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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#381

Post by bob3k »

MattRix wrote: post #336
dsnr wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Third, they secretly deleted over a decade's worth of company chat history shortly before making the disastrous blog post. Why? I can think of a reason. To protect employees who are not part of the woke mob from being “canceled” by the woke mob.

any time I find someone like you complaining about “getting cancelled” or “cancel culture”, I just replace “cancel” with “consequences”, since that’s what it really is. They wanted to protect employees from the consequences of their words and actions.

So, would you say the same thing about a person talking about abortion if the company culture was conservative?

This goes well beyond 'consequences'. its being used as a weapon against people you disagree with or are just political enemies and the end result is thugs and bullies gaining power that didnt earn it and dont deserve it.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#382

Post by moduspol »

jiofih wrote: post #320
moduspol wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was just claimed to be. It's not the case that forming a committee that's over 1/3 the size of the company to do unprompted evaluation of vendor relationships for DE&I and approval of guest speakers follows logically from, "there used to be a list of funny sounding names and management didn't handle it well."

Source?

For which claim?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#383

Post by FireBeyond »

prawn wrote: post #224
threeseed wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that it is "his" workplace belongs in the Mad Men era of business. If you want to attract and keep talent you need to listen to their views and involve in them defining the values of the company.

Is it possible that they were doing exactly that in trying to focus the staff on work itself? I'd guess I lean politically with the founders and their departing staff, and I don't love the "silent majority" that gets spoken of, but DHH talked about having people approach him who were uncomfortable with having a workplace they felt was politicised. As a personal example, I work in a shared office space. If a vocal ten…

> Is it possible that they were doing exactly that in trying to focus the staff on work itself?

A lot of the complaints or commentary I've seen across a few issues, leaving aside this more acute issue was that DHH and JF were entirely comfortable espousing _their_ opinions and feelings on things, but a lot less interested in hearing other people's.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#384

Post by steve_taylor »

sithlord wrote: post #318
arp242 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's wrong with husband? Or housekeeping? How am I supposed to talk about my husband doing the housekeeping?

you say "My Man Spouse is doing the domestic science"

Don’t assume their spouse’s gender. /s

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#386

Post by faizmokhtar »

azangru wrote: post #92
DiNovi wrote: post #6

so they: - Announced a new company policy publicly before telling the staff - Deleted internal threads that would go against their narrative of why they did so - Had a conservative senior employee go off about politics on the call discussing the new no politics policy. - refused to reprimand said employee on the call - had one founder take this extremely sensitive call from his bed with his camera off and on mute. -…

> - Had a conservative senior employee go off about politics on the call discussing the new no politics policy. The article really doesn't tell us whether that senior employee just went off on a political tangent for no reason whatsoever, or he was responding to an earlier made political statement that he decided to disagree with. What the article does suggest is that that contribution by that senior employee was pre…

Based on what I followed from Twitter, that senior employee is the one who regularly posted articles from Breitbart to the internal thread that was deleted.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#387

Post by sagichmal »

kbenson wrote: post #134
Threeve303 wrote: post #13

This story is so strange. First of all, it has been considered unprofessional to talk about politics at work for as long as I can remember. It's odd how you would need a rule implemented about that. Is this just a generational thing? On the other hand, when did racial equality become an inherently political topic? Especially racial equality inside the workplace. This also doesn't mean that the Basecamp founders are r…

> On the other hand, when did racial equality become an inherently political topic? When it was turned into one by politicians and activists, just like masks were. I'm a firm believer that if you actually sit a few people down and try to have a sane conversation where people actually talk and don't spout slogans, you find that their views aren't all that different, then just put emphasis and importance on slightly di…

(laughs)

"Politicians and activists" obviously didn't politicize masks. No coherent reading of the last 2 years supports that conclusion.

It was the screeching Republican base, who decided on day one that the masks were a symbol of government overreach and I guess got Covid to own the libs.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#388

Post by jgwil2 »

JPKab wrote: post #354
jgwil2 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My favorite moment was sitting there, and having a coworker (US born, but of Arab descent) who grew up in an extremely wealthy neighborhood with immense privilege, lecturing a blind white male employee about how much privilege he had, and then going on to talk about how white people were uniquely tainted by the slave trade that some of their ancestors engaged in. I find it pretty hard to believe this went down the…

That's exactly how it went down in one of my companies HR "listening circles" in February. The blind employee is married to a woman who immigrated to the US from Japan. He was being lectured by a young semi-useless data scientist who grew up in a wealthy suburb just outside of Dearborn. I'm totally making all of this up in your eyes because you don't like what you're hearing. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable.

I think you have an agenda and you're shading the story to fit your narrative. I would bet that other people would describe it differently.

I notice you didn't reply about the name-calling.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#389

Post by [deleted] »

seriousquestion wrote: post #193
gowld wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's you vs Merriam-Webster, I'll take Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defund > : to withdraw funding from and "withdraw" does not mean "remove completely" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy > 1 : the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races > 2: the social, economic, an…

Interesting. They added that 2nd definition just last October. Here it was prior to October 2020; https://web.archive.org/web/20200901223507/https://www.merri...

[deleted]

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#390

Post by dantemoose »

Casey Newton is at least partly responsible for this. Before Basecamp "blew up", he wrote two articles that people argued about for days on Hacker News and Twitter. That absolutely must have heightened tensions among the Basecamp team.
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