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Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who left their last job because they co

Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? I don't see how demonstrating the inability to follow basic company rules in the interest of productivity improves their career prospects. Even inside the SV bubble, things aren't that warped, are they?

eplanit 5y ago
> ... someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? I don't see how demonstrating the inability to follow basic company rules in the interest of productivity improves their career prospects. Exactly. These didn't use to have to be rules -- it was simply part of Professionalism and social courtesy. That wasn't that long ago, it seems.
- andrewingram 5y ago
  It's not 0%, but I spend a negligible amount of company time talking about political issues. I also don't have a particular desire to. Nonetheless, if something of a political nature did come up, either as a distraction that was affecting my colleagues (e.g. they're part of a minoritized group, or empathetic to one, and something is going on), or something the company was doing was at odds with my own political values; I would hope the company would accommodate the need for _some_ level of discussion. An outright ban ala Coinbase, and now Basecamp, would send an extremely troubling message - and would prompt me to begin the motions of seeking employment elsewhere. A generous severance package would make it a much easier decision.
- 8note 5y ago
  I'd say it'sa new union topic. Employers need to start worrying about what political opinions they are lobbying for, and what their employees want them to be lobbying for. Corporate lobbying is going to stop just being for the owners
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    I bet unions are a political topic, along with how much your co-workers are being paid.
    - vageli 5y ago
      I wonder if there have been court cases for this; is slack considered a non-work area for, say, the purposes of discussing unionization? Would a DM between two people mediated through the company slack be a non-work area? Though generally, it seems this kind of ban (of union discussion or pay) would be unlawful in the US, > For example, your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about the union during working time if it permits you to talk about other non-work-related matters during working time. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-rights-during-union-organizing https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
predaking 5y ago
I think "couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime" is really minimizing the leadership vaccuum that caused this in the first place. As someone who hires I'd have zero issue with a talented person who also felt passionately about not working with people who enable racism or toxic environments. That's part of how you build good companies.
- uh_uh 5y ago
  Would you also have zero issue with a talented person who felt passionately about gun rights, free-speech or banning abortion?
  - predaking 5y ago
    I’ve worked with people who were passionate about each of those issues (maybe not all at once). None of them encouraged or participated in the dehumanizing of other people and all found that kind of behavior towards others to be abhorrent. I can tell you that if they were confronted with a list making fun of people's names in this manner said list would not have survived with any one of them being at the company, let alone all of them. =) I would note as a follow up to this re: leadership and culture; 30 people left Basecamp today. DHH is hanging out on social media like it’s no big deal, back to talking about Apple. You know what’s consistent between the start of this incident and today’s behavior? The derisive and dismissal treatment of people that have been a part of his company for many years.
    - JamesBarney 5y ago
      Did they accuse others of enabling murder because they were pro choice or did they keep their politics to themselves?
  - 8note 5y ago
    To me they sound like a fun person to be around? People with strong opinions have strong opinions about a lot of things, and are good to bounce ideas off of Mind you, I'm friends with people who are fans of gun rights, free speech, and ensuring abortion access
uh_uh 5y ago
I agree that their behaviour hurts their career prospects. But I'm not sure if they agree. Many might think that the public at large is on their side and what they did looks good from the outside. This might be objectively false, but this belief would nevertheless encourage them to take the 6 months free money and leave.
- 8note 5y ago
  I wouldn't imagine it does. They can probably still make a fizzbuzz, which puts them far above most candidates
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    I've never worked anywhere else since starting at my first company, but is FizzBuzz seriously that difficult?
    - anonfornoreason 5y ago
      I regularly have people fail before introducing fizzbuzz, and then regularly pass on people that can’t do an equivalent problem that isn’t exactly fizzbuzz. Surprise, tons of applicants out there can’t actually code, it’s true!
      - Veen 5y ago
        As someone outside of the tech industry, this surprises me. I’m a writer, but when I wanted to learn to code, I did loads of coding exercises, including FizzBuzz. A couple of years later I could knock up a FizzBuzz algorithm in JavaScript or Python and probably other languages too—and I’m really not very good at programming, certainly not at a professional standard. Why is it such a Shibboleth in the tech industry?
        goto11 5y ago
        The whole point of FizzBuzz is it is a trivial exercise. It could be any trivial problem. For some reason many applicants to software development jobs are simply not able to program even trivial stuff.
hparadiz 5y ago
This is a weird take. The tech industry is all politics all the time. Even if all you're doing is discussing policy changes as it relates to the business. Even if literally everyone at the company agrees and is on the same political side you'll still occasionally discuss things like municipal broadband or the Affordable Care Act. By banning politics it creates a hush hush atmosphere where the mere mention of something inocuious can get you fired so you end up never talking about anything.
- aniforprez 5y ago
  I honestly don't understand the sentiment here when people are saying "do your job" and other things to that effect that strip all context from this. The biggest issue right now is COVID and when discussing it the topic can and will inevitable lead to something political. Is it helpful to have to think about the arbitrary line your employers have drawn and try to toe it? When do you know if you pissed off someone higher up? You cannot stop workplace discussions because programmers are people too and will want to find camaraderie and sympathy. Putting these rules and posting them publicly seems like a poor way of simply avoiding the issue rather than resolving it
  - Cyberdog 5y ago
    > The biggest issue right now is COVID and when discussing it the topic can and will inevitable lead to something political. Will it? I feel like I've had dozens of conversations about the coof (most recently, about getting the shots and related stuff - I had some bad side effects to mine that caused me to miss a half day of work) without politics being a part of it. Do people not even try anymore?
    - deanCommie 5y ago
      What a perfect example. Just the very idea of bringing up vaccines is "political" to those that think vaccines are a means of the state to control the population. You don't think it's political, but it is to someone. And that person, under the guise of a "no politics aloud" policy could seek to silence you from any references to the benefits of the vaccines, it's side effects, etc.
Sebb767 5y ago
> Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? Depends on how you frame this. Describing it as "sudden change of company culture", "lacking leadership communication" or "wanted to change fields and took the opportunity" can both be valid and inoffensive to either side. On the other hand, there's a chance your hiring manager will feel similarly strong about politics, especially in SV, so even your framing might work.
lupire 5y ago
The company banned talking politics on the work server, not talking politics on personal accounts, even on the company dime.
- GVIrish 5y ago
  The initial blog post did not make that distinction. Not only is that a significant mistake in clarity, it was a significant mistake to announce a change like that via blog post. With that change they also got rid of the D&I committee established with employee participation. If you're gonna tell your employees 'you have a seat at the table' on something sensitive like D&I, then eliminate that group with no warning, people are gonna feel some kind of way about it. Even Palpatine didn't dissolve the Imperial Senate right away.
- 8note 5y ago
  If you needed to report a neo-nazi to hr, would that involve the work server?
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I'd say probably a personal visit to the HR office, assuming he was bringing neo-nazi politics into the office. If he was doing it strictly on his own time, not a work issue.
    - WitCanStain 5y ago
      You don't think someone holding views to the effect that jews, gays and black people/slavs should be exterminated is a work issue? If I belonged to any of these groups and found out by chance that the person was a neo-Nazi, even if they never brought it up at work, I would certainly demand that they not work in my vicinity anymore. Then management would get to choose between me and a literal neo-Nazi.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        The problem is, at least in my experience, that phrases like "neo-nazi" more commonly refer to Trump supporters, Republicans, edgy Twitter wags, etc and less to Mein Kampf reading would-be perpetrators of genocide.
GVIrish 5y ago
> Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? I think that's a big mischaracterization of what happened. For one, it seems a lot of the issue was about the 'funny names list' and heated debate around that. It wasn't people going to war over liberals vs conservatives. It seems DHH took particular umbrage at someone brining the Anti Defamation League's Pyramid of Hate into the conversation. Secondly, Basecamp had allowed the creation of a Diversity and Inclusion committee with at least a dozen employees joining. DHH and Fried decided to unilaterally dissolve it. If you're going to give employees your blessing for a D&I group then just axe it with no discussion or warning, some people will be put off. Then there's the fact that employees found out about this group of changes via blog post. That betrays a lack of empathy/care for employees when implementing a set of big changes. Lastly, saying 'no politics or societal issues' because you, as the owners of the company felt uncomfortable, is a recipe for ruining the culture of a company like Basecamp. For some employees, they can't get away from politics and societal issues because it affects them every day and their very existence has been politicized. More savvy leaders could've established a better climate of respect and politeness around any 'political' discussion rather than a heavy handed and clumsy edict. This wasn't about a bunch of people endlessly bickering about politics at work, it's about company owners who took a manageable issue and turned it into a public crisis. Companies several orders of magnitude larger manage to accommodate employees having political conversations without making messes like this.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > For some employees, they can't get away from politics and societal issues because it affects them every day and their very existence has been politicized. What a lame excuse for politicizing everything.
  - pell 5y ago
    It might sound like a "lazy excuse" for someone who hasn't been in their shoes. As lazy as commenting one's gut reaction even. It might be worthwhile to actually give this one some thought, maybe read up on it, talk to people. The non-lazy response basically.
8note 5y ago
"they offered a lot of money and it looked like a good idea" seems like a good enough justification to me. It seems unlikely to me that 1/3 of basecamp employees wouldn't shut up about their support for Donald Trump and how QAnon would save the dau
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

eplanit 5y ago

> ... someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? I don't see how demonstrating the inability to follow basic company rules in the interest of productivity improves their career prospects. Exactly. These didn't use to have to be rules -- it was simply part of Professionalism and social courtesy. That wasn't that long ago, it seems.

andrewingram 5y ago
It's not 0%, but I spend a negligible amount of company time talking about political issues. I also don't have a particular desire to. Nonetheless, if something of a political nature did come up, either as a distraction that was affecting my colleagues (e.g. they're part of a minoritized group, or empathetic to one, and something is going on), or something the company was doing was at odds with my own political values; I would hope the company would accommodate the need for _some_ level of discussion. An outright ban ala Coinbase, and now Basecamp, would send an extremely troubling message - and would prompt me to begin the motions of seeking employment elsewhere. A generous severance package would make it a much easier decision.
8note 5y ago
I'd say it'sa new union topic. Employers need to start worrying about what political opinions they are lobbying for, and what their employees want them to be lobbying for. Corporate lobbying is going to stop just being for the owners
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  I bet unions are a political topic, along with how much your co-workers are being paid.
  - vageli 5y ago
    I wonder if there have been court cases for this; is slack considered a non-work area for, say, the purposes of discussing unionization? Would a DM between two people mediated through the company slack be a non-work area? Though generally, it seems this kind of ban (of union discussion or pay) would be unlawful in the US, > For example, your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about the union during working time if it permits you to talk about other non-work-related matters during working time. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-rights-during-union-organizing https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...

predaking 5y ago

I think "couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime" is really minimizing the leadership vaccuum that caused this in the first place. As someone who hires I'd have zero issue with a talented person who also felt passionately about not working with people who enable racism or toxic environments. That's part of how you build good companies.

uh_uh 5y ago
Would you also have zero issue with a talented person who felt passionately about gun rights, free-speech or banning abortion?
- predaking 5y ago
  I’ve worked with people who were passionate about each of those issues (maybe not all at once). None of them encouraged or participated in the dehumanizing of other people and all found that kind of behavior towards others to be abhorrent. I can tell you that if they were confronted with a list making fun of people's names in this manner said list would not have survived with any one of them being at the company, let alone all of them. =) I would note as a follow up to this re: leadership and culture; 30 people left Basecamp today. DHH is hanging out on social media like it’s no big deal, back to talking about Apple. You know what’s consistent between the start of this incident and today’s behavior? The derisive and dismissal treatment of people that have been a part of his company for many years.
  - JamesBarney 5y ago
    Did they accuse others of enabling murder because they were pro choice or did they keep their politics to themselves?
- 8note 5y ago
  To me they sound like a fun person to be around? People with strong opinions have strong opinions about a lot of things, and are good to bounce ideas off of Mind you, I'm friends with people who are fans of gun rights, free speech, and ensuring abortion access

uh_uh 5y ago

I agree that their behaviour hurts their career prospects. But I'm not sure if they agree. Many might think that the public at large is on their side and what they did looks good from the outside. This might be objectively false, but this belief would nevertheless encourage them to take the 6 months free money and leave.

8note 5y ago
I wouldn't imagine it does. They can probably still make a fizzbuzz, which puts them far above most candidates
- imbnwa 5y ago
  I've never worked anywhere else since starting at my first company, but is FizzBuzz seriously that difficult?
  - anonfornoreason 5y ago
    I regularly have people fail before introducing fizzbuzz, and then regularly pass on people that can’t do an equivalent problem that isn’t exactly fizzbuzz. Surprise, tons of applicants out there can’t actually code, it’s true!
    - Veen 5y ago
      As someone outside of the tech industry, this surprises me. I’m a writer, but when I wanted to learn to code, I did loads of coding exercises, including FizzBuzz. A couple of years later I could knock up a FizzBuzz algorithm in JavaScript or Python and probably other languages too—and I’m really not very good at programming, certainly not at a professional standard. Why is it such a Shibboleth in the tech industry?
      - goto11 5y ago
        The whole point of FizzBuzz is it is a trivial exercise. It could be any trivial problem. For some reason many applicants to software development jobs are simply not able to program even trivial stuff.

hparadiz 5y ago

This is a weird take. The tech industry is all politics all the time. Even if all you're doing is discussing policy changes as it relates to the business. Even if literally everyone at the company agrees and is on the same political side you'll still occasionally discuss things like municipal broadband or the Affordable Care Act. By banning politics it creates a hush hush atmosphere where the mere mention of something inocuious can get you fired so you end up never talking about anything.

aniforprez 5y ago
I honestly don't understand the sentiment here when people are saying "do your job" and other things to that effect that strip all context from this. The biggest issue right now is COVID and when discussing it the topic can and will inevitable lead to something political. Is it helpful to have to think about the arbitrary line your employers have drawn and try to toe it? When do you know if you pissed off someone higher up? You cannot stop workplace discussions because programmers are people too and will want to find camaraderie and sympathy. Putting these rules and posting them publicly seems like a poor way of simply avoiding the issue rather than resolving it
- Cyberdog 5y ago
  > The biggest issue right now is COVID and when discussing it the topic can and will inevitable lead to something political. Will it? I feel like I've had dozens of conversations about the coof (most recently, about getting the shots and related stuff - I had some bad side effects to mine that caused me to miss a half day of work) without politics being a part of it. Do people not even try anymore?
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    What a perfect example. Just the very idea of bringing up vaccines is "political" to those that think vaccines are a means of the state to control the population. You don't think it's political, but it is to someone. And that person, under the guise of a "no politics aloud" policy could seek to silence you from any references to the benefits of the vaccines, it's side effects, etc.

Sebb767 5y ago

> Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? Depends on how you frame this. Describing it as "sudden change of company culture", "lacking leadership communication" or "wanted to change fields and took the opportunity" can both be valid and inoffensive to either side. On the other hand, there's a chance your hiring manager will feel similarly strong about politics, especially in SV, so even your framing might work.

lupire 5y ago

The company banned talking politics on the work server, not talking politics on personal accounts, even on the company dime.

GVIrish 5y ago
The initial blog post did not make that distinction. Not only is that a significant mistake in clarity, it was a significant mistake to announce a change like that via blog post. With that change they also got rid of the D&I committee established with employee participation. If you're gonna tell your employees 'you have a seat at the table' on something sensitive like D&I, then eliminate that group with no warning, people are gonna feel some kind of way about it. Even Palpatine didn't dissolve the Imperial Senate right away.
8note 5y ago
If you needed to report a neo-nazi to hr, would that involve the work server?
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I'd say probably a personal visit to the HR office, assuming he was bringing neo-nazi politics into the office. If he was doing it strictly on his own time, not a work issue.
  - WitCanStain 5y ago
    You don't think someone holding views to the effect that jews, gays and black people/slavs should be exterminated is a work issue? If I belonged to any of these groups and found out by chance that the person was a neo-Nazi, even if they never brought it up at work, I would certainly demand that they not work in my vicinity anymore. Then management would get to choose between me and a literal neo-Nazi.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      The problem is, at least in my experience, that phrases like "neo-nazi" more commonly refer to Trump supporters, Republicans, edgy Twitter wags, etc and less to Mein Kampf reading would-be perpetrators of genocide.

GVIrish 5y ago

> Do you think people in charge of hiring, particularly outside of the SV bubble, are going to be eager to pick someone up who left their last job because they couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime? I think that's a big mischaracterization of what happened. For one, it seems a lot of the issue was about the 'funny names list' and heated debate around that. It wasn't people going to war over liberals vs conservatives. It seems DHH took particular umbrage at someone brining the Anti Defamation League's Pyramid of Hate into the conversation. Secondly, Basecamp had allowed the creation of a Diversity and Inclusion committee with at least a dozen employees joining. DHH and Fried decided to unilaterally dissolve it. If you're going to give employees your blessing for a D&I group then just axe it with no discussion or warning, some people will be put off. Then there's the fact that employees found out about this group of changes via blog post. That betrays a lack of empathy/care for employees when implementing a set of big changes. Lastly, saying 'no politics or societal issues' because you, as the owners of the company felt uncomfortable, is a recipe for ruining the culture of a company like Basecamp. For some employees, they can't get away from politics and societal issues because it affects them every day and their very existence has been politicized. More savvy leaders could've established a better climate of respect and politeness around any 'political' discussion rather than a heavy handed and clumsy edict. This wasn't about a bunch of people endlessly bickering about politics at work, it's about company owners who took a manageable issue and turned it into a public crisis. Companies several orders of magnitude larger manage to accommodate employees having political conversations without making messes like this.

rayiner 5y ago
> For some employees, they can't get away from politics and societal issues because it affects them every day and their very existence has been politicized. What a lame excuse for politicizing everything.
- pell 5y ago
  It might sound like a "lazy excuse" for someone who hasn't been in their shoes. As lazy as commenting one's gut reaction even. It might be worthwhile to actually give this one some thought, maybe read up on it, talk to people. The non-lazy response basically.

8note 5y ago

"they offered a lot of money and it looked like a good idea" seems like a good enough justification to me. It seems unlikely to me that 1/3 of basecamp employees wouldn't shut up about their support for Donald Trump and how QAnon would save the dau

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]