7 ms·

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. Comp

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.

busterarm 6y ago
I loved everything about what I read here. I'm not surprised at the backlash as most of the Ruby community in the west has been extremely political.
- busterarm 6y ago
  #ruby-lang is famous for K-lining people who say "guys", for example.
  - fighterpilot 6y ago
    What's #ruby-lang?
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Probably an IRC channel (the original hashtag).
  - bluedino 6y ago
    Like “hey guys, can anyone help me with x?” That’s annoying.
  - GFischer 5y ago
    I had to look up K-lining. TIL.
- eclat 6y ago
  Really? That’s a shame.
astrange 6y ago
> Seems like they handled the paternalistic benefits well also by just providing direct compensation instead. This one's odd to me, because I thought the point of non-cash benefits was that it was much cheaper than giving out cash because the employer has more bargaining power than you.
- omegote 6y ago
  Totally. Not sure about the US, but at least in Spain that kind of benefits (private health insurance, restaurant tickets, etc) tend to be a lot cheaper for the employer often just for being a company, but usually for the large quantities they work with.
- hardwaresofton 6y ago
  Well it depends -- it's fairly simple math equation. The more paternalistic benefits you have, the more they cost, and the more people take advantage of more than one of them the more you risk hitting the value requivalent to the 3-5% promotion you have given that employee over 2 years. Just my opinion, but if you were happy to take a 90k job because you live somewhere with a low cost of living for relatively less strenuous engineering work (let's be honest, Basecamp isn't pushing the boundaries of what can be done on the technical side, more on the product side), you're probably fine with waving off the extra 10k or whatever by thinking to yourself they'll pay for schooling if you ever do that (you probably won't). Also, important to note that their 10% thing is performance linked ("profit sharing") -- so it pays for itself. If sales at the company grow 10% so they increase your pay 10% (and that isn't even necessarily what it is, they didn't clarify what the 10% is), the incentives are aligned and the company makes an outsize gain compared to each individual employee. It's a win-win-win, but most of the wins are on the side of the company, as usual. Compounding effects are much stronger than 10% yearly gain -- and what's even crazier is that you have to keep moving the company forward to keep getting the 10% -- essentially if you keep doing that, it's exponential improvement for the company, and each new person that comes in has to get on the hamster wheel. It's brilliant (which is why it's so common).
  - yerwhat01010 6y ago
Hamuko 6y 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 6y ago
  There’s a difference between economic politics to be lobbied for and cultural politics to signal/argue about.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    What's the difference?
    - therealdrag0 6y ago
      Corporations lobby for their interests. Employees lobby for their interest by negotiating with their managers/contract or organizing into a union etc. or if they’ve been seriously slighted by lawyering up. Arguing about race relations, gun rights, cancel culture, policing, trans rights, income inequality at large is irrelevant to 99% of employees. They’re just venting opinions and creating drama over something that they can’t change and usually is irrelevant to their workplace. They can be activists on their own time or keep it in private channels. I think all the “no politics” people want to avoid is Twitter-like conflict and drama, not a ban on all things human or real advocacy for your own interests.
  - smt88 6y ago
    That's true, but you can't separate them when making donations. If I donate to Candidate X, I'm taking her economic and her social policies at the same time. In practice, this means that many large companies have to choose between issues they support. Microsoft may want lower taxes from Republicans, but they also want easier immigration and gay rights from Democrats. If a company takes only an economic perspective, they may end up doing something morally repugnant to their workforce or customers, which turns a social issue into an economic one.
mradzikowski 6y ago
I understand the motives (at least the official ones) behind those changes, and I agree with most of the points there. I would say that to some extend, joining social/political discussions by companies becomes marketing. My biggest issue is that companies do not live in a politics-free bubble. The bigger the company the more it cares and tries to influence the politics, either publicly or not, because politics influences the business. But business influences politics too. And I think this is a reason that employees want the companies to take a stand. A company employing 10k people can make a bigger impact than those 10k people themselves, so people want to leverage this. Theoretically, it should be a bad thing, in democracy, we want every vote to count equally. But in sad reality, individual people choose politicians, but after that, the politics is shaped by powerful. 10k people are not powerful, the company they work for - may be.
lovetocode 6y ago
I love Ruby but I don't share a lot of common ground with Twitter hungry rubyists.
detaro 6y ago
> IMO people (even the people in charge of companies) can (and should) have political opinions! _Companies_ shouldn't. I'm not sure how this meshes with this post? Basecamps founder has been politically active in a role representing the company, by talking to congress about big techs market power (i.e. Hey's fight with Apple). That part is not what they are banning here.
- lupire 6y ago
  Those sent political opinions, those are naked self-interest opinions. They overlap, but the distinction is critical.
- drusepth 6y ago
  Part of this post's change is that Basecamp (as a company) is pulling back on publicizing political stances that aren't directly related to their business. From the follow-up post @ 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...: >Next, Basecamp, as a company, is no longer going to weigh-in publicly on societal political affairs, outside those that directly connect to the business. Again, everyone can individually weigh-in as much or as little as they want, but we're done with posts that present a Basecamp stance on such issues. >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. The founders obviously have strong political opinions on a lot of topics and I think it's great that they're going to express more of them personally instead of expressing them through Basecamp (company).

busterarm 6y ago

I loved everything about what I read here. I'm not surprised at the backlash as most of the Ruby community in the west has been extremely political.

busterarm 6y ago
#ruby-lang is famous for K-lining people who say "guys", for example.
- fighterpilot 6y ago
  What's #ruby-lang?
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Probably an IRC channel (the original hashtag).
- bluedino 6y ago
  Like “hey guys, can anyone help me with x?” That’s annoying.
- GFischer 5y ago
  I had to look up K-lining. TIL.
eclat 6y ago
Really? That’s a shame.

astrange 6y ago

> Seems like they handled the paternalistic benefits well also by just providing direct compensation instead. This one's odd to me, because I thought the point of non-cash benefits was that it was much cheaper than giving out cash because the employer has more bargaining power than you.

omegote 6y ago
Totally. Not sure about the US, but at least in Spain that kind of benefits (private health insurance, restaurant tickets, etc) tend to be a lot cheaper for the employer often just for being a company, but usually for the large quantities they work with.
hardwaresofton 6y ago
Well it depends -- it's fairly simple math equation. The more paternalistic benefits you have, the more they cost, and the more people take advantage of more than one of them the more you risk hitting the value requivalent to the 3-5% promotion you have given that employee over 2 years. Just my opinion, but if you were happy to take a 90k job because you live somewhere with a low cost of living for relatively less strenuous engineering work (let's be honest, Basecamp isn't pushing the boundaries of what can be done on the technical side, more on the product side), you're probably fine with waving off the extra 10k or whatever by thinking to yourself they'll pay for schooling if you ever do that (you probably won't). Also, important to note that their 10% thing is performance linked ("profit sharing") -- so it pays for itself. If sales at the company grow 10% so they increase your pay 10% (and that isn't even necessarily what it is, they didn't clarify what the 10% is), the incentives are aligned and the company makes an outsize gain compared to each individual employee. It's a win-win-win, but most of the wins are on the side of the company, as usual. Compounding effects are much stronger than 10% yearly gain -- and what's even crazier is that you have to keep moving the company forward to keep getting the 10% -- essentially if you keep doing that, it's exponential improvement for the company, and each new person that comes in has to get on the hamster wheel. It's brilliant (which is why it's so common).
- yerwhat01010 6y ago

Hamuko 6y 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 6y ago
There’s a difference between economic politics to be lobbied for and cultural politics to signal/argue about.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  What's the difference?
  - therealdrag0 6y ago
    Corporations lobby for their interests. Employees lobby for their interest by negotiating with their managers/contract or organizing into a union etc. or if they’ve been seriously slighted by lawyering up. Arguing about race relations, gun rights, cancel culture, policing, trans rights, income inequality at large is irrelevant to 99% of employees. They’re just venting opinions and creating drama over something that they can’t change and usually is irrelevant to their workplace. They can be activists on their own time or keep it in private channels. I think all the “no politics” people want to avoid is Twitter-like conflict and drama, not a ban on all things human or real advocacy for your own interests.
- smt88 6y ago
  That's true, but you can't separate them when making donations. If I donate to Candidate X, I'm taking her economic and her social policies at the same time. In practice, this means that many large companies have to choose between issues they support. Microsoft may want lower taxes from Republicans, but they also want easier immigration and gay rights from Democrats. If a company takes only an economic perspective, they may end up doing something morally repugnant to their workforce or customers, which turns a social issue into an economic one.

mradzikowski 6y ago

I understand the motives (at least the official ones) behind those changes, and I agree with most of the points there. I would say that to some extend, joining social/political discussions by companies becomes marketing. My biggest issue is that companies do not live in a politics-free bubble. The bigger the company the more it cares and tries to influence the politics, either publicly or not, because politics influences the business. But business influences politics too. And I think this is a reason that employees want the companies to take a stand. A company employing 10k people can make a bigger impact than those 10k people themselves, so people want to leverage this. Theoretically, it should be a bad thing, in democracy, we want every vote to count equally. But in sad reality, individual people choose politicians, but after that, the politics is shaped by powerful. 10k people are not powerful, the company they work for - may be.

lovetocode 6y ago

I love Ruby but I don't share a lot of common ground with Twitter hungry rubyists.

detaro 6y ago

> IMO people (even the people in charge of companies) can (and should) have political opinions! _Companies_ shouldn't. I'm not sure how this meshes with this post? Basecamps founder has been politically active in a role representing the company, by talking to congress about big techs market power (i.e. Hey's fight with Apple). That part is not what they are banning here.

lupire 6y ago
Those sent political opinions, those are naked self-interest opinions. They overlap, but the distinction is critical.
drusepth 6y ago
Part of this post's change is that Basecamp (as a company) is pulling back on publicizing political stances that aren't directly related to their business. From the follow-up post @ 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...: >Next, Basecamp, as a company, is no longer going to weigh-in publicly on societal political affairs, outside those that directly connect to the business. Again, everyone can individually weigh-in as much or as little as they want, but we're done with posts that present a Basecamp stance on such issues. >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. The founders obviously have strong political opinions on a lot of topics and I think it's great that they're going to express more of them personally instead of expressing them through Basecamp (company).