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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.

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."

deleted 6y ago
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caffeine 6y 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.
- krainboltgreene 6y ago
  > You are hired to build product, not obsess over the diversity of the employee base, unless you are hired in a DEI role specifically. pssst those two things are connected > Discrimination happens against an individual. This is just weirdly wrong? > If you see discrimination happen against an individual, and you privately and discreetly 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 This is an incredibly political act.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    It's hard not to escape the conclusion that the goal of Basecamp's new policy is to quietly suppress or ultimately evict people who think like you. There is no connection whatsoever between diversity and building product. Note: you haven't tried to explain your claim there is, just implied it's obvious, probably because you can't. I've seen people try to honestly intellectually defend a connection between employee diversity and product design before, and it's always a joke. You get anecdotes about face recognition not working on black people (reality: the software in question just had trouble with low contrast images and also struggled with white people's faces). And that's about it. I can't recall ever seeing someone actually argue that more women == better product because, well, that's a pretty sexist thing to believe isn't it? It implies men have no empathy, or that there's a universe of product requirements women will only tell to other women, etc. If discrimination is happening against an individual and you work with the management chain to resolve it, that's not a political act, because you aren't attempting to radically remake the entire organisation for everyone (politics), but only address the specific problem that was actually observed.
    - bonaldi 6y ago
      There is an absolute wealth of connection between more diversity and better products: it’s not that a monoculture can’t make products for everyone, it’s that it’s easier for a team that has wider representation to do so: it’s a competitive advantage for them. Want examples beyond hand driers? Apple missed menstrual cycle tracking in the Health app. NASA offered to send 1,000 tampons with the first woman in space - and had to abandon its first all-woman spacewalk for bad planning in kit availability. Google Photos tagged black people as gorillas. (Regardless of the cause, it shipped). SnapChat shipped a yellowface filter. Google Translate delivers highly gendered results when translating from gendered languages into English. Google Home is 70% more likely to recognise male voices because of training set bias. Women are 49% more likely to be injured in car accidents because the seating position for crash testing is designed for men. And - yes! - Pinterest has struggled to reach men as users apparently because of its SEO strategy. Want more examples? Ask any passing woman what app she uses that clearly didn’t think about women. Diverse teams make better products. The stats are out there. Trying to argue this highly political. We wouldn’t even be able to talk about your point at Basecamp. Does that not worry you? Don’t assume they will always agree with your politics just because they’ve done this.
koonsolo 6y ago
> 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 really detest such things, and the "problem" is easily solved by "I don't give a fuck". I don't give a fuck if you are male or female, or anything in between, if you are, black, white, yellow or whatever, neither do I care about your sexual preferences, or your religion. And neither should anyone else care. I do care about how well you can do your job, how well you fit in our team, etc. I helped hire most of our team members, and by luck they are very diverse in all of the above mentions traits. But who should care? This is 2021, nobody should give a fuck about those things anymore. If you do, in either direction, you're part of the problem, not the solution.
- peteretep 6y ago
  > I don't give a fuck Some people would say you have the _privilege_ to not give a fuck
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    Yes, we live in a privileged society where all people are considered equal. People who practice positive or negative discrimination should get with the program.
    - abenga 6y ago
      Discrimination does not need to be overt, mostly it's insidious, cloaked in vague statements such as "culture fit". And no, not everyone is considered equal. There are many (or at the very least non-zero) racists, sexists, homophobes, and bigots of many other forms in the world. Thinking that that does not affect how those in power go about their business is willful ignorance, capricious heartlessness, or gleeful complicity. Just because it is no longer possible to actively voice discriminatory opinions, or that laws exist to ostensibly stop discrimination does not stop its effects, and sticking our heads in the sand does not stop them.
randomsearch 6y ago
> 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? Whilst this is reasonable and well-intentioned, the unfortunate truth is that wokeness is used as tactic for gaining power. And in a company power struggles are bad for the company.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
> 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? Because if you have data(like Google had) that women are paid more for same skillset or try to argue that the company is focusing too much on diversity at the expense of talent, do you think it doesn't count as politics. Honest question, I don't have strong opinion in these topics, but I know people who have.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> 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? This is just so alien to me. Maybe it's an American thing but I've never been in a workplace where this has been a thing. I've never seen these "quickly turning unpleasant" conversations in the workplace. > '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 In 2021, I think we've moved past the point of benefit of the doubt. DHH and Jason Fried and (supposed) to be smart switched on people who recognise their own privilege. They (should) know that you cannot ban the former without impacting the latter and genuinely hurting people.
jsiepkes 6y ago
I find the boundaries which the "On Politics At Work" blog sets to be very narrow and centered around what that the author thinks is the most pressing issue. The author names 4 points out of which 3 are about equality on the workfloor and one vague one about "what problems do we solve?". I find it odd that no one even speaks about questions like: "Is this company a net-win for society? Are we perhaps making the world a worse place?". For example is it not important if you work at Uber to discuss how far "disrupting" is allowed to go? When does "disrupting" become eroding workclass rights? Shouldn't you discuss if it is ethical to get a large group of people to work below minimum wage? Or in case of Apple if it is acceptable that the supply chain becomes time and again "contaminated" with suppliers who use forced labour?
- jasonpbecker 6y ago
  For what it's worth, this was hastily written as I was thinking about what was happening at Basecamp. I would agree that it's very important to ask the questions you're asking-- that's why I added the final bullet. It wasn't the set of issues that were top of mind for me in the context of what was happening at BC, but I think they are critical, political questions that companies should ask.
jononomo 6y ago
Forget banning politics at work -- that's obviously such a good idea that it should be considered an assumption. This post from chipotle_coyote makes a good argument for banning Slack at work.
- deleted 6y ago
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vfulco2 6y ago
Well put...
jasonpbecker 6y ago
I'm glad you enjoyed my post.
spopejoy 6y ago
I suspect that this represents a practical consolidation of power by leadership in tech. While you can't come out and say "hey, we want to corner the market in white male nerds", you can say things like "Mean people suck, why can't we all just get along, no politics on slack, we're good right?" Think of it as the tech-liberal backlash. Tech has been wrestling with representation and diversity for a while now, indeed more visibly than many industries, and some limited progress has been made, maybe not as much in raw numbers than in qualitative stuff like less-hostile workplaces. But it is far from the _worst_ industry for diversity. Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to hire engineers, and the dominant class isn't going away anytime soon. If you can figure out how to signal to them that "hey, Basecamp/Coinbase/MyCo is a place you can just be you and chat about games and gear without worrisome questions about equal pay" then you potentially achieve a short-term recruiting advantage. I say "short-term" because of course, it's short-sighted. But worse, it's cynical, as it wants to halt the minimal progress that has been made behind a smokescreen of civility and fairness. And given that it's being openly pushed by white male leadership, it's fully reactionary, and white-male supremacist. It's a harsh term to use but we haven't really uncovered a more accurate one.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  Not everything is racially motivated. They are just making business decisions in a small business. The whole reason they are doing it is probably ridiculous and cynical takes like this.
  - spopejoy 6y ago
    It doesn't have to have a particular animus to have the effect. The question is, why make a big blog post about it in the first place? They can't claim innocence, since they followed Brian Armstrong pretty much to the letter, and have the walkouts to boot. So we can assume the attention was calculated. Just look at how many posts on HN are now like "I want to work there!" Recruitment signalling accomplished. The backlash is real, and to me the interesting part is it's semi-liberal tech dudes leading the charge. BTW do you mean to say that bringing up issues of equal pay justify overt censorship as a "business decision"? Just asking because that was the issue I mentioned above.
garrison 6y ago
> I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt It's not clear that they deserve the benefit of the doubt, if we are to believe Casey Newton's article, "What really happened at BaseCamp": > Employees say the founders’ memos unfairly depicted their workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself. > “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’ > Interviews with a half-dozen Basecamp employees over the past day paint a portrait of a company where workers sought to advance Basecamp’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by having sensitive discussions about the company’s own failures. After months of fraught conversations, Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson moved to shut those conversations down. https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec... EDIT: formatting
louiskottmann 6y ago
I disagree. Discussions about diversity and equality are absolutely political debate. It's even boringly trending I must say. It's barely a 30seconds discussion between founders, not a company-wide debate. You follow it up with a yearly report on actual diversity vs real world distribution. That is, if you're big enough a company to be compared to it. For example: if you have zero women in tech, there is a problem, and you have people to remove from recruiting roles. If you're close-ish to the median of your recruiting pool, you're fine. What need do you have for ceaseless internal discussions about it?
gregd 6y ago
The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible until and unless they center marginalized voices and give them positions of power at Basecamp. Otherwise this decision is cowardice wrapped in some arbitrary policies.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  > The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. To me that's just sensible leadership. To keep the company productive, you have to let the leaders make decisions while the subordinates focus on doing the work. > Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible But maybe the only way to solve the problem of polarization is for all of us to give each other the benefit of the doubt more than we might be comfortable doing.
- jschulenklopper 6y ago
  Well, Basecamp is their company, isn’t it? If they don’t have the right to make those changes... who has?
  - zorpner 6y ago
    The people who do the work that produces the value.
    - chii 6y ago
      > do the work that produces the value. who then got paid for said value.
      - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
        People who say things like that generally consider profit to be stealing because there would be no profit if everyone was paid for their value. The way I see it is that profit occurs because the value of the end product is greater than the sum of its parts.
rpdillon 6y ago
In a follow-up on DHH's blog[0], he says: > 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. I would read this to mean that political issues that are tied to business decisions (like pay equality and recruiting practices) are in-bounds for discussion at work. [0]: 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...
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago
>"are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" Yes. Wow problem solved! No one in America pays people differently based on their gender. It is based on your experience, your ability to negotiate, and how you sell yourself. I bet short dainty men earn less on average too. Also, I applaud them for banning politics at work. Nothing you mentioned is relevant to Basecamp or things that they are producing. Talking about politics just creates animosity and drives teams apart. Not everyone has the same viewpoints and most people cannot "just get along" when they disagree.
bo1024 6y ago
Very interesting - the Basecamp statement addresses both discussions about politics broadly, and discussions about internal company policies related to diversity, ethics, and inclusion. In fact, it changes the power structures around those to make them more top-down. It seems a bit disingenuous to lump these changes in with the first kind.
StanislavPetrov 6y ago
>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? These are questions for people at work whose job description involves hiring, payroll, and the corporate charter. These aren't collective questions to be debated and answered by employees whose jobs are completely unrelated. If, for example, you are hired to be a programmer, then your job is to program - that's all. Its not up to you to decide what the company's mission should be, or, "whose problems we are trying to solve". While a programmer is debating these philosophical and political questions with other programmers, they aren't doing the job they were hired to do - program. Certainly if the ownership of a company decides that they want to hire people to not only program, but also opine on their political and moral beliefs, that is their right. But is also their right to decide they don't want to pay people they hire to opine and debate during work hours on issues that have no direct relevance to the job they were hired to do. Just as it is your right to refuse to accept a job at a company that hires you to exclusively do a job without bringing your political baggage into the workplace.
- astrange 6y ago
  "Are we hiring diverse people I want to work with" is a question relevant to everyone, because it falls under workplace conditions, which is something you're not allowed to prevent employees from discussing. Also, we're talking about tech workers who get stock compensation, right? They literally own (part of) the company.
  - StanislavPetrov 6y ago
    If you don't like the people in a company, don't take a job there. Astounding to me that it is controversial that people who are hired to do a job should be spending their time doing the job they are paid to do instead of debating with other employees about what their employers should be doing. I don't see anyone suggesting that employees can't contact HR, or write letters to those whose actual job it is to making hiring decisions, or have discussions with the coworkers on their own time. If you are a shareholder, and you want to have input on how the company is run, there are numerous avenues to do so. The sense of entitlement is crazy.
lindy2021 6y ago
We already have a solution for the issues you described, HR. Defiling work communication channels with political opinions only serves to distract, deride, and divide.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  HR is on your employer's side and in most companies gets nothing done aside from avoiding liability. As a European person, I'd say keep the political discussion to your union. Unions also often have much better political affiliation and can make things happen on a broader scale.
- villasv 6y ago
  > We already have a solution for the issues you described, HR. Surely you must be joking.
  - lindy2021 6y ago
    If you don't trust your employer's HR department, then why did you accept the position?
    - BoDlulu 6y ago
      Because "do I trust HR?" (a question to which the answer is almost certainly always "no, but it doesn't matter in most cases"), is only one minor criteria amongst a vast plethora of other important ones when deciding to join a company or not?
    - DiNovi 6y ago
      HR exists to protect the company not the individual
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - Uyuxo 6y ago
      What kind of a question is that? The first and foremost function of HR is to protect the company, you have no reason to trust them. And who even has such a deep insight into the HR of a company at the time of your hiring that they decide whether to take the job or not based on that info?
reducesuffering 6y ago
> 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? Because there is only one accepted answer. Anyone who drifts from that into the opposing side will be reprimanded, scarred for their remaining tenure at the company, and/or fired. Good luck objecting to your company having N number of positions literally reserved for only certain races. Source: company X recruiter.
- cgag 6y ago
  What the hell is water? People can't even see politics anymore they're so steeped in it.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    I think this is perhaps true in a different way than you mean it: politics has such a pervasive effect on people's lives that it is nearly impossible to remain resolutely neutral about everything (and going out of your way to try to do so anyway will come to be seen as its own stance).
- angry_octet 6y ago
  No doubt you would be offended and angry if your CEO instituted a policy of workplace secularism, that extended to no career progression if you were a churchgoer. Or if important people commented on how smelly you were, and everyone laughed about Mr Stinker and your funny food. Banks wouldn't lend you money for a house in the nice part of town, because they all knew you were a snollygoster and they didn't want your kind at the local school. You'd probably be angry at their prejudices. But I'm sure you'd understand, because groupthink is bad.
  - yibg 6y ago
    And you'd be completely fine with being passed over for a job because there is a quota for pink people and you're not pink? One can object to bad solutions to a problem without denying the problem itself exists. It's exactly the stifling of these types of discussions to real problems that's the issue. Any suggestion of alternatives or pointing out problems with existing practices, and you get labeled a bigot.
temp8964 6y ago
> 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 don't understand why would any company want employees to openly discuss "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" This is a terrible question for any specific company to answer. Calculate the average wage of male and female employees? Very likely it won't be equal. And run regression to control different variables (experiences, skills)? If this is not inviting unnecessary internal fight, I can't think of anything else. Not any sane person would want to do this its own company. "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" Same spirit, if you don't believe it, nobody can prove it. "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?" not sure what's the point here.
- ngc248 6y ago
  Even salary between men at the same level may not be same. there are too many variables.
- wmf 6y ago
  I don't understand why would any company want to openly discuss... That's the point; companies don't want to discuss it but oppressed employees do.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I think a problem is that people don't want to discuss these subjects. They want to tell other people about the problems. This creates an atmosphere where, if you have the correct opinions, you are free to lecture ad nauseam, and if you do not then you must keep your ideas a secret on penalty of ignominious and instant termination.
  - 6y ago
kristofferR 6y ago
Sounds just as dumb as when Hacker News banned "politics" for a period, and people were discouraged from posting EFF blog posts and the like, because "politics" is an impressively vague word. Politics is life, it doesn't have to be toxic.
- yosito 6y ago
  Starting a comment with "sounds dumb" isn't a great way to make your case that "it doesn't have to be toxic".
- tmp538394722 6y ago
  Eh, feels pretty different. HN’s ban was intentionally a short term reboot/cooldown, during a particularly hot time - not a broad and indefinite ban. Society is hard. I think it’s good to experiment, and when you’re explicit about a timeline, it seems like the stakes are reasonable.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  In my experience, when people say "I don't want politics at work", what they mean is they don't want what you'd call toxic politics. For example, I consider my workplace generally apolitical despite our large and active DEI committees, because they consistently frame their work in positive terms: lots of "here's how we can make people happier and more successful!", occasional "suchandsuch was a tragedy and we hope to work towards a better future", nothing in the vein of "X group is bad" or "Y politician must be defeated".
  - chii 6y ago
    There's political activism that's related to your employment/career, and then there's political activism unrelated to your employment/career. Discussing career related political activism at work - such as unionization, or fair pay, because it actively affects you in the workplace - is fine to me. However, woke politics, like gender equality, abortion, or some other trending topic that is unrelated to your workplace, should be discouraged. Things like that are more akin to religion - it's private, and should be kept off the workplace. Do it in your own private time, with people who also want to do it in their private time.
tylermenezes 6y ago
> I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt I'm not, especially as the post then moves straight into dissolving the DEI committee and moving its responsibilities to HR.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  They moved it back to an employee who cares and was doing a good job without being a toxic coworker. That seems good for future hires as well as current employees of all kinds.
- sidlls 6y ago
  That is a net benefit to the company and employees. The DEI committees I've seen are filled with some of the most viciously aggressive people. It's simply not possible to have a conversation with them about these issues that doesn't start with "you're right, I'll shut up and listen to you tell us how we should fix things."
wmf 6y ago
Say "keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work." You have been canceled for "tone policing".
jimkleiber 6y ago
I appreciate this. I think often we will frame things in a negating way, which doesn't end up working that well. I find "don't be political" as telling me to not touch something...I end up wanting to touch it. Whereas "keep channels civil and focused on work" tells me what the goal is and helps me recenter on that when I stray. Because I think the goal is not to be "not political" but really to "be civil and focused" as you mentioned. Thank you!
TearsInTheRain 6y ago
My company has mandated that 40% of our recruiting contacts for engineers are women. We have spent weeks talking about bias in our interview process and despite having no metrics showing bias is a problem we have made changes to combat it (i.e. no video on the call) that have led to worse experiences for our candidates. Suffice to say we have had a lot of trouble hiring engineers. > Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work? Imho companies that try to tackle the woke political issues are going to end up worse off and never make those few employees that keep bringing them up happy.
- SNosTrAnDbLe 6y ago
  How many woman engineers are in your team as a percent of total?
  - junon 6y ago
    How much does being a woman affect your ability to engineer? Should a woman only be hired because they're a woman, even if they're a poor engineer? That seems way more sexist than the alternative.
    - pizza234 6y ago
      An alternative interpretation is that by opening more positions for women, they're trying to make a societal improvement, by opening doors to people (women, in this case), that meet too many closed doors. Given their (in relative terms) failure, one could say that this is a complex problem, and addressing one issue is unfortunately not enough. > even if they're a poor engineer? This is not something GP wrote. They wrote they had significant issues because, in a sense, they created a problem (hiring methodologies) in order to solve one that didn't previously exist (gender bias).
    - madeofpalk 6y ago
      I would say reasonably. Products benefit from broad points of view. Companies should avoid making soap dispensers that don't work on black skin because they didn't hire black people. The cliche is that tech companies are aiming to change the world. Software has real impacts on humans. Maybe the group of people "changing the world" should be a bit more diverse than just Dudes.
pradn 6y ago
The more general problem is the same words can be interpreted differently by different people. On the internet, given a large enough audience, every interpretation with every possible emphasis will be brought out.
eweise 6y ago
Seems pretty clear to me that they mean general political discussions and not those that relate to the company. Imagine being on a team where there are differing opinions on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and it keeps getting brought up in threads? You think that team is going to gel?
- LightG 6y ago
  Hmm, my jury is out on all of this, but you raise a good point. I was in exactly that position where I had to work closely with someone who I knew had strongly differing opinions to me on Israel/Palestine. I'm not sure if it was an unspoken agreement or just lucky, but we made damned sure not to bring it up at work ... and we managed to work effectively together. My gut here is that the founders just botched the delivery of these policies, but I'll keep thinking about it.
  - eweise 6y ago
    Unfortunately, I took their announcement at face value but looks like from this article, that their intent was to eliminate company criticism theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-political-speech-policy-controversy

deleted 6y ago

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caffeine 6y 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.

krainboltgreene 6y ago
> You are hired to build product, not obsess over the diversity of the employee base, unless you are hired in a DEI role specifically. pssst those two things are connected > Discrimination happens against an individual. This is just weirdly wrong? > If you see discrimination happen against an individual, and you privately and discreetly 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 This is an incredibly political act.
- thu2111 6y ago
  It's hard not to escape the conclusion that the goal of Basecamp's new policy is to quietly suppress or ultimately evict people who think like you. There is no connection whatsoever between diversity and building product. Note: you haven't tried to explain your claim there is, just implied it's obvious, probably because you can't. I've seen people try to honestly intellectually defend a connection between employee diversity and product design before, and it's always a joke. You get anecdotes about face recognition not working on black people (reality: the software in question just had trouble with low contrast images and also struggled with white people's faces). And that's about it. I can't recall ever seeing someone actually argue that more women == better product because, well, that's a pretty sexist thing to believe isn't it? It implies men have no empathy, or that there's a universe of product requirements women will only tell to other women, etc. If discrimination is happening against an individual and you work with the management chain to resolve it, that's not a political act, because you aren't attempting to radically remake the entire organisation for everyone (politics), but only address the specific problem that was actually observed.
  - bonaldi 6y ago
    There is an absolute wealth of connection between more diversity and better products: it’s not that a monoculture can’t make products for everyone, it’s that it’s easier for a team that has wider representation to do so: it’s a competitive advantage for them. Want examples beyond hand driers? Apple missed menstrual cycle tracking in the Health app. NASA offered to send 1,000 tampons with the first woman in space - and had to abandon its first all-woman spacewalk for bad planning in kit availability. Google Photos tagged black people as gorillas. (Regardless of the cause, it shipped). SnapChat shipped a yellowface filter. Google Translate delivers highly gendered results when translating from gendered languages into English. Google Home is 70% more likely to recognise male voices because of training set bias. Women are 49% more likely to be injured in car accidents because the seating position for crash testing is designed for men. And - yes! - Pinterest has struggled to reach men as users apparently because of its SEO strategy. Want more examples? Ask any passing woman what app she uses that clearly didn’t think about women. Diverse teams make better products. The stats are out there. Trying to argue this highly political. We wouldn’t even be able to talk about your point at Basecamp. Does that not worry you? Don’t assume they will always agree with your politics just because they’ve done this.

koonsolo 6y ago

> 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 really detest such things, and the "problem" is easily solved by "I don't give a fuck". I don't give a fuck if you are male or female, or anything in between, if you are, black, white, yellow or whatever, neither do I care about your sexual preferences, or your religion. And neither should anyone else care. I do care about how well you can do your job, how well you fit in our team, etc. I helped hire most of our team members, and by luck they are very diverse in all of the above mentions traits. But who should care? This is 2021, nobody should give a fuck about those things anymore. If you do, in either direction, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

peteretep 6y ago
> I don't give a fuck Some people would say you have the _privilege_ to not give a fuck
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Yes, we live in a privileged society where all people are considered equal. People who practice positive or negative discrimination should get with the program.
  - abenga 6y ago
    Discrimination does not need to be overt, mostly it's insidious, cloaked in vague statements such as "culture fit". And no, not everyone is considered equal. There are many (or at the very least non-zero) racists, sexists, homophobes, and bigots of many other forms in the world. Thinking that that does not affect how those in power go about their business is willful ignorance, capricious heartlessness, or gleeful complicity. Just because it is no longer possible to actively voice discriminatory opinions, or that laws exist to ostensibly stop discrimination does not stop its effects, and sticking our heads in the sand does not stop them.

randomsearch 6y ago

YetAnotherNick 6y ago

madeofpalk 6y ago

> 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? This is just so alien to me. Maybe it's an American thing but I've never been in a workplace where this has been a thing. I've never seen these "quickly turning unpleasant" conversations in the workplace. > '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 In 2021, I think we've moved past the point of benefit of the doubt. DHH and Jason Fried and (supposed) to be smart switched on people who recognise their own privilege. They (should) know that you cannot ban the former without impacting the latter and genuinely hurting people.

jsiepkes 6y ago

I find the boundaries which the "On Politics At Work" blog sets to be very narrow and centered around what that the author thinks is the most pressing issue. The author names 4 points out of which 3 are about equality on the workfloor and one vague one about "what problems do we solve?". I find it odd that no one even speaks about questions like: "Is this company a net-win for society? Are we perhaps making the world a worse place?". For example is it not important if you work at Uber to discuss how far "disrupting" is allowed to go? When does "disrupting" become eroding workclass rights? Shouldn't you discuss if it is ethical to get a large group of people to work below minimum wage? Or in case of Apple if it is acceptable that the supply chain becomes time and again "contaminated" with suppliers who use forced labour?

jasonpbecker 6y ago
For what it's worth, this was hastily written as I was thinking about what was happening at Basecamp. I would agree that it's very important to ask the questions you're asking-- that's why I added the final bullet. It wasn't the set of issues that were top of mind for me in the context of what was happening at BC, but I think they are critical, political questions that companies should ask.

jononomo 6y ago

Forget banning politics at work -- that's obviously such a good idea that it should be considered an assumption. This post from chipotle_coyote makes a good argument for banning Slack at work.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

vfulco2 6y ago

Well put...

jasonpbecker 6y ago

I'm glad you enjoyed my post.

spopejoy 6y ago

I suspect that this represents a practical consolidation of power by leadership in tech. While you can't come out and say "hey, we want to corner the market in white male nerds", you can say things like "Mean people suck, why can't we all just get along, no politics on slack, we're good right?" Think of it as the tech-liberal backlash. Tech has been wrestling with representation and diversity for a while now, indeed more visibly than many industries, and some limited progress has been made, maybe not as much in raw numbers than in qualitative stuff like less-hostile workplaces. But it is far from the _worst_ industry for diversity. Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to hire engineers, and the dominant class isn't going away anytime soon. If you can figure out how to signal to them that "hey, Basecamp/Coinbase/MyCo is a place you can just be you and chat about games and gear without worrisome questions about equal pay" then you potentially achieve a short-term recruiting advantage. I say "short-term" because of course, it's short-sighted. But worse, it's cynical, as it wants to halt the minimal progress that has been made behind a smokescreen of civility and fairness. And given that it's being openly pushed by white male leadership, it's fully reactionary, and white-male supremacist. It's a harsh term to use but we haven't really uncovered a more accurate one.

bitexploder 6y ago
Not everything is racially motivated. They are just making business decisions in a small business. The whole reason they are doing it is probably ridiculous and cynical takes like this.
- spopejoy 6y ago
  It doesn't have to have a particular animus to have the effect. The question is, why make a big blog post about it in the first place? They can't claim innocence, since they followed Brian Armstrong pretty much to the letter, and have the walkouts to boot. So we can assume the attention was calculated. Just look at how many posts on HN are now like "I want to work there!" Recruitment signalling accomplished. The backlash is real, and to me the interesting part is it's semi-liberal tech dudes leading the charge. BTW do you mean to say that bringing up issues of equal pay justify overt censorship as a "business decision"? Just asking because that was the issue I mentioned above.

garrison 6y ago

> I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt It's not clear that they deserve the benefit of the doubt, if we are to believe Casey Newton's article, "What really happened at BaseCamp": > Employees say the founders’ memos unfairly depicted their workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself. > “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’ > Interviews with a half-dozen Basecamp employees over the past day paint a portrait of a company where workers sought to advance Basecamp’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by having sensitive discussions about the company’s own failures. After months of fraught conversations, Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson moved to shut those conversations down. https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec... EDIT: formatting

louiskottmann 6y ago

I disagree. Discussions about diversity and equality are absolutely political debate. It's even boringly trending I must say. It's barely a 30seconds discussion between founders, not a company-wide debate. You follow it up with a yearly report on actual diversity vs real world distribution. That is, if you're big enough a company to be compared to it. For example: if you have zero women in tech, there is a problem, and you have people to remove from recruiting roles. If you're close-ish to the median of your recruiting pool, you're fine. What need do you have for ceaseless internal discussions about it?

gregd 6y ago

The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible until and unless they center marginalized voices and give them positions of power at Basecamp. Otherwise this decision is cowardice wrapped in some arbitrary policies.

mwcampbell 6y ago
> The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. To me that's just sensible leadership. To keep the company productive, you have to let the leaders make decisions while the subordinates focus on doing the work. > Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible But maybe the only way to solve the problem of polarization is for all of us to give each other the benefit of the doubt more than we might be comfortable doing.
jschulenklopper 6y ago
Well, Basecamp is their company, isn’t it? If they don’t have the right to make those changes... who has?
- zorpner 6y ago
  The people who do the work that produces the value.
  - chii 6y ago
    > do the work that produces the value. who then got paid for said value.
    - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      People who say things like that generally consider profit to be stealing because there would be no profit if everyone was paid for their value. The way I see it is that profit occurs because the value of the end product is greater than the sum of its parts.

rpdillon 6y ago

In a follow-up on DHH's blog[0], he says: > 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. I would read this to mean that political issues that are tied to business decisions (like pay equality and recruiting practices) are in-bounds for discussion at work. [0]: 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...

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago

>"are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" Yes. Wow problem solved! No one in America pays people differently based on their gender. It is based on your experience, your ability to negotiate, and how you sell yourself. I bet short dainty men earn less on average too. Also, I applaud them for banning politics at work. Nothing you mentioned is relevant to Basecamp or things that they are producing. Talking about politics just creates animosity and drives teams apart. Not everyone has the same viewpoints and most people cannot "just get along" when they disagree.

bo1024 6y ago

Very interesting - the Basecamp statement addresses both discussions about politics broadly, and discussions about internal company policies related to diversity, ethics, and inclusion. In fact, it changes the power structures around those to make them more top-down. It seems a bit disingenuous to lump these changes in with the first kind.

StanislavPetrov 6y ago

>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? These are questions for people at work whose job description involves hiring, payroll, and the corporate charter. These aren't collective questions to be debated and answered by employees whose jobs are completely unrelated. If, for example, you are hired to be a programmer, then your job is to program - that's all. Its not up to you to decide what the company's mission should be, or, "whose problems we are trying to solve". While a programmer is debating these philosophical and political questions with other programmers, they aren't doing the job they were hired to do - program. Certainly if the ownership of a company decides that they want to hire people to not only program, but also opine on their political and moral beliefs, that is their right. But is also their right to decide they don't want to pay people they hire to opine and debate during work hours on issues that have no direct relevance to the job they were hired to do. Just as it is your right to refuse to accept a job at a company that hires you to exclusively do a job without bringing your political baggage into the workplace.

astrange 6y ago
"Are we hiring diverse people I want to work with" is a question relevant to everyone, because it falls under workplace conditions, which is something you're not allowed to prevent employees from discussing. Also, we're talking about tech workers who get stock compensation, right? They literally own (part of) the company.
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  If you don't like the people in a company, don't take a job there. Astounding to me that it is controversial that people who are hired to do a job should be spending their time doing the job they are paid to do instead of debating with other employees about what their employers should be doing. I don't see anyone suggesting that employees can't contact HR, or write letters to those whose actual job it is to making hiring decisions, or have discussions with the coworkers on their own time. If you are a shareholder, and you want to have input on how the company is run, there are numerous avenues to do so. The sense of entitlement is crazy.

lindy2021 6y ago

We already have a solution for the issues you described, HR. Defiling work communication channels with political opinions only serves to distract, deride, and divide.

kalleboo 6y ago
HR is on your employer's side and in most companies gets nothing done aside from avoiding liability. As a European person, I'd say keep the political discussion to your union. Unions also often have much better political affiliation and can make things happen on a broader scale.
villasv 6y ago
> We already have a solution for the issues you described, HR. Surely you must be joking.
- lindy2021 6y ago
  If you don't trust your employer's HR department, then why did you accept the position?
  - BoDlulu 6y ago
    Because "do I trust HR?" (a question to which the answer is almost certainly always "no, but it doesn't matter in most cases"), is only one minor criteria amongst a vast plethora of other important ones when deciding to join a company or not?
  - DiNovi 6y ago
    HR exists to protect the company not the individual
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Uyuxo 6y ago
    What kind of a question is that? The first and foremost function of HR is to protect the company, you have no reason to trust them. And who even has such a deep insight into the HR of a company at the time of your hiring that they decide whether to take the job or not based on that info?

reducesuffering 6y ago

cgag 6y ago
What the hell is water? People can't even see politics anymore they're so steeped in it.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  I think this is perhaps true in a different way than you mean it: politics has such a pervasive effect on people's lives that it is nearly impossible to remain resolutely neutral about everything (and going out of your way to try to do so anyway will come to be seen as its own stance).
angry_octet 6y ago
No doubt you would be offended and angry if your CEO instituted a policy of workplace secularism, that extended to no career progression if you were a churchgoer. Or if important people commented on how smelly you were, and everyone laughed about Mr Stinker and your funny food. Banks wouldn't lend you money for a house in the nice part of town, because they all knew you were a snollygoster and they didn't want your kind at the local school. You'd probably be angry at their prejudices. But I'm sure you'd understand, because groupthink is bad.
- yibg 6y ago
  And you'd be completely fine with being passed over for a job because there is a quota for pink people and you're not pink? One can object to bad solutions to a problem without denying the problem itself exists. It's exactly the stifling of these types of discussions to real problems that's the issue. Any suggestion of alternatives or pointing out problems with existing practices, and you get labeled a bigot.

temp8964 6y ago

> 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 don't understand why would any company want employees to openly discuss "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" This is a terrible question for any specific company to answer. Calculate the average wage of male and female employees? Very likely it won't be equal. And run regression to control different variables (experiences, skills)? If this is not inviting unnecessary internal fight, I can't think of anything else. Not any sane person would want to do this its own company. "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" Same spirit, if you don't believe it, nobody can prove it. "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?" not sure what's the point here.

ngc248 6y ago
Even salary between men at the same level may not be same. there are too many variables.
wmf 6y ago
I don't understand why would any company want to openly discuss... That's the point; companies don't want to discuss it but oppressed employees do.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I think a problem is that people don't want to discuss these subjects. They want to tell other people about the problems. This creates an atmosphere where, if you have the correct opinions, you are free to lecture ad nauseam, and if you do not then you must keep your ideas a secret on penalty of ignominious and instant termination.
- 6y ago

kristofferR 6y ago

Sounds just as dumb as when Hacker News banned "politics" for a period, and people were discouraged from posting EFF blog posts and the like, because "politics" is an impressively vague word. Politics is life, it doesn't have to be toxic.

yosito 6y ago
Starting a comment with "sounds dumb" isn't a great way to make your case that "it doesn't have to be toxic".
tmp538394722 6y ago
Eh, feels pretty different. HN’s ban was intentionally a short term reboot/cooldown, during a particularly hot time - not a broad and indefinite ban. Society is hard. I think it’s good to experiment, and when you’re explicit about a timeline, it seems like the stakes are reasonable.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
In my experience, when people say "I don't want politics at work", what they mean is they don't want what you'd call toxic politics. For example, I consider my workplace generally apolitical despite our large and active DEI committees, because they consistently frame their work in positive terms: lots of "here's how we can make people happier and more successful!", occasional "suchandsuch was a tragedy and we hope to work towards a better future", nothing in the vein of "X group is bad" or "Y politician must be defeated".
- chii 6y ago
  There's political activism that's related to your employment/career, and then there's political activism unrelated to your employment/career. Discussing career related political activism at work - such as unionization, or fair pay, because it actively affects you in the workplace - is fine to me. However, woke politics, like gender equality, abortion, or some other trending topic that is unrelated to your workplace, should be discouraged. Things like that are more akin to religion - it's private, and should be kept off the workplace. Do it in your own private time, with people who also want to do it in their private time.

tylermenezes 6y ago

> I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt I'm not, especially as the post then moves straight into dissolving the DEI committee and moving its responsibilities to HR.

1123581321 6y ago
They moved it back to an employee who cares and was doing a good job without being a toxic coworker. That seems good for future hires as well as current employees of all kinds.
sidlls 6y ago
That is a net benefit to the company and employees. The DEI committees I've seen are filled with some of the most viciously aggressive people. It's simply not possible to have a conversation with them about these issues that doesn't start with "you're right, I'll shut up and listen to you tell us how we should fix things."

wmf 6y ago

Say "keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work." You have been canceled for "tone policing".

jimkleiber 6y ago

I appreciate this. I think often we will frame things in a negating way, which doesn't end up working that well. I find "don't be political" as telling me to not touch something...I end up wanting to touch it. Whereas "keep channels civil and focused on work" tells me what the goal is and helps me recenter on that when I stray. Because I think the goal is not to be "not political" but really to "be civil and focused" as you mentioned. Thank you!

TearsInTheRain 6y ago

My company has mandated that 40% of our recruiting contacts for engineers are women. We have spent weeks talking about bias in our interview process and despite having no metrics showing bias is a problem we have made changes to combat it (i.e. no video on the call) that have led to worse experiences for our candidates. Suffice to say we have had a lot of trouble hiring engineers. > Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work? Imho companies that try to tackle the woke political issues are going to end up worse off and never make those few employees that keep bringing them up happy.

SNosTrAnDbLe 6y ago
How many woman engineers are in your team as a percent of total?
- junon 6y ago
  How much does being a woman affect your ability to engineer? Should a woman only be hired because they're a woman, even if they're a poor engineer? That seems way more sexist than the alternative.
  - pizza234 6y ago
    An alternative interpretation is that by opening more positions for women, they're trying to make a societal improvement, by opening doors to people (women, in this case), that meet too many closed doors. Given their (in relative terms) failure, one could say that this is a complex problem, and addressing one issue is unfortunately not enough. > even if they're a poor engineer? This is not something GP wrote. They wrote they had significant issues because, in a sense, they created a problem (hiring methodologies) in order to solve one that didn't previously exist (gender bias).
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    I would say reasonably. Products benefit from broad points of view. Companies should avoid making soap dispensers that don't work on black skin because they didn't hire black people. The cliche is that tech companies are aiming to change the world. Software has real impacts on humans. Maybe the group of people "changing the world" should be a bit more diverse than just Dudes.

pradn 6y ago

The more general problem is the same words can be interpreted differently by different people. On the internet, given a large enough audience, every interpretation with every possible emphasis will be brought out.

eweise 6y ago

Seems pretty clear to me that they mean general political discussions and not those that relate to the company. Imagine being on a team where there are differing opinions on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and it keeps getting brought up in threads? You think that team is going to gel?

LightG 6y ago
Hmm, my jury is out on all of this, but you raise a good point. I was in exactly that position where I had to work closely with someone who I knew had strongly differing opinions to me on Israel/Palestine. I'm not sure if it was an unspoken agreement or just lucky, but we made damned sure not to bring it up at work ... and we managed to work effectively together. My gut here is that the founders just botched the delivery of these policies, but I'll keep thinking about it.
- eweise 6y ago
  Unfortunately, I took their announcement at face value but looks like from this article, that their intent was to eliminate company criticism theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-political-speech-policy-controversy