52 ms·

How Basecamp Blew Up

• eloff 5y ago
  There is a great supporting argument for keeping discussions of politics, race, religion, etc out of the workplace to begin with. It's not possible to call it from outside, but there was no actual racist behavior cited, apart from the list of funny customer names, which is not really racist (more culturalist - if that were a thing), but it is a terrible idea anyway. It sounds like a bunch of people got upset and quit over white privilege and the usual similar nonsense. Good riddance, why would you want activist employees like that?
  • fallenfromgrace 5y ago
    I thought so too, until I read the second (third?) article. Quite a few racist statements were made in the meeting itself and many employees mentioned that it was the meeting that convinced them to resign.
    • eloff 5y ago
      Like what?
      • fallenfromgrace 5y ago
        I was struck quite a bit by “I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.” The context it was said in made the statement rather jarring. I am all for their initial stance of "no politics" etc, but their all-hands was a face palm all around.
        • eloff 5y ago
          I fully agree with that statement. A lot of the framing around implicit bias and white privilege is actually straight up generalizing about a group based on skin color. That's racist. This business that it's not racist if it's against white people is seriously wrong - and racist.
          • deleted 5y ago
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        • deleted 5y ago
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        • dudul 5y ago
          How is this statement racist?
        • jariel 5y ago
          That statement is not jarring. Employees calling the organization 'White Supremacist' is the thing that should be 'jarring' or at least controversial. There are arguments to be made, sure, but the language is fairly extremist.
        • somedangedname 5y ago
          It's jarring because you're hearing an opinion that challenges a fundamental part of your world view.
      • DiNovi 5y ago
        like saying white supremacy doesnt exist in the united states
        • tomschlick 5y ago
          Singer clarifies in the later follow up to say he was referring to the people at Basecamp, not in reference to the whole country. > To which Singer responded: “I said we have different ways of framing … If you want to debate whether it exists anywhere, then yeah. But not here at this company, not with the people I associate with.” Edit: to add quote
          • DiNovi 5y ago
            Yes it is a common tactic to back away from an initial claim and pivot after people call you out, but he already let the genie out the bottle.
            • tomschlick 5y ago
              Its also common to not to explain things you think are obvious when initially talking but when someone asks you about it you clarify your position.
              • ashtonkem 5y ago
                He also has every single motive to lie here.
                • tomschlick 5y ago
                  Or he just thinks that the whole situation is ridiculous because there is zero evidence that we have seen relating any of this to white supremacy. Instead, those allegations are just brought out by people on the left anytime they want as a cudgel to stop all debate on a topic.
                  • 5y ago
  • ashtonkem 5y ago
    I think announcing policies on the company blog without telling employees first is always going to go poorly. You don’t have to be an “activist” employee to feel slighted by that.
    • eloff 5y ago
      Yes, although that doesn't seem to be the proximate grievance leading to people quitting. Pretty dumb thing to do though.
  • Igelau 5y ago
    Yeah, a lot of us are missing the fact that there was real monetary value in these people going away, and so Basecamp paid them to do so.
• baggy_trough 5y ago
  Why was Singer suspended? I don’t get it.
  • peterthehacker 5y ago
    I think these comments were the main reason: > “I strongly disagree we live in a white supremacist culture,” Singer said. “I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.”
    • baggy_trough 5y ago
      I don’t follow. Why would you be suspended for that?
      • fallenfromgrace 5y ago
        It has hints of "reverse racism" and tends to dismiss that racism is an issue...and if it is an issue, racism against white people is the actual and bigger issue. That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist. Generally, this would be someone who is, in his position, at the very best, wilfully ignorant. I was not the one dismissed him, nor do I work at basecamp, nor am I Ryan Singer, so I can't be sure that's why he was suspended...can only guess with the same information available to you.
        • baggy_trough 5y ago
          Mind boggling.
        • anon7725 5y ago
          > It has hints of "reverse racism" and tends to dismiss that racism is an issue...and if it is an issue, racism against white people is the actual and bigger issue. That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist. This is the problem with cultural Marxism / “wokeness”. It’s a sanctified, totalizing ideology that admits zero daylight between “100% agreement” and “you are a white supremacist/literal Nazi”. In that way it functions exactly like a “state religion”: in public, you’re either a true believer, act like one or are mute and don’t give away your position. Soon they will make you mouth the words or face denunciation. Perhaps we are already there in the vanguard of coastal tech companies. This whole thing is counter to the very spirit of liberalism.
• DiNovi 5y ago
  so they: - Announced a new company policy publicly before telling the staff - Deleted internal threads that would go against their narrative of why they did so - Had a conservative senior employee go off about politics on the call discussing the new no politics policy. - refused to reprimand said employee on the call - had one founder take this extremely sensitive call from his bed with his camera off and on mute. - After the employees resigned, did not send any sort of public message thanking them for their time at the company. Can't believe only 21 employees walked. What idiots these founders are. There is no way to defend this poor management even if you agree with the rule they tried to put in
  • nate 5y ago
    When they DHH+Jason laid the 7 of us off from Highrise (the Basecamp CRM spin-off) no one even showed up online to say anything to us on our last day. Just the Head of Devops to turn off our access to things. (That guy at least apologized for no-one else being there) :/
    • whitepoplar 5y ago
      Could you speak a little more about your impression of the company while you were there? I know you didn't want to talk about it after you left, but so many of us are/were curious, especially as to how Basecamp's private image compares to its public image.
      • nate 5y ago
        It's tough to get it all down here in a comment. Maybe now this is all out I'll share more in some channels soon. I will say that last comment in Casey's article: “They don't want to deal with people, which is something you have to do as a manager … Jason and David just threw us away.” That could easily have been written from someone at Highrise. (It wasn't. But it could have been) We killed ourselves to turn that thing around. And it hurt. Some of this coming out I can definitely empathize with and concur with what people experienced. Thanks for asking.
• DiNovi 5y ago
  so they: - Announced a new company policy publicly before telling the staff - Deleted internal threads that would go against their narrative of why they did so - Had a conservative senior employee go off about politics on the call discussing the new no politics policy. - refused to reprimand said employee on the call - had one founder take this extremely sensitive call from his bed with his camera off and on mute. - After the employees resigned, did not send any sort of public message thanking them for their time at the company. Can't believe only 21 employees walked. What idiots these founders are. There is no way to defend this poor management even if you agree with the rule they tried to put in
  • dang 5y ago
    Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. It lowers signal/noise ratio. It also makes merging threads a pain.
• cercatrova 5y ago
  "To a manager, the exchange that led to Singer’s departure could lend credence to the idea that addressing social injustices on company Zoom calls is bound to be disastrous." Yes, reading this entire exchange between Singer and the unnamed employee shows exactly why there shouldn't be political talk in the workplace. Disastrous indeed.
  • Igelau 5y ago
    Have political discussions, lose 1/3 of your employees and an executive. Seems like it was a sound policy after all.
• Threeve303 5y ago
  This story is so strange. First of all, it has been considered unprofessional to talk about politics at work for as long as I can remember. It's odd how you would need a rule implemented about that. Is this just a generational thing? On the other hand, when did racial equality become an inherently political topic? Especially racial equality inside the workplace. This also doesn't mean that the Basecamp founders are responsible for systemic racism because they had a list of "funny" names and [gasp] employ at least one conservative. What has happened to everyone? It's like we have taken the social media rage machine and applied it to real life interactions.
  • fooey 5y ago
    I mean, racial equality has always been political. It became more so when a major segment of the USA decided they didn't care to hide being racist anymore after the 2008 elections.
  • Barrin92 5y ago
    >Is this just a generational thing? No, it's a class thing. Among unionised labour work has always been a political battlefield. What's new is that you know have a politically activist group of people within upper middle class white collar jobs who, traditionally were conservative in temperament because they were materially well off. Professionals whose values do not align with their management have figured out that they actually have influence, and the top 1-10% have noticed that they can actually press the top 0.1% if they want to.
    • foobarthrowaway 5y ago
      Maybe, but don't kid yourself that you (or, the average HN'er) are the working blue collar everyman or share much of their politics. A lot of you would brand a lot of them "nazis" for their opinions.
    • intergalplan 5y ago
      Now that is one of the more interesting perspectives on the situation that I've read, out of all these threads. Thanks.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 40acres 5y ago
  This company is insane. Weak leadership that fostered a political culture that they eventually lost control of, and a workforce so engulfed in politics that they lost sight of focus. DHH playing sick is just the Cherry on top. I can't say that I don't feel an enormous amount of that petty German word towards to founders who love to preach about company culture having this blow up so spectacularly.
• throwawaysea 5y ago
  This author, Casey Newton, seems to be trying to push a narrative that Basecamp damaged itself by banning politics at work. But the anecdotes in here convince me that Basecamp did the right thing. The people involved in this exchange with Singer seem unhinged - demanding that someone declare that white supremacy exists at work? This type of cultish demand-oriented discourse is unacceptable in professional organizations and even the rest of society. It creates an unnecessarily hostile workplace, and the lack of nuance in their stances really just shows a lack of mental balance or ability to deal with any differences of opinions. Let’s be honest - the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) committees that have appeared in companies and governments all over are simply a Trojan horse for far left progressive politics, and a vehicle to take over an institution by making a particular political ideology the official religion of that organization. DEI groups and policies usually serve to prevent any actual diversity, labeling dissenting thought as racist and coating their own racist policies (for example race or gender based hiring/promotion) in vague terms like “justice”. Usually those participating in DEI efforts are so distracted by it that they add no actual value to the business, and I’m sure the third of the company that joined that group at Basecamp were no different. I’m betting Basecamp will pull through just fine without such toxic employees, and am glad to see companies like Basecamp and Coinbase take steps to keep from having their workplace and company weaponized by activists to serve divisive ideological purposes that have nothing to do with the company’s business.
  • abxytg 5y ago
    "demanding that someone declare that white supremacy exists at work" I would just love if you could point out this interaction to us. You have wildly mischaracterized it lmao.
    • x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
      Not the person you replied to, but this was a direct quote: > “The fact that you can be a white male, and come to this meeting and call people racist and say ‘white supremacy doesn't exist’ when it's blatant at this company is white privilege,” the employee said. “The fact that he wasn’t corrected and was in fact thanked — it makes me sick.” Isn't this employee declaring that "white supremacy" is "blatant at this company" ? His reaction that such "white supremacy" and "white privilege" "wasn't corrected" made him "sick." It's albeit not a direct demand that Ryan Singer be called out as a white supremacist, but it does seem to both imply it and express a strong grievance that it was not called out or corrected. Maybe you have a different interpretation of this?
• predaking 5y ago
  DHH was “so sick” that he was barely present for the most important meeting of his career. Fortunately he was able to post on Twitter several hours later storming at Apple, then going on a twitter blocking spree. What a “miraculous recovery”. I wonder what things will be like for him when he becomes an adult.
  • dang 5y ago
    Please don't cross into personal attack and name-calling. You may not owe (or feel you owe) $person better, but you owe this community better if you're participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • predaking 5y ago
      Fair enough! Thanks. I’ll edit! (or apparently I can't, but I'll note it for the future - feel free to take out my last sentence there if you have editing privileges!)
      • dang 5y ago
        Thanks for the kind reply! don't worry about it - examples are good for learning, and the main thing is just to course-correct going forward.
• ashtonkem 5y ago
  The through line for all of these disasters seems to be a thirst for attention and adulation. Fried and DHH have always been super excited to tell us how to work, but it turns out when a crisis came to their company, they managed to mess it up to an unbelievable degree. Fried was so thirsty for attention that he told us how to manage a crisis like this before he’d even bothered to handle it himself or even tell his own employees about the policy changes first. If this is how these two are going to manage after decades at this, maybe they should bring in some executives willing to do the actual work of managing instead of bungling it themselves.
  • StavrosK 5y ago
    Maybe this is just the first crisis we're hearing about. Alternatively, if they only hit one crisis in decades of running a company, they must be doing something right.
  • lancesells 5y ago
    It definitely felt like using company policy as content marketing when I found out this was a blog post first. Strange.
• neom 5y ago
  Amazon has over 50,000 results for "change management" in the books category for a reason. If you're curious to get going on this subject so as to not make these mistakes, "HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management" is a great resource.
  • freediver 5y ago
    More concretly, "Leading Change - Why Transformation Efforts Fail" by John P. Kotter is _the_ manual on change management (featured in the book).
• mellosouls 5y ago
  In the April discussion about the list of customer names, Singer posted to say that attempting to link the list to genocide was “absurd.” On the Friday call, he went further. “I strongly disagree we live in a white supremacist culture,” Singer said. “I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.” He continued: “Very often, if you express a dissenting view, you get called a Nazi. … I have not felt this is open territory for discussion. If we were to try to get into it as a group discussion it would be very painful and divisive.” Singer concluded his remarks. Fried responded, “Thank you, Ryan.” A handful of other speakers followed. Then a Black employee asked if the company could revisit Singer’s remarks. (I’m withholding the employee’s name and other identifying details out of colleagues’ fears that they could be targeted for harassment for speaking out.) -- Interesting that comments objecting to political hyperbole gets the commenter suspended (leading to resignation) with his name all over the place, while those who called for his censure are deemed as needing to be protected from naming due to "harrassment for speaking out".
  • Igelau 5y ago
    Psychological safety for me, but not for thee.
  • dshpala 5y ago
    I'm interested in "employee asked if the company could revisit Singer’s remarks" - was there a point, or did that employee just said literally that?
  • freewilly1040 5y ago
    Singer is an executive in a c suite that has courted publicity, seems fair to name him.
• markhahn 5y ago
  Definitions are everything. Consider someone for whom "white supremacy" means "it is right and appropriate to act deliberately to create and preserve white dominance of other races". Versus someone for whom it means "privilege exists in many, though often subtle ways, and advantages white, male, older, cis, het people". It's a lot like how "defund police" means radically different things.
  • moduspol 5y ago
    True, but none of this is by mistake or accident.
  • jariel 5y ago
    That's not quite the right example though. CRT definitions of 'White Supremacy' are not about 'people acting deliberately' to support it. CRT laments that 'regular people' doing 'regular things' act unconsciously to support oppressive systems, hence 'White Supremacy'. Making a film about 'something' and hiring those people you know to make it, who by virtue of your social network might be 'mostly white' - would be an example of 'White Supremacy'. Ergo - in their view, unless you are actively fighting to dismantle the concept of whiteness - you're supporting 'White Supremacy'. I believe there is a kernel of truth in systematic, even unconsciously biased systems, however, I don't remotely agree with many of the assertions. Unfortunately, to disagree with their assertions makes you a 'bad person' in their view. Have a read [1]. A thesis of 'self examination' i.e. a fairly progressive individual addressing their own 'white supremacy' due to their lack of active assertion of issues of equity etc.. http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/06/25/dismantling-white-supremacy-starts-inside/ http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/06/25/disman...
    • jokethrowaway 5y ago
      The problem lies in the assumption that we live in a society which is systemically racist. The people not dismantling the system are not white supremacists, they just don't believe we have systemic racism. I'm definitely not a white supremacist (I'm not even white) and I can't find a single instance of systemic racism. Sure, I met a bunch of racist individuals, but that doesn't prove systemic racism.
• etchalon 5y ago
  I think the type of people who have embraced and championed the new policy says a lot about who that type of policy helps, and who it hurts.
• seattle_spring 5y ago
  Why is this getting so much attention? When I first saw the dozen or so headlines exclaiming 1/3 of the company quit I assumed it was a huge company. The place only has 60 employees!
  • pseudalopex 5y ago
    The company is well known. The people in charge have written books about how to run companies. Hansson created Rails. Politics at work is a hot topic for HN now.
    • seattle_spring 5y ago
      > Hansson created Rails It sounds like the old adage, "the architecture of the company mimics the architecture of the software," applies very well here. In this case, the company's stance on politics scales about as well as Rails.
      • jensvdh 5y ago
        Shopify and Airbnb were able to become multi-billion dollar companies mostly by running on Rails before it became unsustainable. I'd say Rails scaled pretty well.
        • Tainnor 5y ago
          While true, I also remember watching a presentation about Shopify where they explained how they spent a whole year migrating to a newer Rails version. Now, Shopify clearly has the capacity to pull this off. But a smaller company that initially bet on Rails and is now facing a mountain of tech debt might not. To be fair: it is possible to write Rails applications in a way that you don't couple every aspect of your application to Rails internals. But in certain crucial ways, Rails encourages doing exactly that - dragging the DB along your whole application, for example. I've been a Rails developer for a couple of years and I left that ecosystem in no small part because a huge chunk of that community seems to treat "architecture" as a dirty word and monkeypatching as a solution for everything (and also indulges into making fun of PHP or Java a bit too much for my taste). Of course, everyone's experiences are different and you can do great stuff with Rails, but for me it's something I don't really want to go back to.
• bitwize 5y ago
  I've worked at a lot of places where politics was discussed casually. In my experience, political discussions at work tend not to be such a bad thing, provided that assholes can keep their mouths shut and not sow acrimony. When I read about the blowup a few days ago, I thought Basecamp had a cryptofascist in there somewhere and when he opened his mouth, shit hit the fan. Sure enough, it was Singer. I'm beginning to understand why Andy Wingo emphasized filtering out fash when doing your hiring: https://www.wingolog.org/archives/2017/09/04/the-hardest-thing-about-hiring-is-avoiding-the-fash https://www.wingolog.org/archives/2017/09/04/the-hardest-thi...
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > Unfortunately, one participant was stuck on free speech side of the debate. All day the conference has been doing logical programs and term equivalence, but somehow this person didn't deduce the result "free speech fundamentalism == fash", at least within the current evaluation context. Really? Someone who writes that is where you're looking for guidance? Words fail me to describe how appalling this is. Free clue: You can believe in strong free speech protection without being fascist. You'd be amazed at how many people do so - who believe in free speech on principle, not because they want to be able to say their secret horrible beliefs out loud. Putting them in the fascist category merely shows that your brain has turned off, and you're willing to harm completely innocent people in order to try to protect against your current bogeymen.
    • bitwize 5y ago
      > Really? Someone who writes that is where you're looking for guidance? Words fail me to describe how appalling this is. Did you read the rest of the blog post? Or did seeing "<my dearly held American value>=fash" stop your thought? As Andy says, free speech really only works in a context where everybody is of equal power. In an asymmetric power context, speech against those with less power is objectively more damaging than speech against those with more power, and is therefore more legitimately subject to restriction. Tolerating speech against the marginalized thus pulls society further in a pro-fascist direction. You should really consider whether it makes sense to be more appalled by someone calling out tolerance of hate speech as fascist, than by the hate speech itself.
• tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  God sounds like they needed to clean house if this was the kind of shit going on at work. Hopefully they can actually focus on the company goals after all this blows over.
  • ProjectArcturis 5y ago
    They needed to clean out the C-suite, not the actual workers.
  • rtpg 5y ago
    > “My honest sense of why everybody is leaving because they're tired of Jason and David's behavior — the suppression of voices, of any dissent,” one employee told me. “They really don’t care what employees have to say. If they don't think it's an issue, it's not an issue. If they don't experience it, then it's not real. And this was the final straw for a lot of employees Sounds a hell of a lot like the house cleaning needing to happen is at the top. That quote is the clearest indication that this isn’t a politics issue, it’s a management issue. This sort of “I don’t think it’s an issue so let’s not handle it” attitude applies just as much/more to actually getting work done. Classic bad manager 101 stuff. You can have good success by being a bad manager of course! My bet is that there’s a lot of great ICs that counteract whatever messy people mgmt stuff is going on.
  • brown9-2 5y ago
    Are you advocating for new owners?
  • thrownaway564 5y ago
    This only gets worse if they hadn't. We have hours of these meetings every week. I attend a few hours to keep the target off me and turn off my camera to workout instead.
• Tainnor 5y ago
  Honestly, in this story everyone looks like a big child. I would maybe be more sympathetic to DHH if it wasn't the guy who was so opinionated he pushed through Rails features that everyone else disliked or co-wrote several books on company culture that are glorified ads for basecamp (although "it doesn't have to be crazy at work" is still a thought-provoking read, at least in part). I can only imagine that he might be similarly self-righteous in workplace situations. I think that, no matter your political views, if a situation gets out of hand that bad over matters that aren't even really directly related to workplace concerns, something must have gone fundamentally wrong much earlier. These levels of tension and distrust don't just arise out of nowhere.
  • jokethrowaway 5y ago
    I've seen it happen in a company which was doing just fine. It happened randomly and completely out of the blue: one software engineer mentioned he didn't believe in the gender gap and he was promptly replied 1000 words essays by other leaders in the company shutting him down, to show that "we don't tolerate certain behaviour". Guidelines were created to avoid future political discussions in the workplace. No-one left because of it (immediately) and we sadly didn't become famous. The engineer who brought that up quit a few months after. After that, half of the employees hated thinking there were people thinking something different from them in the company, the other half was afraid to talk in public. Again, I don't think there was a particular situation in the company: just a naive person who likes to talk frankly and people who get offended and are quick to attack in order to defend the "safe space" for the people who share their beliefs.
    • Tainnor 5y ago
      Maybe. But this is (was) a 60-person company. That's about the size of the company I'm currently working at. In other words, you should know everyone and interact with a sizeable chunk of these people somewhat regularly. It strikes me as very odd that you would suddenly so fundamentally distrust your co-workers with whom you share so much. But I'm also not in the US and maybe this is just the current climate over there. (Or maybe it also shows that being a fully-remote company can have downsides, such as coworkers not socialising enough and therefore not trusting each other? Who knows. DHH certainly has championed the "remote work for everyone" approach countless times.)
• S_A_P 5y ago
  I think what we are seeing is the Gen X folks becoming the "old guys" to the latest generation and having the same struggles boomers had with Gen X.
  • Igelau 5y ago
    Hmm... So do you reckon this is just something that happens with age? Or has each generation inadvertantly provided an ideological framework for the next one to strangle it with?
    • SrslyJosh 5y ago
      > has each generation inadvertantly provided an ideological framework for the next one to strangle it with? LOL, that's a hilarious way of putting it, but I think it's more about whether people keep learning and growing as they age or decide that they already know everything they need to. If you stop learning and growing, you're going to be left behind by the people who don't.
      • Igelau 5y ago
        That's another side of the coin to consider. Thanks.
    • hnfong 5y ago
      I consider the fundamental issue being a paradox between trusting lessons learned from past experiences and adopting to new circumstances. When you grow older, you gain more experience, and if you're intelligent, probably gain some wisdom along the way. You either trust that inherently imperfect knowledge, or you throw it away and learn everything anew together with the younger generation. We're mostly trained to treasure knowledge and experience, even if the errors accumulate and times change.
• seriousquestion 5y ago
  white su·prem·a·cy; the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society de·fund; prevent from continuing to receive funds Courtesy of the dictionary. This is not hard. Stop entertaining people who redefine words.
  • dools 5y ago
    I think the point the OP is making is that an overt statement such as "White power!!1 Jews will not replace us!!!sixonetikitorches" directly exposes a white supremacist opinion, whereas there are less overt actions that, if analysed thoughtfully, also expose white supremacy. It is very similar to people who say "I'm not racist, I don't think I'm superior to anyone and the dictionary definition of racism is to assume superiority based on race" (this is more or less a direct quote from Pauline Hanson, an Australian Senator who is wildly racist). What I have found in discussions with people who I think are racist, but who deny it, is that they have an emphasis on personal agency and personal responsibility. So while they might be able to happily have black friends, they see, for example, disparaties in incarceration rates not as a social problem but as an aggregation of personal failures. If one believes that a particular race is, on average, more likely to commit the types of crime for which one should be incarcerated, and one sees incarceration as an "inferior" way of life, then the logical conclusion is that they are racist. An interesting thing to note about analysing racism this way is that it can also uncover racist attitudes in the very minority populations who are being discriminated against. Also "defund the police" is a shorthand that typically means "reduce direct law enforcement funding and instead fund other community engagement programs". Of course we need cops, but we don't necessarily need them all armed to the teeth in riot gear showing up for a drug bust (sub-question: do we really need drug busts at all?), and maybe they're not the best first responders in domestic disputes, and so on. Most people for whom "defund the police" is a catchcry recognise this, because there are very few true anarchists in society (and anarchy is kind of where "left meets right" in the political spectrum anyway, which is why libertarianism is such a dangerous and insidious ideology).
    • vorpalhex 5y ago
      Oddly, several members of the defund movement have said they literally want to defund and abolish the police. It's almost like words mean things? > If one believes that a particular race is, on average, more likely to commit the types of crime for which one should be incarcerated, and one sees incarceration as an "inferior" way of life, then the logical conclusion is that they are racist. You can try to argue that crime rates show disproportional racial representation for a bunch of reasons. Claiming anyone who states the facts is racist is wrong.
• aaroninsf 5y ago
  There will be a string of such explosions. Many of them. Those with historically unassailable, unnamed, and most sensitively, unearned, prerogatives, become understandably if unfortunately upset when this state of affairs is questioned. While they retain a platform and resources to do so, they lash out. The details will vary; the attempts at spin and chaff will vary; the root issues are no mystery. We're in a moment of cultural shift. Those who perceive themselves rightly as historical "winners" are going to fight "loss" of status, control, hegemony, pick a word. All the more so, to the extent that they are prone to understanding the world in terms of zero-sum games. (As others have noted, the Basecamp trashfire has nothing to do with "politics," that's one transparent attempt at spin.)
• csours 5y ago
  > "But as much as the conversation about Basecamp’s moves has been framed as “politics,” it seems important to remember that the entire affair began when a third of the company — not all of whom are among the 20 who have departed so far, by the way — volunteered to help the company become more diverse and equitable. It was only when their committee dug a skeleton out of the company closet — that list of names — that Fried and Hansson moved to shut the whole thing down." I've shared and laughed at funny names in the past, as recently as last year. I can't imagine an official or permanent list such as the one pointed out here. --- It's really fucking hard to talk about stuff like this online or big groups. I would encourage people and companies to have small, offline discussions and start with humility and empathy as the guiding principles. --- I've typed and deleted all of this three times. Anything I say feels like not enough. People are people.
• joeblow21 5y ago
  Sounds like they cleaned house not “blew up”
• throthro111 5y ago
  I feel bad for everyone involved. This story made me realize that working at Basecamp is not something I would want to do in the future, primarily because DHH and Fried are so egotistic. However, it also makes me face the reality that I would not want to work with many of the people that resigned. Resigning over a random employee refusing to say that "white supremacy exists" is absurd. I imagine myself working at some of my earlier minimum wage jobs in college and putting forth such a requirement to my managers then. It's a non-sequitur. When I talk to my family and non-tech non-coasts non-city friends about the sort of political polarization I encounter at my high-tech Seattle job, they often think I'm messing with them, that I'm being facetious or exaggerating. Unfortunately, I'm not. It's all so tiresome. The increasing politicization of everything, and tech being at the center of it, made me realize I have no interest anymore in climbing the corporate ladder. I realize that my lack of political fervor is a liability. I wish I cared more about these things, I really do, but I don't.
  • mk81 5y ago
    I don't wish I cared more about this BS, and I don't.
  • threeseed 5y ago
    > Resigning over a random employee refusing to say that "white supremacy exists" is absurd It's not a random employee though. It's someone who is part of the Senior Leadership Team. If you deny that it exists then how can you be trusted to do something if an issue does comes up ?
    • prepend 5y ago
      Refusing to say it isn’t denying it exists. Those are different things. If I’m trying to count to 100 and someone says “Prepend, please say that white supremacy exists.” And I respond “I’m busy counting to 100 and will not comply with your wishes.” That doesn’t mean I’m denying that white supremacy exists. It’s odd you would interpret it that way as it’s illogical.
      • 5y ago
• JPKab 5y ago
  "But Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, had been taken aback by an employee post which argued that mocking customer names laid the foundation for racially-motivated violence, and closed the thread." Children understand that calling people names isn't the same as violence. At some point can we all admit that the most narcissistic, dramatic people are overly-indulged by this garbage? I'm at a startup now, but left a company in February that got torched by this toxic BS. My favorite moment was sitting there, and having a coworker (US born, but of Arab descent) who grew up in an extremely wealthy neighborhood with immense privilege, lecturing a blind white male employee about how much privilege he had, and then going on to talk about how white people were uniquely tainted by the slave trade that some of their ancestors engaged in. Naturally, he didn't seem to realize that the African slave trade was invented by his Arab ancestors. Nor did he see the irony in the fact that holding a person responsible for horrible action of people who look like them is the same way of thinking that leads bigots to blame all Arabs for the actions of the 9/11 hijackers. Seeing good companies get torn to shreds by this campus idiocy reminds me of how insulated academia is from the real world. The absurd, essay-driven philosophy masquerading as social science makes it impossible for groups of humans to achieve anything productive. Nobody ever noticed this before, because in the pseudo social science world they inhabit, productivity isn't a thing.
  • threatofrain 5y ago
    > Seeing good companies get torn to shreds by this campus idiocy reminds me of how insulated academia is from the real world. What does this have to do with academia?
    • avs733 5y ago
      It’s coded language.
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Pointing out that cancel culture is toxic and that free speech still has a place in polite isn't a bad thing. Academia really has a problem with siloing those of a different opinion and apparently it is extending to tech companies as well. I mostly just refuse to talk about that stuff at work. If it's not work related or "guess what I did last weekend" I'm not really interested.
• nikolay 5y ago
  I can't believe why this is so abuzz as it's their company, their rules - as long as they don't violate laws at any level, they can do whatever makes them happy at their own company! Employees get paid to do certain job, they don't do this for free. Basecamp is a business, it's not a charity or an activist collective - unless the owners want it that way! Employment is at will and can be terminated on either side at any time - not questions asked and no reasons given. Shaming your employer who provided for you for years and allowed you to build your career and resume and who is giving you a great severance package that they don't have to give you and still be unhappy is pretty silly! Take the package and find a job, which makes you happy at an employer who is okay that you're gonna spend most of your paid time discussing politics and societal issues!
  • CydeWeys 5y ago
    Just because something might be legal doesn't make it a good idea to do it.
    • nikolay 5y ago
      What's a good and a bad idea is very subjective. Let them run their business the way they want! Pretty much everywhere else in the world political polemics are not allowed at work as they can divide the workforce and some people could feel harassed by hearing non-work-related stuff they wholeheartedly disagree with!
      • ryanbrunner 5y ago
        Sure, but part of the consequences of making horrible decisions is that you're going to lose 30% of your employees. Any business leader can do what they like with their business, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be immune to criticism or that they have a god-given right for their employees not to quit.
        • nikolay 5y ago
          I worked at a big company and popular brand when they hired an asshole to harass the entire developer team and make them leave and replaced all of us with contractors from the asshole's buddy company. It was beyond obvious that this was coming from upper management, because all of us reporting to HR did not result to any change, even if there was documented harassment of employees. So, maybe Jason and DHH just wanted these people out and found this way to do it as to do a layoff if the company is beyond a certain size, it's not so easy. Anyway, I am no the kind of employee that will go sue their former employer or talk shit about them as, again, I know employment is at will and should be.
• JPKab 5y ago
  Do what I did in February: Quit. Life's too short to waste time at a company that's forgotten it's purpose. This ideology borders on cult like. A good sign that you are dealing with an irrational ideology is non-sensical, illogical and inconsisten rules. For example, in this article, "Black" is capitalized everywhere its mentioned, and "white" isn't. There's nothing logically consistent about this, because it's a borderline religious ideology.
  • thrownaway564 5y ago
    it's completely religious - prophets, sacred texts, heresies. Going to quit after vacation this summer by just not showing up. See how long that lasts
    • SantalBlush 5y ago
      Yes!! I highly encourage this decision. Everyone will be happier--it's the free market at work.
  • foolinaround 5y ago
    no place seems immune from this nowadays... it only seems to differ in degrees.
  • etchalon 5y ago
    The capitalization of Black is becoming increasingly accepted editorially due to its similarities to otherwise capitalized words like Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Marxist, Irish, etc. Essentially, a culturally distinct body of people. "white" isn't capitalized because it doesn't bear as much similarities to those words, as "white" is not a cultural identity.
    • SvenMarquardt 5y ago
      > "white" isn't capitalized because it doesn't bear as much similarities to those words It is precisely the same as black. The mental gymnastics on display here are astonishing.
• aliswe 5y ago
  Serious question, how is "stop sounding like a white male" (a quote from Pixars "soul" movie) not racist? ik its not exactly relevant to the article but I want to know...
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  The thing that company founders and managers should understand is that discussing politics is intimately related to power. Any power struggle inside an organisation can quickly turn into mutiny...
• cleandreams 5y ago
  I am a member of a discriminated against minority in tech and I find this level of wokeness appalling. We will sometimes politically disagree with our co-workers and I don't want to have to argue with them. It's dreary and demoralizing. Most of the time there is no change in views as a result and frankly, it's not worth my time. That said, it's very problematic to go into this controversy because one of the senior management team said white supremacy does not exist. That is troubling because for employees who have been impacted by white supremacy, the amount of pain this obliviousness causes can be nearly unbearable. This exodus was a self-inflicted wound. It's a bad mistake to treat a topic which causes so much pain in this arrogant and dismissive way. So sorry Basecamp, but you really deserve the trouble you are in.
  • thrownaway564 5y ago
    You - "one of the senior management team said white supremacy does not exist" article - "he questioned the existence of white supremacy at the company" Not the same
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • MattRix 5y ago
      The article contains multiple interpretations of what was said, including the one the parent comment used.
      • JamesBarney 5y ago
        > Ryan Singer, had been suspended and placed under investigation after he questioned the existence of white supremacy at the company >“I objected to an employee’s statement that we live in a white supremacist culture. White supremacism exists, and America’s history of racism still presents terrible problems, but I don’t agree that we should label our entire culture with this ideology. From Ryan Singer.
      • anm89 5y ago
• foolinaround 5y ago
  Fun experiment: Take a look at the comments in this thread, and figure out the ones that are created with a throwaway account.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    Even more fun, watch how much karma they can rack up flame bating
  • ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
    They are using a throwaway account because they are scared of being taken to task by their companies?
  • tha0xa2 5y ago
    The fact that we have to post with throwaways should speak volumes about how toxic activists are. No one wants their family to be cancelled because someone posted some wrongthink on the internet.
• Sindrome 5y ago
  MORE white supremacy in tech
• LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  WOKO HARAM! Zack! Bamm!
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• dantemoose 5y ago
  Casey Newton is at least partly responsible for this. Before Basecamp "blew up", he wrote two articles that people argued about for days on Hacker News and Twitter. That absolutely must have heightened tensions among the Basecamp team.
• dantemoose 5y ago
  Casey Newton is at least partly responsible for this. Before Basecamp "blew up", he wrote two articles that were argued about for days on Hacker News and Twitter. That absolutely must have heightened tensions among the Basecamp team.
• jskdkdnsnkdkd 5y ago
  I’m sympathetic to the argument that toxic discussions about issues that neither the work nor the company exist to solve are a distraction. But what I really see here is the way power can blind. This situation was 100% avoidable but the dudes didn’t think the incoming fire was at their level. Fried and DHH have been making “fuck you money” monthly, for well over a decade. And I happen to know what Ryan Singer’s salary was many years ago - even if he never did anything smart with it, and he is very smart, he has an impenetrable financial moat. The money, combined with a measure of fame and influence, compounded by the fact that they have full control of Basecamp and by some intrinsic hubris is the reason this blew up in their face. It’s a shit show but this will basically blow over. The customers mostly don’t care.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• duxup 5y ago
  I'm not sure any company could survive unscathed from everyone at an all hands meeting addressing topics like: "we live in a white supremacist culture" Or demands from one employee to another at all hands meetings to denounce white supremacy.
• otde 5y ago
  Bit of a fool’s errand to try and avoid politics at work — like a fish trying to avoid water in the ocean. The ways companies are built and maintained, the relationship between employers and employees, workplace requirements and benefits — all of these are shaped by and and built from political systems, to say nothing of how politics surrounding a person’s identity might affect their worldview. You’re never going to shut all of that out of your company. Lots of fearmongering in the comments about “woke mobs” here, and I want to offer a counterpoint to the characterization of the Basecamp employees who left as some kind of shrill hypersensitive scolds. Put yourself in their shoes. You notice the company you work at has a circulated list of customer’s names, some of which make fun of your race — have been used to make fun of you since you were young. You go “hey this sucks” and it gets taken down. You point out that this is part of a pattern of societal behavior you’ve known your whole life, and that pattern has affected your life negatively and materially. This is not received well — combating a single incident is easy, but unraveling a pattern of behavior is an arduous, years-long, and sometimes unprofitable path. At an all-hands meeting, a higher-up not only denies this pattern exists, but any action taken to unravel it would instead target him instead. The Big Bosses do not refute this until much later, and only partially. Would you feel respected? How would you react if someone said you were acting like a child and demanding something unreasonable? How would you feel if someone told you that you’re only doing this to perform “wokeness?”
  • duxup 5y ago
    I can understand being hurt and more about the funny names list. But I think things have gotten out of hand when at an all hands meeting people are debating topics like: "we live in a white supremacist culture" Or demands from one employee to another at all hands meetings to denounce white supremacy. I doubt many companies could handle that right... and I'm sure many people would come away more hurt.
    • seppin 5y ago
      Did those things actually happen at Basecamp or are they theoretical?
    • newacct583 5y ago
• whatever1 5y ago
  Why is the whole tech world talking about Basecamp? It is literally a shop smaller than a local grocery store. Pretty sure you can find there way more serious labor rights violations.
• newacct583 5y ago
  > One can empathically agree that such injustice, and any injustice, sucks, and still advocate compartmentalizing between institutions of the society writ large. That depends very heavily on the nature of the injustice, doesn't it? I mean, take Godwin's perspective here: that's literally the logic that gave us the holocaust! Implicit in your statement is the idea that the "injustice" might "suck", but not so much that it's worth blowing up your employer. Which is to say: you really don't think this injustice sucked very much. Well... some people disagreed. And they were willing to quit over it. Isn't that an existence proof that your intuition is simply wrong here?
  • acituan 5y ago
    > Implicit in your statement is the idea that the "injustice" might "suck", but not so much that it's worth blowing up your employer. Which is to say: you really don't think this injustice sucked very much. You're both misreading and over-reading. The comparison is not between how much the injustice sucks vs. the cost of blowing up the employer. It is a) whether all injustices have equitable access to pressuring employers and b) whether parasitizing any organization to advance a cause, however honorable the intentions are, is a fair game despite the negative externalities. If any cause fails either of these criteria, it is bound to be creating its own injustices.
    • shkkmo 5y ago
      I don't think "parasitizing" is accurate or constructive terminology. I think your conclusion is also obviously false. The access that the civil rights movement eventually acquired at many institutions did nothing to increase the injustices faced by LGBTQ group. So while unequal access can create further injustices, it is not case they always do. I think that the linkage you are calling out tends to arise when the two groups are in conflict.
  • shkkmo 5y ago
    > That depends very heavily on the nature of the injustice, doesn't it? I mean, take Godwin's perspective here: that's literally the logic that gave us the holocaust! Um... I completely failed to follow this. Are you talking about Godwins law? What is the logic that literally gave us the Holocaust? > Isn't that an existence proof that your intuition is simply wrong here? I believe you have an error in your modal logic. Existence proofs can only disprove 'all/no X are P' statements and prove 'there exists an X that is P' statements. The claim you cite is of the later form. Generally, the way to disprove such a claim is to assume it is true then reach a logical contradiction.
• gustavo-fring 5y ago
  I'm Jewish Colombian among other things. I'm a mutt. I can pass as white. Where my dad came from (Scary Gary) you voted Republican because up until about the 1960s, they were the party that cared about immigrants and wanted them to succeed. So, when he moved to a similarly Republican state in the 80s, he remained a Republican. The Republican is not a werewolf boogeyman around here. I made the mistake once of saying that I was a "closet Republican" on HN and I got downvoted so fast that I lost all self-confidence for about a year. I went to a student Democrats meeting on my local campus. Now I know college political groups are a unique demographic and I get why these people (these people, yikes) feel this way, and those that I talked to were completely rational; like I could be and was one of them. But when we were asked at the beginning of the meeting why people were Democrats, the very first person responded that they were a Democrat because they were not a racist. The tactlessness, the arrogance, the naivety, and immaturity were so concentrated in a single sentence that I wish I could have left. But I stayed and learned even if that tribalism is toxic and wins no friends nor understanding nor ultimately progress.
  • js2 5y ago
    The Republican party has cynically been using race for fifty years to split the working class vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy So for someone to say they aren't Republican because they aren't racist is hyperbolic, but it isn't wrong. What is Scary Gary?
    • gustavo-fring 5y ago
      Yes and the first Jews and African-Americans that gained positions in government gained them as Republicans. Prior to the Southern strategy, the democratic party was the party of Jim Crow and lynchings and backwards ass race hatred. But they, like people, changed. It really says nothing about the potential of the parties today. If you are so ideological that you can't see that calling people you just met racists is a bad strategy, I don't know what to tell you. Want to play a game of prisoner's dilemma? Scary Gary == Gary, Indiana, a burb of Chicago. It met the same crisis as a lot of Rust Belt areas and if you watch a youtube vid of it today, you'll see why it's scary. The Jackson family was from there, left for the same reasons (well...).
• tonymet 5y ago
  Wasn’t this the desired outcome ?
• paxys 5y ago
  My take on this whole saga is – don’t offer your employees (who get no equity) 6 months salary to quit, no questions asked, and be surprised when a lot of them take you up on it. It would be idiotic not to in the current software job market.
• kisstheblade 5y ago
  “I strongly disagree we live in a white supremacist culture,” Singer said. Does the "black employee" actually think the culture is "white supremacist"? That's a horrible view in my opinion, and this guy seems to be the biggest problem. The Black employee responded: “You said, ‘white supremacy doesn't exist.’ That's a factual lie. It's not true.” Yeah, Singer didn't say that. Well, "bend the knee" and apologize for being white, bravo, I couldn't think of anything more racist than this way of thinking.
• ylem 5y ago
  I was debating about whether to comment on this--whether I could add any useful signal to the noise. My thought is that is a tragedy. Let me start with the business case. It resulted in around 30% of the company resigning. As a client, that would disturb me. What is the likelihood of new features being added? Security patches? Maintenance? Also, AFAIKT, Basecamp isn't just a product, but a brand, with the founders writing several books on work and this basically wipes out that brand. But to the issue itself. I've read what I can about it and it's tragic. I'll start by saying that I believe the founders had the right to make the call that they did and give them credit for offering severance packages to those who disagreed with their decision. However, the whole affair is a disaster and a cautionary tale. It seems to have started out with good intent. A group of employees wanted to create a more equitable workplace. They found a list of "funny" customer names and realized that this was a bad thing to have. The founders agreed--mocking your customers is a bad idea. The question is what happened next. I was unaware of the idea of the pyramid of hate. It kinda reminds me of Yoda “Fear is the path to the dark side … fear leads to anger … anger leads to hate … hate leads to suffering.” It looks like the implication is not that funny names === The Holocaust, but rather that a certain context is required for something like The Holocaust to occur. I believe that idea is true, but am not sure if this was a productive path to take. It seemed like the company had decided that the list was bad, to discontinue it, and to move on. The call not to fire whoever made the list doesn't seem to be a bad one. Contexts change and people make mistakes. If people evolve that should be encouraged. Where it seems that things fell apart is in how the CEOs responded to this. It's a really difficult issue and it would seem that discussion could have led to some mutual understanding. Moving to cancel social-political discussion in response (and to announce it in a blog post instead of internally) strikes me as where things took a tragic turn. While it's possible to have a policy of not discussing partisan politics at work (for example, it's not allowed for federal employees), not having discussion of equity issues at work is more problematic. Because for some employees, it's not just a question of doing their job and talking about these things in their own time--because for some, it effects their ability to do their jobs. For an in-person company, there can be something as simple as bathrooms. I'm a heterosexual male and never thought about there being a need for unisex bathrooms until an LGBTQ+ group at work pointed it out. Now in our building we have some. It doesn't effect me, but it means a lot to them. I can picture a woman wondering if she didn't get a promotion because there was something that she wasn't doing at work or if it was because of her gender--for her, it's not an abstract sociopolitical question--it's a question that has an impact on her ability at work. Or, if she's in a meeting and she finds that she's being ignored when she speaks, but men of similar ability are not, then it's not just an abstract issue, but a question of how she gets her job done. I am not even saying that if it happens that men are doing this that they are sexist--they might simply be oblivious to it. By my personality, I have a tendency to talk over people and have to remind myself to let other people talk (I think it's a good idea because then I can hear ideas that I might not have considered and sometimes save myself from doing something dumb). I hope that it's something that I never get called into HR about and would much rather a coworker told me if it was a problem. I think there's a worthwhile set of discussions about workplace culture that are worth having about what it means to be professional in the workplace. Of course there are cases that can go too far. But, a lot of it just strikes me as being polite to people. If someone wants to be called Robert instead of Bob, then if it makes him happy, ok. Other things are related to questions of cognitive bias. For example, if if I want to hire someone, it's pretty natural to use my network. However, maybe I can surface better candidates by searching more broadly. Am I using a good set of criteria in hiring? But, back to the list. Without seeing it, it's not possible to judge whether was it just in bad taste to mock customers period, or did it have racial overtones in the "funny" names for some racial groups. A lot of the interpretation hinges on that. Also, the perception of whether it was racially motivated or not (unless it was particularly blatant could also vary depending on if one was a member of the targeted group or not. But from the exchange on white supremacy to occur and for such a large fraction of the company to quit, then it would suggest that there were deeper issues at the company and that the CEOs didn't want to engage with those issues.
• BMorearty 5y ago
  > it’s clear that the five books Fried and Hansson wrote lecturing other people about good management made them a lot of enemies… That’s a bad take. Everyone I’ve ever heard mention those books has talked about them in a very positive light. I’ve never heard anyone describe them as lecturing. The books aren’t what earned them enemies. Their behavior in the last week did. I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter badmouth Fried and Hansson who admired them deeply until now.
• hartator 5y ago
  Am I wrong to see this as a very binary management issue? If an employee calls another employee on racist acts and this is true, fire the racist. If it was a lie, fire the accuser. It feels easy and natural to just take the accusation very seriously with very serious consequences instead of framing this as a political discussion.
• antoniuschan99 5y ago
  The fact that 1/3 of the company resigned is a huge red flag. Add to the fact that Fried and Hansson are supposed to be thought leaders in (alternative) Silicon Valley Company Management and Philosophy. That’s a whole lot of “severance” to pay out. Regardless of what happens to the company, their reputation as Leaders/Managers will take a hit. The fact that Hansson “peaced out” and left Fried to Moderate the meeting at such a critical time doesn’t bode well either.
• midrus 5y ago
  “...They just want to build cool shit all day,” the employee said. “They don't want to deal with people, which is something you have to do as a manager … Jason and David just threw us away...” That's... a win?? I mean, I've worked at some companies where some employees, specially some which basically are activists disguised as developers/PMs/etc cause 90% of the management work because everything is an issue to them. It's tiring, really tiring, and some of these people have negative value for the company actually, from my point of view as a developer anyway. I'm a developer. I love my profession, I want to build cool shit all the time, and learn, and progress. I want to build a great product and, if possible, earn a ton of money. I don't want to go to the office to discuss the issues of the society or try to fix the world. I do that on weekends and after work, in the right forums. I do not force my coworkers to "take sides"... either you're a racist or you're this other thing or if you don't say anything then that's conceding.. WTF!!! I just want to work, learn, and earn money. Fix the world in some other place, please. Hope this makes basecamp even stronger in the long term.
• midrus 5y ago
  20% is less than 50%, so I bet most employees are going to be happier now that politics at work are over.
• jarek83 5y ago
  I'm among those with mixed feelings. - list of funny names that is kept in some persistent form and circulates the company with full acknowledgment of the head people: Childish and extremely unprofessional, but still a typical mistake rather than a colossal disaster; - politics and racism issue: looks like typical misunderstanding but on a very fragile subjects. Very easy to get into drama scenarios with this mix. Very easy to mishandle it. But it still seems that this topic is not normal workplace topic. If there is a serious issue in that matter, you go to some authorities. If you did not address it officially and decided to attack the head people - sorry, it's not the way. That might suggest that there was no real issue as there were no serious actions; - policy change public announcement first then to your team: Yeah that's a big mistake, something that probably their books wouldn't even advise. Head people did not recognise that this is not the way to manage fragile topics. Is DHH and Jason all evil? - These are the same guys that give equal pay regardless of remote worker location. - They were always believing in remote work, which is bigger problem for company and it's more of a benefit for the employees - Many times were vocal about issues with big companies, where many others did not have enough courage to do the same - Creators of a breakthrough tech stack and tremendous contributions to open-source - Always happily sharing their knowledge They made a mistake. But they don't seem to be bad guys here overall. In this context, the article seems to be written by someone who had some personal issues with the guys and he found a way to "show'em all". Even if it tells his version of the story, to me it's at least unfair and biased.
  • midrus 5y ago
    Best reasoning I've read so far. Can't agree more with you.
  • emrah 5y ago
    I agree with you too. Jason and DHH draw a lot of attention, especially DHH, and some of it is not favorable. This incident just gave fodder to those who already had a pet peeve with them.
    • tanseydavid 5y ago
      Having and acting on "Pet Peeves" in the workplace is about as unprofessional as one can get.
• andrewmd5 5y ago
  The political speech some wish to see silenced revolves around the racial and socioeconomic inequality they benefit from each day. Turning a blind eye to systemic racism does not mean it does not exist, and inherently saying Black lives matter is not a political statement. The ideological aggression against it however is.
• achenatx 5y ago
  I have found that one general rule works pretty well. No ad hominem or insults. No insults to people, groups, or policies. Calling someone or a policy racist would fall under insults. When you eliminate insults, all of a sudden people are talking more about cause and effect. Frankly political debates become incredibly boring and the emotion disappears once insults are removed. In my company I regularly remind our employees that we are not allowed to insult customers, ever. I even try to find the good in everyone. People have competing priorities, personal issues, etc. You never have the whole story.
  • zepto 5y ago
    Generally I agree - no ad-hominem or insults should be rule number one. > Calling someone or a policy racist would fall under insults. How can a policy be insulted? Policies are not people. I don’t see how calling a policy racist falls under ad-hominem.
• PeterStuer 5y ago
  When idiologues try take sidetrack your company, unfortunately there is no other way but to act decisive and fast before the cancer spreads. There is no reasoning with idiologues as reason does not enter into dogmatic rhetoric. Act decisive as it will only get worse, and never apologize.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Lapsa 5y ago
  The only thing weirder than Americans and religion is Americans and racism.
• Lapsa 5y ago
  Lulz. Wrote that I find Americans weird and comment got removed. I guess racism is a forbidden word. Great shitfest. 10/10