Please censor politics in your business so that mine can succeed by seeing around corners your company can't.
“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
691–700 of 1001 posts
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#692What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions. People have their families, their jobs, and maybe a couple of friends and that’s about it. They need an outlet to push the ideas and causes they care about. The workplace is one of the few places where they can feel like they’re having an impact, but that’s not really appr…
I think for the people who are so passionate they can't imagine not engaging with politics at work should look for careers in NGOs. I don't feel any disdain for activists, I just don't really want to work with them, and I think we'd both be happier if they were engaged in work that had first order effects on their beliefs instead of second or third
Not necessarily work for a ngo, but volunteer for one, join a union, join the local political groups that actually make a difference locally in your community. So many options, besides the work place.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#693Offering six months pay is a major own goal by Basecamp.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#694When someone said, corporations are people, it got a lot of flack. And yet, corporations then became people, finding it necessary to have and voice strong political opinions.
It looks like some companies are now going back to focusing on being companies, and less people.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#695What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions. People have their families, their jobs, and maybe a couple of friends and that’s about it. They need an outlet to push the ideas and causes they care about. The workplace is one of the few places where they can feel like they’re having an impact, but that’s not really appr…
"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.
Do you feel good initiatives require someone to be political to be apart of?
Watered down a bit more... do you believe someone can be a good person without affiliating with a group in order to do it?
That's very odd to me... Similar in vein to self-studied engineers/academics vs those who need a college group of peers to do it.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite a few who left said the policy was the reason when they posted about leaving on Twitter.
The social incentives are certainly aligned for that to be the case. A couple scenarios: 1) Employee A leaves Basecamp and says "I'm leaving for the severance package, not the policy change", and actually takes the severance 2) Employee B leaves Basecamp and says "I'm leaving because of the policy change, not the severance", but actually takes the severance package. Employee B will both get the social virtue points o…
I'd expect to see more of A than B.
Taking money that is offered is well respected across pretty well all political groups, especially those that are in charge of hiring
Taking money isn't controversial with anyone other than extreme Marxists.
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would depend on how much I liked my job. My sense is that DHH is just a terrible boss. Note the "changes" [1] are not just "no politics" but also "no more committees" (of any kind at all; that is, no authority or responsibility except individually along line-of-report hieararchy), no more 360 degree reviews (no way to formally give feedback to your boss), and no more bringing up past decisions you disagree…
> My sense is that DHH is just a terrible boss Not all the people who left worked for DHH, who is the CTO. OTOH, if the CTO is a terrible boss, there’s a very good chance that the rest of the C-suite is suboptimal, since executives generally aren’t picked at random, so there is probably some correlation across the group. And, then, down the chain of management, for the same reasons.
The c-suite is DHH and Fried. Three of the people who left are department heads, who report directly to them.
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/orgchart.md
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#698People are gonna wanna make this about politics, but my sense is that it's really just about the owners of basecamp are crappy tyrants to work for, that's about it. I don't think it's really even about the specific policy. Note that the "changes" [1] also include "no more committees" (ie, no more feedback/authority/responsibilty except through the line-of-report hieararchy), "no bringing up past decisions you disagre…
> no more committees 1/3 of the company had joined this D&I committee, which apparently felt that it’s scope included everything that the company did. The employees proved that they couldn’t be trusted to self-organize into a committee and keep it on topic.
You could also see the company as being wildly off track? 1/3 is a lot of people
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#699A lot of people discussing this appear to be unfamiliar with the values and history of Basecamp, and might benefit from reading their company handbook for background
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook
Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I see a Jehovah’s Witness coming up to my door, I pretend to not be home. I’d really hate to be forced to have that same feeling at work, but be unable to escape it. If you can’t do your job without evangelizing your coworkers in some form or fashion, maybe you should reconsider your career choices.
You are halfway there, but now think a bit further. Imagine if you were working at a job, but you are stuck with immature coworkers that are making fun of aspects of your culture, making fun of names that are similar to your own name, or similar to names of your friends and family. You can't escape these immature people because you need to work the job with them in order to make money. So you deal with it for a while…
The portrayal of a whole spectrum of ethical questions as "religious" is the most bad faith interpretation I see deployed basically all the time in these types of discussions. It's practically a senseless meme at this point.
We're literally talking about people keeping a list of names they thought were funny that lead to the situation, which apparently enough people internally found offensive, and you have people in this thread talking about "professionalism" and "religious thinking"; what?