How Basecamp Blew Up • Hacker News Board

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#671

Post by MisterBastahrd » Wed, May 05, 2021, 9:05 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #198

Tainnor wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't imply that I have to like his self-promotion book. After all, if I'm to read a book I want to get something out of it. As I already mentioned, the book has good parts, but it reads quite jarring in many places. Also, I guess this is personal, but a little humility is good for everyone, IMHO, and doesn't necessarily contradict a healthy dose of self-confidence either. DHH seems to have little of it — at l…

This: "co-wrote several books on company culture that are glorified ads for basecamp" just doesn't seem too questionable to me. The readership made them popular books. His job, in part, is to promote his products - my interpretation of your comment was that your thoughts on his plight were swayed by him writing something that promoted his business. I find him a bit over the top, so I don't follow him on Twitter. I ha…

Anyone who has written more than one book on their own company culture has zero idea what their company's culture actually is.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#672

Post by sol_invictus » Wed, May 05, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #668

philosopher1234 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes off as though you didn't even read the comment you're replying to. I don't see how you can, in good faith, frame their point as "the most miniscule issue".

Read some of his other comments. It's not a coincidence that he pops up whenever there is a thread involving race on this site.

I went through my last comments page and maybe one of them involved ”race.” Why dont you go spread your disinformation elsewhere

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#673

Post by Huggernaut » Wed, May 05, 2021, 9:24 AM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #557

rsanheim wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, you have an opportunity to experience what it feels like to work in tech as a person of color, or a woman, or any of the many other underrepresented groups in tech. Only those people experience every day at almost all companies, and can't escape it by leaving their existing company. Maybe see it as a chance to learn and grow instead of something to resent and run from?

This is of course the worst take. When I was in 4th grade we had to read a short story about a society that enforced sameness, it wasn’t the giver where they did it genetically, rather if you were smart they’d fix headphones to your ears that played a loud obnoxious noise so you couldn’t think, if you were tall or athletic they crippled you, basically they brought everyone down to the same bad level... That’s the soc…

I imagine the downvotes are mainly because the comparison seems pretty off base, regardless of whether one agrees with the good or bad of the original post.

Comparing "you are now in a situation where you may have an opportunity to empathise with difficulties others have had" to "you are trying to build a society where more fortunate people are harmed in the name of sameness" doesn't resonate at all.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#674

Post by brailsafe » Wed, May 05, 2021, 9:30 AM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #626

ipaddr wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demanding you denounce a minority population is how we got into this problem in the first place. Don't you see you are creating white supremacy by demanding everyone persecute it? You create the demand.

I don't think it's going to increase demand by persecution. Maybe if being racist becomes the new underground lifestyle like being goth, etc.

This basically does happen. For it to not happen, people would have to universally be ok with prejudice toward them based on their skin colour, and that's obviously not true. A certain percentage of them will develop more hostile beliefs toward people who they feel are persecuting them.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#675

Post by jarek83 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

I'm among those with mixed feelings.

- list of funny names that is kept in some persistent form and circulates the company with full acknowledgment of the head people: Childish and extremely unprofessional, but still a typical mistake rather than a colossal disaster;

- politics and racism issue: looks like typical misunderstanding but on a very fragile subjects. Very easy to get into drama scenarios with this mix. Very easy to mishandle it. But it still seems that this topic is not normal workplace topic. If there is a serious issue in that matter, you go to some authorities. If you did not address it officially and decided to attack the head people - sorry, it's not the way. That might suggest that there was no real issue as there were no serious actions;

- policy change public announcement first then to your team: Yeah that's a big mistake, something that probably their books wouldn't even advise. Head people did not recognise that this is not the way to manage fragile topics.

Is DHH and Jason all evil?

- These are the same guys that give equal pay regardless of remote worker location.

- They were always believing in remote work, which is bigger problem for company and it's more of a benefit for the employees

- Many times were vocal about issues with big companies, where many others did not have enough courage to do the same

- Creators of a breakthrough tech stack and tremendous contributions to open-source

- Always happily sharing their knowledge

They made a mistake. But they don't seem to be bad guys here overall.

In this context, the article seems to be written by someone who had some personal issues with the guys and he found a way to "show'em all". Even if it tells his version of the story, to me it's at least unfair and biased.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#676

Post by midrus » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

jarek83 wrote: post #675

I'm among those with mixed feelings. - list of funny names that is kept in some persistent form and circulates the company with full acknowledgment of the head people: Childish and extremely unprofessional, but still a typical mistake rather than a colossal disaster; - politics and racism issue: looks like typical misunderstanding but on a very fragile subjects. Very easy to get into drama scenarios with this mix. Ve…

Best reasoning I've read so far. Can't agree more with you.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#677

Post by randompwd » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #666

JPKab wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this whole ridiculous movement is isolated to the United States and not at all popular in nations like Brazil which got dramatically more African slaves brought to them in the time of the slave trade. When you get sucked in by a US-centric ideology that is almost entirely based out of US universities you get these glaring holes in these theories that don't make sense as soon as you move them to another countr…

> South American countries which were huge destinations for African slaves This is a gross misrepresentation of events. They were colonized by European countries, who imported African slaves, to work alongside the SAmerican slaves for their economic exploitation.

Actually, they were colonised by a relatively tiny group of individuals. And the profits were kept by a relatively tiny group of individuals.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#678

Post by type0 » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

username90 wrote: post #664

myWindoonn wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans only form one race. You're thinking of skin tones.

Humans forms a spectrum of races. The unscientific part are the crude categories USA uses, not the concept that humans from different parts of the world are genetically different enough to be called different races.

> not the concept that humans from different parts of the world are genetically different enough to be called different races.

This definition was invented by Nazi Germany and led to countless horrors, are you sure you want to continue to use it?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#679

Post by jokethrowaway » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:35 AM UTC

6AA4FD wrote: post #284

jokethrowaway wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem lies in the assumption that we live in a society which is systemically racist. The people not dismantling the system are not white supremacists, they just don't believe we have systemic racism. I'm definitely not a white supremacist (I'm not even white) and I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. Sure, I met a bunch of racist individuals, but that doesn't prove systemic racism.

I think based on other discussions in the thread, that just pulling out definitions will not be so helpful, so I just want to directly inquire, what sort of problem (since there is obviously a problem with this) do you think causes things like the "war on terror" and "war on drugs"? Do you think that these sorts of political actions would be acceptable to the voting public if they only affected white people?

Both problems are caused by having a corruptible, warmongering, spying and controlling government.

I don't want the government to intervene between me and a drug dealer to prevent me from buying what I want.

I don't want the government to spend billions of taxpayers money (and incurring debt - and devaluing my money) killing dudes in the middle east. There were definitely economical and geopolitical reasons to do the war on terror, but that's not something I wanted. 9/11 was merely the reason to attack a oil rich country.

I don't think there is anything racist with any of these wars.

Black people are disproportionally poorer and that's why they're overrepresented in drug related crimes and jail convictions. This happened mainly because stable families were destroyed in the 70s thanks to welfare policies. I'm not the best at explaining this kind of stuff, listen to Thomas Sowell for more.

I'm against prosecution for any drug related crime - but if drugs were legal, I'm sure a portion of poor people would move to whatever shady business they can do as long as they can survive and conviction rate wouldn't change much. Maybe street scams, maybe stealing, maybe begging.

Sure, go ahead and push for an end on the war on drugs, but you have to solve poverty and stable families as well if you want to see meaningful outcomes.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#680

Post by jokethrowaway » Wed, May 05, 2021, 10:40 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #147

jokethrowaway wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem lies in the assumption that we live in a society which is systemically racist. The people not dismantling the system are not white supremacists, they just don't believe we have systemic racism. I'm definitely not a white supremacist (I'm not even white) and I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. Sure, I met a bunch of racist individuals, but that doesn't prove systemic racism.

> I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/05/05/veil-dar... "The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when “a veil of darkness” masks their race." > Creating that database enabled the team to find the sta…

We're overrepresented in poverty and crime, so it's reasonable that police officers would be biased against black people.

I definitely get stopped more often than my white friends (albeit it changes based on the country). I've been asked several times by police officers in Europe whether I was an immigrant from North Africa with the implication I was dealing drugs.

A lot of north africans immigrants in the country where I was actually deal drugs and I look like I'm from North Africa, so it makes sense for police officers to question me more.

This is not systemic racism, this is recognising patterns, this is an explicit bias.

I can't find a single law discriminating on people's skin color: that's why I think there is no systemic racism.