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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.
by jakelazaroff 6y 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 6y agoIf 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 6y agoI 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 6y ago30% is like ~a dozen employees
- jolux 6y agoTwenty 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 6y agoYeah, 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 6y agoFrankly, 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.