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How Basecamp Blew Up

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Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#801

Post by dang »

gustavo-fring wrote: post #526

I'm Jewish Colombian among other things. I'm a mutt. I can pass as white. Where my dad came from (Scary Gary) you voted Republican because up until about the 1960s, they were the party that cared about immigrants and wanted them to succeed. So, when he moved to a similarly Republican state in the 80s, he remained a Republican. The Republican is not a werewolf boogeyman around here. I made the mistake once of saying t…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045887.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#802

Post by andrewmd5 »

The political speech some wish to see silenced revolves around the racial and socioeconomic inequality they benefit from each day. Turning a blind eye to systemic racism does not mean it does not exist, and inherently saying Black lives matter is not a political statement. The ideological aggression against it however is.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#803

Post by shagie »

wyclif wrote: post #559
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> husband Yup. Pro tip: If you're at a SV-influenced company and you find yourself talking about your personal life, don't say "husband," "wife," "boyfriend," or "girlfriend;" say "partner." That signals that you're an Ally rather than an Enemy. You'll notice other weird speech patterns too. Pay attention to them; they're meaningful.

I often see that peculiar speech pattern here on HN! It's like they're afraid to say 'wife' out of fear of offending the woke mob. The same people who are OK with work being a constant struggle seminar.

I use "sibling" rather than "brother" or "sister" and "parent" rather than "mother" or "father" to reduce information leakage. "Partner" could find the same use.

This isn't any woke thing - its just a "don't reveal information that isn't necessary."

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#804

Post by shkkmo »

newacct583 wrote: post #791
shkkmo wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holocaust didn't happen because the people who opposed rounding up people demonstrated as part of their private lives but didn't bring up their objections at work. Pretending that THIS is "literally" why the Holocaust happened borders on anti-semitism. The Holocaust happened because enough peoole there were willing to accept bad things being done when they were done to unpopular groups. The lesson to be learned from…

I'm sorry, but no. The holocaust absolutely happened because the German people turned a blind eye to what was going on. Because whatever their private feelings might have been, they kept them private because they weren't appropriate to express in public. The German people, in aggregate, were clearly able to stop the holocaust. And it happened anyway. Also let me just note that your casual attempt to accuse me of anti…

> German people turned a blind eye to what was going on.

Yes, that is what I said was the cause.

That is different from what you said which is that people protesting in their personal live but being unwilling to discuss as part of their professional lives (i.e. compartamentalizing) was the cause.

Those germans should have been protesting and fighting back wherever possible, but it absolutely wasn't a limiting of protests to non-professional contexts that caused the Holocaust.

> Also let me just note that your casual attempt to accuse me of antisemitism in a thread LITERALLY ABOUT people being casually and unjustly accused of white supremacy is just "chef's kiss" level hypocrisy. Well done.

I stand by the assement of the stance that I put forward; it borders on anti-semitism. It sounds like that stance might not be one you intended to take. If so, I suggest re-reading what you wrote to see how it appears you are taking that stance.

If you disagree with my assessment of that stance, please explain whitewashing the german response to the rise of the Nazis doesn't border on anti-semitism because what that stance equates to for me is saying: "The germans didn't believe reprehensible things or disregard the humanity of those headed to concentration camps, they just let their professionalism stand in the way of speaking out against the Nazis."

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#805

Post by anm89 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #656
anm89 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He very clearly did not say "white supremecy does not exist". He said it didn't exist at the company. Those two things are very different.

Singer alternated saying "white supremacy does not exist at BaseCamp" and posting articles off Breitbart into the company chats. Yeeesh.

Yes, the well known unforgivable crime of referencing that a publication you do not like exists. I think this is a pretty good basis for upending someone's career.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#806

Post by kenjackson »

arp242 wrote: post #396
kenjackson wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BLM organization and the movement are two different things. You’d be lucky to randomly be able to find a single black person who knows any of the founders of the org or any of their principles except to reduce police brutality.

Yes, and people keep saying this, and people keep being confused by this. I don't understand why people are so resistant, or even outright hostile, in making the social justice movement (including the sentiments BLM expresses) more effective. If you truly care about social justice then being as effective as possible should be the #1 priority, no? I don't care much for BLM not because I don't care about their goals, b…

> I don't understand why people are so resistant, or even outright hostile, in making the social justice movement (including the sentiments BLM expresses) more effective. If you truly care about social justice then being as effective as possible should be the #1 priority, no?

Again, you're confusing an organization with the movement. The organization has only minor impact on the actual movement. It's like saying that a group named "Democracy for America" reflected what people in the US believed about Democracy.

> Aren't conversations on how to best affect these kind of changes super-duper important? It appears not, and it seems BLM has become the goal, rather than the vehicle to get at the goal.

I support BLM, but I'm not sure I support the goals of the BLM org. Mostly because I barely know them (I realize I could just go to their webpage and read them). I do know what most people I associate believe BLM means though.

Now this does mean there is a problem in that different people have different interpretations of it. But honestly this is always the case for any type of social movement. There's a base for the support, and then a bunch of splinter ideologies.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#807

Post by dang »

treeman79 wrote: post #294
JPKab wrote: post #209

"But Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, had been taken aback by an employee post which argued that mocking customer names laid the foundation for racially-motivated violence, and closed the thread." Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. At some point can we all admit that the most narcissistic, dramatic people are overly-indulged by this garbage? I'm at a startup n…

Had to quit a company last year due to bigotry. Constant bashing of white men on company calls. Exceptions if you were openly non straight. They also loved talking about how inclusive they were. Constant mocking of customer base, who was mostly traditional white people. I figure out quick I was hired only because they were desperate for someone with experience. Which sadly meant hiring an undesirable. At some point i…

While this was obviously an ideological flamewar comment, I'd let it pass if you hadn't included a gratuitous swipe at the end. You can't do that in HN threads, and we need you to do exactly the opposite when the discussion is already a flamewar. That is, we need commenters to add thoughtful, substantive information, not throw bombs.

It's fine to describe your relevant personal experience in an HN thread. What's not fine is doing the equivalent of arson (or criminal negligence). No more of this please. We've had to warn you more than once before. That's not cool.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#808

Post by dang »

newacct583 wrote: post #516

> One can empathically agree that such injustice, and any injustice, sucks, and still advocate compartmentalizing between institutions of the society writ large. That depends very heavily on the nature of the injustice, doesn't it? I mean, take Godwin's perspective here: that's literally the logic that gave us the holocaust! Implicit in your statement is the idea that the "injustice" might "suck", but not so much tha…

Would you please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle, and please stop feeding flamewars? We've had to ask you this many times before. It's not helping. Going to the Holocaust is super not helping. You could easily have made your point here without that; in fact your comment is entirely coherent without that gratuitous provocation.

I appreciate that you may be arguing a minority position in this particular thread (at least from the portions that I've seen), but that doesn't absolve you of needing to follow the site guidelines, and your comments have been noticeably more flamey than many others.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046069.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#809

Post by nikolay »

CydeWeys wrote: post #723
nikolay wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a good and a bad idea is very subjective. Let them run their business the way they want! Pretty much everywhere else in the world political polemics are not allowed at work as they can divide the workforce and some people could feel harassed by hearing non-work-related stuff they wholeheartedly disagree with!

Seeing as how the context of this discussion in an article titled "How Basecamp Blew Up", I think it's pretty safe to say it was in fact a bad idea.

That's absolutely not true. It's one viewpoint of a person with obvious liberal views - not all clients and employees drink the neoliberal Kool-Aid. In fact, many people outside of the SV would become more loyal to Basecamp and many suggested in comments on previous posts that the no-politics policy makes Basecamp a more attractive employer for them.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#810

Post by dang »

shkkmo wrote: post #783
newacct583 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you polled Germans in 1938 about whether it should be state policy to kill six million jews, you would have gotten a hard no. Yet it happened anyway, because (to borrow the upthread phrasing) while sure rounding them up might "suck", it was important to "compartmentalize" and not conflate the injustice suffered by the local jews being interned with the prosecution of the war. So the people prosecuting the war got…

Holocaust didn't happen because the people who opposed rounding up people demonstrated as part of their private lives but didn't bring up their objections at work. Pretending that THIS is "literally" why the Holocaust happened borders on anti-semitism. The Holocaust happened because enough peoole there were willing to accept bad things being done when they were done to unpopular groups. The lesson to be learned from…

The GP shouldn't have gone holocaust but accusing them of anti-semitism is a serious escalation and not at all cool. Please omit such swipes from your comments here. If there's real evidence of anti-semitism, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. But bringing something like that up frivolously, as ammunition in an internet spat, is degrading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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