Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Basecamp Blew Up

platformer.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

961–970 of 1001 posts

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#961

Post by dools »

javagram wrote: post #914
dools wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The currently dominant creed" would be ... urr ... white christians.

Not in my experience in the workplace. Your mileage may vary, but I’ve never been preached to about Christianity in my work experience. Meanwhile there are usually plenty of meetings and group emails about stuff like diversity, people openly express their support of Democratic politicians or hate toward republican politicians, etc. If someone at my work stated in a meeting they don’t believe in Christianity I would n…

One thing to note is technology companies are far more progressive than almost all other companies! Your workplaces are the exception right now.

Also it’s a false equivalence to compare not believing in Christianity and discouraging diversity and inclusion programs.

It’s the same mistake people make in comparing the protective use of force with the oppressive use of force, or comparing being racist with calling out racism.

If Christians were in the minority, and were disadvantaged as a result, and there was a program to promote a higher level of Christian employment, and you said “I don’t think Christianity is even a religion why do we have this stupid program” then you might find you get the same sort of response as claiming there’s no white privilege now.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#962

Post by tasuki »

jarek83 wrote: post #832
igneo676 wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, no, they're not "bad guys" in the sense that they're irredeemably evil. Unfortunately, the current situation certainly paints them in the "extremely foolish or downright spiteful" territory Once a harmful set of actions comes to light, it's your job as the leadership team to: 1. Apologize 2. Correct the wrong 3. Allow your employees the space to process and heal a. Note: People are messy. Especially hurt…

Are you past or present employee? If so, then you probably know better, but I can only response to what I know, and I was never related to Basecamp. What you say is correct in really bad situations. Thing is, that I have trouble to see real issue in what has happened here. It somehow feels surreal that DHH and Jason were able to fool us all for years, and now it seems that they are being accused of almost being hosti…

> He was very hesitant to learn, he always knew better, and any PR feedback ended always with 2 hours-long calls, trying to explain him the comments there.

After this, it's totally clear where this is headed. Why were you surprised?

You said he was hesitant to learn and always knew better. That struck me as a little incongruous? He was opinionated, and his opinions were different than yours. You wanted to do things your way, he wanted to do things his way. I imagine he might also describe you as hesitant to learn. From what you wrote, it really isn't clear which of you was "more right", but it's clear it wasn't a good fit.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#963

Post by jarek83 »

tasuki wrote: post #962
jarek83 wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you past or present employee? If so, then you probably know better, but I can only response to what I know, and I was never related to Basecamp. What you say is correct in really bad situations. Thing is, that I have trouble to see real issue in what has happened here. It somehow feels surreal that DHH and Jason were able to fool us all for years, and now it seems that they are being accused of almost being hosti…

> He was very hesitant to learn, he always knew better, and any PR feedback ended always with 2 hours-long calls, trying to explain him the comments there. After this, it's totally clear where this is headed. Why were you surprised? You said he was hesitant to learn and always knew better. That struck me as a little incongruous? He was opinionated, and his opinions were different than yours. You wanted to do things y…

I was surprised because he said we didn't do what actually did for him many times. Not sure if that answers your question.

For more context: I'm 8 years at the project, it's multi-stack, we have some conventions worked out through years that more or less work for us. You don't want to adapt new ideas with every new developer as that would become a mess. But we are also open for changes, but they have to be reasonable and worth spending time on them.

The guy is/was ok in regards of front-end skills, but he lacks a lot about how to connect the dots from business logic perspective. He never got the point about making code friendly to get through instead of easy to write at the moment when he was working on it. He also wasn't good at abstractions, and I didn't expect him to be since he was hired for junior role, but he either never wanted to accept that we want him to be better at it. One of many examples: he wanted to use BEM in Vue's single-file components. I showed that him that even Vue tells that scoping could be done by `scoped` attribute _or_ BEM. Since we use scoped, using BEM is overlapping the need of scoping. He was like "fine, but I will do it my way anyway, because I like BEM"... And then I will need to explain it somehow to some other developer who would ask - "Hey, why we have double scoping? What was the reasoning behind it?"

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#964

Post by javagram »

dools wrote: post #961
javagram wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my experience in the workplace. Your mileage may vary, but I’ve never been preached to about Christianity in my work experience. Meanwhile there are usually plenty of meetings and group emails about stuff like diversity, people openly express their support of Democratic politicians or hate toward republican politicians, etc. If someone at my work stated in a meeting they don’t believe in Christianity I would n…

One thing to note is technology companies are far more progressive than almost all other companies! Your workplaces are the exception right now. Also it’s a false equivalence to compare not believing in Christianity and discouraging diversity and inclusion programs. It’s the same mistake people make in comparing the protective use of force with the oppressive use of force, or comparing being racist with calling out r…

Yes I agree and that’s why in my post I said “speaks to a lack of understanding of tech workplaces” right before my statement about dominant creeds.

I was not talking about construction sites or other non-tech workplaces.

You were the one who brought up Christianity, but I don’t think you’re really in disagreement with what I said. Perhaps it’s simply the term “creed” that’s at issue here, and substitute it for another one in that case. You go on to present a hypothetical example of management attempting to specifically hire Christians rather than members of other religions, if that actually openly happened we both know there would be a hue and cry and an EEOC or HR investigation. It’s not representative of what tech workplaces look like today.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#967

Post by tha0xa3 »

heterodoxxed wrote: post #957
tha0xa3 wrote: post #947

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Literally the only substantial voice that stood up and went to bat for Daniel Shaver was BLM. I don't believe this is true. Can you like anything on BlackLivesMatter.com that touches on Daniel Shaver's death?

https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4f6138fe-ea8c-551b-9e6... https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/09/black-lives-mat... https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForDaniel/photos/i-just-want... | BlackLivesMatter.com The movement is so much more than that website. There's also a big difference between black lives matter and Black Lives Matter.

Opinion articles and FB posts, none of which back up GP's "literally the only substantial voice" claim... So you couldn't find anything, thanks for making my point for me.

Again, where is any official BlackLivesMatter material on Daniel Shaver?

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#968

Post by heterodoxxed »

tha0xa3 wrote: post #967
heterodoxxed wrote: post #957

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4f6138fe-ea8c-551b-9e6... https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/09/black-lives-mat... https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForDaniel/photos/i-just-want... | BlackLivesMatter.com The movement is so much more than that website. There's also a big difference between black lives matter and Black Lives Matter.

Opinion articles and FB posts, none of which back up GP's "literally the only substantial voice" claim... So you couldn't find anything, thanks for making my point for me. Again, where is any official BlackLivesMatter material on Daniel Shaver?

First off it's been over seven years, it's not hard to understand that black lives matter is a decentralized movement that is not centrally represented.

The website is not the movement.

Second, both of those "opinion pieces" have references to high profile black lives matter activists (deray, shaun king, etc) speaking out about Daniel Shaver, so that's about as official as you're going to get.

Third, that "facebook post" documents an actual event organized by the family of Daniel Shaver, thanking the local blm chapter for their support.

If you have a more substantial voice that has done more than blm in bringing attention to this issue in a productive way, feel free to bring that forward.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#969

Post by TheSisko »

JPKab wrote: post #714
SantalBlush wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They do not accept non-racist environments, only anti-racist ones. They do not accept that businesses be politically neutral. Perhaps they are the ones working toward a politically neutral, non-racist environment, and it is you who won't accept it. In truth, I don't believe either they or you could properly identify what a politically neutral environment really looks like, and you're probably all unreliable and serv…

No you really don't get it. At my company that I was formally employed at before moving on to my current startup, we had a minority of employees very aggressively and vocally demanding that the CEO issue an anti-racism statement after the George Floyd murder. A statement was issue condemning what happened and racism. They were not satisfied with this and demanded that the exact words black lives matter be used and al…

> A statement was issue condemning what happened and racism. They were not satisfied with this and demanded that the exact words black lives matter be used and also that a donation to the BLM organization be made.

It's weird that hold this case up as an example of unreasonable behavior on the employees part when in actuality their requests are extremely normal and reasonable.

Re: How Basecamp Blew Up

#970

Post by TheSisko »

nicbou wrote: post #896
JPKab wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you really don't get it. At my company that I was formally employed at before moving on to my current startup, we had a minority of employees very aggressively and vocally demanding that the CEO issue an anti-racism statement after the George Floyd murder. A statement was issue condemning what happened and racism. They were not satisfied with this and demanded that the exact words black lives matter be used and al…

What is the playbook for a situation like this?

Using the words "black lives matter" and making a donation to a BLM affiliated group.

It's basic, morally right, and easily completed during a single lunch break. There's absolutely no reason to overthink this.

Post reply on HN