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"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 alw

"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." I see this assumption a lot, too, that banning political discussion is purely a matter of preventing partisan squabbling. The truth is, though, that banning political discussion means banning challenges to the status-quo, and maintaining the status-quo is often just defaulting to political conservatism and the current organizational structure. I'd like to think that some people will read the statement, and new ones like it, in a more cynical and suspicious light, now.

Daishiman 6y ago
You can't have a functional organization if you spend a substantial amount of socializing dealing with disagreements that make teamwork difficult. If Chris doesn't like Stan because he worked in the military industrial complex and it makes it hard for both of you to work, you've just made the team and its dependents dramatically less productive. And at the end of the day you have changed fundamentally nothing about the core issue. Companies have limited capital to be weird, to deal with difficult problems, and to take risks. And while some things can and should deserve attention, for 90% of things it will be business as usual, everywhere. The 10% that changes in different organizations is what matters. I read the person's letter and looked at her profile. I'm going to take a prejudiced guess and say that she doesn't sound like a person that's easy to work with or willing to compromise, and when reality hits the wall that you have someone who's killing team and management morale, there isn't much more to expect than a prompt firing or suspension. Some people are revolutionary activists willing to burn everything down instead of compromising; others are suck-ups and bootlickers that do little things but won't raise their voice. In the real world there's a huge range of positions on how to change the world. You can't expect an oil company to drop its oil wells tomorrow and switch to green energy investments in one year just because you demand it as an employee. If that's your expectation you're far better off resigning and working through political channels to kill off the viability of oil. She should have frankly realized that her values don't align with the management and that she could A) accept that she apparently won _many_ battles and do the best to keep the political capital necessary to work on what matters most, or B) decide that the differences are irreconcileable and leave.
- tomlockwood 6y ago
  > I read the person's letter and looked at her profile. The verge reports that they spoke to a half-dozen people. > You can't have a functional organization if you spend a substantial amount of socializing dealing with disagreements that make teamwork difficult. The question is I guess, if the organization gets to define what discussions are "difficult", can they be trusted to do so? Why? In this case, they released this prohibition on political speech as a direct result of having a wildly insensitive list of "funny names" internally. I think its very easy to argue that such a list would weaken the organization by making it less appealing to people, generally, and more specifically, to certain types of people. Is anything gained from having such a list? Personally, I think people should take a cynical view of organizations prohibiting "political" speech at work.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    I strongly disagree. You can't have functional organizations where there aren't some common values about what's important and what isn't and where discussions, even about culture, aren't aggressively prioritized. The greatest example I've seen is in grassroots organizations run by activists with "flat" organizations. Assemblies on everything, discussions about everything, rehashing and revisiting the same points over and over again, ridiculously petty feuds, incredible amounts of energy lost and just a handful of people actually doing the real work, because it turns out that everyone would rather fight their pet internal cause unless you have strong leadership that's willing to put a sock on it to actually _do_ things. It's clear to me that the founders have extremely strong opinions about certain topics and that's where they put their energy for change and analysis and where discussions can be had with depth. Their values lie there, and for most other things they want things to run smoothly so they can focus on their most important values. It is extremely unlikely that a challenge to those values will go smoothly unless it is absolutely paramount in importance. Would you go to work at Apple if you're a Free Software activist? Would you work at Exxon if you're a vegan environmentalist? At some point certain accomodations are not reasonable. Some staff have basically encountered that, effectively, they don't share all of the values that management has. They can either: live with it, quit, or try to graciously let some air in the room to reraise the conversation with cooler heads and understanding that this just might not work out. DHH's point on certain arguments making for toxic conversation are very, very real. I've seen it in several organizations. And strong leadership means sometimes drawing lines. What others do with said lines is up to each person. Another political and NGO analogy that I have some familiarity with: if you're a third-wave progressive feminist militant, it is _extremely_ unlikely that you would allow TERFs (trans-exclusionary feminists, ie: people who consider trans women to not be "women") into your organization, because while they may consider themselves "feminist", their value system is just too different to get meaningful consensus on extremely important topics. That's just the way it is.
arrrg 6y ago
Well, it all comes down to companies being starkly hierarchical organizations where the leadership has absolute power. You know, the thing we usually detest when we talk about states and societies. It doesn’t matter how much the company dresses itself up as having flat hierarchies, in the end it’s clear where the absolute power rests. So, I don’t know what to even say. Maybe abolish capitalism?
- yamellasmallela 5y ago
  >Maybe abolish capitalism? Can you concretely define how to do this and what the alternatives are?

Daishiman 6y ago

You can't have a functional organization if you spend a substantial amount of socializing dealing with disagreements that make teamwork difficult. If Chris doesn't like Stan because he worked in the military industrial complex and it makes it hard for both of you to work, you've just made the team and its dependents dramatically less productive. And at the end of the day you have changed fundamentally nothing about the core issue. Companies have limited capital to be weird, to deal with difficult problems, and to take risks. And while some things can and should deserve attention, for 90% of things it will be business as usual, everywhere. The 10% that changes in different organizations is what matters. I read the person's letter and looked at her profile. I'm going to take a prejudiced guess and say that she doesn't sound like a person that's easy to work with or willing to compromise, and when reality hits the wall that you have someone who's killing team and management morale, there isn't much more to expect than a prompt firing or suspension. Some people are revolutionary activists willing to burn everything down instead of compromising; others are suck-ups and bootlickers that do little things but won't raise their voice. In the real world there's a huge range of positions on how to change the world. You can't expect an oil company to drop its oil wells tomorrow and switch to green energy investments in one year just because you demand it as an employee. If that's your expectation you're far better off resigning and working through political channels to kill off the viability of oil. She should have frankly realized that her values don't align with the management and that she could A) accept that she apparently won _many_ battles and do the best to keep the political capital necessary to work on what matters most, or B) decide that the differences are irreconcileable and leave.

tomlockwood 6y ago
> I read the person's letter and looked at her profile. The verge reports that they spoke to a half-dozen people. > You can't have a functional organization if you spend a substantial amount of socializing dealing with disagreements that make teamwork difficult. The question is I guess, if the organization gets to define what discussions are "difficult", can they be trusted to do so? Why? In this case, they released this prohibition on political speech as a direct result of having a wildly insensitive list of "funny names" internally. I think its very easy to argue that such a list would weaken the organization by making it less appealing to people, generally, and more specifically, to certain types of people. Is anything gained from having such a list? Personally, I think people should take a cynical view of organizations prohibiting "political" speech at work.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  I strongly disagree. You can't have functional organizations where there aren't some common values about what's important and what isn't and where discussions, even about culture, aren't aggressively prioritized. The greatest example I've seen is in grassroots organizations run by activists with "flat" organizations. Assemblies on everything, discussions about everything, rehashing and revisiting the same points over and over again, ridiculously petty feuds, incredible amounts of energy lost and just a handful of people actually doing the real work, because it turns out that everyone would rather fight their pet internal cause unless you have strong leadership that's willing to put a sock on it to actually _do_ things. It's clear to me that the founders have extremely strong opinions about certain topics and that's where they put their energy for change and analysis and where discussions can be had with depth. Their values lie there, and for most other things they want things to run smoothly so they can focus on their most important values. It is extremely unlikely that a challenge to those values will go smoothly unless it is absolutely paramount in importance. Would you go to work at Apple if you're a Free Software activist? Would you work at Exxon if you're a vegan environmentalist? At some point certain accomodations are not reasonable. Some staff have basically encountered that, effectively, they don't share all of the values that management has. They can either: live with it, quit, or try to graciously let some air in the room to reraise the conversation with cooler heads and understanding that this just might not work out. DHH's point on certain arguments making for toxic conversation are very, very real. I've seen it in several organizations. And strong leadership means sometimes drawing lines. What others do with said lines is up to each person. Another political and NGO analogy that I have some familiarity with: if you're a third-wave progressive feminist militant, it is _extremely_ unlikely that you would allow TERFs (trans-exclusionary feminists, ie: people who consider trans women to not be "women") into your organization, because while they may consider themselves "feminist", their value system is just too different to get meaningful consensus on extremely important topics. That's just the way it is.

arrrg 6y ago

Well, it all comes down to companies being starkly hierarchical organizations where the leadership has absolute power. You know, the thing we usually detest when we talk about states and societies. It doesn’t matter how much the company dresses itself up as having flat hierarchies, in the end it’s clear where the absolute power rests. So, I don’t know what to even say. Maybe abolish capitalism?

yamellasmallela 5y ago
>Maybe abolish capitalism? Can you concretely define how to do this and what the alternatives are?