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Changes at Basecamp

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#711

Post by drewbug01 »

skinkestek wrote: post #703
drewbug01 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Call the new thing what you want: around here it is something like "civil marriage" as opposed to "(implicit: religious) marriage". I think the major problem here is that most conservative Christians who propose it still want “religious marriage” to count as a “civil marriage.” Fundamentally separating the two isn’t actually a bad idea in my opinion, but in practice it seems like most people who suggested it (from…

Why make it harder than it is? There's usually no problem with a religious marriage counting as a civil marriage, except for edge cases like religions who accepts polygamy etc since all the rules that are needed for civil marriage (and more) are typically also required by mainstream religions. And religions mostly have no problem with civil marriage as long as nobody forces them to bless it. Exceptions: I guess WBC a…

I mean, for starters it’s a little insulting for people to say “Oh no, you can’t have marriage. Let’s go create a new kind of marriage and that’ll be the same thing.” To know that not only do they not want to bless it, they want to not even have it called the same name is just really a slap in the face, as far as bargaining chips go. Why settle for an insult?

But it’s not even just that - if the US religious right had honestly been fine with that, then why didn’t that come to pass? That would have been a much easier thing to do than to fight marriage equality tooth and nail at every turn. The fact that they didn’t really support this obvious easy way out is very telling.

Why are we pretending like the ones asking for the rights didn’t take some obvious logical, alternate path? LGBT folks largely supported “civil unions” which were explicitly unequal, doesn’t it stand to reason they would have supported something far more equal? The answer is that LGBT people weren’t the ones refusing to take some higher road here.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#712

Post by hardwaresofton »

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #647
hardwaresofton wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

> a 90k job Basecamp pays SV salaries to all employees regardless of location. https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp/

Just a theoretical example to make the numbers easier (rounding off to 100k).

That said, I also can't find anything anywhere on what people at basecamp are actually paid (nothing on levels.fyi or glassdoor, I didn't search very hard). I don't know what "SV salaries" means but not everyone in SV is making the average or median salary -- some people will be under or right at 100k, probably very early in their careers or when a company is taking a flyer on someone with no credentials.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#713

Post by tomlockwood »

hitekker wrote: post #635
imwillofficial wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“prefer to talk about politics, at work?” To answer your question, no, they did not say that.

Seems like the GP tried https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions and failed

I find it incredibly funny that you'd find an innocuous question about someone's post to be some kind of sinister rhetorical strategy.

Its also very funny that anyone would consider the contents of a question about a post to be "putting words in their mouth". I am absolutely authentically curious about why someone would take the extremely funny step of appearing to rail against politics being discussed at work - by complaining about a "political" issue that's happening at their work.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#714

Post by drewbug01 »

apple4ever wrote: post #691
drewbug01 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it much more common that conservatives are totally down with the rights, but annoyed or put off by strong activism among minority groups Then why are we still debating, in the US, whether or not different groups should have equal rights? Why are conservative legislatures throughout the country still trying to roll equal rights back ? This point can't possibly be true, in light of what conservative groups are…

> Then why are we still debating, in the US, whether or not different groups should have equal rights? We are not. > Why are conservative legislatures throughout the country still trying to roll equal rights back ? They are not.

“Am not” is not a really convincing argument:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/04/22/2021...

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#715

Post by drewbug01 »

slibhb wrote: post #698
drewbug01 wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your argument is basically "my relationship is political because I am gay". I disagree. I think that reasonable people understand that your marriage is not political. My argument is "my relationship is political because I am gay" and part of why I make that argument is because people have told me they think it's political. So - you disagree. About what, precisely? If you don't want to believe me that this has happe…

My point is not what has or hasn't happened to you. My point is that, if someone tells you your marriage is political, they are wrong. They don't know what politics is and the law is on your side. I don't see what else you can really ask for (besides approval).

Who cares if they’re actually right or wrong? The point of all of this is that if they want, under this Basecamp policy, they could cry to their management about “drewbug01 is being political and waving around his sexuality in my face and I’d like a politics-free workspace”.

And if that manager happens to also be jerk? Or even just not like me very much and want cover to get rid of me? They’ve got it.

It has nothing to do with whether or not you and I think it’s unpolitical. Enough people believe that it is so it is. This is the part that’s such a huge problem.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#716

Post by ljm »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #479
ljm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One place I worked at had a politics channel, designed to keep the chat out of the general spaces. Mainly because the team worked across the world and politics were US-centric first and UK-centric second, and nobody wanted a ping on one of the global chat channels only to get a link complaining about a sleazy American politician or the debate on Brexit as if none of the rest of the world (and the politics there) exis…

Reminds me of this essay: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

That touches on what I feel, I think. In my own words, once you have something as an identity, criticism or disagreement very quickly turns into an attack on who you are; an attack on your being. It's not about the issue any more, it's about you feeling threatened and fighting back to protect yourself and feel safe.

Ultimately I identify as myself and that encompasses a small collection of things where I feel intensely vulnerable but also very secure in knowing that, relating to my experience of growing up, abandonment, attachment, my mental health, and so on. Attacking those aspects of my being is likely to hurt me, and is the point where I would decide whether this person needs to be present in my life or not.

So I would speak out strongly on the topic of depression and suicide, for example, because part of who I am - my identity - is that I tried multiple times and survived each time, and that long-term state of depression significantly changed who I am.

If someone made fun of me for being some bleeding-heart liberal whenever I talk about compassion or some spiritual experience? whatever...I don't care. It's not for everyone.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#717

Post by bingbingbong »

marbletiles wrote: post #701
bingbingbong wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the implication here that Apple had no women working on the Health app, Google Photos has no black team members (and if they did, they would have explicitly checked this case?), Snapchat has no asians, etc? Or that some magic ratio would have caught these issues? There's some serious assumptions buried there that don't pass the smell test.

Yes, that is absolutely the implication. These mistakes are so egregious they're almost instantly obvious to people who know to look. For instance, the Health app tracked seemingly everything under the sun, including blood-alcohol levels. The reaction from women when it shipped was instant: where's the period tracker? If there was a woman on that team it says even less good things about Apple that they shipped withou…

Apple case is somewhat odd as it's a guilt by omission. I would bet large amounts of money on there being at least woman within the product chain on this (director, PM, TPM, designers). That is, I don't think there's as strong of a correlation between presence of an identity and attention to features/products they would be affected by. For example, I could see a PM reading articles like this [1] and deciding there's too much potential heat on a period app in the default offerings. FWIW I also think this should have been there, and Apple can position themselves nicely w.r.t privacy concerns.

Like, at its core, I agree with the statement that having women on the team would not decrease the probability that these sorts of mistakes don't happen. But its positive impact has to be non-deterministic (or else getting into some implications about as a group which I can't get behind).

[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/13/18079458/menstrual-...

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#718

Post by throwaway0xc »

amrangaye wrote: post #639
agd wrote: post #11

Think we'll see a lot more companies coming out with statements like this. Who wants their work slack to look like the worst parts of Twitter and Facebook? With employees cancelling each other and demanding they recognise various political points? Not me. You can tell there have been a lot of difficult discussions with various employees behind the scenes. It's all a distraction. Work should be about work.

I don’t want to make any assumptions about who you are, and this is not an attack on you, but “no politics” isn’t a neutral position - it’s a position to take when you’re OK with the status quo and want people to shut up and just go along, because you’re largely not affected by the things that they are. I speak from experience - in my country our autocratic ex president also had a “no political discussions except the…

>but “no politics” isn’t a neutral position

Yes it is, it absolutely is. You can be a big activist outside of work, no one is saying you can't be.

>It's a position to take when you’re OK with the status quo and want people to shut up and just go along, because you’re largely not affected by the things that they are.

This boils down to the "you're with me, or you're against me" mentality. You can want work to be neutral but still not be happy with the way things are. These things are not mutually exclusive.

It's like saying "if you don't believe in gun rights, it's because you hate women and want them to be defenseless." Or "if you support Planned Parenthood, you support the genocide of minority babies."

Of course those are nonsense stances.

On top of that, maybe the "status quo" is better than what you're suggesting. The tens of millions of lives that perished under Communism would be happier with the "status quo" the way it was before... Alive.

>I speak from experience - in my country our autocratic ex president also had a “no political discussions except the ones I sanction / that benefit me”, and enforced it with brute force, torture, imprisonments, even murder.

This is exactly what leftists are asking for though. The "no politics at work" literally means no left-wing or right-wing politics, just none at all.

>This was nonsense, of course - HE still got to talk politics when he wanted, and used that fact to extend his rule. Yes the analogy isn’t perfect and it’s country vs company, but it’s the same underlying logic.

Straight out of the Marxist handbook.

>But this is not as simple as oh they’re just trying to make the work culture less toxic, good for them.

I think they are, because what's considered the "status quo" is up for debate in 2021. Welcome to the post-fact world.

Politics, especially wokeism at work, has become exceedingly toxic, and counterproductive.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#719

Post by djrobstep »

anm89 wrote: post #622
djrobstep wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as horrible as that viewpoint is, at least you have the self-awareness to admit that you actively approve of authoritarianism and forced servitude. Many do, but won't admit it to themselves.

You are dense.

What is it you think I've misunderstood?

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#720

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway0xc wrote: post #718
amrangaye wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to make any assumptions about who you are, and this is not an attack on you, but “no politics” isn’t a neutral position - it’s a position to take when you’re OK with the status quo and want people to shut up and just go along, because you’re largely not affected by the things that they are. I speak from experience - in my country our autocratic ex president also had a “no political discussions except the…

>but “no politics” isn’t a neutral position Yes it is, it absolutely is. You can be a big activist outside of work, no one is saying you can't be. >It's a position to take when you’re OK with the status quo and want people to shut up and just go along, because you’re largely not affected by the things that they are. This boils down to the "you're with me, or you're against me" mentality. You can want work to be neutr…

> Yes it is, it absolutely is.

No, its not, it avsolutely is not.

> You can be a big activist outside of work, no one is saying you can't be.

Limiting the scope of activism always serves to protect the status quo. The fact that the imposed limit is itself limited does not make it neutral.

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