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I disagree. It’s about professionalism. Flame wars at work create a hostile environment where quiet voices are silenced. It’s the same reason HN bans political

I disagree. It’s about professionalism. Flame wars at work create a hostile environment where quiet voices are silenced. It’s the same reason HN bans political flame wars.

detaro 5y ago
But you might remember the disaster as HN as an experiment tried to get rid of those by banning all politics topics... Of course not 100% identical, but some analogues hold. Going against flamewars is quite different than banning topics wholesale - and if you are a "quiet voice", are you going to dare touch anything potentially political now? And if it's about professionalism, you probably shouldn't communicate your policy change to your employees through the personal blog of an executive...
- nomdep 5y ago
  lobste.rs is going very well banning any off-topic subject like politics. Might be because is invite-only or because the rule was enforced from the beginning
joshribakoff 5y ago
It’s possible to ban flame wars instead of politics. Dealing with differences of opinions (or lack thereof of this skill) is what causes flame wars. Politics is not the only thing people disagree on. Should they also ban discussion of potentially contentious improvements to the codebase? Edit: reading some of the comments below, it does also say they banned discussion of certain past decisions. It’s not just politics. Interesting.
- hintymad 5y ago
  > It’s possible to ban flame wars instead of politics. I find this statement idealistic in the US, as so many issues, political or not, are turned into good-vs-evil moral confrontation. Universal care is taking freedom from citizens. Taking vaccine is big pharma's conspiracy. Wearing masks is eroding civil rights. The left is not better. J.K Rowling is already a Nazi. Any Trump supporter should be hunted and punished. Questioning Faucci is anti-science. Questioning Biden is supporting Trump. Asking a person not to graffiti on my house means losing my job for opposing the right movement. And how much hate did Bari Weiss get from her staff for an editorial decision?
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  > Should they also ban discussion of potentially contentious improvements to the codebase? Sometimes, yes. For example, if your company is riven by endless flame wars over tabs vs spaces or where curly braces go, it can make a lot of sense to publish a style guide and cut off further discussion.
  - joshribakoff 5y ago
    In this context it sounds like an engineer who joins the company and suggests an improvement to or asks the reasoning behind why the style guide says something would be fired or receive reprimand. In an idea meritocracy on the other hand engineers are empowered to understand and question things. I have found that by questioning things, it helps me disagree and commit to things. I have found open discussion is what build alignment. I don’t think I would be happy working somewhere where I cannot question the reasoning behind a decision. As an example, when I first joined Twitch, it was an uphill battle initially to get buy in for automatic code formatting, however through questioning and understanding their past decisions the team came around to implementing it, as well as numerous other improvements I still have engineers reach out to me thank me for years later. If they had this policy, it’s possible I would not have been around long enough to actually champion the improvements.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      Are you familiar with the term Eternal September? That’s the downside to what you are suggesting. I don’t say there’s no upside, only that sometimes the downside outweighs the upside (and sometimes it doesn’t.)
      - digitaltrees 5y ago
        Such an awesome example. I didn’t know this phrase. Thanks for that.
      - joshribakoff 5y ago
        In other examples I received constructive coaching from a manager “the team feels like while you had valid points, you yak shaved/took it personally, in the future please write a doc instead of doing X”. No one was fired or reprimanded. No company wide policies were created. I can look back at my career at Twitch and honestly say I grew as an engineer, because they used positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.
- deleted 5y ago
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rodgerd 5y ago
Professionalism like... mocking customers' names? On company time? Using company assets to do so?
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  Then say that is reason resigning, I haven’t seen a single person report that. All reports have been focused ENTIRELY on the prohibition on political speech.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Have they? Most of the tweets I've seen have simply said "due to the recent changes". The company leadership is framing those changes as a ban on political speech, but clearly there's disagreement about what the changes really are.
grey-area 5y ago
I think most would agree more professionalism would be nice, in fact getting rid of a list of funny customer names (as employees suggested) would be more professional, not less. But again, that's not really what the core disagreement is here - that's not IMO why people are quitting - it sounds like most of the company agrees that is a good idea. They are quitting because the founders decided to assert their power nakedly and without restraint, to berate employees, shut down their organisation and discussions and attempt to dictate terms to them in a humiliating public way, that is to break the social contract between employee and employed. In doing that they declared that they alone decide the rules, they alone decide what is acceptable to say and what is not. Every workplace has some subtle set of rules about behaviour but these rules are negotiated between employer and employee, and if as a manager you lose sight of that, you'll lose your best employees as they decide they don't really want you to decide everything about their waking hours without consulting you.
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  None of this is how companies or teams work. Rules are not created through negotiations, at some point a leader makes a decision.
  - zucker42 5y ago
    A "leader" makes a decision and the people under him decide whether to listen to that decision, to push back against that decision, or leave. So in reality, the company's direction is influenced by people both at the top and at the bottom of the totem pole. True leaders realize the importance of cultivating those underneath them, and adapting their direction to pushback or input.
    - GavinMcG 5y ago
      And when there's a dramatic split on how to move forward, they apparently generously buy out the minority.
  - klelatti 5y ago
    Do you always do exactly what your boss first tells you to do? You never negotiate a delivery date? Leaders make decisions but good leaders take account of the views of their teams.
marcinzm 5y ago
You mean the professionalism of the founder going off on people in petty ways after they pointed out that making fun of customer names is bad and the company should review it's culture? Or where they banned any ability to give negative feedback about management under the disguise of banning political discussions? If anything, I see everyone who is leaving as being the professional ones in this situation.
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  I haven’t seen this allegation. It would help the discussion if you could link to someone citing this reason.
  - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 5y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-political-speech-policy-controversy https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-politic... > Employees say the founders’ memos unfairly depicted their workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself. > “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’”
    - digitaltrees 5y ago
      From the article: After months of fraught conversations, Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson moved to shut those conversations down. If my team spent months debating these issues I would be concerned as well.
      - MattRix 5y ago
        You say that as if the team spent literally all their work time debating these issues during those months.
chipgap98 5y ago
From what the founders and employees have said publicly there is no indication that flame wars were a problem at Basecamp
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  In the US almost all political conversations descend to flame wars very quickly.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    There are on-record accounts from both DHH and employees of what the actual disagreements were, and they were not political discussions. They were discussions about the list of "funny" customer names.
    - anon7725 5y ago
      > they were not political discussions. They were discussions about the list of "funny" customer names. They were not political in the sense of being about politicians or political parties. They were political in that they were motivated by the agenda and language of the activist left. A subtext in many responses from said activists is that this is “not politics”, but something more essential or “above” politics. I agree insofar as they are treating their ideas more akin to a religion now.
      - crooked-v 5y ago
        How is "don't make fun of our own customers" an 'activist left' agenda? It may have been couched in liberal terms, but ultimately it's a pretty politics-free motivation.
        anon7725 5y ago
        Did you read anything about this? Nobody thought this was a good thing. Jason/DHH apparently addressed it multiple times over the course of months. A group within the company refused to move on, including someone who participated in making fun of customers.
wbl 5y ago
Saying "I don't think we should make fun of our customers" isn't a flame war. 1/3 of employees don't leave because a few unreasonable people are told to tone it down.
- thorough 5y ago
  DHH says the trouble didn’t come from objecting to the list. In fact, he’s disavowed it repeatedly. He said the trouble was that the employee said that the list was not merely unprofessional but was one step on a ladder of racial oppression that leads to genocide. It’s one thing to say someone is acting unprofessionally. It’s another thing altogether to accuse them of being on a path to genocide. If I did that to someone when it was so clearly uncalled for, I would be an asshole and my relationship with that person would be strained from that point forward. If you don’t like that strain in your workplace, you try to draw a line on speech. It’s not something I’d want from the government, but it seems appropriate for a workplace.
  - dbt00 5y ago
    And yet, it's possible to have a direct conversation with someone where you say, I appreciate where you're coming from on this and I hear what you're saying, but in this place and time you escalated this conversation in an unproductive way and I'd like to talk to you about bringing more light than heat to what is a difficult conversation. Going from "someone posted an ADL infographic about the pyramid of hate" to "we're cancelling all external benefits, DEI discussion group is cancelled, and nobody can talk about politics anymore in our office ever" is an insane overreaction.
  - andrewingram 5y ago
    But isn’t this also DHH making a strawman of a strawman? I’m led to understand the graphic in question was about how long-term tolerance of micro aggression can lead macro-aggressions over time, the ultimate form of which being genocide. To share such a graphic isn’t to make a point that “your actions lead to genocide”, it’s to highlight the important of being diligent about not allowing micro aggressions to become commonplace and accepted within a culture. Because the long term society-wide effects of that can be genuinely terrible.
deleted 5y ago
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superultra 5y ago
It’s ironic that “professionalism” is so malleable. We’re talking about misuse of customer data in a borderline racist way, and when employees did their job and raised red flags, the founder dug through search logs in a petty attempt to embarrass an employee - in front of the company. Tell me again how this is “about professionalism.”
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  That it is about professionalism doesn’t seem to be in dispute. Who’s professionalism might be, though.
- thorough 5y ago
  You are leaving something out that seems quite relevant to me, which is that the list wasn’t just objected to as unprofessional but that the conversation was escalated to the highest possible level, linking it to genocide.
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    One person mentioned the pyramid of hate and you think it makes sense to point that out when talking about a policy that spans all employees? It’s clear basecamp doesn’t know how to handle difficult discussions, but politics is business. The state, laws and political institutions are the basis of all wealth and power. Their cowardice means their business is now in jeopardy. We have lots of difficult, sometimes racialized discussions at BigCo. It makes us better at engaging with the world outside our walls. It’s not unnecessary or distracting from our work because our customers live in the same world we create products and services for, it’s part of our work. Look at Apples stance on privacy, that’s based on a lot of difficult political discussions that culminate in corporate policy. If we did away with politics, we couldn’t have come to some of the decisions we have until forced by legislatures or our competitors.
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  It’s unprofessional to call a coworker a racist or say they are one step from genocide.
mrgoldenbrown 5y ago
DHH is the guy who defended porn as a suitable metaphor for a CouchDB talk. I don't think professionalism is his north star.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  He's Danish. Danes are wonderful people but they can be very blunt.
- fastball 5y ago
  So it's impossible to be a professional programmer who works for pornhub?
madeofpalk 5y ago
Right. The part where the leaders started a flame war, dredging through old posts of employees to publically discredit them was very hostile. Has nothing to do with "politics", or at least those that were trying to be banned.
viraptor 5y ago
HN nerfs the position of submissions with any flame wars (high comment to vote ratio) rather than political ones specifically. Those are not the same situations.
Lazare 5y ago
I agree with you...except that I don't think this ties in to what's happening at Basecamp at all. I don't think that Basecamp had an issue with "flame wars", I don't think that the company tried (or succeeded) in banning them, and I don't think the company's actions represented (or increased the level of) professionalism at Basecamp. So while in general, yes, sure, professionalism is great and we should try and stop destructive flame wars, if you dig into what actually happened at Basecamp, and the timeline, and, eg, the exact reason DHH was reported to HR internally, it becomes rapidly clear that this was something else entirely, in my view. The policy change was not triggered by people behaving unprofessionally or having a flame war, it was not tailored to prevent unprofessional behaviour or flame wars, it was executed in an unprofessional way, and it has now itself caused flamewars. In short, I think your argument is correct, but is a damning indictment of Basecamp/DHH, not a defense of them.
birdyrooster 5y ago
  Edit: I was too aggressive, have rephrased in grandchild comment.
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  Part of what makes HN great is the good faith, respectful discussions. Please stick to issues rather than personal attacks. If you disagree with my opinions I welcome a debate in the ideas. I am a leader with responsibility for a large team. These issues are complicated and warrant thoughtful debate.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    We have lots of difficult, sometimes racialized discussions at BigCos that are political. It makes us better at engaging with the world outside our walls. It’s not unnecessary or distracting from our work because our customers live in the same world we create products and services for, it’s part of our work. Look at Apple's stance on privacy for example, that’s based on a lot of difficult political discussions that culminate in corporate policy. If we did away with politics, we couldn’t have come to some of the decisions we have until forced by legislatures or our competitors.
    - digitaltrees 5y ago
      I totally agree. It is important to have debates and foster a culture of civility, while recognizing that there are times where the debate breaks down, becomes dysfunctional and can escalate. In those moments a reset or pause is appropriate to again foster a healthy dialogue. One of the most valuable investment I’ve made in my life is counseling focused on functional, healthy communication and dispute resolution. It has allowed to respectfully resolve areas of disagreement and reach consensus on difficult issues. P.S. thank you for engaging. I found your follow up comment helpful and important. I think it is critical we as a society build companies that can engage in difficult debates and take normative positions to improve society. Your example of Apple is an excellent example and I think added something important to this thread.
zacharycohn 5y ago
Flame wars at work were not happening in this case.
faeriechangling 5y ago
Deplatforming loud voices under implicit threat of termination doesn't reduce "silencing". I have never ever bought the "we have to silence people so people can have free speech" line of argument, which I've mostly seen over the last 5 years being used to justify banning conservatives from college campuses. Quiet voices are deciding to silence themselves voluntarily, they aren't victims we need to protect by silencing others. I'm not saying such silencing doesn't have benefits, but ensuring people aren't silenced isn't a benefit of silencing people. Bombing for peace generally doesn't result in peace, just more bombing.
- digitaltrees 5y ago
  I would not ban conservative voices from college campuses. The work place, however, is not a college. I would prohibit any inflammatory speech that was serving to divide and distract the team. We share more in common that we disagree on. In a team setting we need to be United and aligned full stop. If you’re in the army and heading into battle you don’t debate philosophy, art or sports you focus on the mission and unit cohesion. In college you debate and explore ideas. Different contexts. Different purposes. Different rules.
sam0x17 5y ago
It's only a flame war if there is a war. Management should be on the same page as any DEI initiative, especially considering who management is in this case.
tdhz77 5y ago
Professionalism if you live in North Korea.
smsm42 5y ago
It's not an exclusive option. It is both. You don't have to be "professional" if you're a Supreme King - in fact, you don't need to be anything, the more power you have, the less limitations are placed on you for the sake of others. If you have a lot of power, you can demand from the management to expunge everybody from the company that dares to support wrong political ideas, or demand the management to perform acts of supplication to the right set of political ideas, or turn the profits to causes that you want to be served - instead of causes the management wants to be served. Being able to do that is a power, and we have seen exercise of this power before. Some company leaders are ok with giving a vocal minority of their workers this kind of power, some are not. As a member of a non-vocal minority that does not want my work to serve the power of vocal minority, I would sincerely hope there would be more of the latter.

I disagree. It’s about professionalism. Flame wars at work create a hostile environment where quiet voices are silenced. It’s the same reason HN bans political flame wars.

detaro 5y ago

But you might remember the disaster as HN as an experiment tried to get rid of those by banning all politics topics... Of course not 100% identical, but some analogues hold. Going against flamewars is quite different than banning topics wholesale - and if you are a "quiet voice", are you going to dare touch anything potentially political now? And if it's about professionalism, you probably shouldn't communicate your policy change to your employees through the personal blog of an executive...

nomdep 5y ago
lobste.rs is going very well banning any off-topic subject like politics. Might be because is invite-only or because the rule was enforced from the beginning

joshribakoff 5y ago

It’s possible to ban flame wars instead of politics. Dealing with differences of opinions (or lack thereof of this skill) is what causes flame wars. Politics is not the only thing people disagree on. Should they also ban discussion of potentially contentious improvements to the codebase? Edit: reading some of the comments below, it does also say they banned discussion of certain past decisions. It’s not just politics. Interesting.

hintymad 5y ago
> It’s possible to ban flame wars instead of politics. I find this statement idealistic in the US, as so many issues, political or not, are turned into good-vs-evil moral confrontation. Universal care is taking freedom from citizens. Taking vaccine is big pharma's conspiracy. Wearing masks is eroding civil rights. The left is not better. J.K Rowling is already a Nazi. Any Trump supporter should be hunted and punished. Questioning Faucci is anti-science. Questioning Biden is supporting Trump. Asking a person not to graffiti on my house means losing my job for opposing the right movement. And how much hate did Bari Weiss get from her staff for an editorial decision?
bradleyjg 5y ago
> Should they also ban discussion of potentially contentious improvements to the codebase? Sometimes, yes. For example, if your company is riven by endless flame wars over tabs vs spaces or where curly braces go, it can make a lot of sense to publish a style guide and cut off further discussion.
- joshribakoff 5y ago
  In this context it sounds like an engineer who joins the company and suggests an improvement to or asks the reasoning behind why the style guide says something would be fired or receive reprimand. In an idea meritocracy on the other hand engineers are empowered to understand and question things. I have found that by questioning things, it helps me disagree and commit to things. I have found open discussion is what build alignment. I don’t think I would be happy working somewhere where I cannot question the reasoning behind a decision. As an example, when I first joined Twitch, it was an uphill battle initially to get buy in for automatic code formatting, however through questioning and understanding their past decisions the team came around to implementing it, as well as numerous other improvements I still have engineers reach out to me thank me for years later. If they had this policy, it’s possible I would not have been around long enough to actually champion the improvements.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Are you familiar with the term Eternal September? That’s the downside to what you are suggesting. I don’t say there’s no upside, only that sometimes the downside outweighs the upside (and sometimes it doesn’t.)
    - digitaltrees 5y ago
      Such an awesome example. I didn’t know this phrase. Thanks for that.
    - joshribakoff 5y ago
      In other examples I received constructive coaching from a manager “the team feels like while you had valid points, you yak shaved/took it personally, in the future please write a doc instead of doing X”. No one was fired or reprimanded. No company wide policies were created. I can look back at my career at Twitch and honestly say I grew as an engineer, because they used positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.
deleted 5y ago
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rodgerd 5y ago

Professionalism like... mocking customers' names? On company time? Using company assets to do so?

digitaltrees 5y ago
Then say that is reason resigning, I haven’t seen a single person report that. All reports have been focused ENTIRELY on the prohibition on political speech.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Have they? Most of the tweets I've seen have simply said "due to the recent changes". The company leadership is framing those changes as a ban on political speech, but clearly there's disagreement about what the changes really are.

grey-area 5y ago

I think most would agree more professionalism would be nice, in fact getting rid of a list of funny customer names (as employees suggested) would be more professional, not less. But again, that's not really what the core disagreement is here - that's not IMO why people are quitting - it sounds like most of the company agrees that is a good idea. They are quitting because the founders decided to assert their power nakedly and without restraint, to berate employees, shut down their organisation and discussions and attempt to dictate terms to them in a humiliating public way, that is to break the social contract between employee and employed. In doing that they declared that they alone decide the rules, they alone decide what is acceptable to say and what is not. Every workplace has some subtle set of rules about behaviour but these rules are negotiated between employer and employee, and if as a manager you lose sight of that, you'll lose your best employees as they decide they don't really want you to decide everything about their waking hours without consulting you.

digitaltrees 5y ago
None of this is how companies or teams work. Rules are not created through negotiations, at some point a leader makes a decision.
- zucker42 5y ago
  A "leader" makes a decision and the people under him decide whether to listen to that decision, to push back against that decision, or leave. So in reality, the company's direction is influenced by people both at the top and at the bottom of the totem pole. True leaders realize the importance of cultivating those underneath them, and adapting their direction to pushback or input.
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    And when there's a dramatic split on how to move forward, they apparently generously buy out the minority.
- klelatti 5y ago
  Do you always do exactly what your boss first tells you to do? You never negotiate a delivery date? Leaders make decisions but good leaders take account of the views of their teams.

marcinzm 5y ago

You mean the professionalism of the founder going off on people in petty ways after they pointed out that making fun of customer names is bad and the company should review it's culture? Or where they banned any ability to give negative feedback about management under the disguise of banning political discussions? If anything, I see everyone who is leaving as being the professional ones in this situation.

digitaltrees 5y ago
I haven’t seen this allegation. It would help the discussion if you could link to someone citing this reason.
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 5y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-political-speech-policy-controversy https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-politic... > Employees say the founders’ memos unfairly depicted their workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself. > “At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’”
  - digitaltrees 5y ago
    From the article: After months of fraught conversations, Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson moved to shut those conversations down. If my team spent months debating these issues I would be concerned as well.
    - MattRix 5y ago
      You say that as if the team spent literally all their work time debating these issues during those months.

chipgap98 5y ago

From what the founders and employees have said publicly there is no indication that flame wars were a problem at Basecamp

digitaltrees 5y ago
In the US almost all political conversations descend to flame wars very quickly.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  There are on-record accounts from both DHH and employees of what the actual disagreements were, and they were not political discussions. They were discussions about the list of "funny" customer names.
  - anon7725 5y ago
    > they were not political discussions. They were discussions about the list of "funny" customer names. They were not political in the sense of being about politicians or political parties. They were political in that they were motivated by the agenda and language of the activist left. A subtext in many responses from said activists is that this is “not politics”, but something more essential or “above” politics. I agree insofar as they are treating their ideas more akin to a religion now.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      How is "don't make fun of our own customers" an 'activist left' agenda? It may have been couched in liberal terms, but ultimately it's a pretty politics-free motivation.
      - anon7725 5y ago
        Did you read anything about this? Nobody thought this was a good thing. Jason/DHH apparently addressed it multiple times over the course of months. A group within the company refused to move on, including someone who participated in making fun of customers.

wbl 5y ago

Saying "I don't think we should make fun of our customers" isn't a flame war. 1/3 of employees don't leave because a few unreasonable people are told to tone it down.

thorough 5y ago
DHH says the trouble didn’t come from objecting to the list. In fact, he’s disavowed it repeatedly. He said the trouble was that the employee said that the list was not merely unprofessional but was one step on a ladder of racial oppression that leads to genocide. It’s one thing to say someone is acting unprofessionally. It’s another thing altogether to accuse them of being on a path to genocide. If I did that to someone when it was so clearly uncalled for, I would be an asshole and my relationship with that person would be strained from that point forward. If you don’t like that strain in your workplace, you try to draw a line on speech. It’s not something I’d want from the government, but it seems appropriate for a workplace.
- dbt00 5y ago
  And yet, it's possible to have a direct conversation with someone where you say, I appreciate where you're coming from on this and I hear what you're saying, but in this place and time you escalated this conversation in an unproductive way and I'd like to talk to you about bringing more light than heat to what is a difficult conversation. Going from "someone posted an ADL infographic about the pyramid of hate" to "we're cancelling all external benefits, DEI discussion group is cancelled, and nobody can talk about politics anymore in our office ever" is an insane overreaction.
- andrewingram 5y ago
  But isn’t this also DHH making a strawman of a strawman? I’m led to understand the graphic in question was about how long-term tolerance of micro aggression can lead macro-aggressions over time, the ultimate form of which being genocide. To share such a graphic isn’t to make a point that “your actions lead to genocide”, it’s to highlight the important of being diligent about not allowing micro aggressions to become commonplace and accepted within a culture. Because the long term society-wide effects of that can be genuinely terrible.

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superultra 5y ago

It’s ironic that “professionalism” is so malleable. We’re talking about misuse of customer data in a borderline racist way, and when employees did their job and raised red flags, the founder dug through search logs in a petty attempt to embarrass an employee - in front of the company. Tell me again how this is “about professionalism.”

dragonwriter 5y ago
That it is about professionalism doesn’t seem to be in dispute. Who’s professionalism might be, though.
thorough 5y ago
You are leaving something out that seems quite relevant to me, which is that the list wasn’t just objected to as unprofessional but that the conversation was escalated to the highest possible level, linking it to genocide.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  One person mentioned the pyramid of hate and you think it makes sense to point that out when talking about a policy that spans all employees? It’s clear basecamp doesn’t know how to handle difficult discussions, but politics is business. The state, laws and political institutions are the basis of all wealth and power. Their cowardice means their business is now in jeopardy. We have lots of difficult, sometimes racialized discussions at BigCo. It makes us better at engaging with the world outside our walls. It’s not unnecessary or distracting from our work because our customers live in the same world we create products and services for, it’s part of our work. Look at Apples stance on privacy, that’s based on a lot of difficult political discussions that culminate in corporate policy. If we did away with politics, we couldn’t have come to some of the decisions we have until forced by legislatures or our competitors.
digitaltrees 5y ago
It’s unprofessional to call a coworker a racist or say they are one step from genocide.

mrgoldenbrown 5y ago

DHH is the guy who defended porn as a suitable metaphor for a CouchDB talk. I don't think professionalism is his north star.

throwawayboise 5y ago
He's Danish. Danes are wonderful people but they can be very blunt.
fastball 5y ago
So it's impossible to be a professional programmer who works for pornhub?

madeofpalk 5y ago

Right. The part where the leaders started a flame war, dredging through old posts of employees to publically discredit them was very hostile. Has nothing to do with "politics", or at least those that were trying to be banned.

viraptor 5y ago

HN nerfs the position of submissions with any flame wars (high comment to vote ratio) rather than political ones specifically. Those are not the same situations.

Lazare 5y ago

I agree with you...except that I don't think this ties in to what's happening at Basecamp at all. I don't think that Basecamp had an issue with "flame wars", I don't think that the company tried (or succeeded) in banning them, and I don't think the company's actions represented (or increased the level of) professionalism at Basecamp. So while in general, yes, sure, professionalism is great and we should try and stop destructive flame wars, if you dig into what actually happened at Basecamp, and the timeline, and, eg, the exact reason DHH was reported to HR internally, it becomes rapidly clear that this was something else entirely, in my view. The policy change was not triggered by people behaving unprofessionally or having a flame war, it was not tailored to prevent unprofessional behaviour or flame wars, it was executed in an unprofessional way, and it has now itself caused flamewars. In short, I think your argument is correct, but is a damning indictment of Basecamp/DHH, not a defense of them.

birdyrooster 5y ago

  Edit: I was too aggressive, have rephrased in grandchild comment.

digitaltrees 5y ago
Part of what makes HN great is the good faith, respectful discussions. Please stick to issues rather than personal attacks. If you disagree with my opinions I welcome a debate in the ideas. I am a leader with responsibility for a large team. These issues are complicated and warrant thoughtful debate.
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- birdyrooster 5y ago
  We have lots of difficult, sometimes racialized discussions at BigCos that are political. It makes us better at engaging with the world outside our walls. It’s not unnecessary or distracting from our work because our customers live in the same world we create products and services for, it’s part of our work. Look at Apple's stance on privacy for example, that’s based on a lot of difficult political discussions that culminate in corporate policy. If we did away with politics, we couldn’t have come to some of the decisions we have until forced by legislatures or our competitors.
  - digitaltrees 5y ago
    I totally agree. It is important to have debates and foster a culture of civility, while recognizing that there are times where the debate breaks down, becomes dysfunctional and can escalate. In those moments a reset or pause is appropriate to again foster a healthy dialogue. One of the most valuable investment I’ve made in my life is counseling focused on functional, healthy communication and dispute resolution. It has allowed to respectfully resolve areas of disagreement and reach consensus on difficult issues. P.S. thank you for engaging. I found your follow up comment helpful and important. I think it is critical we as a society build companies that can engage in difficult debates and take normative positions to improve society. Your example of Apple is an excellent example and I think added something important to this thread.

zacharycohn 5y ago

Flame wars at work were not happening in this case.

faeriechangling 5y ago

Deplatforming loud voices under implicit threat of termination doesn't reduce "silencing". I have never ever bought the "we have to silence people so people can have free speech" line of argument, which I've mostly seen over the last 5 years being used to justify banning conservatives from college campuses. Quiet voices are deciding to silence themselves voluntarily, they aren't victims we need to protect by silencing others. I'm not saying such silencing doesn't have benefits, but ensuring people aren't silenced isn't a benefit of silencing people. Bombing for peace generally doesn't result in peace, just more bombing.

digitaltrees 5y ago
I would not ban conservative voices from college campuses. The work place, however, is not a college. I would prohibit any inflammatory speech that was serving to divide and distract the team. We share more in common that we disagree on. In a team setting we need to be United and aligned full stop. If you’re in the army and heading into battle you don’t debate philosophy, art or sports you focus on the mission and unit cohesion. In college you debate and explore ideas. Different contexts. Different purposes. Different rules.

sam0x17 5y ago

It's only a flame war if there is a war. Management should be on the same page as any DEI initiative, especially considering who management is in this case.

tdhz77 5y ago

Professionalism if you live in North Korea.

smsm42 5y ago

It's not an exclusive option. It is both. You don't have to be "professional" if you're a Supreme King - in fact, you don't need to be anything, the more power you have, the less limitations are placed on you for the sake of others. If you have a lot of power, you can demand from the management to expunge everybody from the company that dares to support wrong political ideas, or demand the management to perform acts of supplication to the right set of political ideas, or turn the profits to causes that you want to be served - instead of causes the management wants to be served. Being able to do that is a power, and we have seen exercise of this power before. Some company leaders are ok with giving a vocal minority of their workers this kind of power, some are not. As a member of a non-vocal minority that does not want my work to serve the power of vocal minority, I would sincerely hope there would be more of the latter.