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Changes at Basecamp

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#461

Post by mradzikowski »

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…

I understand the motives (at least the official ones) behind those changes, and I agree with most of the points there. I would say that to some extend, joining social/political discussions by companies becomes marketing.

My biggest issue is that companies do not live in a politics-free bubble. The bigger the company the more it cares and tries to influence the politics, either publicly or not, because politics influences the business.

But business influences politics too. And I think this is a reason that employees want the companies to take a stand. A company employing 10k people can make a bigger impact than those 10k people themselves, so people want to leverage this.

Theoretically, it should be a bad thing, in democracy, we want every vote to count equally. But in sad reality, individual people choose politicians, but after that, the politics is shaped by powerful. 10k people are not powerful, the company they work for - may be.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#462

Post by amzn-throw »

reducesuffering wrote: post #427
deanCommie wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you wrote the "pink" analogy and this post too, I can respond here: The issue of anti-asian quotas at major american universities is absolutely a legitimate one that needs addressing. Here's why it's a little bit more complicated than just: "Let's just remove all criteria for university admission besides high scores. That won't discriminate against asians and be a true meritocracy". Because then, the amount of…

> There is no quota. There are goals to improve these numbers. But there is no quota in the professional world. You're simply misinformed on this. I have direct primary source information from recruiting personnel in "Google and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft" that there are significant specific quota'd positions. These programs leaking to non-woke press is going to be an outrage.

Goals != Quotas.

This is frequently misunderstood by people outside these companies (and frequently by people inside them too without integrity).

You're supposed to meet goals without compromising on integrity or quality. e.g. you can't ship buggy messes.

And you can't hire substandard employees. There are mechanisms ("bar raisers") in place to do this, at least at Amazon.

I suppose I can't speak for Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. But I'm pretty sure that it's exactly the same and what you're getting is a game of broken telephone where an ambitious goal in a high stakes environment gets re-interpreted as a quota.

BTW, you're supposed to fail ~20-30% of your goals at Amazon, or you didn't set ambitious-enough ones.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#463

Post by hardwaresofton »

astrange wrote: post #433
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…

> Seems like they handled the paternalistic benefits well also by just providing direct compensation instead. This one's odd to me, because I thought the point of non-cash benefits was that it was much cheaper than giving out cash because the employer has more bargaining power than you.

Well it depends -- it's fairly simple math equation. The more paternalistic benefits you have, the more they cost, and the more people take advantage of more than one of them the more you risk hitting the value requivalent to the 3-5% promotion you have given that employee over 2 years.

Just my opinion, but if you were happy to take a 90k job because you live somewhere with a low cost of living for relatively less strenuous engineering work (let's be honest, Basecamp isn't pushing the boundaries of what can be done on the technical side, more on the product side), you're probably fine with waving off the extra 10k or whatever by thinking to yourself they'll pay for schooling if you ever do that (you probably won't).

Also, important to note that their 10% thing is performance linked ("profit sharing") -- so it pays for itself. If sales at the company grow 10% so they increase your pay 10% (and that isn't even necessarily what it is, they didn't clarify what the 10% is), the incentives are aligned and the company makes an outsize gain compared to each individual employee. It's a win-win-win, but most of the wins are on the side of the company, as usual. Compounding effects are much stronger than 10% yearly gain -- and what's even crazier is that you have to keep moving the company forward to keep getting the 10% -- essentially if you keep doing that, it's exponential improvement for the company, and each new person that comes in has to get on the hamster wheel. It's brilliant (which is why it's so common).

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#464

Post by therealdrag0 »

tshaddox wrote: post #217
robjan wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there a difference. A statement of indisputable fact i.e. "I went to the park with my husband" is different from an opinion or belief such as "I think x should be y", regardless of how accepted it is in the workplace or society as a whole.

You think that the statement “I think my marriage should remain legal” is significantly different from the statement “I went to the park with my husband”?

Yes.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#465

Post by meowface »

drewbug01 wrote: post #275
kiawe_fire wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely But this isn’t what I’m saying: I’m saying that plainly anodyne workplace chitchat that anecdotally confirms that I am a gay man is coded as political speech by many people. I don’t know if you misread me or not, but if you didn’t then it…

>But this isn’t what I’m saying: I’m saying that plainly anodyne workplace chitchat that anecdotally confirms that I am a gay man is coded as political speech by many people.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Basecamp is not at all saying people should not reveal, let alone actively hide, their sexual orientation, gender identity, or anything like that.

I think anyone else at the company who considered such a thing political and tried to tell that person or the chat that what they're doing is political would be the only individual who's violating the "no politics at work" policy (perhaps in addition to other policies, too).

I understand your concern in general, here, but I don't see any reason why "gays are gonna get told to stop mentioning their husbands like we used to" is a thing that would start happening as a result of this policy change at Basecamp. I very strongly share your opinion that a conservative person who would do such a thing is deeply in the wrong, but I don't really think I see how it would apply to this particular situation.

I don't think "banning political discussion" at all carries the implications you're concerned about at most companies, and I think if it did happen at such a company it would be the thing that's violating the policy.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#466

Post by chii »

rtpg wrote: post #196
bsima wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 woul…

> "would be nice for our team to have different kinds of people"

so if you have a business case for recruiting different kinds of people (who currently don't get recruited), then that's not a political agenda. If you can point to evidence that the recruitment team is missing out on great candidates because of some systemic mis-identification.

But if you are suggesting that it would make the world a more equal place to hire those different people, even though they currently would not be hired, then that's not a great business case, and thus, becomes a political agenda.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#467

Post by bitcharmer »

angry_octet wrote: post #457
yibg wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh you mean affirmative action for non-Asian minorities is unfair to Asian ones? I don't really think that is unfair, but then I think the whole system of elite university admission is a total disaster for equity.

> Oh you mean affirmative action for non-Asian minorities is unfair to Asian ones?

Yes, it objectively is. No matter how you will try to paint it using colourful phrases and invocation of "justice" - this is discrimination.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#468

Post by meowface »

cozuya wrote: post #326
kiawe_fire wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I misread you, and I think I fully understand what you mean - to some, simply saying “my husband and I” triggers the feeling that you’re shoving an agenda in their face. I get it, and I don’t disagree at all. But you immediately lept to “conservative politics” as the one opposition that might object to the very existence of somebody. Clearly, without any context, if ever a word were to be said about thi…

[flagged]

Why are you connecting "banning political discussions at work" to "being conservative"? Either here, or in general.

Any conservative who expressed any views like that at a company where political discussion was banned would certainly be violating the political discussion policy, at the least, and potentially also violating harassment policies.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#469

Post by zorpner »

caffeine wrote: post #451
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #191

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…

Your latter example is also expressly undesirable in the workplace. You are hired to build product, not obsess over the diversity of the employee base, unless you are hired in a DEI role specifically. Asking the questions you are asking is political. Discussing people’s membership in groups like cis or Native American or whatever else IS an unwanted political act. Those group identities are fundamentally political to…

> Discussing people’s membership in groups like cis or Native American or whatever else IS an unwanted political act.

Unwanted by whom?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#470

Post by mytailorisrich »

> No more paternalistic benefits. For years we've offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmer's market share, and continuing education allowances

I have had a gripe with this sort of 'benefits' in previous companies. For example, paying for membership at the local gym. Reply to criticism tended to be "Oh well, use it or lose it".

Glad Basecamp saw the light on this. Just pay employees well or set up a benefits self-service like some companies do: Employees have a benefits budget that they can choose to assign to a list of individual benefits or to pocket in cash.

Obviously political discussions on company channels are always a bad idea.

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