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Changes at Basecamp

• illustriousbear 5y ago
  Hopefully the obnoxiously loud people will learn that no one wants to hear their crap at work (or anywhere else). Your take on race? I don't care Your take on gender? I also don't care Your take on politics? Nope, don't care. Insert cause here, still don't care I go to work to do my job and get money. When some person starts carrying on about politics, I walk away. If I wanted to engage with this stuff, I would on my own time. I shouldn't be dodging it at work.
• beshrkayali 5y ago
  > We make project management, team communication, and email software. We are not a social impact company. Someone should remind Github.
• FemmeAndroid 5y ago
  I found this Twitter thread by a Basecamp employee quite revealing about what did and did not happen in the lead up to this. https://mobile.twitter.com/conormuirhead/status/1386890595902267394 https://mobile.twitter.com/conormuirhead/status/138689059590...
  • bart_spoon 5y ago
    Without seeing the actual discussions themselves, I don't believe anyone's personal account of what happened. Every single person I've ever encountered that fit the bill of being politically obsessive/extreme seemed completely incapable of recognizing that fact, and always framed their conduct as completely unremarkable.
  • ketamine__ 5y ago
    archived link: https://archive.is/ekqAy https://archive.is/ekqAy
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  How is this any different from the rules at any company, say Google or Facebook. Can you start a public political debate on the Facebook company chat? This just sounds like 37signals is all grown up and has decided to take the inherent risks in political discussion in the workplace seriously.
  • ceras 5y ago
    At least when I worked at Google a couple years ago, you could indeed start political discussions. Communications are very open at Google, and employee activism is quite visible. Political questions also come up in Q&A's, and some employees expect leadership to comment on societal issues/events. There has been some tightening in the past couple years, due to how loud it got in the last few years. But still quite open from my understanding. One sample consequence was that open derision of Republicans was fairly common at Google, from both individual contributors and managers.
• doublejay1999 5y ago
  fried never stops talking
• mytailorisrich 5y ago
  > No more paternalistic benefits. For years we've offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmer's market share, and continuing education allowances I have had a gripe with this sort of 'benefits' in previous companies. For example, paying for membership at the local gym. Reply to criticism tended to be "Oh well, use it or lose it". Glad Basecamp saw the light on this. Just pay employees well or set up a benefits self-service like some companies do: Employees have a benefits budget that they can choose to assign to a list of individual benefits or to pocket in cash. Obviously political discussions on company channels are always a bad idea.
  • randomsearch 5y ago
    What's wrong with a benefit that some employees cannot or choose not to use? I'm genuinely curious as to what your thinking is. If my company provides free coffee and I don't drink coffee, is that also a problem, for instance?
    • hn8788 5y ago
      If you don't use the benefit, it's effectively compensation that you don't get. I'd much rather a company just pay everyone an extra $30 a month than include a free gym membership that most people won't use. Stuff like coffee is used by enough people and is so cheap that it's a negligible cost, but I've had jobs that included gym memberships, personal financial counseling, unlimited re-imbursement for new certifications, etc. Making those "benefits" instead of just paying people more to spend how they want is employers trying to lock you into staying at the company.
      • randomsearch 5y ago
        > it's effectively compensation that you don't get. Agreed. I'm not sure why that's a big deal though? If you don't drink coffee, are the other employees getting compensation via their free coffee? Coffee can really add up.
    • mytailorisrich 5y ago
      There are two aspects. One is the purpose of offering benefits, the other is fairness and inclusivity. Companies offer benefits because they want to make employees happy enough to stick around. It thus makes sense that all employees can take advantage and feel good about it. For the same reason, benefits should be designed so that no employee feels excluded or that they fell they are told how they should live their lives. At then end of the day, for the company it's only a matter of budget. So, to me, it makes sense to let each employee decide. This is the best way to address the two points above. That's exactly how it works at some companies (as hinted in my previous comment): The company tells you that you have a budget of x per year that you can allocate to a range of benefits with any cash left added to your cash pay. It's flexible, empowering, and employees tend to be quite happy about the system. Or, as I mentioned, decide to pay well enough that you can tell employees that you don't offer additional benefits but compensate through the pay cheque, which they can obviously spend however they please. Regarding your example, I would think that a good company would provide a range of free drinks, not just coffee or even one type of coffee (again the point it to make employees feel valued).
• skyzadev 5y ago
  Whether this change is good or bad is still to be seen, however, what is great is that the elephant in the room is finally being addressed - how are all these social issues REALLY affecting (tech) companies today? So far we have just accepted that it's all good and the way we have been dealing with it is fine and we are better off this way. But are we really? Let's stop fighting and start figuring out how to properly handle deep social issues troubling the workplace today.
• lukaszkups 5y ago
  Most discussions here at HN are about the changes about "Politics". Honestly, I don't really care what political views have my colleagues and I don't care to share my thoughts about this at my workplace. Talking about politics makes place a lot more toxic. Politics are toxic (because of the politicians, most of the time). What really makes me smile is #2. Like really, most of the IT companies has their lucrative offers with TONS of benefits, e.g. that they're sponsoring you gym, fresh food etc. I REALLY DON'T CARE - I'm an adult person, give me more money instead, let me decide by myself how I spend it.
• bob33212 5y ago
  I think a lot of people have trouble empathizing with owner's perspective. What if a tree fell and knocked out power to your house. And the power company showed up to fix the power lines. Would it be OK for the workers to take a break from their work and discuss gender equality if they found out that a female executive was just hired at their company and she was paid 8% less than the man she replaced. If so, how long could they discuss the issue? 10 minutes? 1 week? At what point would you ask them to fix the power and then discuss the gender equality issue after? And if you do set a time limit does that mean that you don't care about gender equality?
• darthrupert 5y ago
  Using your workplace to further political goals is such a white upper-middle class privilege.
• wreath 5y ago
  The type of people who continue to discuss politics and say "X IS political" even when it clearly isn't, are the most toxic people to be around particularly in the workplace. I really wish my current workplace implements such rules. Since we hired more of the activist variety of techies, the company culture went to shit, and became like a parody of an SF startup.
• danjac 5y ago
  Setting aside arguments whether "Politics at work" is good or bad, this looks like an avoidable HR and PR disaster. 1. This was announced on social media, apparently catching Basecamp employees by surprise. 2. Several employees (going by Twitter accounts) are looking to lawyer up or even exit the company. 3. This appears to be result of some long-running debate over a list of "funny" customer names. If so, the over-reaction shows a lack of maturity among the founders. While Basecamp-the-company might be just an "apolitical" project/email set of apps, the founders - particularly DHH - are leaders in the Rails community and they also publish a number of bestselling books on management. These actions - whether well-intentioned or not - are both a middle finger to many, many people in the Rails community, particularly those in marginalized groups, and make one question their wisdom as management thought-leaders. Rails and ShapeUp are priceless marketing that have given their company exposure and goodwill other small companies would have loved to have, and this whole event has single-handedly killed that goodwill. It may result in the loss of key employees a company their size cannot afford to lose. Furthermore, it comes across as hypocritical given DHH's frequent public tirades against Apple, monopolies, government lobbying, and support of controversial figures such as Glenn Greenwald. One rule for me, another for thee? This is the kind of PR/HR disaster even an average newbie junior manager in a mid-size company would have avoided, and shows the danger of getting high on your own supply.
• NationalPark 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708 There's been a lot of new information published on what lead to this change that isn't getting nearly as much discussion.
• nickjj 5y ago
  I'm super late to this thread and not that anyone cares what my opinion is, but why are so many folks against this new policy and are quitting Basecamp (as employees) over this? From the looks of it you can still openly talk about whatever you want on your personal Twitter and other social media accounts. It seems reasonable IMO to not talk country politics at work on a work account with other employees, especially on a medium where it's posted online, persisted and mixed in with other work related things as opposed to a private casual conversation in the parking lot or in a break room with no one else there. I didn't look into this beyond Jason and DHH's blog posts but I saw Sam Stephenson quit Basecamp[0] a few hours ago over this change. He mentioned working there for 15 years and it's his life work. I don't get it, why would someone quit over this alone? [0]: https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/1388146129284603906 https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/1388146129284603906
  • nemothekid 5y ago
    "No politics at work" to me is a crazy rule. It will almost always boil down to "Don't discuss what makes management unhappy". There are no clear rules at all. For example - let's say I don't like how Amazon treats open source and I say we should use more AGPL. Is that political? I would think so - copyright law and the DMCA have been political issues for years for many creators. Obviously I would think most people on this forum wouldn't consider AGPL vs MIT "political" even though the very subject of the matter is how the government should respect copyright law. So for most, AGPL vs MIT would fly under the political radar. What is really being said is "don't discuss the issues pertaining to minorities" and how people don't view that as insane is worrisome. There was an uproar last year about how Zoom would shutdown your stream if you talked about uyghur muslims. Can you imagine how different the reaction to this news would be if DHH implemented a no politics rule after some employees were discussing uyghur muslims?
• deleted 5y ago
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• jmadsen 5y ago
  I'm curious to see how many of these people who make SF level salaries while living in the Midwest stand up for their beliefs and refuse the 6 months severance Not that most of them wouldn't be able to afford to "Read all about how I refused Basecamp's buyout and spend a year snorkeling in Belize to make myself feel better"
• pete_b 5y ago
  I hope it works out for Basecamp. It is simply not ok to allow anxious or bitter people to be wearing each other out with political beliefs when they are being paid well to do a job. The twitter parade of martyr complexes is predictable but it is disappointing that so much talent has lost perspective on what professional conduct looks like in a workplace.
• GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I'm very much opposed to this. Society has everything to do with companies, and most of our current societal and environmental problems are a direct result of the way we do business. Externalising environmental and societal consequences for example. Wasting the environment by not taking pollution into account. Having drivers pee in bottles because it's not the company's problem if they can't meet their targets. Bullying of people who are different and HR turning a blind eye. As an employee I want to make sure the company aligns with my ideas about equality and environmental protection. As a customer I don't want to do business with a company that doesn't. This is why it's important that a company takes a stand on these issues. Also, it seems to me these things will not be applied equally. Will someone be told off for wearing a cross or a church group badge as much as someone wearing a gay rights ribbon? Companies are the cause of many if not most of the world's problems and this feels like they're getting back to closing their eyes to them. I'm glad I don't work for Basecamp nor do business with them.
  • throw000away 5y ago
    Saying that companies are the cause of most or all of the world’s problems with is just saying that people are the cause. Which they are. People are the problem. All have been, always will be. In all their institutions that they occupy or by themselves. So what? It’s not a very useful observation. If we are going to live together in peace we have to accept each other and move on with life. We have to move past seeing others who have different views, culture, and beliefs as an existential threat. Continually pointing at people and calling them an existential threat is terrifying and wrong. Stop doing it.
    • GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Companies are led by people, but in the neoliberal society we have elevated companies as an entity above people. Companies have more rights and less responsibilities than people, and more influence due to lobbying. As well as being bound by certain rules (making profit for shareholders, due diligence) that binds them to certain decisions even if the people leading them want to do differently. It binds them to prioritise profit over any other concern. So I do think companies are a different force than people yes. This is why I thought it was a great thing that companies were developing an identity and a conscience. Due to the power I have I want to target my buying decisions to companies which are aligned with my ideals. This new direction takes them back to being just money makers which IMO is a bad thing. It's not all about money, considerations like environmental impact are more important right now, on the verge of a climate crisis. I want companies to have a stance on this so I can stimulate the ones that do well on this front. That in itself makes their social/environmental identity an influence on their profits.
• valyagolev 5y ago
  > 1. No more societal and political discussions at Basecamp. Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it at Basecamp. I wonder what's the context here
  • agd 5y ago
    The context is the same as many other companies - employee activists creating strife and division internally and causing other employees to feel uncomfortable.
    • Kye 5y ago
      Shutting down all discussion of things that affect their employees is an extreme overreaction.
    • valyagolev 5y ago
      thanks for the inference. I wonder about the particulars, though
      • wmf 5y ago
        At Coinbase, employees demanded that the company take an official public position on Black Lives Matter. Probably the same was going on at Basecamp.
    • a4isms 5y ago
      The expression “employee activists” makes it seem very one-sided. What about old-school companies where everyone played golf. If you were, say, someone who liked hiking and canoeing, you might have been made to feel like you don’t fit in. Is that the same thing as being made to feel uncomfortable about social issues? Or is it somehow different because “playing golf” is normal, but “advocating for social justice” is not? A word like “activist” is extremely imprecise. Any time someone is making other people uncomfortable, isn’t that important? If I was a woman and the water cooler discussion every Monday morning was about various men and their misadventures picking up women in bars, I’d say there was discussion causing strife and division, but few people would say “activists” were involved. If I then complained about the unprofessional water-cooler talk, would I be the activist trying to change the company culture? If it’s the “strife and division” that’s the problem, we need not restrict ourselves to discussion “activism.” But if the real problem is that we’re ok with some strife and division, but not others, well... We ought to come clean about that and say, basically, “Don’t try to change anything, not even the stuff that makes you uncomfortable, because this is how we like it, and if something has to change, that something is you."
• deleted 5y ago
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• wearypyo 5y ago
  So this is exactly the same move Coinbase did, pretty weird from Basecamp tbh https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company-af882df8804 https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...
• Afforess 5y ago
  > No more paternalistic benefits. Cutting benefits and calling it a feature. Amazing. A lot of "work will set you free" vibes from this.
  • agd 5y ago
    They also set out how they've paid the value of these benefits to employees instead, and have started a profit sharing plan. Looks like a better deal to me?
    • Afforess 5y ago
      Cash value != Benefit value. That you interpret the cash value as being identical shows you trust management over the employees, who this actually effects...
    • yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
      I don't know what Basecamp's books look like, I don't have the clairvoyance to know what they will look like in the future.. humor a speculative question for a moment: would the "better deal" have been to give employees the option of how they'd like to receive their fringe benefits versus a one-size-fits-all edict, so that those with less tolerance for the volatility of profit sharing can enjoy a bit of stability with such fringe benefits if profits decline? Especially after, as another commenter mentioned: the tax implication of cash payout?
    • itsdrewmiller 5y ago
      Paid out "this year" - pretty weaselly. Are they going to pay out the value next year too or just cut it from the budget?
      • markmark 5y ago
        The job market is great, if people aren't happy with their comp they can find someone who wants to pay them more.
        • 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• agd 5y ago
  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.
  • amrangaye 5y ago
    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 ones I sanction / that benefit me”, and enforced it with brute force, torture, imprisonments, even murder. His rationale was that “there’s a lot of work left to move the country forward - so let’s put politics aside and work together”. 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. The people who made these rules are not going to be affected by them in any way, beyond no longer having to see opinions they disagree with on Slack. Yes you’re right no one wants their work slack to turn into the worst parts of fb and Twitter, but that’s not what we’re talking about here is it? We’re talking about employees being able to discuss current events and how they’re being affected by them, in a world where everything - even mask wearing - can be deemed political. This doesn’t have to happen on the main slack channels, but where’s the harm in letting employees still communicate in separate slack channels that are not mandatory to join and that employees can just ignore if they’re not interested? They have every right to introduce any rules they want - it’s their company and I’m not contesting that. But this is not as simple as oh they’re just trying to make the work culture less toxic, good for them.
    • throwaway0xc 5y ago
      >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.
• akdav 5y ago
  Basically shutting up DHH on Twitter from the looks of it.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • swyx 5y ago
    no, he's talking https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1386773744484552715 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1386773744484552715
• bonaldi 5y ago
  Must be such a relief for them that "project management, team communication, and email software" don’t touch at all on social or political issues, in any ways that their staff might want to discuss.
  • bobzimuta 5y ago
    I don't get what you're saying. Is there some unique intersection between the software they develop and social/political issues?
    • bonaldi 5y ago
      They essentially build communications software –– social software. To try and say that you can do this without ever considering social issues is strange to me, and seems like at worst, it could damage their products. For one thing, there is no shortage of examples of social products that have launched offerings without thinking how they could be abused (hello cross-Slack messaging) and had to recant quickly. But to go more deep: social software is about community, and communities bring political and social issues with them. Should you have a gender field in your user form? What values should it have? Should you have vacation auto-responders? How will they operate? Do you have activity lights? With what timeout? Should you allow users to filter or block one another? What emoji do you offer? What biases do they exhibit? Will you refuse certain kinds of customer? Will you _protect_ certain kinds of customer despite public outcry? Or certain kinds of content? How you approach these sorts of questions can touch on a wide range of social/political issues, and they appear to be saying "only David and Jason can discuss, decide or think about these things". Which seems ... limiting.
      • temp8964 5y ago
        Read the whole post. They will counsel specific personals, no need for everyone to get involved.
• paxys 5y ago
  Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp? People are going to say "obviously stuff like this is okay", but to me that's even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever they think is unacceptable political speech. And if they do strictly enforce that employees must only ever communicate about work (and the weather or whatever), then that sounds like a very depressing and dystopian workplace. Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a "major distraction"? And is the best response to this really to bow down to the loudest voices on either side and shut down conversation for the 99% who are just...normal?
  • tshaddox 5y ago
    > In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp? > People are going to say "obviously stuff like this is okay", but to me that's even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever they think is unacceptable political speech. From reading this announcement, it seems like they are going with the former. The article specifically mentions "every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large." Of course, it remains to be seen how exactly they apply this rule. The announcement doesn't mention how they will go about enforcing this prohibition, but to me it's very clear that the examples you mentioned obviously fall under this prohibition, as well as many other topics I would expect to be discussed at work, like vacation and holiday policies.
  • sktrdie 5y ago
    Yeah. More than questioning the ethical implications of their decision I was simply struct with a... damn that must be a boring place to work at.
• yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
  So is the DEI officer currently on staff going to cease being a DEI officer and just 'stick to HR' stuff, if politics and topics adjacent are out the window?
  • tshaddox 5y ago
    DEI is mentioned in this announcement: > The responsibility for DEI work returns to Andrea, our head of People Ops. The implication is that (prior to this announcement) they had one or more committees responsible for DEI.
    • yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
      Yes. I read that. And what I am flatly pondering is what that "responsibility" could possibly consist of, if the topics inherent to DEI are now not to be had at basecamp.
      • tshaddox 5y ago
        My interpretation was that discussions directly related to each job would obviously be allowed. I'm sure people still need to discuss employment law, immigration law, IP law, etc. for certain roles. I gathered that this announcement is about casual at-work discussions e.g. in the company Slack.
        • yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
          I think we may have differing ideas as to what "DEI" work consists of; because to your response, that work sounds like the typical duties of an HR officer in collaboration with corporate counel, not necessarily, and not specifically DEI. Maybe my bias as a DEI officer in current and past roles is on the table here-making things a bit cloudy, and I'm just without an immediate means of resolving that.
  • kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
    How is DEI even a job? What do you do, yell at people when a meeting isn't diverse enough?
• shados 5y ago
  This is a tricky one. On one hand, there's the obvious issues: almost everything you can talk about is societal or political. Talking about your lawn growing is societal because it means you can have a lawn and that gets into the housing crisis sooner or later. If people can't speak about politics, marginalized group will have difficulty bringing up tough issues that impact them in their day to day job. On the other hand, I haven't seen a company where the various politics Slack channel didn't devolved to a couple of white guys in an eco chamber trashing anyone who isn't agreeing with their favorite issue of the day. And god forbid you're NOT part of that channel, because then you're the "one person who doesn't care" or some such. Some issues may be fairly one sided, at least at a high level (gender and race equality), others are much more nuanced (gentrification and housing, the school debt crisis) and the discussions are always bordering on needing HR involved to avoid people screaming at each other. Some are extremely subjective but just as heated in Slack (the whole working from home thing). So how do you handle it? Let people talk about it but ban the slack channels? Ban it altogether? Have HR moderating the discussions? I honestly don't know. Right now it seems like the status quo of "let it happen and hope for the best" is the best of the bad options you have in front of you, but eventually something goes sour and you have to do something. Basecamp's approach is likely missing the mark, but I'd be curious what others are doing. If your answer is "Nah, we have tons of political discussions at work and its all positives", you're probably not looking very hard.
  • aaronbrethorst 5y ago
    Grass lawns are also just flat-out bad. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/more-sustainable-and-beautiful-alternatives-grass-lawn https://www.nrdc.org/stories/more-sustainable-and-beautiful-...
    • lovegoblin 5y ago
      Which is a perfect example of how nothing is truly apolitical.
      • azemetre 5y ago
        I'm extremely late to the thread, but why is pointing out that manicured lawns may have negative environment effects now political? I'm genuinely curious because after reading this thread you get the impression that you shouldn't be allowed to exist because to do so would be a political act.
• dmazin 5y ago
  So like if I think not using master/slave is not only important morally, but also important for recruiting, is suggesting we remove it for business reasons a political discussion? Hmm.
  • randomsearch 5y ago
    I'd say it's definitely political. I don't believe it's not allowed to be discussion though, just not permitted on the official company basecamp account. Perhaps the implication is that listening to your politics should be optional for other people working at basecamp.
  • kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
    Master/slave in the context of IT has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, black people, etc. So yes, it is political.
    • astrange 5y ago
      > Master/slave in the context of IT has absolutely nothing to do with slavery This can't possibly be true as stated. Even if it's a metaphor, it doesn't add anything over leader/follower or, say, playwright/actor. Plus it sounds like a sex thing.
    • gregd 5y ago
      Actually there are legitimate arguments that master/slave in this context (IT) are precisely tied to slavery.
      • x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
        Yes, but not _black_ slavery. It's not inherently racist terminology.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
      • 5y ago
• jakelazaroff 5y ago
  DHH, Basecamp’s co-founder and CTO, literally testified before Congress and wrote about it on the official company blog [1]. But it’s “distracting” when the rank and file talk politics in the office. Oooookay. [1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/testimony-before-the-house-antitrust-subcommittee/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/testimony-before-the-house-antitr...
  • ash 5y ago
    They say antitrust discussions are okay. > Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products. This means topics like antitrust, privacy, employee surveillance. If you're in doubt as to whether something falls within those lines or not, please, again, reach out for guidance. https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding-societal-politics-at-work-b44bef69 https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...
• antidaily 5y ago
  sam's pissed.
  • sleepyhead 5y ago
    Yup. Doesn't look like there is a way back. I wonder what this will mean for the JS-experience in Rails. Rails is so big it lives outside Basecamp, but Hotwire is so tied to the company.
  • Trasmatta 5y ago
    Sam who?
    • sweepyjunior 5y ago
      Sam Stephenson, works at Basecamp, specifically on Hotwired at the moment I think
    • agos 5y ago
      Possibly San Stephenson? Their Twitter is currently protected, so it’s hard to tell.
  • sweepyjunior 5y ago
    Did they say anything on their Twitter? It's protected now.
    • sleepyhead 5y ago
      Since it's protected I won't publish it but: yes.
  • klelatti 5y ago
    Jonas too: https://twitter.com/jonasdowney/status/1386792772334768130 https://twitter.com/jonasdowney/status/1386792772334768130
  • swyx 5y ago
    this was very relevant to me and something I didn't know - the employees found out at the same time as the outside world. Jason and DHH seem to not have bothered getting internal consensus first before going ahead with this thing. (confirmed with sam) live feed of employee reactions https://twitter.com/i/lists/1202647 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1202647
• klelatti 5y ago
  "Employees are free to...speak out on whatever horrible injustices are being perpetrated on this group or that . But that's their business, not ours." So BaseCamp as a company has no view on any horrible injustices as long as they don't hit their bottom line. Really surprised that a firm that is supposed to be great at marketing seems to have taken no account of how a sizeable subset of their customers would react to this. They also seem to have really upset some key members of their team. Strange and on the face of it not an especially smart move.
  • mimikatz 5y ago
    I don't care if the chip maker who runs this computer thinks Global warming is real or not. I don't care if my orange juice company has spoken out about human trafficking. I don't want those companies to take part in those things, but outside that companies should be in general apathetic soulless beings who only care about things that impact them and act in a legal and ethical matter to provide goods I want or don't want. It is in my mind strange that people want Red Solo cups to fight against the big lie of a stolen election. You realize when companies do this it isn't because they CARE, it is because they see the PR benefit vs cost (look at the NBA on Hong Kong vs BLM). If people demand companies lie to them so they can feel moral about purchasing their products... That is just bizarre.
    • klelatti 5y ago
      Who mentioned lying? You pick out a few examples that you personally don't like - fair enough you're entitled to do that. But Basecamp are saying that they will never have a view on anything in the environment in which they operate no matter how it affects their employees - as long as their profits are not affected - that is just bizarre and for many disappointing.
• eplanit 5y ago
  So refreshing. Yes, focus on the business (because it is, after all, a business). The job people are hired for is not politics or activism. Also glad to see the weird new-age peer review crap and "soft" stuff eliminated, too. A lot of that is accumulated trendiness from the 90s onward. I love the new policy and attitude, as its emphasis is more about the professional than the personality.
  • mempko 5y ago
    Software is a creative act. This kills creativity and will kill any company culture. Basecamp might as well become JIRA at this point.
    • markmark 5y ago
      Atlassian's market cap is almost $60B, Basecamp will be pretty happy if this small change leads to that sort of success.
      • itsangaris 5y ago
        Not defending this Basecamp's policy, but their goals as a company are vastly different than Atlassian's, so it's not really a fair comparison. Which do you think indexes higher on employee happiness?
        • markmark 5y ago
          Well one of the companies had to step in and ban certain areas of discussion among employees because it was so toxic it was effecting the company. So _they_ don't sound super happy.
          • itsangaris 5y ago
            haha agreed, sounds like things have changed
    • mdoms 5y ago
• drewbug01 5y ago
  Issues that directly impact me and mine at my workplace are considered “political” by those of more conservative mindsets. That’s the really ugly flip side of this, and I know it’s been said elsewhere but: conservative politics in the US make some people’s entire existence political, full stop. So you do a lot more than just cut out “distracting” conversations this way. You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth. You can’t disconnect this from the current US political situation. They’re joined at the hip.
  • koonsolo 5y ago
    Discrimination in any form should not be accepted. But is this still a political topic? I thought we all already decided that.
    • drewbug01 5y ago
      I think a lot of people replying have the same mindset: “haven’t we already decided that discrimination is bad?” I mean... I wish we all had, but evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Many people still tout discrimination as a legitimate political view.
      • koonsolo 5y ago
        I agree, but strangely enough, both extreme right and extreme left seem to love discrimination in some form. I honestly believe that the real solution is treat everyone the same, and to demand from everyone to do the same. When your solution includes distinction, you will never get rid of the distinction.
  • spawarotti 5y ago
    I think you jumped to conclusions here by assuming bad intent. Perhaps implicitly the new policy assumes it is obvious you can mention your husband and anybody giving you problems because of that is violating the policy. I do think the policy should be explicit about it. It doesn't help to say "We forbid X" if one side's prominent tactic is to redefine X as they see fit. By analogy, it is not enough to say "We forbid discussions about religious beliefs". One also needs to say "Theory of evolution is accepted here as true".
• davidgerard 5y ago
  Are they trying to head off unionization?
  • davidgerard 5y ago
    Looks like the answer is "yes": a full one-third of Basecamp employees wanted to join the Diversity/Equity/Inclusion council. DEI appears to be precisely the politics DHH and Jason don't want Basecamp to think about. Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Rahsfan/status/1387042197321633792 https://twitter.com/Rahsfan/status/1387042197321633792
  • drewbug01 5y ago
    That’s usually a nice side-effect. This is a bigger trend developing in tech, I think ... the exact contours of why various C-levels are pushing this now is yet to be seen (not every company policy change to this effect was announced on a blog post, it’s happening elsewhere too).
    • markmark 5y ago
      I honestly think people are reading too much into this. They straight out say that discussions were turning toxic. That presumably impacted the ability of teams to be productive in the jobs they were paid to do. That's the why.
      • derex 5y ago
        From what I see, lots of people who object to this policy change raised a (legitimate) concern: where is the evidence supporting the claim? It’s not like corporations have ever had any problem firing people over productivity issues. If people argue over political topics all day at work and that turns out to affect their productivity negatively, it’s much less controversial for the company to act upon it from a performance angle.
  • pg_bot 5y ago
    Basecamp is known to have one of the most generous pay/benefits packages in the industry. Generous to the point where I would have no idea what a union would even bargain for. I would highly doubt that this was in response to any effort to unionize.
• DiNovi 5y ago
  > You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit This is a very privileged stance. Stopping dialogue because it makes people queezy just means stopping change from taking hold at their company. One of their 10x engineers is a nazi and got mad, I will bet $10 dollars
  • toiletfuneral 5y ago
    A lot of these "keep all politics out of work" stances feel inherently reactionary and could passively ossify some pretty gnarly social issues. I've been in software for 30 years, I can't imagine management attempting to formalize how racist & sexist it was back when I started. Pretending it's fixed now so we can all just move on is a pretty big yikes from me. Sorry that it makes people uncomfortable or could get in the way of profits but even though I don't enjoy it either, thats what progress has to feel like.
• spondyl 5y ago
  Does this mean that all workers and contractors will be treated the same, and given free range data access, regardless of the politics of their home country (ie China or Russia)? This seems like one area that is usually unavoidable in tech companies.
  • izgzhen 5y ago
    What is banned is discussion of society and politics, not their existence.
    • spondyl 5y ago
      I'm making a silly, unfair comparison to be sure. It's just an interesting line of thought, not necessarily a credible one ;) I can imagine that the first time such policies came up could have come from security or legal teams discussing foreign politics around the water cooler and thinking "We should perhaps have some policy in place, just in case". Fundamentally, that's no different than say; implementing a D&I policy or climate actions in response to employees discussing news stories on Slack, in my mind anyway. Just going off first principles, as us HNers love to do, I can imagine if you never had political discussion in the first place, policies such as "offsetting perceived risk of foreign governments" would never be bothered with until they're actually tangibly impacting you (ie literal foreign spies or whatever) The whole thing is kinda moot anyway since I'm sure HR and legal teams will be discussing these things in some capacity unavoidable, just not in view of other employees. Perhaps even more importantly, what defines "politics" is extremely vague in the first place.
      • izgzhen 5y ago
        Thanks for this reply!
• alostpuppy 5y ago
  I wish I could write like that guy.
• mempko 5y ago
  The "no committees" takes away autonomy. The "no politics" takes away purpose. All you are left with is mastery. They just killed intrinsic motivation. See Daniel Pink.
  • ehershey 5y ago
    You’ve got it exactly backwards. Committees take away autonomy by introducing external influence. Politics by definition is guiding policy, not acting with purpose within the confines of policy.
    • mempko 5y ago
      For any given decision you make, you either only affect yourself or you can affect others. Similarly there are people making decisions that could affect you. In the situation where a decision could affect you, wouldn't you want to participate in that decision? That's what democracy allows you to do. committees increase your autonomy because you can participate in decision making that could affect you. obviously if it ONLY affects you and nobody else, then a committee should not be involved. The alternative is someone unilaterally making decisions for many people, and where I'm from, that's called authoritarianism.
• ashtonkem 5y ago
  Taking away wellness benefits seems unbelievably petty and foolish. These are relatively cheap compared to payroll, but are fantastic for morale. Taking them away on top everything else feels like he’s just willfully poking his own employees in the eye with a stick for no good reason. Also, posting this publicly feels like a very, very bad idea.
  • rangoon626 5y ago
    Providing gym memberships is kind of problematic, if not outright insensitive. Body positivity is a thing and self-love can be expressed in more ways than just this one.
    • ashtonkem 5y ago
      Problematic how?
      • rangoon626 5y ago
        Seems kind of like an ableist “perk” to me. I understand that it’s one of those things that’s not intended to be, but the net result is still the same.
        • teddyfrozevelt 5y ago
          You really should have led with this argument because "companies shouldn't give employees gym memberships because fat people might not use them" is an awful argument but "companies shouldn't give employees gym memberships because some employees might be physically unable to go to a gym" is pretty reasonable if the alternative is just giving them money instead.
    • notwhereyouare 5y ago
      You don’t have to use the gym membership though
      • 5y ago
• taytus 5y ago
  They are making changes to the document: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1386810666221150210 https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1386810666221150210
• tonymet 5y ago
  expect to see more of these policies. Otherwise you'll have separate cohorts of politically active companies and productive companies
• drusepth 5y ago
  I wasn't expecting to like these changes after seeing a ton of tweets from rubyists I respect criticizing them, but after reading them... I love them all. Companies becoming vocal political entities over the past few years has been mind-blowing and I'm glad to see companies starting to reel it back and get back to, well, being companies. They make products; they don't need to have opinions on unrelated things. IMO people (even the people in charge of companies) can (and should) have political opinions! _Companies_ shouldn't. >You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. This line speaks to me a lot. I find 99% of political conversations at work are just pontification and/or signaling; I don't want to waste precious time at work chatting into echo chambers (or starting fights!) -- especially in a context where my opinion (or my coworkers' opinions) literally _do not matter_. Seems like they handled the paternalistic benefits well also by just providing direct compensation instead. I've felt left out of benefits at companies in the past because I didn't want to use a gym, or buy certain things, etc. It's kind of the same vibe as smoke breaks at some jobs -- you're missing out if you're not a smoker. This seems more inclusive for everyone, and I really appreciate companies recognizing their place in a worker's life: they sign your checks for what you do during work hours. All in all, these seem like really great changes in theory. With all corporate policies though, we'll see how they're implemented in practice.
  • Hamuko 5y ago
    >Companies becoming vocal political entities over the past few years has been mind-blowing Are we pretending that all that corporate lobbying and political donations that have been going on for years and years was non-political?
    • therealdrag0 5y ago
      There’s a difference between economic politics to be lobbied for and cultural politics to signal/argue about.
      • Hamuko 5y ago
        What's the difference?
• paxys 5y ago
  "Staying out of politics" is a bold move from a company that just launched a blogging platform.
• theshadowknows 5y ago
  Hard for me to take it seriously when providing a gym stipend is “paternalistic” but not trusting your employees to discuss certain topics is supposed to be smart business.
  • starik36 5y ago
    I am totally on board with this. I get extra subsidy for health insurance at work if I walk 7000 steps a day - $750 per year. I was already walking over 10k steps daily for years. But what if you have bad knees or live in a dangerous neighborhood or simply don't like walking? That to me is paternalistic behavior. If you want subsidize my health insurance, just do it. But I don't need my employer to be my mommy, no matter the intentions.
    • gls2ro 5y ago
      I don't know if it is good or not to have gym benefits so I cannot comment if removing it is a good or bad decision. With regards to "But what if you have bad knees or live in a dangerous neighborhood or simply don't like walking?" This is very simple to fix: thing about this in terms of equity not equality. Do not eliminate a benefit but think how can include more people by changing the metric. If someone has bad knees or don't like walking but still want to participate in this subsidy then the fix is not to eliminate the subsidy for everyone, but to have different metrics for people to opt in.
    • yerwhat01010 5y ago
      > I get extra subsidy for health insurance at work if I walk 7000 steps a day - $750 per year. Really? How does this work? Your company tracks how many steps you take?
      • starik36 5y ago
        Yes, through an app called Virgin Pulse. It hooks into Apple Health and syncs steps with it when you start it up. There is also a portion that tracks your sleep habits, but it requires you to enable the Bedtime feature on the iPhone, which I don't want to do.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  I think what is important to recognize is that a company saying that some discussions are off limits is not commenting on the value of the discussions. It is saying that they do not want to be a battle ground in the cultural war. In the Middle Ages, there was the concept of the Truce of God. That meant on certain feast days or on Sundays, you were not allowed to fight. It didn't mean that your fight wasn't legitimate. Maybe Lord Ronald over there killed your family and stole your castle and you had a legitimate reason to fight him. But, it did mean that when you were in Mass on Christmas, you did not pull out your sword and start fighting Lord Ronald, even though you both might be in the same cathedral. In the same way, we are in the midst of a cultural war. And there are very legitimate issues and deep hurts. However, that does not mean that warfare has to take place in every venue. There should be some venues where cultural warfare is banned. Kind of like the equivalent of the old Medieval Truce of God.
• chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  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 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 women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work? I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt and assuming they're trying to stave off the former. But it's not that easy to do that without also affecting the latter, because if you ask questions that boil down to is our company discriminating, even unintentionally and do our LGBT and minority employees feel as safe and valued as our straight cis white employees, someone will be super upset that you're "bringing politics into the workplace." (I guarantee someone reading this is thinking "ugh, 'cis' is a slur, why you gotta be so political," and, bang: somebody has just made recognizing the existence of trans people into something inherently political, and now we get to argue over whether that somebody is me or the cis-is-a-slur guy.) Here's a thought: if your goal is to try to keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work, then don't say "don't be political." Say "keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work."
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  • caffeine 5y ago
    Your latter example is also expressly undesirable in the workplace. You are hired to build product, not obsess over the diversity of the employee base, unless you are hired in a DEI role specifically. Asking the questions you are asking is political. Discussing people’s membership in groups like cis or Native American or whatever else IS an unwanted political act. Those group identities are fundamentally political tools. Treating people as anything other than individuals is a political act. Discrimination happens against an individual. If you see discrimination happen against an individual, and you privately and discretely address it with the appropriate people (could be with those directly involved, with superiors, with HR, whatever seems appropriate in that situation), that is not a political act, it is a moral act of taking care of a coworker.
• rexreed 5y ago
  How does the 10% profit share work? Do they take 10% of profits and divide them equally among all employees? Contractors? Full time? Part time? Interns? Does someone know how the profit share works?
  • ativzzz 5y ago
    Typically you can either give everyone the same percent or say you set aside 10% of your profit and divvy it up proportional to people's salaries
    • rexreed 5y ago
      Yes but how is it being done in this case?
      • 1123581321 5y ago
        It is entirely based on time employed, up to a cap: "You’re eligible to participate in profit sharing after two years of working at Basecamp. You’ll accrue one share per month starting on your second anniversary at Basecamp, and you’ll max out your shares at 10 years. We calculate shares based on months of tenure so there’s no unfair cliff between being hired in December vs January."
        • rexreed 5y ago
          So they just add up all the employee months and split the profit equally per employee month?
• adolph 5y ago
  People close to [Steve Jobs] over the years say he sees himself as a "progressive industrialist" who eschews moral gestures and views succeeding in the marketplace with innovative products as his central mission in life. https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/in-the-politics-of-innovation-steve-jobs-shows-less-is-more https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/in-the-politics...
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• vmception 5y ago
  I was a fan when Coinbase did this, I am a fan when Basecamp did this, I don't want or expect companies to "use their platform" just because they have one. If that's the premise of the company, go for it, if not then don't. I am not a white cis male, as some might assume.
• nightski 5y ago
  This is why I have been self employed for over a decade and there is no going back. I have no interest in dealing with any of this. I just want to work on solving problems.
• Gatsky 5y ago
  It seems quite shocking to claim that an important sociopolitical issue is not important everywhere and at every moment.
• madeforthispost 5y ago
  Had to make a throwaway because I was nervous to discuss opinions even remotely related to politics with my personal account, but wanted to share regardless. This is an interesting move and I really don't think we are getting the whole story on what caused such a drastic change. It's interesting because, for the most part, I think it is safe to assume that most basecamp employees are liberal leaning, including the founders. My first thought was, why not just deal with these specific problem employees individually? Well, surely they must have tried. I can't imagine going public with such a drastic change if they didn't first at least try to correct the behavior of misbehaving employees. What's misbehaving? I would classify that as slinging personal insults/threats across the room. Would you fire these employees if they didn't stop this behavior? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like something basecamp would do. In fact, it might make it _worse_ for them from a PR perspective if they did this, even if the employees were completely out of line for what is appropriate workplace conversation. So not sure. In this situation, I would give them the benefit of the doubt(other than on the poor communication). I've never worked at a place where politics was discussed heavily in either work chat or in person (outside of friends talking with friends, which IMO, is perfectly acceptable), but I've seen some conversations (such as the leaked Github chat) that are just plain toxic and I wouldn't feel comfortable rebuttaling extreme views without fear of retribution. I personally don't think that people should have to deal with that in a work environment, but just my 2c. I guess it's just where do you draw the line, and internally, they must have hit that point.
  • natemo 5y ago
    I actually suspect this statement blindsided most of the company. It seems the way DHH and Jason operate is to lead with big philosophies and work backwards to the practical implications. This is not just evident in their company practices, but how they develop software. I also suspect things weren't necessarily toxic within Basecamp. Given their recent book title "It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work" and activity on Twitter, maybe they just see the writing on the wall and would prefer to nip this in the bud. "Political talk" (however we're defining it) has become all-consuming in the past year and perhaps they recognize it as a big distraction for anyone trying to get work done. It is a privileged stance, but I'm sure there are many who appreciate the workplace being a venue where employees are encouraged to talk about other things.
• tcbasche 5y ago
  Interesting; working at a company with a fairly high degree of psychological safety there is almost no heavy political fighting on Slack or other communication channels (except for the odd comment here or there). There is a high degree of focus on completing actual work and a level of professional behaviour that arguments like these would be very out of place. This is probably due to the size of the org; maybe with more people there would be higher levels of discussion overall and therefore more political chitchat; but I couldn't see it devolving into the bowels of Twitter... I feel like a productive and healthy work culture basically eliminates the toxic discourse that can run rampant on Slack (I've seen it before; it led to the organisation banning Slack entirely!) and by having a safe workplace you wouldn't even need to mandate the removal of political or societal discussion. To me this signals that there is a wider problem within the organisation and I'm not sure banning anything will change it.
  • randomsearch 5y ago
    Is your company remote or in-person? Because I think the problems that Basecamp might have been having (reading between the lines on twitter) is more likely to occur when people do not have to face each other on a daily basis.
    • tcbasche 5y ago
      It’s in-person but now a mix. That’s interesting because I think after a few months into the pandemic while being totally remote, I noticed an increase in confrontational behaviour... I wonder if that disconnect means it’s easier to forget you’re talking to a real person.
  • lindy2021 5y ago
    Basecamp founders openly appease political activists: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1350091751789375490 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1350091751789375490 Not surprising they've run into workplace toxicity.
• wnevets 5y ago
  I certainly don't regret passing on an @hey.com email address anymore
• kundi 5y ago
  Changes at Basecamp published on Hey.com?
  • yerwhat01010 5y ago
    You realise that Hey.com and Basecamp are the same company, right?
• Ericson2314 5y ago
  > We introduced 360s, which required peers to provide feedback on peers. The problem is, peer feedback is often positive and reassuring, which is fun to read but not very useful. The whole point of 360 reviews is to collectively confront management when doing so 1-1 would be too awkward and risky. This list of changes here is honestly pretty suspect, and seems like the owners are trying to recentralize their power.
  • wbc 5y ago
    How has 360 reviews confronted management in your experience?