5 ms·
Seriously. Maybe if it had a more clickbaity headline like, "Basecamp insiders reveal a culture of contempt for customers" it would get traction. And all this
by NationalPark 5y ago
Seriously. Maybe if it had a more clickbaity headline like, "Basecamp insiders reveal a culture of contempt for customers" it would get traction.
And all this from a management team that's published how many books on their deep people management insights?'
This bit in particular:
Employees took a different view. In a response to Hansson’s post, one employee noted that the way we treat names — especially foreign names — is deeply connected to social and racial hierarchies. Just a few weeks earlier, eight people had been killed in a shooting spree in Atlanta. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent, and their names had sometimes been mangled in press reports. (The Asian American Journalists Association responded by issuing a pronunciation guide.) The point was that dehumanizing behavior begins with very small actions, and it did not seem like too much to ask Basecamp’s founders to acknowledge that.
Hansson’s response to this employee took aback many of the workers I spoke with. He dug through old chat logs to find a time when the employee in question participated in a discussion about a customer with a funny-sounding name. Hansson posted the message — visible to the entire company — and dismissed the substance of the employee’s complaint.
Strikes me as extremely unprofessional, childish, and really just downright embarrassing for him, for Basecamp, for Basecamp's customers who now have to have their own internal discussions about whether or not their vendor ESG standards are being met, and for the employees whose personal reputations are for better or worse now associated with this PR disaster. It's truly astonishing what a series of poor choices were made (assuming, of course, that this particular piece is faithfully telling the story).
- sanderjd 5y agoI have always found it a bit odd that their management perspective holds so much sway when it is built upon their experiences managing what has always been a very small organization.
- cbnotfromthere 5y agoHow exactly could be "extremely unprofessional, childish, and really just downright embarrassing for him" to prove, beyond any doubt, that the accuser on a high-horse is actually a scheming hypocrite?
- virgilp 5y agoWas it wrong on DHH's part, though? Here's how I read it: DHH: "Making fun of names is wrong and clearly a failure on our part that we didn't stop it. Please don't take extreme views though, it is not genocide, we'd like to believe we'd fire genocide-inclined employees Employee: continues to argue that making fun of names leads to genocide DHH: points to employee making fun of names Employee: surprised pikachu face What was DHH supposed to do? Acknowledge said employee, and fire them?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tomerv 5y agoMaybe not post his response for the whole company to see? It's the first thing you learn about managing people.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- virgilp 5y agoPerhaps you imagine DHH's response was different than his actual response? Read it (link below) - do you still consider it wrong? https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
- meepmorp 5y agoAre people who formerly did shitty things not allowed to ever criticize those things point out their consequences? If said employee learned to behave better, why publicly shame them? Unless you only care about shutting them up and "winning" the argument in front of your staff, DHH didn't help himself or the company at all. He actually behaved like a spoiled chikd.
- lr4444lr 5y agoWell isn't that convenient: make your own mistakes against social propriety and have your "come to Jesus" moment, then apply your normal code only going forward, despite people losing their careers over 10 plus year old tweets? Doesn't work that way when you are not the king. If they cannot find a moral code that seeks a common denominator when other moral agents disagree, then they should not complain about being hoisted by their own petard. Maybe a little more nuance and forgiveness is in order here, and if they are not capable of that, then shutting down controversial political talk makes a lot of sense.