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Changes at Basecamp

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#401
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Asian students that can't get into Harvard despite higher scores disagree with you.

I realize your heart is in the right place, but I just want to call out that what you're saying is actually propagating the stereotype of Asians scoring high / other PoCs not scoring as much in exams. This can create undue expectations which can lead to feustration, anxiety, and depression amongst people that are stereotyped to be high performers. Add to that the layer of being systemically discriminated against, and…

This has been covered to death wrt the Harvard discrimination scandal.

Asians do (on average) score higher. Asians were discriminated against due to this.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has mandated that 40% of our recruiting contacts for engineers are women. We have spent weeks talking about bias in our interview process and despite having no metrics showing bias is a problem we have made changes to combat it (i.e. no video on the call) that have led to worse experiences for our candidates. Suffice to say we have had a lot of trouble hiring engineers. > Why wouldn't you want to bring the…

Are you saying you'd prefer to talk about politics, at work? Because it sounds like you consider this to be a political issue, that you'd like addressed.

They didn't say that at all. Why are you putting words in their mouth?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#403
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea who Jason and DHH are beyond this announcement, so I have no idea which political discussions they intend to prohibit in practice. But clearly there have been some political discussions there that they intend to prohibit now, so it’s not crazy to give same-sex marriage as an example of a prominent divisive highly-charged political topic in the United States. What’s a better example that you think these…

To me it seems very clear that merely mentioning the fact of a same sex relationship is not a political statement. If person A mentions they are in a same sex relationship, then person B goes on a rant about how it should be illegal and how dare you bring it up, then to me person B is the one making the discussion political, not person A. I do see how if person B is the boss, this would be a problem, but I don't thin…

Theology-driven (in bio) person starts a "justice-orientated" non-profit while admitting in the same sentence that she knew nothing about "Critical Social Justice" or "Critical Theory". //This would be a little bit like starting a web hosting provider while "knowing nothing about DNS, or HTTP"

Gets a lot of criticism on her approach. //Unclear if this is fair or not. We don't know what they did and the criticisms she is describing are very vague.

Decides that because she doesn't understand the critics, it must be that they don't want to actually fix anything, they just wanted control of the organization.

Weaponizes the language that oppressed minorities use to carve out a semblance of agency in a discriminatory world in bad faith. //"Did you just assume my sexuality" is a 4chan-level troll, and as much of a cliche as her pinned tweet equating racism with talking about racism.

I could go on but the key point is this person's story is a Choose Your Own Adventure for Outrage.

If you already agree with her you read this and think "how horrifying, we must do everything possible to prevent this". If you don't, you stop reading the first time she uses the term "Woke" and realize there will be nothing credible that follows other than non-specific vague allegations of boogymen SJWs and cancel culture.

The word woke has been completely appropriated. Not a single "woke" person I know would ever describe themselves as woke anymore. It has been completely appropriated by bad faith actors who use it as a blanket statement for basically everything they disagree with. A bit like US Republicans saying the MLB moving the All-Star game is an example of "cancel culture".

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#404
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 don't understand why would any company want e…

I don't understand why would any company want to openly discuss... That's the point; companies don't want to discuss it but oppressed employees do.

[deleted]

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#405
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible until and unless they center marginalized voices and give them positions of power at Basecamp. Otherwise this decision is cowardice wrapped in some arbitrary policies.

Well, Basecamp is their company, isn’t it? If they don’t have the right to make those changes... who has?

The people who do the work that produces the value.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#406
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m pretty sure mainstream republicans are pretty onboard with accepting homosexuality, it’s the trans movement that is currently under scrutiny. Obviously we can find examples of members of the GOP that are against gay marriage, but the last four or five years has seen that toned down a bunch. People change, conservatives pride themselves on changing slower, but it does happen.

> Obviously we can find examples of members of the GOP that are against gay marriage

The party platform is the official stance of the Republican party and it is against same sex marriage. It won't change until 2024. Republicans who support it are extreme outliers, not the other way around.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rnc-moves-2016-platform-inta...

> I’m pretty sure mainstream republicans are pretty onboard with accepting homosexuality

Less than half of Republicans support same sex marriage.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-mat...

If I was in a same sex marriage I would feel very, very uncomfortable working at a company that "bans politics" when a large number of my peers thinks my spouse is "unnatural".

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#407
post #27

Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp? People are going to say "obviously st…

While I hear the, "But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion", it's kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, "But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy." F…

Do we all know? I don't. I have no idea. Is it cool for me to talk about housing markets? About markets in the abstract? About marijuana markets despite it being illegal where I live? About policies in other states that differ from mine, like marijuana policies?

There's no reasonable line, because unless you're stupid as can be, politics isn't some abstract thing that happens over there; it's a thing that happens everyday in your life.

I'm immensely disappointed in DHH for this take.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#408

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…

> conservative politics in the UD make some people’s entire existence political, full stop Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company, my entire existence isn’t just political, it’s apparently a moral imperative that I be reminded on a daily basis that people like myself not only shouldn’t have a voice, we shouldn’t be allowed to exist in society at all. Full stop. It’s made quite clear tha…

Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views

Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?

Con: LOL no...no not those views

Me: So....deregulation?

Con: Haha no not those views either

Me: Which views, exactly?

Con: Oh, you know the ones

(from https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174... )

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#409

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…

>Companies becoming vocal political entities over the past few years has been mind-blowing

Are we pretending that all that corporate lobbying and political donations that have been going on for years and years was non-political?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you'd prefer to talk about politics, at work? Because it sounds like you consider this to be a political issue, that you'd like addressed.

They didn't say that at all. Why are you putting words in their mouth?

Are you saying they don't consider this issue political, or that they don't want it addressed? What words do you think I put in their mouth?
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