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Exactly this. What people don’t realize is this move is hardly political. It’s all about building a better business. When work is a safe space free from politic

Exactly this. What people don’t realize is this move is hardly political. It’s all about building a better business. When work is a safe space free from political flame wars, employees can actually focus on the one thing they were hired to do, and be happier doing it: write code, manage projects, etc.

nr2x 5y ago
With 1.5x more work for the remaining people they’ll need to be focused…or just find jobs that are 1x the work for same or better pay.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Or just ship less features. I doubt basecanp is feature constrained right now.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  1.5x work today. Basecamp will backfill most of those roles, no? Honestly, a bunch of people quitting probably works out just fine for Basecamp.
  - fancyfish 5y ago
    Yeah, seriously. It’s Basecamp. There’s a very deep bench of engineers and product people that would love to backfill the roles. It will still be damaging short term because they lost a lot of depth in cultural and product knowledge, with the marketing and product leads gone. Not easy to replace someone who’s been living and breathing the products for over a decade.
    - jakelazaroff 5y ago
      If the response to this is any indication, they've just alienated a significant portion of that bench. Basecamp seems very profitable, so it may not be fatal. But my guess is that it cuts far, far deeper than Jason and DHH intended. There may well be another wave of resignations next week.
      - staticassertion 5y ago
        If your goal was to get likeminded people who don't want to discuss politics into the company, and "pot stirrers" out, seems like the post succeeded. Maybe that wasn't the intent and they were naive enough to post something publicly like that and not expect resignations, I couldn't say.
        jolux 5y ago
        I don't think they expected to lose 30% of their workforce. That doesn't seem like something you'd do intentionally except in dire circumstances.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        30% is like ~a dozen employees
        jolux 5y ago
        Twenty so far, actually. Including Sam Stephenson, who seems to have been their longest-tenured developer. Also their head of design, head of marketing, and head of customer support. And their entire iOS team.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        Yeah, sounds like a pretty big fuck up then on Basecamp's part. Weird that they didn't see this coming, I can't imagine being so out of tune with a large portion of senior, long-standing employees.
        jakelazaroff 5y ago
        Frankly, at this point I’m inclined to agree with OP that the politics rule was just a pretext to assert their power over the employees. (Partially because the employees learned about all this via the public blog post, which seems uncontroversially dickish no matter how one feels about the actual changes). I’m sure they expected attrition — hence the severance — but I’d wager they thought it would be closer to Coinbase’s 5% when they announced a similar policy, not 30% and counting.
    - hello_moto 5y ago
      Only those who still cling to their cult (I mean their marketing gimmick). Many have moved on for a while...
    - dylan604 5y ago
      What happens when customers leave the platform in response?
      - staticassertion 5y ago
        FWIW I'm not saying this is a good thing, or purposeful, but just that if the goal was to eliminate dissent, a whole bunch of people quitting is probably more or less accomplishing the goal.
        predaking 5y ago
        Person you're replying to was mentioning customers quitting, not employees (and I have seen a number of people mentioning they've cancelled their Basecamp or Hey subscriptions today).
        rightbyte 5y ago
        Why do you assume the "activist" personality types left? Maybe people that never discuss politics at work want the right to do ot too.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        Common sense, I guess.
      - thu2111 5y ago
        Product managers are not exactly a time critical position. If the iOS app falls behind the Android app for a few months, will many users even notice? And it won't take them long to re-fill these roles. There's a ton of unmet demand to work at a place that's purged the activists. You aren't gonna see them much on Twitter but Basecamp just gave themselves a massive recruiting advantage that FAANG cannot/will not match, and they already had a good reputation. Lots of people read DHH's blog post and thought "excellent, that's what's needed". Any impact on the firm will be transient at best.
    - woofie11 5y ago
      I think the loss of culture is the intended effect, and the loss of product knowledge is the cost. I'm not going to argue about which culture is better, but the split between people who wanted to get their jobs done and make a good product, and the people who wanted to use their job as an avenue for social change/partisan warfare (depending on which side of the split you're on) sounded toxic. I suspect there will be a lot of highly-qualified people who will want to go to work at Basecamp who wouldn't have wanted to work there before. We're in the middle of a culture war: * A lot of people like wokeness. * A lot of people hate it. Most SV companies have gone for the woke side of the current culture war, and so my perception is that there are a lot of people who hate it and don't have good places to go. From a purely supply-and-demand perspective, running a non-woke firm seems the way to find good employees. Conversely, being a woke employee seems the way to find good jobs. To be clear, I'm not advocating employees be overly woke -- this is all more about social signaling than actual advocacy.
gtaylor 5y ago
No, it's about DHH using politics as a stand-in for the actual issue: they mishandled this issue with the name list, they got called out and held to task for it, and they don't like that behavior. The politics thing really amounts to "don't challenge me" and is a nice diversion from the actual issue.
- fastball 5y ago
  What are Fried and DHH supposed to do, flagellate themselves?
  - pm90 5y ago
    Admit they made a mistake and address it, rather than institute a childishly overbroad ban on all "political conversation" specifically to shut down criticism related to their mistake.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Have you read DHH's blog? It sounds like they did exactly that, and the instigating employees were unwilling to let things go and insisted on continuing to escalate things.
      - pm90 5y ago
        “Instigating employees” really? People were hurt by a very obvious instance of the company failing to live up to its stated values, so they attempt to bring it up to its founder. He’s painted the situation as “troublemakers out to get my skin” whereas from all the reporting it appears that he’s been the one to needlessly throw a childish and very public temper tantrum.
        digitaltrees 5y ago
        Read his words. They offer a respectful measured tone. They acknowledge and seek to make amends. It is a case study in healthy communication and dispute resolution, and that is saying something for someone like DHH who is prone to bombastic trolling generally. DHH never said instigating employees he merely requested that the apology be accepted and the team move forward. Then he asked everyone to consider the degree of severity of the problem and not give in to the temptation to bring slippery slope arguments into the debate because it actually undermines any possible progress by inflaming the debate, making people’s opinions more intractable and destroying any possible resolution.
billybatson 5y ago
I would argue that a mandate to not have societal/political discussions/statements is in itself a societal/political statement.
causality0 5y ago
The mistake was the timing. If they'd started the company off banning that stuff, they'd have been fine. If they'd waited until months after this controversy died down, they'd probably have less than 10% losses. Doing it now was a truly enormous screw up.

nr2x 5y ago

With 1.5x more work for the remaining people they’ll need to be focused…or just find jobs that are 1x the work for same or better pay.

brianwawok 5y ago
Or just ship less features. I doubt basecanp is feature constrained right now.
staticassertion 5y ago
1.5x work today. Basecamp will backfill most of those roles, no? Honestly, a bunch of people quitting probably works out just fine for Basecamp.
- fancyfish 5y ago
  Yeah, seriously. It’s Basecamp. There’s a very deep bench of engineers and product people that would love to backfill the roles. It will still be damaging short term because they lost a lot of depth in cultural and product knowledge, with the marketing and product leads gone. Not easy to replace someone who’s been living and breathing the products for over a decade.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    If the response to this is any indication, they've just alienated a significant portion of that bench. Basecamp seems very profitable, so it may not be fatal. But my guess is that it cuts far, far deeper than Jason and DHH intended. There may well be another wave of resignations next week.
    - staticassertion 5y ago
      If your goal was to get likeminded people who don't want to discuss politics into the company, and "pot stirrers" out, seems like the post succeeded. Maybe that wasn't the intent and they were naive enough to post something publicly like that and not expect resignations, I couldn't say.
      - jolux 5y ago
        I don't think they expected to lose 30% of their workforce. That doesn't seem like something you'd do intentionally except in dire circumstances.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        30% is like ~a dozen employees
        jolux 5y ago
        Twenty so far, actually. Including Sam Stephenson, who seems to have been their longest-tenured developer. Also their head of design, head of marketing, and head of customer support. And their entire iOS team.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        Yeah, sounds like a pretty big fuck up then on Basecamp's part. Weird that they didn't see this coming, I can't imagine being so out of tune with a large portion of senior, long-standing employees.
      - jakelazaroff 5y ago
        Frankly, at this point I’m inclined to agree with OP that the politics rule was just a pretext to assert their power over the employees. (Partially because the employees learned about all this via the public blog post, which seems uncontroversially dickish no matter how one feels about the actual changes). I’m sure they expected attrition — hence the severance — but I’d wager they thought it would be closer to Coinbase’s 5% when they announced a similar policy, not 30% and counting.
  - hello_moto 5y ago
    Only those who still cling to their cult (I mean their marketing gimmick). Many have moved on for a while...
  - dylan604 5y ago
    What happens when customers leave the platform in response?
    - staticassertion 5y ago
      FWIW I'm not saying this is a good thing, or purposeful, but just that if the goal was to eliminate dissent, a whole bunch of people quitting is probably more or less accomplishing the goal.
      - predaking 5y ago
        Person you're replying to was mentioning customers quitting, not employees (and I have seen a number of people mentioning they've cancelled their Basecamp or Hey subscriptions today).
      - rightbyte 5y ago
        Why do you assume the "activist" personality types left? Maybe people that never discuss politics at work want the right to do ot too.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        Common sense, I guess.
    - thu2111 5y ago
      Product managers are not exactly a time critical position. If the iOS app falls behind the Android app for a few months, will many users even notice? And it won't take them long to re-fill these roles. There's a ton of unmet demand to work at a place that's purged the activists. You aren't gonna see them much on Twitter but Basecamp just gave themselves a massive recruiting advantage that FAANG cannot/will not match, and they already had a good reputation. Lots of people read DHH's blog post and thought "excellent, that's what's needed". Any impact on the firm will be transient at best.
  - woofie11 5y ago
    I think the loss of culture is the intended effect, and the loss of product knowledge is the cost. I'm not going to argue about which culture is better, but the split between people who wanted to get their jobs done and make a good product, and the people who wanted to use their job as an avenue for social change/partisan warfare (depending on which side of the split you're on) sounded toxic. I suspect there will be a lot of highly-qualified people who will want to go to work at Basecamp who wouldn't have wanted to work there before. We're in the middle of a culture war: * A lot of people like wokeness. * A lot of people hate it. Most SV companies have gone for the woke side of the current culture war, and so my perception is that there are a lot of people who hate it and don't have good places to go. From a purely supply-and-demand perspective, running a non-woke firm seems the way to find good employees. Conversely, being a woke employee seems the way to find good jobs. To be clear, I'm not advocating employees be overly woke -- this is all more about social signaling than actual advocacy.

gtaylor 5y ago

No, it's about DHH using politics as a stand-in for the actual issue: they mishandled this issue with the name list, they got called out and held to task for it, and they don't like that behavior. The politics thing really amounts to "don't challenge me" and is a nice diversion from the actual issue.

fastball 5y ago
What are Fried and DHH supposed to do, flagellate themselves?
- pm90 5y ago
  Admit they made a mistake and address it, rather than institute a childishly overbroad ban on all "political conversation" specifically to shut down criticism related to their mistake.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Have you read DHH's blog? It sounds like they did exactly that, and the instigating employees were unwilling to let things go and insisted on continuing to escalate things.
    - pm90 5y ago
      “Instigating employees” really? People were hurt by a very obvious instance of the company failing to live up to its stated values, so they attempt to bring it up to its founder. He’s painted the situation as “troublemakers out to get my skin” whereas from all the reporting it appears that he’s been the one to needlessly throw a childish and very public temper tantrum.
      - digitaltrees 5y ago
        Read his words. They offer a respectful measured tone. They acknowledge and seek to make amends. It is a case study in healthy communication and dispute resolution, and that is saying something for someone like DHH who is prone to bombastic trolling generally. DHH never said instigating employees he merely requested that the apology be accepted and the team move forward. Then he asked everyone to consider the degree of severity of the problem and not give in to the temptation to bring slippery slope arguments into the debate because it actually undermines any possible progress by inflaming the debate, making people’s opinions more intractable and destroying any possible resolution.

billybatson 5y ago

I would argue that a mandate to not have societal/political discussions/statements is in itself a societal/political statement.

causality0 5y ago

The mistake was the timing. If they'd started the company off banning that stuff, they'd have been fine. If they'd waited until months after this controversy died down, they'd probably have less than 10% losses. Doing it now was a truly enormous screw up.