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Changes at Basecamp

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Re: Changes at Basecamp

#781

Post by [deleted] »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #766
throwaway0xc wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not a straw man, because the rule itself isn't germane to the discussion. It is a straw man because internal company dealings in your example is something that they explicitly allowed to be discussed. >I just picked one in which it’s clear that the “default” state is unfair. Yes, and the reason the Bobs have to sit and eat on the floor is because when they used to eat on the table, they'd kill a baby before eve…

Okay, so let's imagine it's a societal norm that Bobs eat on the floor rather than a company rule. A group of Bobs are agitating for change, so I institute a gag policy on the topic. Neutral?

[deleted]

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#782

Post by [deleted] »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #766
throwaway0xc wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not a straw man, because the rule itself isn't germane to the discussion. It is a straw man because internal company dealings in your example is something that they explicitly allowed to be discussed. >I just picked one in which it’s clear that the “default” state is unfair. Yes, and the reason the Bobs have to sit and eat on the floor is because when they used to eat on the table, they'd kill a baby before eve…

Okay, so let's imagine it's a societal norm that Bobs eat on the floor rather than a company rule. A group of Bobs are agitating for change, so I institute a gag policy on the topic. Neutral?

[deleted]

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#783

Post by cutemonster »

marbletiles wrote: post #755
thu2111 wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was a woman on that team it says even less good things about Apple that they shipped without it. So you admit it's nothing to do with diversity, then, just an ambient assumption that the needs of women should automatically trump the needs of men and women combined? The simplest explanation for Apple's decision is not that they're all raging sexists who need to be forced to hire more women by activists, but r…

Periods are relevant to a "small handful" of women? Have you discussed your thinking with any women? Is it a "pretty grotesque" sense of entitlement at work when a man looks for a urinal in a public building? Or when a disabled person looks for the wheelchair ramp? These things have half utility at best by your "obvious metric". Take this further: imagine architecture firms were staffed mostly (80%+) by women. They k…

It seems to me that buildings and medicine and cars and gym equipment and everything, need to be usability tested on all groups of people: short, tall, men, women, black, white, thin, fat, old, young, wheelchair, blind, deaf.

But I don't think all those groups of people need to take part in the construction work.

It'd be nice with more diversity in tech. So please don't misunderstand. I just think that there are other better examples of how diversity is good.

(Usability testing: Testing early prototypes I suppose -- it's not that easy to redo, say, a car, once it's in production.)

> keep getting complaints because their doorways are only 5'11" high (ideal for 99% of women's bodies),

That thought makes me feel upset! (Although I'm not a human. But I am tall) Thanks for a good example

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#784

Post by throwaway0xe »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #766
throwaway0xc wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not a straw man, because the rule itself isn't germane to the discussion. It is a straw man because internal company dealings in your example is something that they explicitly allowed to be discussed. >I just picked one in which it’s clear that the “default” state is unfair. Yes, and the reason the Bobs have to sit and eat on the floor is because when they used to eat on the table, they'd kill a baby before eve…

Okay, so let's imagine it's a societal norm that Bobs eat on the floor rather than a company rule. A group of Bobs are agitating for change, so I institute a gag policy on the topic. Neutral?

>A group of Bobs are agitating for change, so I institute a gag policy on the topic.

Again, it's not specific topics, you're straw maning here.

The societal norm that Bobs eat on the floor is because when they have a table meal, they kill babies.

In this case the "status quo" is the morally correct approach. But still, it's not specific to company politics.

>Neutral?

Yes.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#785

Post by cutemonster »

educaysean wrote: post #761
cutemonster wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me as if you think someone who hasn't been discriminated against, cannot have any meaningful thoughts. As if a social worker could only help out with problems s/he had experienced him/herself already. > Hope that made sense. A bit, not that much

You can put words in my mouth all day but here is exactly what I wrote. > When it comes to discussing specific experiences that minorities face, however, you should defer to the experts in the area who have lived their entire lives being in the seat of discrimination. We all appreciate attempts to understand and empathize with us. You can go very far by talking with us and trying to place yourself in our shoes, but w…

> should defer to the experts in the area

There is not always such a thing as "the experts".

People who look the same, grew up in the same place, have the same parents, can still have the opposite opinions.

Then, who is the expert -- when they disagree with each other, the complete opposite.

(Real world example from where I live.)

I'm not in the US though, actually things seem a bit weird over there. The history looks quite different here where I live.

> put words in my mouth all day

Not sure what you have in mind, I still think that what you wrote, sounds weird (I hope you don't mind). As if someone who got bullied in school, automatically should know better how to mitigate such problems in school. (Be an expert?)

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#786

Post by cutemonster »

chipgap98 wrote: post #162
stephsmithio wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I hear the, "But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion", it's kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, "But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy." F…

I honestly don't know what types of discussions they are referring to. I obviously know some of what is included, but I certainly don't know what the limits are.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26949792

Someone else (and me too) had the same question

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#787

Post by angry_octet »

tomjen3 wrote: post #777
angry_octet wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're arguing that diversity of background (age, previous career, class) is more useful diversity than ethnicity/race? In some ways I agree; we're all shaped by adversity and experience. But I don't think you can ignore the incredible lack of people from black or hispanic backgrounds in tech either. The goal of increased diversity in entry level hiring is advanced by the suggested HBCU recruitment drive. Supporti…

You assume that hiring a black person to an all white team, gives much thought diversity. My argument is that it does not, if that person had a middle class background and similar upbringing. If you hire a former gang-banger who is a wiz with eletronics, then you will have some real diversity.

You don't think that hiring a black guy will provide some useful perspective? (Or an immigrant?) I don't get why you contend that class is the only fundamental distinction here.

Tech is often focused on the minutiae of our machines, but even then information and learning is not evenly distributed. I've worked with various minority engineers and also Indian/Chinese/Persian/etc and they've all had really different views on how to approach things, how to manage conflicts, and different mathematical backgrounds too.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#788

Post by dang »

wry_discontent wrote: post #400
imgabe wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog post specifically mentioned the work chat channel. Talk about whatever you want in other channels. If you were in the middle of a meeting to plan a new product launch and suddenly announced "I'm getting married this weekend!" what kind of reaction would you expect? People might be polite but gently remind you that's not really relevant to what's being discussed at the moment and to get back to work. If you k…

> People might be polite but gently remind you that's not really relevant to what's being discussed at the moment Have you never been in a workplace before? That is absolutely not what would happen, especially in HN's darling startup atmosphere. No normal person, being told their colleague was getting married would brush it off and say it's not relevant to the work discussion, and nor should they. It's inhuman and gr…

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, and it's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#789

Post by spopejoy »

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…

I suspect that this represents a practical consolidation of power by leadership in tech. While you can't come out and say "hey, we want to corner the market in white male nerds", you can say things like "Mean people suck, why can't we all just get along, no politics on slack, we're good right?"

Think of it as the tech-liberal backlash. Tech has been wrestling with representation and diversity for a while now, indeed more visibly than many industries, and some limited progress has been made, maybe not as much in raw numbers than in qualitative stuff like less-hostile workplaces. But it is far from the _worst_ industry for diversity.

Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to hire engineers, and the dominant class isn't going away anytime soon. If you can figure out how to signal to them that "hey, Basecamp/Coinbase/MyCo is a place you can just be you and chat about games and gear without worrisome questions about equal pay" then you potentially achieve a short-term recruiting advantage.

I say "short-term" because of course, it's short-sighted. But worse, it's cynical, as it wants to halt the minimal progress that has been made behind a smokescreen of civility and fairness. And given that it's being openly pushed by white male leadership, it's fully reactionary, and white-male supremacist. It's a harsh term to use but we haven't really uncovered a more accurate one.

Re: Changes at Basecamp

#790

Post by markmark »

shados wrote: post #656
brown9-2 wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This move is generating even more unrest and publicity for them

Oh for sure. Writing the blog post (at all) and putting that policy in without discussing it within the company was a REAAAAAAALLY bad/tone deaf move. When they announced it originally I assumed it had been implemented for weeks and they had the expected all hands meeting internally and concerns/edge cases worked out. They clearly didn't. Saying that was dumb would be the understatement of the week.

It would have been instantly leaked by employees, might as well get ahead of things.
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