“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today” • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by acjohnson55 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #479

I don't think this is really about making fun of people's names, or holocaust references. It's about power. The managers at basecamp were unhappy that their employees asserted power over them in the workplace, and decided to assert their own power in turn over what they view as their personal fiefdom and retract some of the freedoms they had so graciously granted their workers, because those ungrateful workers actual…

This pretty much nails it. The "politics" angle has been revealed to be a red herring by the subsequent accounts of everyone involved. The same contentious discussions would have happened had this policy already existed! I guess you could say the policy gives the founders a ban hammer to swing to end discussions they don't like.

Separated from their justification, the 6 policies represent an assertion that Basecamp leadership are the sole arbiters of all things Basecamp. I don't think that's an awful thing in itself, but the way it was announced was clearly felt to be completely demoralizing for employees who assumed their judgment on the direction of the company was valued.

And the result seems likely to be catastrophic. Basecamp has had their pick of the litter for talent for years. Sure, they'll hire new folks who are aligned with their new way of running the company, but you don't go back to being a beacon of the industry when you lose 1/3 of your staff in a week over an ego trip.

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

#572

Post by ergocoder » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #62

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).

I have no direct insight, but I'm getting a bit of a 'tip of the iceberg' feeling, like maybe there's some other stuff going on.

You can read the twitter thread from Casey.

One of the issues was that one of the activist employees tried to link "making fun of customers' names" to "genocide".

That was a big yike. And definitely a convo I wouldn't want to have.

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

#573

Post by musicale » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

> Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

s/Government/Company/

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

#574

Post by jollybean » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #525

ipaddr wrote: post #152

Interestingly the employees who left have the best career prospects. Entire iOS team, head of marketing and head of product team. The 6 months free money is hard for anyone entering a strong job market to pass up. A lot of comments seem to think 1/3 left because of the no politics policy. 1 / 3 left because it would increase their wealth or give them the summer covid took away last year. How many people would leave y…

> Interestingly the employees who left have the best career prospects. The people who can most afford to not put up with are always those with the best career prospects. If you aren’t certain that you can get a job somewhere else that matches even the newly-worse conditions of your present job within the cushion provided by the offered buyout, then a buyout isn’t attractive.

Except there's nothing to 'put up with' other than policy which is going to be effectively the same almost anywhere, or possibly worse.

If you try to form an 'issue group' at an arbitrary company, to take on the executive team, and make demands with excessive intellectualizations that 'making fun of names' lead to 'genocide' - you're not going to get offered severance, you're going to get fired immediately.

The kind of leverage that people here on HN seem to think they have is a little bit bizarre.

People deserve to be treated with dignity, of course, people should not be making fun of people's names, it was stopped, and for the most part, that should have been it. Antagonizing almost any further is going to be seen as lacking in legitimacy and probably not acting good faith.

I think 90% of companies would be 'much less open' than Basecamp even with their new policies, 9.5% would be about the same. The rest, a grab-bag of different views, mostly at smaller companies. The bigger the company, the more the actions will be based purely around legality, caution, and the companies will to maintain some semblance of positive image.

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

#575

Post by chubbyish » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

grumblestumble wrote: post #89

A lot of the conversation from the "no politics at work" crowd here is centered around "these folks were wasting company time and losing productivity protesting this". That entirely misses the point. The loss of productivity around this issue is entirely on the leadership team. They let this fester - they were complicit in allowing this dumb-ass list to be circulated around the company for years, and when it became a…

Everyone has laughed at these kinds of jokes.

Also, if someone had a funny name and they went against progressive politics, then they would be laughing about it. How about all the Donald Drumpf stuff from Oliver.

It puzzles me what progressives actually do laugh at when so much is forbidden and everything is somehow insensitive.

Most likely is that they are all just hypocrites.

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

#576

Post by treelovinhippie » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

The simplest filter to avoid hiring these Woke cult people in the first place is to check for pronouns in their Twitter bio. You can see it in the tweets from people leaving Basecamp. I'm not against using preferred pronouns in the workplace, but when it's in their bio that says a lot about how far down the Woke rabbithole they've gone.

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

#577

Post by chubbyish » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:32 AM UTC

musicale wrote: post #573

> Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government s/Government/Company/

Companies ain’t democracies.

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

#578

Post by Ar-Curunir » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

xbar wrote: post #289

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Workplace is inappropriate for politics" is a really ahistorical stance to take. All the things that you enjoy nowadays (8 hr work day, 5 day work week, no child labour, etc) came about as a result of organized politics at the workplace.

Nope. Those are all the results of laws which came from politically elected officials who made policy. None of my employers limited work hours or work days or children at work because of political discourse in the office. Nor did historical companies from 3 generations ago when such laws were passed. All of those laws were created because companies did NOT implement such limits.

Educate yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_young_people%27s_r...

https://www.timesizing.com/history-of-the-american-workweek/

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

#579

Post by coldtea » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

ethnt wrote: post #523

coldtea wrote: post #331

It's sad that the target for those employees' "political disruption" is Basecamp. One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so, pays well, embraces remote work, gives back to open source (RoR, etc.), and has good products, with no shady anti-consumer practices, that people actually like and pay for (as opposed to somewhere where they sell…

Well, you say that it's one of the nicest companies to work in, but clearly not if 1/3 of their employees are willing to leave over a policy decision. Some of the employees that left had been there for over 15 years — it used to be a good place to work, but this made it untenable for them.

>but this made it untenable for them.

I'd say "I've been here too long, let's shop around since IT is a buyers' market, and take advantage of this one-time buyout offer" is a far more probable explanation than "no political discussions at work rule makes this untenable for me"...

Without the buyout or in a worse job market, we'd see much closer to 0 "principled" exits...

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

#580

Post by gifnamething » Sat, May 01, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #331

It's sad that the target for those employees' "political disruption" is Basecamp. One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so, pays well, embraces remote work, gives back to open source (RoR, etc.), and has good products, with no shady anti-consumer practices, that people actually like and pay for (as opposed to somewhere where they sell…

Management took a stance against the employees. Management cancelled their employees, removing their platform to talk about internal politics.

Framing this as 'these people' vs Basecamp is ludicrous. It's 1/3 or more of Basecamp vs. Basecamp's management. Important people in important roles, entire teams. They are this company. Or were.