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We will see if most of the company stays after losing a third of its staff including several directors and some of its most senior and longest-tenured engineeri
by jolux 6y ago
We will see if most of the company stays after losing a third of its staff including several directors and some of its most senior and longest-tenured engineering talent. Would you? I’m not sure I would.
- astrange 6y agoIs the company still going to exist after this? That's quite a lot of severance, unless they manage to renegotiate it all.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 6y agoThey’ll live. They just kneecapped themselves for no obvious reason, but they’ve got enough cash, remaining talent, and customers to live. Especially since they’re not VC backed, and slowing growth isn’t fatal. I’d wait until you hear about customers quitting before you assume that they’re in trouble, and I don’t think it’ll happen.
- astrange 6y agoThey lost the entire iOS app team. If they live I think it'll be because they convince the people to stay, not because they replace them.
- riffraff 6y agoSome people have said they'll abandon basecamp products because of this. My gut feeling is that this won't be a significant number but it is happening
- rzz3 6y agoPeople always say that though. A few weeks go by, hype dies down, no one cares. Boycotts are rarely effective. Most people just want software that works, and migrating creates time and effort that affects business. I’m sure most people who cancelled were already on the verge of it before.
- ashtonkem 6y agoTools like Basecamp are much harder to boycott than consumer goods because they’re so sticky. I’m not even sure “boycott” is the right word here, as I think if they lose any customers it’ll be more of a “loss of faith” problem than a political one. Personally, while I’d find the list of “funny” names offputting, I wouldn’t cancel. I however would take the buyout if I worked there; leadership there seems genuinely incompetent, and it’s not like remote jobs are rare anymore.
- wyclif 6y agoI don't think they kneecapped themselves, I think they're just not letting a good crisis go to waste.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI’m not sure how losing 1/3rd of your staff, including the head of design and the entire iOS team could be seen as anything other than a massive issue.
- wyclif 6y agoAn issue, yes, but we don't know what else could be going on behind the scenes at Basecamp. You can replace a head of design and an iOS team quickly at a company that small (58 employees before the purge).
- ashtonkem 6y agoIf anything else is going on behind the scenes that makes losing 1/3 of the company a better outcome, I would lay blame for that directly at the feet of leadership for letting it get that bad.
- luckylion 6y agoThat really depends. Where they activists? Then hell yeah, because it will be great from now on, like a calm morning with the sun shining after a stormy night. A company I'm involved with fired their lead developer and it really was cartoonish how everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Others are stepping up, discussions don't take forever because that person needed to be at the center of everything etc. They've picked up a lot of velocity since then, simply because a problem-employee is gone.