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> 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 i

> 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.
- tomlockwood 6y ago
  > Would you go to work at Apple if you're a Free Software activist? I think if Basecamp had been clear about the funny names list in their hiring process, their candidate pool would be a bit different.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    I think that if you're that upset about the sort of thing that happens in every single place where there's customer support and people need to vent, then you have no place working in a customer-facing position. People vent, and they do so without thinking too much because they spent every single customer interaction censoring themselves and thinking deeply about how not leave a bad impression. DHH did the right thing: they owned up to the problem, finished it, and moved on. If you're going to complain about every possible grievance and unsavory behavior you're not gonna be a person that will get along with peers.
    - tomlockwood 6y ago
      I'm not sure why you've extrapolated this kind of behavior to every customer support position. I've not encountered it in any of the ones I've worked. Also, I'm not seeing evidence that the Basecamp employees that had an issue with this behavior were "going to complain about every possible grievance".
      - Daishiman 6y ago
        > I'm not sure why you've extrapolated this kind of behavior to every customer support position. I've not encountered it in any of the ones I've worked. I've not extrapolated it to every position, but I've worked with enough industries to know that there many have very difficult customers and it takes a toll. > Also, I'm not seeing evidence that the Basecamp employees that had an issue with this behavior were "going to complain about every possible grievance". DHH alluded to certain analogies in the discussion of racial and ethnic prejudices triggering needlessly emotional responses, and frankly I totally agree that a lot of contemporary framings of certain discussions don't allow for tolerating disagreement. And if you're going for those discussions that are going to draw such strong lines, yeah, either you rein in the discussion soon or you allow your teams to be fragmented needlessly. And the same thing happens with management. Management isn't going to be willing to entertain every single discussion. To me it was clear from the start that they had limited energy to discuss the topic and once that was up it was time to move on. They may be right or wrong, but being clear on it is better than being ambiguous or allowing the thing to continue.
shagie 6y ago
> Personally, I think people should take a cynical view of organizations prohibiting "political" speech at work. Aside from going down the rabbit hole of trying to define political that bogged down the other post on this... This doesn't appear to be a ban on political speech at work. It is a "don't use the company boards / channels / resources to carry out political discussions; if you must have them, do them with your own resources and own channels of communication." If HR has to step in and say "cool it off", then the discussion has gone too far. In a company of a few score employees, the "Bob and Alice can't work together because they have been arguing about {topic}" is not something that is tenable. Larger orgs can move them around so that their differences don't impact the overall company. Small ones don't have that luxury.
- tomlockwood 6y ago
  > Aside from going down the rabbit hole of trying to define political that bogged down the other post on this... But that's exactly why we ought to be cynical of organizations prohibiting political speech - they get to define what is and isn't political speech.
  - shagie 6y ago
    If Bob and Alice can't work together anymore because of a non-work related debate they had using company resources, that's a problem for HR. It doesn't matter if its political or not. Politics and religion are just the two easiest ones to get into a debate about - and religion is a protected class. Whats more, if either of them are fired and they claim a wrongful termination because of that debate (on company resources) it puts the company in a very awkward place of both previously encouraging that sort of discussion and discouraging it. If you want to debate politics, go set up a non-work email list or slack channel. The office isn't the third place ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place ) and discussions of politics belong there - in the third place. Discussions of politics in the office with managers and people reporting to you and needing to get along and not being able to leave without forfeiting a paycheck - those are things that make the office a bad place for debates on politics - especially the debate of the CEO's political stances on things that extend belong the product the company produces.
CRConrad 5y ago
> > I read the person's letter and looked at her profile. > The verge reports that they spoke to a half-dozen people. Yes, but AFAICR there was only one link labelled something with "letter" in the article, so adding two and two together it isn't all that hard to arrive at a pretty good guess as to whom the GP meant.

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.

tomlockwood 6y ago
> Would you go to work at Apple if you're a Free Software activist? I think if Basecamp had been clear about the funny names list in their hiring process, their candidate pool would be a bit different.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  I think that if you're that upset about the sort of thing that happens in every single place where there's customer support and people need to vent, then you have no place working in a customer-facing position. People vent, and they do so without thinking too much because they spent every single customer interaction censoring themselves and thinking deeply about how not leave a bad impression. DHH did the right thing: they owned up to the problem, finished it, and moved on. If you're going to complain about every possible grievance and unsavory behavior you're not gonna be a person that will get along with peers.
  - tomlockwood 6y ago
    I'm not sure why you've extrapolated this kind of behavior to every customer support position. I've not encountered it in any of the ones I've worked. Also, I'm not seeing evidence that the Basecamp employees that had an issue with this behavior were "going to complain about every possible grievance".
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      > I'm not sure why you've extrapolated this kind of behavior to every customer support position. I've not encountered it in any of the ones I've worked. I've not extrapolated it to every position, but I've worked with enough industries to know that there many have very difficult customers and it takes a toll. > Also, I'm not seeing evidence that the Basecamp employees that had an issue with this behavior were "going to complain about every possible grievance". DHH alluded to certain analogies in the discussion of racial and ethnic prejudices triggering needlessly emotional responses, and frankly I totally agree that a lot of contemporary framings of certain discussions don't allow for tolerating disagreement. And if you're going for those discussions that are going to draw such strong lines, yeah, either you rein in the discussion soon or you allow your teams to be fragmented needlessly. And the same thing happens with management. Management isn't going to be willing to entertain every single discussion. To me it was clear from the start that they had limited energy to discuss the topic and once that was up it was time to move on. They may be right or wrong, but being clear on it is better than being ambiguous or allowing the thing to continue.

shagie 6y ago

> Personally, I think people should take a cynical view of organizations prohibiting "political" speech at work. Aside from going down the rabbit hole of trying to define political that bogged down the other post on this... This doesn't appear to be a ban on political speech at work. It is a "don't use the company boards / channels / resources to carry out political discussions; if you must have them, do them with your own resources and own channels of communication." If HR has to step in and say "cool it off", then the discussion has gone too far. In a company of a few score employees, the "Bob and Alice can't work together because they have been arguing about {topic}" is not something that is tenable. Larger orgs can move them around so that their differences don't impact the overall company. Small ones don't have that luxury.

tomlockwood 6y ago
> Aside from going down the rabbit hole of trying to define political that bogged down the other post on this... But that's exactly why we ought to be cynical of organizations prohibiting political speech - they get to define what is and isn't political speech.
- shagie 6y ago
  If Bob and Alice can't work together anymore because of a non-work related debate they had using company resources, that's a problem for HR. It doesn't matter if its political or not. Politics and religion are just the two easiest ones to get into a debate about - and religion is a protected class. Whats more, if either of them are fired and they claim a wrongful termination because of that debate (on company resources) it puts the company in a very awkward place of both previously encouraging that sort of discussion and discouraging it. If you want to debate politics, go set up a non-work email list or slack channel. The office isn't the third place ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place ) and discussions of politics belong there - in the third place. Discussions of politics in the office with managers and people reporting to you and needing to get along and not being able to leave without forfeiting a paycheck - those are things that make the office a bad place for debates on politics - especially the debate of the CEO's political stances on things that extend belong the product the company produces.

CRConrad 5y ago

> > I read the person's letter and looked at her profile. > The verge reports that they spoke to a half-dozen people. Yes, but AFAICR there was only one link labelled something with "letter" in the article, so adding two and two together it isn't all that hard to arrive at a pretty good guess as to whom the GP meant.