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One of their iOS devs who left has been incredibly vocal about how he no longer felt like this was somewhere he could work because of this policy and its effect

by andkon 5y ago

One of their iOS devs who left has been incredibly vocal about how he no longer felt like this was somewhere he could work because of this policy and its effects, so I think you're plainly wrong (or insisting that there's no way we could take a person at their word). https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn It's a lot more likely that the 1/3rd that left both left because they were unhappy with the policy, and because they thought they could get jobs elsewhere. I would bet there are some people who stayed behind who didn't believe they could find a job this good soon but who also disagreed with the policy. Which, I get it. 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people.

Rapzid 5y ago
Poster meant a full 1/3 left because yadda yadda. Not that the entire 1/3 left yadda yadda.
wlll 5y ago
Minor point, he's a Ruby/Rails programmer, or was last time I saw him.
- rst 5y ago
  Former member of the Rails core team, in fact, from which he has also resigned. https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn/status/1388131010232074245 https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn/status/138813101023207424...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
madeofpalk 5y ago
A number of their employees were very vocal from the moment the post went live. They expressed how disappointed they are. You can literally hear the despair in two employees voice in a 90s podcast episode where they announce its hiatus. Basecamp was a company built on reputation, and people joined on that and then the leaders just flushed that all away. Its not surprising that opinionated and outspoken people - the kind of people Basecamp courted - left.
- soarfourmore 5y ago
  Despair over not talking about politics on work channels? Are they absolutely consumed with politics that they can’t focus on actual work tasks? I have worked with someone who insists on inserting a political topic or headline into every meeting and it’s distracting and exhausting
  - aspaceman 5y ago
    Despair over the controversy of an internal “funny names” list turned into an external PR move.
  - bytelines 5y ago
    'not talking about politics' is a straw man for the actual issue. They have a list of funny names, got called out on it, and didn't like that. "politics" implies "we dont like Amy Klobuchar" or whatever, but it wasn't that. It was about "what do we tolerate", "who do we welcome", "who are we as a company"? They didn't like their employees defining this for them, because it forced them to think things they didn't want to think about.
    - Udik 5y ago
      People making such a fuss over a list of funny names? Yes, that's office fun you wouldn't want your customers to know about, which I guess makes it a bit unprofessional. But still it's absolutely innocent fun. Whoever makes it into an existential political issue has lost it, seriously.
      - predaking 5y ago
        > But still it's absolutely innocent fun. Not if you're one of the injured parties.
        andyxor 5y ago
        Truly these are first world problems
roenxi 5y ago
> 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people. That still looks like 3 months free money. That is a considerable offer no matter a person's politics. Occam's razor is most of the people who left did so because they didn't like management, because that is the normal reason people leave jobs. However, it is very noticeable that if someone was looking for a reason to leave for any unrelated reason, this was the perfect opportunity.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Occam's Razor is not an appropriate tool to make the point you are trying to make.
  - aranchelk 5y ago
    Yeah, this is exactly right: 1) Employees left for ideological reasons. 2) Employees left out of self interest. There are reasons I believe it’s predominantly 1, but neither explanation is more convoluted. Misuse of an excellent thinking tool.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Those aren’t actually alternative explanation; values define self interest, they aren’t orthogonal to it.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Not sure why you are getting down voted. Occam's Razor is heavily abused and misused in the majority of cases, treating it like some axiomatic mathematical principle and misapplying it to human behavior.
favorited 5y ago
The person you linked to said they are taking time off before looking for new opportunities, so they don't seem concerned about not having enough time to find something new.
sokoloff 5y ago
That’s not my experience watching friends go through the full cycle. The tech employment market for talented programmers appears to be the hottest I’ve ever seen and I worked through the late 90s tech boom where literal used car salespeople were being hired into tech only to be back selling cars by summer of 2000.
- tomerv 5y ago
  Talented people will also have higher standards (want large compensation package, or interesting work, or something else), and figuring out whether a job opening is up to that standard takes time. The result is that even for developers in high demand it takes a lot of time to find a new job.
lupire 5y ago
Tweet: "I’m planning on taking some time for myself before looking for new opportunities" Seems like someone enjoying a break, and glad to have timed it to get a huge severance package. Remember, it's not 6months pay to sit in prison, it's 6monrhs pay to do anything they want, including a hobby project, child rearing, a busoner idea, education... plus a few hours a week of job searching.
- PaulRobinson 5y ago
  Or it's somebody who is so upset and shocked to the core about what has just happened that they need time to grieve for the best job of their lives becoming intolerable very quickly.
  - antpol 5y ago
    theguywipestearswithdollarbills.jpg
bogota 5y ago
I’m not seeing that at all. I have seeing 90% of people let go at my previous job (sample size of 50) pick up jobs within a month. A few obviously had a harder time but the market right now doesn’t seem to be hard at all.
jkhdigital 5y ago
> there's no way we could take a person at their word What people say on Twitter is hardly courtroom testimony. It is evidence, sure, but I wouldn't give it a whole lot of weight. Probably even less weight for being "incredibly vocal".
smsm42 5y ago
> a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people. That sounds really long. It never took me more than 2 months from an initial contact to an offer (whether accepted or not) and sometimes less. I've seen people hired in less than a month - in fact, I've seen many times people hired before they left the previous job. Of course, it's just my personal anecdata but 3 months sounds really long. Any hard data to back it up?
antihero 5y ago
> a new job hunt takes 3 Where is this? At Senior level in London it can take days once you're good and ready.
- ponzao 5y ago
  That was my experience as well in London and very similar here in Helsinki, Finland.
- goatinaboat 5y ago
  Where is this? At Senior level in London it can take days once you're good and ready. Basecamp is fully remote isn't it? So it could be anywhere.
- Oddskar 5y ago
  You would magically find a suitable job in days? I personally have a lot higher requirements for a new position than "a job that pays more than my current one". E.g. working on something that is worth doing, together with great people. This takes a lot longer than "days" to find.
lelanthran 5y ago
> 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people. If you're a developer, that's enough runway to launch a side-business. After all, job-searching is hardly time-consuming (it takes so little time that people do it while already employed in a full-time position). Yeah, some folk will sit at home binge-watching netflix for 6 months. I can all but guarantee you that I will have a product at the end of six months if I was unemployed for six months. At the end of the time I'll have a new job and a product (whether the product actually makes money or not is irrelevant. Getting a product to sell is the first step).
- zrail 5y ago
  > Getting a product to sell is the first step Super tangent on the thread but if you want a product that people are interested in you might think about using a process like Nathan Barry's Authority or 30x500. Not that those are the best or only ways to make a product, of course, but they're at least a direction to take to figure out what people want, need, and buy.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    Thanks, I'll look it up.
kortilla 5y ago
Well if they didn’t do it for they money maybe they could have publicly donate it all to charity. Otherwise it just looks like they did it for the cash.
burningtomato 5y ago
How much do you think the people who have been working there for 5 or 10+ years are making per month? And they can literally land in the company they want to work at in a week.
ugh123 5y ago
I'm reading through his tweets and don't see much interesting on the subject. I may have missed it tho. Can you point me to a thread where hes vocal on it?

by andkon 5y ago

Rapzid 5y ago

Poster meant a full 1/3 left because yadda yadda. Not that the entire 1/3 left yadda yadda.

wlll 5y ago

Minor point, he's a Ruby/Rails programmer, or was last time I saw him.

rst 5y ago
Former member of the Rails core team, in fact, from which he has also resigned. https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn/status/1388131010232074245 https://twitter.com/georgeclaghorn/status/138813101023207424...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

madeofpalk 5y ago

A number of their employees were very vocal from the moment the post went live. They expressed how disappointed they are. You can literally hear the despair in two employees voice in a 90s podcast episode where they announce its hiatus. Basecamp was a company built on reputation, and people joined on that and then the leaders just flushed that all away. Its not surprising that opinionated and outspoken people - the kind of people Basecamp courted - left.

soarfourmore 5y ago
Despair over not talking about politics on work channels? Are they absolutely consumed with politics that they can’t focus on actual work tasks? I have worked with someone who insists on inserting a political topic or headline into every meeting and it’s distracting and exhausting
- aspaceman 5y ago
  Despair over the controversy of an internal “funny names” list turned into an external PR move.
- bytelines 5y ago
  'not talking about politics' is a straw man for the actual issue. They have a list of funny names, got called out on it, and didn't like that. "politics" implies "we dont like Amy Klobuchar" or whatever, but it wasn't that. It was about "what do we tolerate", "who do we welcome", "who are we as a company"? They didn't like their employees defining this for them, because it forced them to think things they didn't want to think about.
  - Udik 5y ago
    People making such a fuss over a list of funny names? Yes, that's office fun you wouldn't want your customers to know about, which I guess makes it a bit unprofessional. But still it's absolutely innocent fun. Whoever makes it into an existential political issue has lost it, seriously.
    - predaking 5y ago
      > But still it's absolutely innocent fun. Not if you're one of the injured parties.
      - andyxor 5y ago
        Truly these are first world problems

roenxi 5y ago

> 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people. That still looks like 3 months free money. That is a considerable offer no matter a person's politics. Occam's razor is most of the people who left did so because they didn't like management, because that is the normal reason people leave jobs. However, it is very noticeable that if someone was looking for a reason to leave for any unrelated reason, this was the perfect opportunity.

shkkmo 5y ago
Occam's Razor is not an appropriate tool to make the point you are trying to make.
- aranchelk 5y ago
  Yeah, this is exactly right: 1) Employees left for ideological reasons. 2) Employees left out of self interest. There are reasons I believe it’s predominantly 1, but neither explanation is more convoluted. Misuse of an excellent thinking tool.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Those aren’t actually alternative explanation; values define self interest, they aren’t orthogonal to it.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Not sure why you are getting down voted. Occam's Razor is heavily abused and misused in the majority of cases, treating it like some axiomatic mathematical principle and misapplying it to human behavior.

favorited 5y ago

The person you linked to said they are taking time off before looking for new opportunities, so they don't seem concerned about not having enough time to find something new.

sokoloff 5y ago

That’s not my experience watching friends go through the full cycle. The tech employment market for talented programmers appears to be the hottest I’ve ever seen and I worked through the late 90s tech boom where literal used car salespeople were being hired into tech only to be back selling cars by summer of 2000.

tomerv 5y ago
Talented people will also have higher standards (want large compensation package, or interesting work, or something else), and figuring out whether a job opening is up to that standard takes time. The result is that even for developers in high demand it takes a lot of time to find a new job.

lupire 5y ago

Tweet: "I’m planning on taking some time for myself before looking for new opportunities" Seems like someone enjoying a break, and glad to have timed it to get a huge severance package. Remember, it's not 6months pay to sit in prison, it's 6monrhs pay to do anything they want, including a hobby project, child rearing, a busoner idea, education... plus a few hours a week of job searching.

PaulRobinson 5y ago
Or it's somebody who is so upset and shocked to the core about what has just happened that they need time to grieve for the best job of their lives becoming intolerable very quickly.
- antpol 5y ago
  theguywipestearswithdollarbills.jpg

bogota 5y ago

I’m not seeing that at all. I have seeing 90% of people let go at my previous job (sample size of 50) pick up jobs within a month. A few obviously had a harder time but the market right now doesn’t seem to be hard at all.

jkhdigital 5y ago

> there's no way we could take a person at their word What people say on Twitter is hardly courtroom testimony. It is evidence, sure, but I wouldn't give it a whole lot of weight. Probably even less weight for being "incredibly vocal".

smsm42 5y ago

> a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people. That sounds really long. It never took me more than 2 months from an initial contact to an offer (whether accepted or not) and sometimes less. I've seen people hired in less than a month - in fact, I've seen many times people hired before they left the previous job. Of course, it's just my personal anecdata but 3 months sounds really long. Any hard data to back it up?

antihero 5y ago

> a new job hunt takes 3 Where is this? At Senior level in London it can take days once you're good and ready.

ponzao 5y ago
That was my experience as well in London and very similar here in Helsinki, Finland.
goatinaboat 5y ago
Where is this? At Senior level in London it can take days once you're good and ready. Basecamp is fully remote isn't it? So it could be anywhere.
Oddskar 5y ago
You would magically find a suitable job in days? I personally have a lot higher requirements for a new position than "a job that pays more than my current one". E.g. working on something that is worth doing, together with great people. This takes a lot longer than "days" to find.

lelanthran 5y ago

> 6 months free money is not as much as you'd think; a new job hunt takes 3, even for talented, in-demand people. If you're a developer, that's enough runway to launch a side-business. After all, job-searching is hardly time-consuming (it takes so little time that people do it while already employed in a full-time position). Yeah, some folk will sit at home binge-watching netflix for 6 months. I can all but guarantee you that I will have a product at the end of six months if I was unemployed for six months. At the end of the time I'll have a new job and a product (whether the product actually makes money or not is irrelevant. Getting a product to sell is the first step).

zrail 5y ago
> Getting a product to sell is the first step Super tangent on the thread but if you want a product that people are interested in you might think about using a process like Nathan Barry's Authority or 30x500. Not that those are the best or only ways to make a product, of course, but they're at least a direction to take to figure out what people want, need, and buy.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  Thanks, I'll look it up.

kortilla 5y ago

Well if they didn’t do it for they money maybe they could have publicly donate it all to charity. Otherwise it just looks like they did it for the cash.

burningtomato 5y ago

How much do you think the people who have been working there for 5 or 10+ years are making per month? And they can literally land in the company they want to work at in a week.

ugh123 5y ago

I'm reading through his tweets and don't see much interesting on the subject. I may have missed it tho. Can you point me to a thread where hes vocal on it?