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Why not just... manage people well? No need to make it no politics/no religion at work. Endless talking about keto or veganism or BeachBody or CrossFit or vacc

by kaitai 5y ago

Why not just... manage people well? No need to make it no politics/no religion at work. Endless talking about keto or veganism or BeachBody or CrossFit or vaccines or children or being anti-child or emacs or vim or whatever can be just as divisive and counterproductive if it's not managed. Lots of people are assholes or misinformed about a lot of stuff. Big deal. Manage. That's the active part of the word "manager". Don't use the company social media to advance your politics or sell your MLM products or shill for cryptocurrencies -- company social media must be managed. Financial policies must be managed, and if people don't like them or aren't able to accept it, talk to them directly. Clear up misunderstandings if they exist and lay out the parameters of the job. This is not about Trump or politics or activists. This is about bad management. I manage and work with people of a wide variety of political persuasions. Out of work I have plenty of opinions about politics and causes. In work, I demand mutual respect and professionalism. I won't let A misgender B, I won't let C make fun of D's evangelical church, we're going to keep all the politics talk to a minimum but we're not going to ban it. If someone doesn't want to engage, that must be respected as well. But it's just foolishness to think that my "employees can come to work... without having to deal with heavy political or societal debates unconnected to that work". Not when heavy political debates unconnected to that work affect where and when they can pee or whether they fear for their lives at the speed trap that's stationed about a mile up the road from the office. We don't need to debate it, we can't solve the world's problems, and we don't need litmus tests, but the basic mutual respect and professionalism demanded of every employee applies to me too and I need to recognize that different employees walked in the door from different worlds, and their skin color/presence or lack of uteruses/accents come along. I need to proactively make this a good place to work for my valued employees because they deserve human respect and they're f(*^ing expensive to replace. That's the bottom line.

koheripbal 5y ago
The problem with managing people, is that they are managed by people. Managing people is hard to do well. It's like writing code. There are bugs, everyone has their own style, everyone thinks the other person's management process was faulty. At some point, your organization needs to set company wide standards. ...and like coding standards, they aren't perfect, they can have grey areas, and in some contexts they don't even make sense. But on the whole, they do more good than bad. Don't put GOTO statements in your code. Don't hard code passwords in your scripts. Don't talk about politics or religion in the office.
- cmorgan31 5y ago
  You would think a company that's been in business for two decades would have a rather robust ethics guide to working with corporate and enterprise customers. It seems to be part and parcel for almost all large SaaS companies. How in the world did they let their culture get bad enough for political rants?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > You would think a company that's been in business for two decades would have a rather robust ethics guide to working with corporate and enterprise customers No, I’d more expect a tech firm that arose in that era which gave us the “tech bro” image and in which reacting against stuffy, corporate, professional corporate structure and culture was all the rage to be among the least likely of firms to have that.
  - StandardFuture 5y ago
    What job can you go on on political rants at? If you can get away with that then this means 1. You have a controlling share in the company and don't give af (b/c you might lose customers and employees) 2. Everyone else (at the company) already completely or mostly agrees with your rants 3. You are so damn good at what you do that people have to put up with you Let's be honest, the most common reason people do get away with personal political rants at companies is because they get lucky and are in Scenario 2. This is another reason why everything is becoming more polarized. Companies are beginning to "lean" much more one direction or another. There is no reason to think that this will change anytime soon.
    - jack9 5y ago
      #3 AKA The most toxic person at the workplace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLlpOAGRsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLlpOAGRsQ
      - StandardFuture 5y ago
        Anyone going on a political rant is "a toxic person" in the workplace. It's always interesting to see the sheer prevalence of downvotes without reasoned response on hacker news. Completely disappointing.
oezi 5y ago
I think what basecamp is experiencing is what can still happen even though you as a manager believed you managed it well. If you don't let "A misgender B" then you might get hit as DHH did. Because one way to read the affair is that one person got upset that DHH as the manager didn't let that person pull a holocaust reference into a debate. (not saying at all if this was appropriate or not)
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  > Because one way to read the affair is that one person got upset that DHH as the manager didn't let that person pull a holocaust reference into a debate. Well it's important to keep the context in mind here: "the holocaust reference" in this case was a chart from the Anti-Defamation League making the case that normalizing seemingly minor bad behavior makes it easier to go on to slightly worse behavior, which now doesn't seem that different from what you're already tolerating, and so on, and so on. https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of-hate.pdf https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of... This is not a terribly controversial assertion, in and of itself. Was it a stretch to use it in this context? You could definitely make that case. (I've long been fond of the quip, "If you use a slippery slope argument once, you'll start using it everywhere.") But I would argue that when DHH acknowledged the list making fun of 'funny names' was a bad idea, apologized, and promised to shut it down, he had the choice to stop talking at that point. He didn't have to publicly chastise the employee who brought up the Pyramid of Hate. He took positive steps toward putting out this fire, but then threw on a match of his own -- and then doubled down on that, publicly calling out an employee who kept at it. So, if we're talking about DHH-the-manager, I would suggest he maybe didn't do the bestest job of managing here. He could have said, "yes, we'll take down the list"; instead, he went with "yes, we'll take down the list, but don't you think you're being a drama queen about it."
  - fastball 5y ago
    My impression was that it was the employees who wouldn't let it go, not DHH. And one employee in particular wouldn't let it go, so DHH helpfully pointed out that at some point they too had participated in joking about a customer name, so who exactly were they trying to persecute here?
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
Politics is different than BeachBody talk because it is moralistic in nature. Politics turns people's brains off much better than other forms of discussion because it combines in-group out-group bias with moral righteousness. Same thing with religion, but religion is brought up much less frequently at work.
- lazide 5y ago
  BeachBody talk can however goes towards the other third rail in a business/corporate environment - sex. Politics, religion, and sex are always going to be a problem in a company, as they distract from the core mission, divide people along lines that aren’t helpful in accomplishing the core mission, and add large potential liabilities everywhere.
  - EvilEy3 5y ago
    Politics and religion comes up most of the times, never heard people discussing sex.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Then you’ve been in some decently professional places! I definitely have, and have had people try to start conversations on the topic many times at one of the FAANGS when I worked there, and other places too.
StandardFuture 5y ago
So, how does this address anything the parent comment has talked about? > keep all the politics talk to a minimum Ok, so this is one management strategy and the parent comment provided another. You seem to be implying that one management choice has moral superiority to the other? > whatever can be just as divisive and counterproductive Yes, and their management choice could be to minimize these just as you choose to minimize politics. That is entirely orthogonal to making managerial decisions to ban certain topics. They could choose to ban some of the non-politics topics of discussion as well. Hell, they could just say "shutup and work". They could say no work related discussion allowed at work. Again, these are all managerial choices but you seem to be accusing the company of not managing at all? > when they can pee or whether they fear for their lives at the speed trap that's stationed about a mile up the road from the office. > their skin color/presence or lack of uteruses/accents come along. You have addressed nothing about the actions of employees as the parent comment discussed. You have only addressed that people have different looks, feelings, organs, and politics. Great observation.
deleted 5y ago
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flippinburgers 5y ago
There may have been more opportunity for subtle management beyond a dictated top down policy of no politcs/religion at work, but at the end of the day it is clear that the two employees being described by OP needed to go. Based on the extreme degree of ... inflammation ... fanned by twitter, fb, etc I would say that people who are not able to keep their opinions under control beyond an occasional two person conversation are the ones who need to seek some sort of counseling. There are conversations and then there are youtube meltdowns. I have no desire to work with the latter. You speak of professionalism and respect. In the diverse world we live in keeping to oneself seems the only reasonable path for the time being.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> Why not just... manage people well? This feels like a statement along the same lines as "just don't be poor". If it's so easy to manage, how come so many people screw it up?
- fastball 5y ago
  I think ya'll are both right. On the one hand, you're right because "just manage better" is a silly assertion. As you say it is like "just don't be poor", or the one I think is more relevant to this conversation: "coal miners should just learn to code". On the other hand, however, these are in fact business leaders who have written books about how good they are and how much they know about leading people, so... it's reasonable that our expectation of good leadership is a bit higher for them than the average middle manager.

by kaitai 5y ago

koheripbal 5y ago

The problem with managing people, is that they are managed by people. Managing people is hard to do well. It's like writing code. There are bugs, everyone has their own style, everyone thinks the other person's management process was faulty. At some point, your organization needs to set company wide standards. ...and like coding standards, they aren't perfect, they can have grey areas, and in some contexts they don't even make sense. But on the whole, they do more good than bad. Don't put GOTO statements in your code. Don't hard code passwords in your scripts. Don't talk about politics or religion in the office.

cmorgan31 5y ago
You would think a company that's been in business for two decades would have a rather robust ethics guide to working with corporate and enterprise customers. It seems to be part and parcel for almost all large SaaS companies. How in the world did they let their culture get bad enough for political rants?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > You would think a company that's been in business for two decades would have a rather robust ethics guide to working with corporate and enterprise customers No, I’d more expect a tech firm that arose in that era which gave us the “tech bro” image and in which reacting against stuffy, corporate, professional corporate structure and culture was all the rage to be among the least likely of firms to have that.
- StandardFuture 5y ago
  What job can you go on on political rants at? If you can get away with that then this means 1. You have a controlling share in the company and don't give af (b/c you might lose customers and employees) 2. Everyone else (at the company) already completely or mostly agrees with your rants 3. You are so damn good at what you do that people have to put up with you Let's be honest, the most common reason people do get away with personal political rants at companies is because they get lucky and are in Scenario 2. This is another reason why everything is becoming more polarized. Companies are beginning to "lean" much more one direction or another. There is no reason to think that this will change anytime soon.
  - jack9 5y ago
    #3 AKA The most toxic person at the workplace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLlpOAGRsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLlpOAGRsQ
    - StandardFuture 5y ago
      Anyone going on a political rant is "a toxic person" in the workplace. It's always interesting to see the sheer prevalence of downvotes without reasoned response on hacker news. Completely disappointing.

oezi 5y ago

I think what basecamp is experiencing is what can still happen even though you as a manager believed you managed it well. If you don't let "A misgender B" then you might get hit as DHH did. Because one way to read the affair is that one person got upset that DHH as the manager didn't let that person pull a holocaust reference into a debate. (not saying at all if this was appropriate or not)

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
> Because one way to read the affair is that one person got upset that DHH as the manager didn't let that person pull a holocaust reference into a debate. Well it's important to keep the context in mind here: "the holocaust reference" in this case was a chart from the Anti-Defamation League making the case that normalizing seemingly minor bad behavior makes it easier to go on to slightly worse behavior, which now doesn't seem that different from what you're already tolerating, and so on, and so on. https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of-hate.pdf https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of... This is not a terribly controversial assertion, in and of itself. Was it a stretch to use it in this context? You could definitely make that case. (I've long been fond of the quip, "If you use a slippery slope argument once, you'll start using it everywhere.") But I would argue that when DHH acknowledged the list making fun of 'funny names' was a bad idea, apologized, and promised to shut it down, he had the choice to stop talking at that point. He didn't have to publicly chastise the employee who brought up the Pyramid of Hate. He took positive steps toward putting out this fire, but then threw on a match of his own -- and then doubled down on that, publicly calling out an employee who kept at it. So, if we're talking about DHH-the-manager, I would suggest he maybe didn't do the bestest job of managing here. He could have said, "yes, we'll take down the list"; instead, he went with "yes, we'll take down the list, but don't you think you're being a drama queen about it."
- fastball 5y ago
  My impression was that it was the employees who wouldn't let it go, not DHH. And one employee in particular wouldn't let it go, so DHH helpfully pointed out that at some point they too had participated in joking about a customer name, so who exactly were they trying to persecute here?

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

Politics is different than BeachBody talk because it is moralistic in nature. Politics turns people's brains off much better than other forms of discussion because it combines in-group out-group bias with moral righteousness. Same thing with religion, but religion is brought up much less frequently at work.

lazide 5y ago
BeachBody talk can however goes towards the other third rail in a business/corporate environment - sex. Politics, religion, and sex are always going to be a problem in a company, as they distract from the core mission, divide people along lines that aren’t helpful in accomplishing the core mission, and add large potential liabilities everywhere.
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  Politics and religion comes up most of the times, never heard people discussing sex.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Then you’ve been in some decently professional places! I definitely have, and have had people try to start conversations on the topic many times at one of the FAANGS when I worked there, and other places too.

StandardFuture 5y ago

So, how does this address anything the parent comment has talked about? > keep all the politics talk to a minimum Ok, so this is one management strategy and the parent comment provided another. You seem to be implying that one management choice has moral superiority to the other? > whatever can be just as divisive and counterproductive Yes, and their management choice could be to minimize these just as you choose to minimize politics. That is entirely orthogonal to making managerial decisions to ban certain topics. They could choose to ban some of the non-politics topics of discussion as well. Hell, they could just say "shutup and work". They could say no work related discussion allowed at work. Again, these are all managerial choices but you seem to be accusing the company of not managing at all? > when they can pee or whether they fear for their lives at the speed trap that's stationed about a mile up the road from the office. > their skin color/presence or lack of uteruses/accents come along. You have addressed nothing about the actions of employees as the parent comment discussed. You have only addressed that people have different looks, feelings, organs, and politics. Great observation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

flippinburgers 5y ago

There may have been more opportunity for subtle management beyond a dictated top down policy of no politcs/religion at work, but at the end of the day it is clear that the two employees being described by OP needed to go. Based on the extreme degree of ... inflammation ... fanned by twitter, fb, etc I would say that people who are not able to keep their opinions under control beyond an occasional two person conversation are the ones who need to seek some sort of counseling. There are conversations and then there are youtube meltdowns. I have no desire to work with the latter. You speak of professionalism and respect. In the diverse world we live in keeping to oneself seems the only reasonable path for the time being.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

> Why not just... manage people well? This feels like a statement along the same lines as "just don't be poor". If it's so easy to manage, how come so many people screw it up?

fastball 5y ago
I think ya'll are both right. On the one hand, you're right because "just manage better" is a silly assertion. As you say it is like "just don't be poor", or the one I think is more relevant to this conversation: "coal miners should just learn to code". On the other hand, however, these are in fact business leaders who have written books about how good they are and how much they know about leading people, so... it's reasonable that our expectation of good leadership is a bit higher for them than the average middle manager.