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Yeah, honestly this seems like addition by subtraction. The last thing I would want at work is to navigate around ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggressi

Yeah, honestly this seems like addition by subtraction. The last thing I would want at work is to navigate around ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists. Not that all the people leaving were that, but it sure sounds like a lot were. At work I just want professionalism and respectful behavior, along with people that have moderately thick skin and don't seek to find offense everywhere.

busterarm 6y ago
Given how Basecamp is known to pay, they're going to attract a significant amount of top talent that is already aligned with the new culture.
dannyr 6y ago
Oh, have you seen tweets from Basecamp leaders calling people out? you could actually say that the execs are activists as well based on their posts on social media.
- ajharrison 6y ago
  Yes, on social media. Outside of their basecamp account.
- dccoolgai 6y ago
  Not really sure where I sit on the whole thing, still, but I've seen this parroted as a "gotcha!" and I don't think it really is. The founders' activism is _public_. The ban is only on activism _at work_. The fact that so many people don't _get this_ is sort of proving their point.
  - iudqnolq 6y ago
    That's not the case. They're explicitly saying employees are welcome to discuss the founder's activist preferences at work. They've also heavily used their workplace for activism. For example, they invited a political candidate to base a campaign out of their offices.
StavrosK 6y ago
I read a summary of the situation and it seemed to me like both sides handled it poorly. It sounded like there was indeed a lot of activism, which is something you don't really want in a workplace, but the C-levels didn't handle it terribly graciously either, what with looking at past logs to find an employee's messages. It's more than a little impolite, I think. I have to admit there's a certain elegance in filtering out political people by banning public discussions of politics, though. I especially cringed at this bit: > Jane Yang, a data analyst at the company, told me that restricting internal conversations would negatively affect diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, she said, the company’s profit-sharing plan gave more profits to people who have longer tenure — a group that is majority white and male. Making that discussion off limits internally could ensure that inequality in profit sharing becomes a structural feature of the company. It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company.
- ajharrison 6y ago
  I think that’s the entire point DHH was attempting to make: internal issues don’t need to be connected with broader issues like colonialism and racism. That senior execs making more money is due to their tenure and merit, and not because they’re white and male.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  "It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company." That's exactly where systemic discrimination originates. Hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and decides that it's a good day to oppress G people. They wake up in the morning having some amount of privilege, discover that it might be threatened, and their actions that day try to avoid reduction of privilege, even if it means treating G people unfairly. It's not anti-G people at first, it's just pro-self. Over years this becomes a de facto systemic discrimination, generally without a rule that explicitly says "we don't want G coworkers". Instead there are rules that mean that everybody works on G holidays, the microwaves can't be used for "smelly" food (and guess what, all G food is "smelly" by default), and of course, rule is by seniority in the company which just happens not to have any senior G people in it. Somehow fewer G people get hired, and those that do are in low-status positions. You can pick your own value for G; it could be gender or nationality or ethnicity or religion or skin color or whatever. It works the same way.
geofft 6y ago
If you're looking for people with moderately thick skin who don't seek to find offense everywhere, a good place to start is to avoid the folks who wrote this blog post: > every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5 https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5 There's absolutely no reason to believe that there were any "ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists" at Basecamp among the employees. All we have is a blog post from someone who is overly sensitive to reasonable professional conversations and didn't want to deal with "unpleasant" conversations at work. It's a story told from that person's perspective and we shouldn't take it as absolute truth.
- pageandrew 6y ago
  How often are conversations in the political/SJW space “reasonable” and “professional”? Never, in my experience, because the said activists tend to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being a bigot.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Hm. In my experience, I've always found them reasonable and professional and I've never been called a bigot.
  - technokozak 6y ago
    Exactly. And it's especially evident when you look at their Twitter accounts
- tha0xa1 6y ago
  >There's absolutely no reason to believe that there were any "ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists" at Basecamp among the employees. This is objectively false. There is 100% undeniable proof of these types of employees being there, including one of the heads of data analytics: From https://janeyang.org/resisting/ https://janeyang.org/resisting/ > Racist capitalism is poison that has weakened every facet of society and been used to “justify” horrific crimes against humanity while destroying our planet. We need massive power and wealth distribution enshrined in national and international policies. From https://janeyang.org/2021/04/13/im-getting-some-feedback/ https://janeyang.org/2021/04/13/im-getting-some-feedback/ > Guess who tends to beta spray? Men. White men, in particular. From https://janeyang.org/2021/03/18/live-forward/ https://janeyang.org/2021/03/18/live-forward/ > If you are white or a man, especially a cis-gendered heterosexual able-bodied white man, do the fucking work. Learn about the characteristics of white supremacy, push through your discomfort, and reflect on how you show up in the spaces you have power. Be ready to apologize when you screw up (we all do!) and then do better. And whatever you do: do not demand that your friends or colleagues or employees or neighbors or acquaintances who belong to historically marginalized groups explain to you all the ways you perpetuate harm and how society got here. Pay an anti-oppression professional for training and coaching; don’t expect us to get you up to speed for free.
jiscariot 6y ago
I feel like a lot of companies (including Google) are still reeling from Google's "Bring your entire self to work" philosophy. It does feel like good management where companies like Coinbase have reified their mission/goals, and given those who feel like solving X needs to be included, a nice payout to leave. The world has a lot of complex problems and not every entity needs to work on fixing all of them--that may in fact be counterproductive.

busterarm 6y ago

Given how Basecamp is known to pay, they're going to attract a significant amount of top talent that is already aligned with the new culture.

dannyr 6y ago

Oh, have you seen tweets from Basecamp leaders calling people out? you could actually say that the execs are activists as well based on their posts on social media.

ajharrison 6y ago
Yes, on social media. Outside of their basecamp account.
dccoolgai 6y ago
Not really sure where I sit on the whole thing, still, but I've seen this parroted as a "gotcha!" and I don't think it really is. The founders' activism is _public_. The ban is only on activism _at work_. The fact that so many people don't _get this_ is sort of proving their point.
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  That's not the case. They're explicitly saying employees are welcome to discuss the founder's activist preferences at work. They've also heavily used their workplace for activism. For example, they invited a political candidate to base a campaign out of their offices.

StavrosK 6y ago

I read a summary of the situation and it seemed to me like both sides handled it poorly. It sounded like there was indeed a lot of activism, which is something you don't really want in a workplace, but the C-levels didn't handle it terribly graciously either, what with looking at past logs to find an employee's messages. It's more than a little impolite, I think. I have to admit there's a certain elegance in filtering out political people by banning public discussions of politics, though. I especially cringed at this bit: > Jane Yang, a data analyst at the company, told me that restricting internal conversations would negatively affect diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, she said, the company’s profit-sharing plan gave more profits to people who have longer tenure — a group that is majority white and male. Making that discussion off limits internally could ensure that inequality in profit sharing becomes a structural feature of the company. It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company.

ajharrison 6y ago
I think that’s the entire point DHH was attempting to make: internal issues don’t need to be connected with broader issues like colonialism and racism. That senior execs making more money is due to their tenure and merit, and not because they’re white and male.
dsr_ 6y ago
"It's not like they had a rule that white males get more money, it's a seniority rule! It seems unreasonable to me to extrapolate that to systemic racism in the company." That's exactly where systemic discrimination originates. Hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and decides that it's a good day to oppress G people. They wake up in the morning having some amount of privilege, discover that it might be threatened, and their actions that day try to avoid reduction of privilege, even if it means treating G people unfairly. It's not anti-G people at first, it's just pro-self. Over years this becomes a de facto systemic discrimination, generally without a rule that explicitly says "we don't want G coworkers". Instead there are rules that mean that everybody works on G holidays, the microwaves can't be used for "smelly" food (and guess what, all G food is "smelly" by default), and of course, rule is by seniority in the company which just happens not to have any senior G people in it. Somehow fewer G people get hired, and those that do are in low-status positions. You can pick your own value for G; it could be gender or nationality or ethnicity or religion or skin color or whatever. It works the same way.

geofft 6y ago

If you're looking for people with moderately thick skin who don't seek to find offense everywhere, a good place to start is to avoid the folks who wrote this blog post: > every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5 https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5 There's absolutely no reason to believe that there were any "ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists" at Basecamp among the employees. All we have is a blog post from someone who is overly sensitive to reasonable professional conversations and didn't want to deal with "unpleasant" conversations at work. It's a story told from that person's perspective and we shouldn't take it as absolute truth.

pageandrew 6y ago
How often are conversations in the political/SJW space “reasonable” and “professional”? Never, in my experience, because the said activists tend to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being a bigot.
- geofft 6y ago
  Hm. In my experience, I've always found them reasonable and professional and I've never been called a bigot.
- technokozak 6y ago
  Exactly. And it's especially evident when you look at their Twitter accounts
tha0xa1 6y ago
>There's absolutely no reason to believe that there were any "ultra-sensitive trigger-warning micro-aggression seeking activists" at Basecamp among the employees. This is objectively false. There is 100% undeniable proof of these types of employees being there, including one of the heads of data analytics: From https://janeyang.org/resisting/ https://janeyang.org/resisting/ > Racist capitalism is poison that has weakened every facet of society and been used to “justify” horrific crimes against humanity while destroying our planet. We need massive power and wealth distribution enshrined in national and international policies. From https://janeyang.org/2021/04/13/im-getting-some-feedback/ https://janeyang.org/2021/04/13/im-getting-some-feedback/ > Guess who tends to beta spray? Men. White men, in particular. From https://janeyang.org/2021/03/18/live-forward/ https://janeyang.org/2021/03/18/live-forward/ > If you are white or a man, especially a cis-gendered heterosexual able-bodied white man, do the fucking work. Learn about the characteristics of white supremacy, push through your discomfort, and reflect on how you show up in the spaces you have power. Be ready to apologize when you screw up (we all do!) and then do better. And whatever you do: do not demand that your friends or colleagues or employees or neighbors or acquaintances who belong to historically marginalized groups explain to you all the ways you perpetuate harm and how society got here. Pay an anti-oppression professional for training and coaching; don’t expect us to get you up to speed for free.

jiscariot 6y ago

I feel like a lot of companies (including Google) are still reeling from Google's "Bring your entire self to work" philosophy. It does feel like good management where companies like Coinbase have reified their mission/goals, and given those who feel like solving X needs to be included, a nice payout to leave. The world has a lot of complex problems and not every entity needs to work on fixing all of them--that may in fact be counterproductive.