tweeted that they are going to leave. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22412714/basecamp-employe...

If that's just the ones quitting publicly, that's a really bad sign. If I was at Basecamp right now, I'd seriously consider accepting that offer, not out of concern about the policy change but out of concern about the future of a company that lost 1/3rd of its employees.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#193

Post by throwawayay02 »

emadabdulrahim wrote: post #145
mark_l_watson wrote: post #105

I have a different take on this, different than most comments here: I think that the founders/owners knew what they were doing based on reading their book and lightly following them. I have never been a customer. I know that I am just guessing, but they might have been making the lifestyle decision that they wanted a smaller and more focused company that was more joyful to manage/run. Also, I have some sympathy for a…

> no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way; I get that you mean very well with this statement. However, given a large and diverse enough group of people working together, it's practically impossible that NO ONE will never feel uncomfortable in different situations or interactions. Be it personally or professionally uncomfortable. Period.

Divide it into smaller groups.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#194

Post by Ar-Curunir »

notJim wrote: post #99

A big part of me wonders if this was the point of this whole exercise. A certain subset of employees are getting too uppity, so you just tell them to fuck off and then show them the door. Theoretically you could fire them, but that might risk lawsuits or even more turmoil. If you have the cash to do this, why not. Basecamp may be getting exactly what they wanted.

These are all core team heads...

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#196

Post by throwawaysea »

klyrs wrote: post #142
throwawaysea wrote: post #43

I really hope more companies declare their workplaces to be politics free. I am completely tired of the long march through the institutions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_ins... ) that has culminated in corporations being weaponized for one-sided progressive political agendas. These departures really just give away the biases of the tech industry at large. As for Basecamp's leaders - I thi…

I'm curious why more right-leaning folks don't see this as a free speech issue.

I consider myself a moderate, and by voting habit, almost fully left-wing. I do see it as a free speech issue in one sense, but in practice I only see free speech being allowed for certain viewpoints. For example if you work at Google or Facebook and you speak up against affirmative action hiring practices or transwomen in women's sports, you will be fired. The excuse will be that these opinions are "hate speech" or that they violate some policy of discrimination at work place or made someone feel "unsafe" or whatever else. If on the other hand, everyone is given the same psychological safety and ability to speak up, without any social or professional repercussions, that might be acceptable.

That said, I think a workplace where people freely argue with each other and try to make their political viewpoints "win" is going to be unproductive. Leaving out politics is appropriate because it focuses the company's efforts on providing a better product or service. I view time and resources spent on those political activities as unproductive and distracting for the workforce. So in a sense, being political at work seems like a performance issue to me. I know some people will use mental gymnastics to claim that being political is somehow beneficial to the company with vague arguments around diversity or attracting certain customers or whatever, but I don't personally find those justifications to be compelling, as they seem disconnected from the reality that apolitical companies and products do just fine.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#197

Post by weeblewobble »

toolz wrote: post #112
dbt00 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more than a third of your employees think that a single policy change is enough for them to leave, then maybe your policy change is dumb.

the decision may or may not be dumb, but appealing to the popularity of a decision is never logically sound. There have been incredibly unethical things done throughout history with far more than 1/3 approval.

I think it's pretty sound in this case. A policy change that causes 1/3 of your company to resign in protest is definitionally dumb (unless you're a believer in the "I meant to do that" school of thought being suggested elsewhere in this thread).

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#199

Post by jtdev »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #136
Graffur wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Bigbuttson an actual name? That is funny to an English speaker.

It's also pretty offensive to your customer if that's their name.

Maybe it’s a pornography company...? Maybe people should chill the fuck out with the constant thirst for being offended.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#200

Post by Ar-Curunir »

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #87
danjac wrote: post #18

I wouldn't be surprised if this will become a case study in future in how to self-destruct a successful company with a single bad communication, much like Gerald Ratner (although this may be due to long-term grievances we're not aware of).

Depends I will be looking and reaching out to them soon. A) they are now looking for a lot of people. B) I fully agree with their idea about apolitical work spaces, and I know a lot of folks that do as well. I have quit jobs due to the BLM fanfare, you are either with us or against us mentality in the workplace where I just wanted to do my job and get paid to do so. edit: I chose BLM because it was the big thing last…

Black lives being undervalued is not a US-centric problem.
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