Changes at Basecamp

https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5

by massel • 5 years ago

883 762 5 years ago

world.hey.com

valyagolev2• 5 years ago

1. No more societal and political discussions at Basecamp. Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and 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. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it at Basecamp.

I wonder what's the context here

agd4• 5 years ago

The context is the same as many other companies - employee activists creating strife and division internally and causing other employees to feel uncomfortable.

Kye2• 5 years ago

Shutting down all discussion of things that affect their employees is an extreme overreaction.

valyagolev2• 5 years ago

thanks for the inference. I wonder about the particulars, though

a4isms2• 5 years ago

The expression “employee activists” makes it seem very one-sided.

What about old-school companies where everyone played golf. If you were, say, someone who liked hiking and canoeing, you might have been made to feel like you don’t fit in. Is that the same thing as being made to feel uncomfortable about social issues? Or is it somehow different because “playing golf” is normal, but “advocating for social justice” is not?

A word like “activist” is extremely imprecise. Any time someone is making other people uncomfortable, isn’t that important?

If I was a woman and the water cooler discussion every Monday morning was about various men and their misadventures picking up women in bars, I’d say there was discussion causing strife and division, but few people would say “activists” were involved. If I then complained about the unprofessional water-cooler talk, would I be the activist trying to change the company culture?

If it’s the “strife and division” that’s the problem, we need not restrict ourselves to discussion “activism.” But if the real problem is that we’re ok with some strife and division, but not others, well...

We ought to come clean about that and say, basically, “Don’t try to change anything, not even the stuff that makes you uncomfortable, because this is how we like it, and if something has to change, that something is you."

oxylibrium• 5 years ago

I think those are particularly choice words coming from Basecamp, who have been particularly active in calling out Apple's treatment of iOS and the App Store, which is in at least some sense political advocacy. Life is necessarily political; and they should be more aware of it than most others.

I'm not endorsing Apple's behavior with the App Store, but seriously, this is very out-of-character and I don't like the tone or the content of the messaging here.

sylens• 5 years ago

I think some (not all) of the changes outlined in the post make some degree of sense, but the overall tone of the blog post just comes off as incredibly condescending

DogOnTheWeb• 5 years ago

They also say, "We're in the business of making software, and a few tangential things that touch that edge."

Advocacy on the policies of one of the world's foremost software distribution gatekeeper seems well within how they define "their business". I don't think it takes much squinting to see how they can view this sort of advocacy as in their lane, while the popular political discussions of the day are not.

ZephyrBlu2• 5 years ago

DHH specified that advocating for things on personal accounts is fine.

wearypyo• 5 years ago

So this is exactly the same move Coinbase did, pretty weird from Basecamp tbh https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...

Afforess2• 5 years ago

No more paternalistic benefits.

Cutting benefits and calling it a feature. Amazing.

A lot of "work will set you free" vibes from this.

agd4• 5 years ago

They also set out how they've paid the value of these benefits to employees instead, and have started a profit sharing plan. Looks like a better deal to me?

Afforess2• 5 years ago

Cash value != Benefit value.

That you interpret the cash value as being identical shows you trust management over the employees, who this actually effects...

yaml-ops-guy4• 5 years ago

I don't know what Basecamp's books look like, I don't have the clairvoyance to know what they will look like in the future..

humor a speculative question for a moment: would the "better deal" have been to give employees the option of how they'd like to receive their fringe benefits versus a one-size-fits-all edict, so that those with less tolerance for the volatility of profit sharing can enjoy a bit of stability with such fringe benefits if profits decline?

Especially after, as another commenter mentioned: the tax implication of cash payout?

itsdrewmiller• 5 years ago

Paid out "this year" - pretty weaselly. Are they going to pay out the value next year too or just cut it from the budget?

swyx4• 5 years ago

cutting benefits and paying out the cash value of them so you can decide what to do with it. i understand the objections to the other points in the post, but why do you present half the story on this one?

lxgr• 5 years ago

paying out the cash value of them so you can decide what to do with it.

Doesn't this have tax implications? At least in my country, some types of benefits are income tax exempt.

sleepydog• 5 years ago

I wonder what the cash value is, since a large group can usually negotiate a better deal than an individual. Will employees get the amount the company spends per employee, or the amount it would take for them to get the benefit for themselves?

dahdum• 5 years ago

They've paid out the benefits for "this year". They could have, but did not, raise base compensation by the value of those benefits.

agd4• 5 years ago

Think we'll see a lot more companies coming out with statements like this.

Who wants their work slack to look like the worst parts of Twitter and Facebook? With employees cancelling each other and demanding they recognise various political points? Not me.

You can tell there have been a lot of difficult discussions with various employees behind the scenes. It's all a distraction.

Work should be about work.

sktrdie2• 5 years ago

So? We are humans. We get distracted by a whole bunch of things that happen to us daily because, well, we're emotional creatures. When you are somewhere most of the day you end up being distracted by many other things than "just work". If you cut the politics then something else will keep our primordial animal minds busy.

A place where you have to only "be about work" is impossible to achieve. Even sweatshops in Bangladesh have unions and places where they can talk politics.

I would say a healthier choice for them would've been to cut out the people that were bullshitting and causing toxic environment. For sure those exist and should be spotted if they cause negativity at work.

Funny thing is that doing this top-down, as they are doing, is literally "cancel culture".

rajin444• 5 years ago

If you cut the politics then something else will keep our primordial animal minds busy.

I think it's fairly easy to make the argument that our minds are especially tuned to tribalism. Not only that, but what comes out of discussions focused on political/social tribalism is especially toxic. It's one thing to have a little banter about football teams, it's another when people are convinced their lives are at stake.

PragmaticPulp2• 5 years ago

If you cut the politics then something else will keep our primordial animal minds busy.

Apples and oranges. Politics triggers people at an entirely different level, to the point that many can't let it go.

Basecamp's decisions may not make sense if you've only worked with level-headed coworkers who are capable of disagreeing with each other on politics and still maintaining respect for each other. However, once you've seen what happens to offices where people let their angry political debates from Facebook and Twitter spill over into the office, it makes a lot more sense.

Company chat shouldn't look like Twitter flamewars or Facebook rants. Some people can debate things and then check their feelings at the door when it's time to get back to work, but many can't.

aaronbrethorst4• 5 years ago

With employees cancelling each other

Can you explain what this means without using the word "cancel"?

agd4• 5 years ago

I'll assume this question was asked sincerely and in good faith.

By cancelling in this context I mean trying to ostrasize those they disagree with. Talking negatively about them, excluding them as much as possible from social and professional activities. Ignoring their advice and opinion at work. Being rude or negative when they do have to engage with them etc.

In short, acting without the respect and courtesy we would want colleagues to show each other.

mempko8• 5 years ago

Yet politics is one of the few places you can impact your workplace. Most companies in the US are authoritarian and it's in politics you can have some say. Democracy at Work is the next stage of work. The "shut up and work" kind of work is a dead end.

throwaway36992• 5 years ago

1. You start a 'democratic' company 2. You make a controversial decision or series of decisions 3. You lose 'voted out' 4. Turns out your controversial decision would've been [firing a few employees/getting acquired/insert unpopular thing here] to keep the company afloat, and everything goes belly up

It's the same reason unions only work in the biggest, most established companies. Everything slows to a crawl otherwise.

amrangaye• 5 years ago

I don’t want to make any assumptions about who you are, and this is not an attack on you, but “no politics” isn’t a neutral position - it’s a position to take when you’re OK with the status quo and want people to shut up and just go along, because you’re largely not affected by the things that they are. I speak from experience - in my country our autocratic ex president also had a “no political discussions except the ones I sanction / that benefit me”, and enforced it with brute force, torture, imprisonments, even murder. His rationale was that “there’s a lot of work left to move the country forward - so let’s put politics aside and work together”. This was nonsense, of course - HE still got to talk politics when he wanted, and used that fact to extend his rule. Yes the analogy isn’t perfect and it’s country vs company, but it’s the same underlying logic. The people who made these rules are not going to be affected by them in any way, beyond no longer having to see opinions they disagree with on Slack.

Yes you’re right no one wants their work slack to turn into the worst parts of fb and Twitter, but that’s not what we’re talking about here is it? We’re talking about employees being able to discuss current events and how they’re being affected by them, in a world where everything - even mask wearing - can be deemed political. This doesn’t have to happen on the main slack channels, but where’s the harm in letting employees still communicate in separate slack channels that are not mandatory to join and that employees can just ignore if they’re not interested?

They have every right to introduce any rules they want - it’s their company and I’m not contesting that. But this is not as simple as oh they’re just trying to make the work culture less toxic, good for them.

throwaway0xc3• 5 years ago

but “no politics” isn’t a neutral position

Yes it is, it absolutely is. You can be a big activist outside of work, no one is saying you can't be.

It's a position to take when you’re OK with the status quo and want people to shut up and just go along, because you’re largely not affected by the things that they are.

This boils down to the "you're with me, or you're against me" mentality. You can want work to be neutral but still not be happy with the way things are. These things are not mutually exclusive.

It's like saying "if you don't believe in gun rights, it's because you hate women and want them to be defenseless." Or "if you support Planned Parenthood, you support the genocide of minority babies."

Of course those are nonsense stances.

On top of that, maybe the "status quo" is better than what you're suggesting. The tens of millions of lives that perished under Communism would be happier with the "status quo" the way it was before... Alive.

I speak from experience - in my country our autocratic ex president also had a “no political discussions except the ones I sanction / that benefit me”, and enforced it with brute force, torture, imprisonments, even murder.

This is exactly what leftists are asking for though. The "no politics at work" literally means no left-wing or right-wing politics, just none at all.

This was nonsense, of course - HE still got to talk politics when he wanted, and used that fact to extend his rule. Yes the analogy isn’t perfect and it’s country vs company, but it’s the same underlying logic.

Straight out of the Marxist handbook.

But this is not as simple as oh they’re just trying to make the work culture less toxic, good for them.

I think they are, because what's considered the "status quo" is up for debate in 2021. Welcome to the post-fact world.

Politics, especially wokeism at work, has become exceedingly toxic, and counterproductive.

eddof13• 5 years ago

Coinbase and Basecamp are now certainly on my shortlist of companies that I would consider working for now, hoping for more like this

eclat2• 5 years ago

Has coinbase done this too?

Breza2• 5 years ago

I have a dumb question. How common are political chat rooms at companies? When I read books like Billion Dollar Loser, it sounds like lots of tech companies encourage employees to have semi-public discussions via Slack on company time about things completely unrelated to work. I work for a tech company and I can't imagine my employer doing that.

akdav• 5 years ago

Basically shutting up DHH on Twitter from the looks of it.

swyx4• 5 years ago

no, he's talking https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1386773744484552715

marbletiles6• 5 years ago

Must be such a relief for them that "project management, team communication, and email software" don’t touch at all on social or political issues, in any ways that their staff might want to discuss.

bobzimuta• 5 years ago

I don't get what you're saying. Is there some unique intersection between the software they develop and social/political issues?

marbletiles6• 5 years ago

They essentially build communications software –– social software. To try and say that you can do this without ever considering social issues is strange to me, and seems like at worst, it could damage their products.

For one thing, there is no shortage of examples of social products that have launched offerings without thinking how they could be abused (hello cross-Slack messaging) and had to recant quickly. But to go more deep: social software is about community, and communities bring political and social issues with them.

Should you have a gender field in your user form? What values should it have? Should you have vacation auto-responders? How will they operate? Do you have activity lights? With what timeout? Should you allow users to filter or block one another? What emoji do you offer? What biases do they exhibit? Will you refuse certain kinds of customer? Will you _protect_ certain kinds of customer despite public outcry? Or certain kinds of content?

How you approach these sorts of questions can touch on a wide range of social/political issues, and they appear to be saying "only David and Jason can discuss, decide or think about these things". Which seems ... limiting.

paxys7• 5 years ago

Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp?

People are going to say "obviously stuff like this is okay", but to me that's even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever they think is unacceptable political speech.

And if they do strictly enforce that employees must only ever communicate about work (and the weather or whatever), then that sounds like a very depressing and dystopian workplace.

Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a "major distraction"? And is the best response to this really to bow down to the loudest voices on either side and shut down conversation for the 99% who are just...normal?

tshaddox13• 5 years ago

In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp?
People are going to say "obviously stuff like this is okay", but to me that's even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever they think is unacceptable political speech.

From reading this announcement, it seems like they are going with the former. The article specifically mentions "every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large." Of course, it remains to be seen how exactly they apply this rule. The announcement doesn't mention how they will go about enforcing this prohibition, but to me it's very clear that the examples you mentioned obviously fall under this prohibition, as well as many other topics I would expect to be discussed at work, like vacation and holiday policies.

sktrdie2• 5 years ago

Yeah. More than questioning the ethical implications of their decision I was simply struct with a... damn that must be a boring place to work at.

temp89643• 5 years ago

Maybe they want to hire people like to work on the things the company do.

mikl• 5 years ago

Try reading the OP again. The headline is “No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account.”

They’re not saying you can’t chat with your colleagues about politics, they’re just saying it shouldn’t happen in the space everyone has to use for work.

williamsmj• 5 years ago

That's a recent edit: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1386810666221150210/

nemo44x6• 5 years ago

You can have these conversations but you can’t have them on company property. But if you want to create your own forum with other coworkers then go ahead.

So no more using the company Slack for this type of thing.

I think people are starting to see how some groups have been undermining and infiltrating every organization they can. It’s literally in their literature to do this. Replicate what they’ve accomplished in universities and journalism - it has spread to tech workplaces, non-profits, and elite private schools. The goal is to politicize everything and then seize power and then pillage for personal gain.

damagednoob• 5 years ago

All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp?

I think you're being needlessly hyperbolic but fear not, DHH has you covered:

If you're in doubt as to whether your choice of forum or topic for a discussion is appropriate, please ask before posting. But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...

meowsnow• 5 years ago

All of the communications on these channels are typically legally discoverable, so it makes sense you don't want to introduce potential vectors for political discrimination in an increasingly remote world.

There are plenty of non political topics to cover...Gardening, pets, clothing, home renovation, local music events and festivals, kids, etc. In all the teams I've been on, political topics never came up. It's okay to find friends outside of work and discuss politics with them; your social network doesn't have to center on the workplace.

threatofrain2• 5 years ago

What if you want to discuss gay spousal benefits? Or how medical insurance is going to work for gay couples?

wombatpm2• 5 years ago

Gardening: So are you a climate change wacko or a doomsday prepper wacko? Clothing: Do you know where I can get my leather chaps repaired? Home Renovation: I need to get a permit and inspection for my rec room renovation. They want confirmation that the beam can hold 400lbs in the sex-swing.

Any topic can be political if you are enough of a jerk.

quotemstr• 5 years ago

Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"?

If you're tendentious enough, you can make anything political. But if you start talking about the post-colonial geopolitical implications of your coworker's son's new chocolate chip cookie recipe, expect everyone to roll their eyes and walk away.

ljm4• 5 years ago

Add small talk, banter, and shooting the shit into that. And, maybe, becoming friends or at least more acquainted.

There's a whole breadth of interpersonal communication and humanity that exists outside of the realm of politics, society, and activism. It's self evident, otherwise what do you expect to achieve from talking politics and activism except to be able to talk even more about politics and activism?

SergeAx• 5 years ago

In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about custom keyboards, sail racing, gym routines and upside of hiring a personal trainer, travel, 3D-printing, I can go on forever. I believe it is fundamentally possible to have an interesting and relaxing conversation with coworkers and not to touch political topics.

exegete• 5 years ago

What you described is talking about personal interests and activities, and I agree that is the kind of stuff that is easy and fun to talk (and hear) about with others. I’m starting to think many people don’t have personal activities and interests and don’t know what to fill in small talk with other than what they saw on social media or the news.

NationalPark6• 5 years ago

You probably shouldn't bring up 3d printing - people might start talking about 3d printing gun parts, and that's of course political, and you _did_ start the conversation. Same problem with travel - as you know, many countries restrict travel because of the pandemic, and the very existence of the pandemic is a political issue among some people.

As you can see, it's a ridiculous policy that can only be enforced arbitrarily.

Also, sidenote: what happened to all the "free speech is bigger than the first amendment! It's an ideological hill worth dying on!" people? One mention of changing "master" to "main" and they're everywhere on hackernews, yet oddly quiet in this comment section.

katbyte5• 5 years ago

it's all fun and games until you slip and your co worker finds out your gay and their entire tone and demeanor changes and they treat you different but then when you go to your manager "no politics in the workplace". Or your black and find out your co-worker is a member of the KKK and is a well known racist, but no politics at work ok

PascLeRasc• 5 years ago

A friend of mine is a software engineer in a conservative industry, and their company brought out the same "no politics at work" last summer. Their benefits package has some language specifically referring to only extending health insurance coverage to hetero spouses, and only permitting time off for a new child if the employee gave birth to it, so nothing for adoptions, fathers, or surrogate births.

People have been trying to bring these issues up to HR but they get immediately shut down, "That's politics. Stop trying to force the company to pick a side. Please refer to section 7(a) revision 2 of your employee handbook".

anm8912• 5 years ago

Right, this is how it should be. If that is a deal breaker then find a different employer.

Work is not a forum to compete for your personal views. It is a forum to exchange your time for money or equity as per your contract.

If you feel it should be different, make sure you are holding enough equity to set the rules or as I mentioned, find a new job that agrees with you.

voidfunc2• 5 years ago

Perhaps they should have looked at the benefits package before taking the job?

david38• 5 years ago

I find it strange that even a hyper conservative company would prohibit time off for adoption.

I took one day off for the birth of my first daughter. I was in college. I couldn’t afford more time.

stephsmithio• 5 years ago

While I hear the, "But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion", it's kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, "But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy."

From my POV, they're taking a difficult stance to rid the workforce of the extreme forms of toxic distraction (which happens across the political spectrum and is pretty recognizable) and for the most part, doing exactly what you articulated: returning to reasonable adult conversations that 99% of people are capable of doing.

mattdeboard2• 5 years ago

I actually do not know what types of discourse they're referring to. Can you specify?

DiNovi4• 5 years ago

Do we "all know" what they're talking about? it sounds like they don't even know. What they want is not to have to deal with society while making products for society. This will lead to a employee base of purely wealthy white guys, which is clearly what they want

tshaddox13• 5 years ago

We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to

Do we? For any potential example I could think of, you’re telling anyone who is directly affected by or cares deeply about that example that their concern is not one of the political issues acceptable to discuss, but rather one of those types that we all know can’t be discussed.

smoe• 5 years ago

I don’t think it is a straw man. They say “remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society”, I can’t think of many things that are not remotely related to these or quickly can turn into them. So it does seem to be restricted to work and the smallest of small talk. Which is fine to me. Those kind of discussions pre-WFH I had during breaks and after work activities with co workers. So now it is just trough other channels than the main company communication one.

detaro9• 5 years ago

Part of the problem is that no, we do not know what they are referring to. Lots of murky lines, lots of people with bad experiences that what for them is essential is considered over lines, worry that it'll be used to silence internal discussion of things the company does, ... (and of course if you impose it on a company used to something different, it's potentially a massive culture shift)

The "you can take it to private channels" can play out either way I guess: it can be a completely valid replacement of using company channels, but it is an additional hurdle if you have no signals to go by who to talk to. And if you actually have a problem with work channels getting out of hand, I feel like it's a gamble to hope it works better in the dark.

If my employer told us we had to move the more social/less technical chat channels outside of company infrastructure, I'm not sure that'd be better overall. And sort of odd to go with each new hire "oh and btw there's this second chat without the bosses, come join".

paxys7• 5 years ago

If these topics are really that obvious to everyone then they should be written down (because it definitely isn't to me). On the contrary, they are pretty explicit about not allowing ANY discussion "remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society".

Now that I think about it, banning some kinds of political talk (discussing pay disparity, forming a union) is probably illegal.

chipgap982• 5 years ago

I honestly don't know what types of discussions they are referring to. I obviously know some of what is included, but I certainly don't know what the limits are.

tyingq2• 5 years ago

I don't feel like it's a strawman. I don't know the culture there, but what about:

- Talking about unions, or pay equity (Might be illegal to ban either)

- "Hey Jodie, my partner and I are marching in a Gay pride parade this weekend, wanna come?" (Is that political at Basecamp?)

- Some ex-military employees form an informal group to welcome and mentor new employees coming out of the military. (Is that political?)

- One of our new clients is a controversial group/business/etc, what should we do?

I could keep going for a while...it's difficult to avoid "politics".

wry_discontent2• 5 years ago

Do we all know? I don't. I have no idea. Is it cool for me to talk about housing markets? About markets in the abstract? About marijuana markets despite it being illegal where I live? About policies in other states that differ from mine, like marijuana policies?

There's no reasonable line, because unless you're stupid as can be, politics isn't some abstract thing that happens over there; it's a thing that happens everyday in your life.

I'm immensely disappointed in DHH for this take.

educaysean7• 5 years ago

We all know? Good thing you're the self-appointed representative for all of "us". Because I have absolutely no idea where to begin drawing that line.

Breza2• 5 years ago

Plus I doubt anybody will get in trouble for having a lunchtime video chat with a coworker and talking politics.

anm8912• 5 years ago

You are actively misinterpreting what they said.

a) They explicitly state that employees are allowed to actively discuss these things, just not in group chat.

b) They explicitly state that this isn't "some high consequences zero tolerance policy" and that the consequence for violating the rule will be that you are reminded of the rule.

It's sad that this is the top comment.

paxys7• 5 years ago

The "not in group chat" part was added later after the backlash. The original version of the post said employees can't talk about it, period.

And the severity of the punishment isn't what is being debated here, but the fact that there can be punishment at all.

snotrockets• 5 years ago

No, original post had don't discuss. They backtracked to "not on main", maybe after realizing this could be read as barring protected activities.

bradleyjg3• 5 years ago

Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a "major distraction"?

What do you do when you have someone that sits in a work slack channel all day fiercely debating politics? Counsel him, sure, but then ultimately you’ll need to fire him.

Inevitably people will wonder if he was fired because of the positions he took (which everyone is fully aware because he never shut up about them) rather than because he wasn’t doing any work. Modern HR best practices foreclose transparency (“we fired so-and-so because he committed just four lines of code in the last two months”).

What’s the best option here?

paxys7• 5 years ago

You just outlined the solution yourself. If someone isn't doing enough productive work then fire them for that. Whether they were talking about politics or anime doesn't really matter.

detaro9• 5 years ago

You can (publicly) tell people to stop getting into politics debates all the time without banning all mentions of things that touch politics.

sokoloff6• 5 years ago

The post specifically contains "People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can't happen where the work happens anymore."

That seems entirely reasonable to me.

StanislavPetrov3• 5 years ago

Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"?

I think there are two questions. How much work time is taken up by non-work related conversation, and how much does an employee's non-work related political advocacy disrupt their work and the work of other employees? The unfortunate truth is that many (especially younger people) believe it is not only their right, but their duty, to agitate for the political and social change they believe in, at all times, and, in many fields, this mentality isn't compatible with a functional (much less efficient) work environment.

yaml-ops-guy4• 5 years ago

So is the DEI officer currently on staff going to cease being a DEI officer and just 'stick to HR' stuff, if politics and topics adjacent are out the window?

tshaddox13• 5 years ago

DEI is mentioned in this announcement:

The responsibility for DEI work returns to Andrea, our head of People Ops.

The implication is that (prior to this announcement) they had one or more committees responsible for DEI.

yaml-ops-guy4• 5 years ago

Yes. I read that. And what I am flatly pondering is what that "responsibility" could possibly consist of, if the topics inherent to DEI are now not to be had at basecamp.

shados6• 5 years ago

This is a tricky one. On one hand, there's the obvious issues: almost everything you can talk about is societal or political. Talking about your lawn growing is societal because it means you can have a lawn and that gets into the housing crisis sooner or later. If people can't speak about politics, marginalized group will have difficulty bringing up tough issues that impact them in their day to day job.

On the other hand, I haven't seen a company where the various politics Slack channel didn't devolved to a couple of white guys in an eco chamber trashing anyone who isn't agreeing with their favorite issue of the day. And god forbid you're NOT part of that channel, because then you're the "one person who doesn't care" or some such. Some issues may be fairly one sided, at least at a high level (gender and race equality), others are much more nuanced (gentrification and housing, the school debt crisis) and the discussions are always bordering on needing HR involved to avoid people screaming at each other. Some are extremely subjective but just as heated in Slack (the whole working from home thing).

So how do you handle it? Let people talk about it but ban the slack channels? Ban it altogether? Have HR moderating the discussions? I honestly don't know. Right now it seems like the status quo of "let it happen and hope for the best" is the best of the bad options you have in front of you, but eventually something goes sour and you have to do something. Basecamp's approach is likely missing the mark, but I'd be curious what others are doing.

If your answer is "Nah, we have tons of political discussions at work and its all positives", you're probably not looking very hard.

aaronbrethorst4• 5 years ago

Grass lawns are also just flat-out bad.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/more-sustainable-and-beautiful-...

lovegoblin• 5 years ago

Which is a perfect example of how nothing is truly apolitical.

ljm4• 5 years ago

One place I worked at had a politics channel, designed to keep the chat out of the general spaces. Mainly because the team worked across the world and politics were US-centric first and UK-centric second, and nobody wanted a ping on one of the global chat channels only to get a link complaining about a sleazy American politician or the debate on Brexit as if none of the rest of the world (and the politics there) existed.

As it happened, we noticed the few people with even vaguely right-wing opinions or ideals were dogpiled by a much larger contingent of left-wing people. It was an ugly sight, and I wasn't happy with that at all. It eventually settled down and the diversity of opinion opened up enough for people to have a sensible chat, but those first few months were utterly fucking shameful. It was about then that I stopped identifying as left wing and decided that there isn't a side to pick unless you've made it who you are.

I still disagreed with most of the conservative viewpoints, but disagreement is fine. A bit of healthy back and forth, get another drink, and then change the topic.

therealdrag05• 5 years ago

Reminds me of this essay: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

brown9-23• 5 years ago

And god forbid you're NOT part of that channel, because then you're the "one person who doesn't care" or some such

is this a serious thing actually happening to anyone?

cyode• 5 years ago

+1 exactly what I was wondering. And if it is, what’s stopping a company from defining the culture as, “It’s ok if you want to talk about this at work, and it’s also ok if you don’t want to.”

PragmaticPulp2• 5 years ago

I worked at a company that had to institute a similar policy for more or less this reason: The people pushing certain political agendas wanted to force everyone else to pick a side on certain political issues.

When the conversations get to a point where even opting out is perceived as the "wrong answer", things get ugly.

markmark10• 5 years ago

Basecamp's post specifically called this out as a problem.

dmazin• 5 years ago

So like if I think not using master/slave is not only important morally, but also important for recruiting, is suggesting we remove it for business reasons a political discussion? Hmm.

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj• 5 years ago

Master/slave in the context of IT has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, black people, etc. So yes, it is political.

gregd2• 5 years ago

Actually there are legitimate arguments that master/slave in this context (IT) are precisely tied to slavery.

astrange7• 5 years ago

Master/slave in the context of IT has absolutely nothing to do with slavery

This can't possibly be true as stated. Even if it's a metaphor, it doesn't add anything over leader/follower or, say, playwright/actor.

Plus it sounds like a sex thing.

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

I'd say it's definitely political.

I don't believe it's not allowed to be discussion though, just not permitted on the official company basecamp account. Perhaps the implication is that listening to your politics should be optional for other people working at basecamp.

jakelazaroff10• 5 years ago

DHH, Basecamp’s co-founder and CTO, literally testified before Congress and wrote about it on the official company blog [1].

But it’s “distracting” when the rank and file talk politics in the office. Oooookay.

[1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/testimony-before-the-house-antitr...

ash• 5 years ago

They say antitrust discussions are okay.

Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products. This means topics like antitrust, privacy, employee surveillance. If you're in doubt as to whether something falls within those lines or not, please, again, reach out for guidance.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...

antidaily• 5 years ago

sam's pissed.

sleepyhead2• 5 years ago

Yup. Doesn't look like there is a way back. I wonder what this will mean for the JS-experience in Rails. Rails is so big it lives outside Basecamp, but Hotwire is so tied to the company.

Trasmatta• 5 years ago

Sam who?

sweepyjunior2• 5 years ago

Sam Stephenson, works at Basecamp, specifically on Hotwired at the moment I think

agos• 5 years ago

Possibly San Stephenson? Their Twitter is currently protected, so it’s hard to tell.

sweepyjunior2• 5 years ago

Did they say anything on their Twitter? It's protected now.

sleepyhead2• 5 years ago

Since it's protected I won't publish it but: yes.

klelatti3• 5 years ago

Jonas too:

https://twitter.com/jonasdowney/status/1386792772334768130

swyx4• 5 years ago

this was very relevant to me and something I didn't know - the employees found out at the same time as the outside world. Jason and DHH seem to not have bothered getting internal consensus first before going ahead with this thing. (confirmed with sam)

live feed of employee reactions https://twitter.com/i/lists/1202647

klelatti3• 5 years ago

"Employees are free to...speak out on whatever horrible injustices are being perpetrated on this group or that . But that's their business, not ours."

So BaseCamp as a company has no view on any horrible injustices as long as they don't hit their bottom line.

Really surprised that a firm that is supposed to be great at marketing seems to have taken no account of how a sizeable subset of their customers would react to this.

They also seem to have really upset some key members of their team.

Strange and on the face of it not an especially smart move.

mimikatz• 5 years ago

I don't care if the chip maker who runs this computer thinks Global warming is real or not. I don't care if my orange juice company has spoken out about human trafficking. I don't want those companies to take part in those things, but outside that companies should be in general apathetic soulless beings who only care about things that impact them and act in a legal and ethical matter to provide goods I want or don't want. It is in my mind strange that people want Red Solo cups to fight against the big lie of a stolen election. You realize when companies do this it isn't because they CARE, it is because they see the PR benefit vs cost (look at the NBA on Hong Kong vs BLM).

If people demand companies lie to them so they can feel moral about purchasing their products... That is just bizarre.

klelatti3• 5 years ago

Who mentioned lying? You pick out a few examples that you personally don't like - fair enough you're entitled to do that.

But Basecamp are saying that they will never have a view on anything in the environment in which they operate no matter how it affects their employees - as long as their profits are not affected - that is just bizarre and for many disappointing.

eplanit• 5 years ago

So refreshing. Yes, focus on the business (because it is, after all, a business).

The job people are hired for is not politics or activism. Also glad to see the weird new-age peer review crap and "soft" stuff eliminated, too. A lot of that is accumulated trendiness from the 90s onward.

I love the new policy and attitude, as its emphasis is more about the professional than the personality.

mempko8• 5 years ago

Software is a creative act. This kills creativity and will kill any company culture. Basecamp might as well become JIRA at this point.

markmark10• 5 years ago

Atlassian's market cap is almost $60B, Basecamp will be pretty happy if this small change leads to that sort of success.

mdoms3• 5 years ago

I worked at Atlassian and it's the exact opposite of the changes described here. The internal Slack (née Stride née Hipchat) was a cesspit of time-wasting political activism bullshit.

jessaustin• 5 years ago

...accumulated trendiness from the 90s onward.

If these have existed for 30 years they are scarcely "trendy".

villasv2• 5 years ago

This trendy thing called “progress”, freaking bandwagon mentality for _centuries_.

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

Issues that directly impact me and mine at my workplace are considered “political” by those of more conservative mindsets.

That’s the really ugly flip side of this, and I know it’s been said elsewhere but: conservative politics in the US make some people’s entire existence political, full stop.

So you do a lot more than just cut out “distracting” conversations this way. You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth.

You can’t disconnect this from the current US political situation. They’re joined at the hip.

nerdponx• 5 years ago

I think I agree with what you said about American conservatism; it's an interesting idea at least.

But what's an example of a political issue that would affect someone's work at Basecamp?

So you do a lot more than just cut out “distracting” conversations this way. You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth.

I can't think of many political topics that necessarily amount to uninviting someone from daily work conversation at a company like Basecamp.

djrobstep6• 5 years ago

But what's an example of a political issue that would affect someone's work at Basecamp?

Let's say I work at Basecamp and believe that workers should be entitled to seats on Basecamp's board, just as they are in all large companies in Germany. Should I be punished for raising this?

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

It wasn’t that long ago that even in tech, you couldn’t mention same-sex spouses without backlash. And that’s still the case today in other industries (particularly ones that don’t have a sizable internet culture influence like tech does).

So like to apply that specifically to a work context: that’s saying “no watercooler chat about what you and your spouses got up to over the weekend” because your spouse existing is a “political” concept. And by extension, that employee isn’t very much welcome.

You can extend that metaphor in other directions though: company PACs supporting anti-gay politicians, benefits that exclude LGBT employees, etc. Now that’s all “political” too.

(There are other areas too, I think - this particular identity-based angle on it is relevant to me personally so I can see these examples clearly. I feel confident there are others.)

chipgap982• 5 years ago

If you can't talk about the way your life is impacted by systemic racism or the way your healthcare is threatened due to your gender identity then you are being told you can't be yourself or talk about parts of your life at work. This is going to land much heavier on certain populations and therefore is giving preference to the people who benefit from the current economic and political structure.

markmark10• 5 years ago

But isn't the place to discuss those issues, if they are impacting you at your workplace, with your manager, HR or your union? Not to start a thread on the work discussion forum?

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

I don’t think so, for a variety of reasons. But one of them is that managers and HR reps are often keen to just make a problem “go away” - so coworkers agitating over that problem is often required for any substantial change.

Notably, the US tech workforce is almost entirely in unionized, as well - so that avenue isn’t available.

mwcampbell4• 5 years ago

You uninvited certain people entirely, and in doing so have taken a hell of a stance on that persons inherent worth.

I don't understand how banning discussions on politics in official company communication channels leads to that. On the contrary, doesn't such a policy create a safe space for the people you're talking about to work together with other people who have different views?

tclancy• 5 years ago

I think it’s because it’s really just putting your fingers in your ears, ignoring the fact you simply redefined the problem instead of solving it. The next step is, who gets to decide what is and is not “political”? The answer tends to be the last people you want.

tshaddox13• 5 years ago

Compare these two messages that might appear in a company’s casual chat channel:

“I’m getting married this weekend and I’m so excited!”

“I tried to get a marriage license today but the county clerk refused to give me one because we are a same-sex couple, which is really upsetting!”

Both statements involve the same event in a person’s life, and it’s an event that tends to be very important and is a very natural thing to share with coworkers. Only one of the statements happens to involve (and even take a stance on!) a political debate which was extremely prominent in US national politics 6 years ago and extremely divisive and highly-charged.

If a company has a policy like this, what should their response be to these two people? Should one, both, or neither message be allowed in the company’s casual chat channel?

jiofih2• 5 years ago

some people’s entire existence political, full stop
you uninvited certain people entirely

Can you elaborate on this? I What makes a person unable to work without bringing those political issues up?

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

Not unable to work; unwelcome at work.

I mentioned it elsewhere, but saying “my husband and I went to [insert benign weekend activity here]” is now a potentially political conversation because there are people in modern, 2021 workplaces who thing that being gay at all is a “political” issue.

So again - not that I can’t work, but I’m unwelcome at work. Even if the company would never enforce the policy that way: they could, and I have to worry about it. And not too long ago, companies did enforce it that way.

(Just to continue with one specific example, I don’t think the problem is contained only to this one example)

NationalPark6• 5 years ago

I think the GP comment is referring to LGBT people who are out, willingly or not, to their coworkers. Which bathroom a trans person uses, for example, is considered a political issue by some people.

But I also think that point can be generalized, to the boring but obvious conclusion that everything involving interaction between human beings is political, since those interactions occur within the context of a malleable political system. We could theoretically pass a constitutional amendment that makes being late for standup punishable by prison, couldn't we? Is it now political to be late for standup? You end up arguing over the degree to which something is political, which leads back to what everyone is complaining about: the enforcement of this policy cannot be anything but arbitrary.

Personally, I think that if the Basecamp folks want to ban a particular type of politics then they should grow a spine and say what they mean, instead of expecting everyone to read between the lines for them. If they did that then perhaps they could expect people to agree to disagree, but these guys clearly know what they want to say and the only reason they don't say it is because they know how bad it makes them look right now.

kiawe_fire6• 5 years ago

conservative politics in the UD make some people’s entire existence political, full stop

Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company, my entire existence isn’t just political, it’s apparently a moral imperative that I be reminded on a daily basis that people like myself not only shouldn’t have a voice, we shouldn’t be allowed to exist in society at all. Full stop.

It’s made quite clear that my only means of survival are to keep my mouth shut and present myself as entirely apolitical.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely, but you’re not ok with both sides being silenced, or at least “toned down”, for the sake of promoting fairness, inclusion, and productivity.

lupire5• 5 years ago

How are you defining "conservative"?

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely

But this isn’t what I’m saying: I’m saying that plainly anodyne workplace chitchat that anecdotally confirms that I am a gay man is coded as political speech by many people.

I don’t know if you misread me or not, but if you didn’t then it actually proves my point: you’re ascribing a political “side” to my speech when I’m just trying to say “gays are gonna get told to stop mentioning their husbands like we used to”. And that’s entirely my point: you’re coding my existence and participation in banal chitchat as political, and these policies make that much more dangerous for me.

yibg4• 5 years ago

Kinda depends on what you do and say as a conservative I guess. I agree that in liberal circles there is a bias against conservatives, but that's also because many conservative views are intolerant.

Expressing "I'm a conservative" should be fine, but saying "I think homosexuality is gross. Oh by the way I'm conservative" is not. Unfortunately, the "conservatives" are often associated with the latter.

I also think it's ok to be intolerant of intolerance, and not all views should be equally freely expressed. Taking a more extreme example (and definitely not saying OP or all conservatives are like this), but I'm ok with a klan member feeling his only means of survival at a work place is to keep his mouth shut about his beliefs.

honkycat• 5 years ago

Funny, I feel like there is a healthy conservative movement in the US and you are literally surrounded by conservatives all the time. In fact I think 74 million of them voted in the last election. So please explain how being a white male makes you some kind of victimized under-class.

pcthrowaway• 5 years ago

Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company,

What is a "straight white" liberal company? Are you saying you've asked all your coworkers their sexual orientation, or are you making assumptions based on heteronormativity. Dating people of the opposite gender doesn't necessarily make one straight.

As a not-entirely-straight man in tech, I have never discussed my degree of "straightness" at work, but I would be a bit taken aback by someone assuming this.

deanCommie8• 5 years ago

I don't know your lived experience. I'm going to try not to doubt it. Maybe your coworkers are toxic and you are trying to talk to them about why low taxes are good because they encourage innovation, and that government-run agencies are not as efficient as private enterprises, and they are screaming the Communist Manifesto back at you.

But in my experience, that's not the kinds of opinions that I see the modern discourse have no tolerance for. Happy to be hear some stories otherwise and have my own mind be opened about the kind of discrimination you're talking about.

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company, my entire existence isn’t just political, it’s apparently a moral imperative that I be reminded on a daily basis that people like myself not only shouldn’t have a voice, we shouldn’t be allowed to exist in society at all. Full stop.

As someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum from you, I want to say - I respect your opinions, I can see some of the arguments for them, I'm willing to listen, and I would have absolutely no problem working with you, employing you, or hanging out. I'm really sorry it's come to this, and it is definitely my side of the political spectrum that is more to blame.

I never really get chance to say that to anyone, so there it is FWIW.

faitswulff• 5 years ago

Your potential... embarrassment? at being outed as a conservative is nowhere near as threatening as being outed as a gay or trans person.

nautilus12• 5 years ago

"I love my family!" "That's good...hold up are you conservative?" "Yes" "Stop pushing your politics on us!"

This mindset is demonizing and insidious, full stop. It's simply unacceptable in a civil society

koonsolo12• 5 years ago

Discrimination in any form should not be accepted. But is this still a political topic? I thought we all already decided that.

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

I think a lot of people replying have the same mindset: “haven’t we already decided that discrimination is bad?”

I mean... I wish we all had, but evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Many people still tout discrimination as a legitimate political view.

spawarotti• 5 years ago

I think you jumped to conclusions here by assuming bad intent. Perhaps implicitly the new policy assumes it is obvious you can mention your husband and anybody giving you problems because of that is violating the policy.

I do think the policy should be explicit about it. It doesn't help to say "We forbid X" if one side's prominent tactic is to redefine X as they see fit. By analogy, it is not enough to say "We forbid discussions about religious beliefs". One also needs to say "Theory of evolution is accepted here as true".

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

I think you jumped to conclusions here by assuming bad intent.

No - just personal experience with similar policies at other places.

Specifically with regards to the gay/husband example I've been sticking to: I don't think they had bad intentions there.

But the problem isn't their intentions; it's what the policy enables. And I've seen what that kind of policy can enable, and it's not good.

I do think the policy should be explicit about it.

I agree - when you start to stray into silencing speech, you should be explicit about what is silenced and why. Part of the problem with the announcement is that the policy (as described) is extremely broad and overly vague.

slibhb3• 5 years ago

Your fundamental error is not recognizing the existence of the "tolerant bigot".

Most bigots are tolerant. Most people (in the US) who think homosexuality is a crime against God, a sin, wrong, or just gross are tolerant. They will keep their opinion to themselves and they can be friends, neighbors, coworkers with a gay person with no issues.

People are weird and complicated. It just isn't the case that someone who is against gay marriage is "against your right to exist". Tolerance is putting up with things you disapprove of not approving everything.

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

You're not really wrong, on any point. But you did make an interesting connection, that a lot of people are making: "Tolerance is [...] not approving everything."

It's honestly fascinating to me that this keeps coming up. I never asked for approval - the hypothetical I continually stick to is "this policy could allow someone to label me saying 'my husband and I ...' as 'political speech', and silence that aspect of my life." (And, specifically, that I have experienced this before myself and have seen it happen to others and that it's not all that uncommon).

But I'm not asking for approval - but you jumped there anyways. Why is that? To me, that reads as "asking for tolerance" is the same as "asking for approval," but that would contradict what you stated earlier.

There's a logical inconsistency there, and I don't know how you resolve it?

davidgerard2• 5 years ago

Are they trying to head off unionization?

drewbug0143• 5 years ago

That’s usually a nice side-effect. This is a bigger trend developing in tech, I think ... the exact contours of why various C-levels are pushing this now is yet to be seen (not every company policy change to this effect was announced on a blog post, it’s happening elsewhere too).

markmark10• 5 years ago

I honestly think people are reading too much into this. They straight out say that discussions were turning toxic. That presumably impacted the ability of teams to be productive in the jobs they were paid to do. That's the why.

pg_bot2• 5 years ago

Basecamp is known to have one of the most generous pay/benefits packages in the industry. Generous to the point where I would have no idea what a union would even bargain for. I would highly doubt that this was in response to any effort to unionize.

kyawzazaw• 5 years ago

for pay, i don't think so?

davidgerard2• 5 years ago

Looks like the answer is "yes": a full one-third of Basecamp employees wanted to join the Diversity/Equity/Inclusion council. DEI appears to be precisely the politics DHH and Jason don't want Basecamp to think about.

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Rahsfan/status/1387042197321633792

DiNovi4• 5 years ago

You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit

This is a very privileged stance. Stopping dialogue because it makes people queezy just means stopping change from taking hold at their company.

One of their 10x engineers is a nazi and got mad, I will bet $10 dollars

toiletfuneral• 5 years ago

A lot of these "keep all politics out of work" stances feel inherently reactionary and could passively ossify some pretty gnarly social issues.

I've been in software for 30 years, I can't imagine management attempting to formalize how racist & sexist it was back when I started. Pretending it's fixed now so we can all just move on is a pretty big yikes from me.

Sorry that it makes people uncomfortable or could get in the way of profits but even though I don't enjoy it either, thats what progress has to feel like.

spondyl2• 5 years ago

Does this mean that all workers and contractors will be treated the same, and given free range data access, regardless of the politics of their home country (ie China or Russia)?

This seems like one area that is usually unavoidable in tech companies.

izgzhen2• 5 years ago

What is banned is discussion of society and politics, not their existence.

spondyl2• 5 years ago

I'm making a silly, unfair comparison to be sure. It's just an interesting line of thought, not necessarily a credible one ;)

I can imagine that the first time such policies came up could have come from security or legal teams discussing foreign politics around the water cooler and thinking "We should perhaps have some policy in place, just in case".

Fundamentally, that's no different than say; implementing a D&I policy or climate actions in response to employees discussing news stories on Slack, in my mind anyway.

Just going off first principles, as us HNers love to do, I can imagine if you never had political discussion in the first place, policies such as "offsetting perceived risk of foreign governments" would never be bothered with until they're actually tangibly impacting you (ie literal foreign spies or whatever)

The whole thing is kinda moot anyway since I'm sure HR and legal teams will be discussing these things in some capacity unavoidable, just not in view of other employees.

Perhaps even more importantly, what defines "politics" is extremely vague in the first place.

alostpuppy• 5 years ago

I wish I could write like that guy.

mempko8• 5 years ago

The "no committees" takes away autonomy. The "no politics" takes away purpose. All you are left with is mastery. They just killed intrinsic motivation. See Daniel Pink.

ehershey• 5 years ago

You’ve got it exactly backwards. Committees take away autonomy by introducing external influence. Politics by definition is guiding policy, not acting with purpose within the confines of policy.

mempko8• 5 years ago

For any given decision you make, you either only affect yourself or you can affect others. Similarly there are people making decisions that could affect you. In the situation where a decision could affect you, wouldn't you want to participate in that decision? That's what democracy allows you to do.

committees increase your autonomy because you can participate in decision making that could affect you.

obviously if it ONLY affects you and nobody else, then a committee should not be involved.

The alternative is someone unilaterally making decisions for many people, and where I'm from, that's called authoritarianism.

ashtonkem3• 5 years ago

Taking away wellness benefits seems unbelievably petty and foolish. These are relatively cheap compared to payroll, but are fantastic for morale. Taking them away on top everything else feels like he’s just willfully poking his own employees in the eye with a stick for no good reason.

Also, posting this publicly feels like a very, very bad idea.

rangoon6264• 5 years ago

Providing gym memberships is kind of problematic, if not outright insensitive. Body positivity is a thing and self-love can be expressed in more ways than just this one.

ashtonkem3• 5 years ago

Problematic how?

notwhereyouare• 5 years ago

You don’t have to use the gym membership though

SirSourdough• 5 years ago

I don’t think that promoting exercise as a component of healthy living makes a statement on body image. People who exercise have all types of bodies, all of which are acceptable.

It is paternalistic to “force” people to go to the gym to receive this compensation for their work. But there’s also plenty of research showing positive benefits of exercise on overall well-being for it to make sense for businesses to incentivize it from a worker performance perspective without body image entering into the discussion.

gamesbrainiac• 5 years ago

He said that he would be providing them with the cash equivalent. I don't see the problem here.

ashtonkem3• 5 years ago

I missed that, my mistake.

AndrewUnmuted• 5 years ago

I take it you weren't moved by what he said to address this?

By providing funds for certain things, we're getting too deep into nudging people's personal, individual choices.

Reimbursing gym membership is not a wellness benefit. It's a cheap way to attract a certain kind of employee, who will more eagerly fulfill the cult-like startup culture that companies like WeWork were trying to foster.

I live on a farm. I don't need a gym membership, my everyday life is my gym membership. What you're doing with such a "wellness benefit" is attracting young, up-starter city-dwelling kids who are willing to be punished by the typical startup working hours.

I feel very fortunate to work for a wonderful company that does not engage in any of these

paternalistic

practices.

taytus• 5 years ago

They are making changes to the document: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1386810666221150210

tonymet• 5 years ago

expect to see more of these policies. Otherwise you'll have separate cohorts of politically active companies and productive companies

drusepth6• 5 years ago

I wasn't expecting to like these changes after seeing a ton of tweets from rubyists I respect criticizing them, but after reading them... I love them all.

Companies becoming vocal political entities over the past few years has been mind-blowing and I'm glad to see companies starting to reel it back and get back to, well, being companies. They make products; they don't need to have opinions on unrelated things.

IMO people (even the people in charge of companies) can (and should) have political opinions! _Companies_ shouldn't.

You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target.

This line speaks to me a lot. I find 99% of political conversations at work are just pontification and/or signaling; I don't want to waste precious time at work chatting into echo chambers (or starting fights!) -- especially in a context where my opinion (or my coworkers' opinions) literally _do not matter_.

Seems like they handled the paternalistic benefits well also by just providing direct compensation instead. I've felt left out of benefits at companies in the past because I didn't want to use a gym, or buy certain things, etc. It's kind of the same vibe as smoke breaks at some jobs -- you're missing out if you're not a smoker. This seems more inclusive for everyone, and I really appreciate companies recognizing their place in a worker's life: they sign your checks for what you do during work hours.

All in all, these seem like really great changes in theory. With all corporate policies though, we'll see how they're implemented in practice.

detaro9• 5 years ago

IMO people (even the people in charge of companies) can (and should) have political opinions! _Companies_ shouldn't.

I'm not sure how this meshes with this post? Basecamps founder has been politically active in a role representing the company, by talking to congress about big techs market power (i.e. Hey's fight with Apple). That part is not what they are banning here.

drusepth6• 5 years ago

Part of this post's change is that Basecamp (as a company) is pulling back on publicizing political stances that aren't directly related to their business.

From the follow-up post @ https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...:

Next, Basecamp, as a company, is no longer going to weigh-in publicly on societal political affairs, outside those that directly connect to the business. Again, everyone can individually weigh-in as much or as little as they want, but we're done with posts that present a Basecamp stance on such issues.
Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products. This means topics like antitrust, privacy, employee surveillance. If you're in doubt as to whether something falls within those lines or not, please, again, reach out for guidance.

The founders obviously have strong political opinions on a lot of topics and I think it's great that they're going to express more of them personally instead of expressing them through Basecamp (company).

lupire5• 5 years ago

Those sent political opinions, those are naked self-interest opinions. They overlap, but the distinction is critical.

Hamuko2• 5 years ago

Companies becoming vocal political entities over the past few years has been mind-blowing

Are we pretending that all that corporate lobbying and political donations that have been going on for years and years was non-political?

therealdrag05• 5 years ago

There’s a difference between economic politics to be lobbied for and cultural politics to signal/argue about.

chii6• 5 years ago

if the lobbying relates to the business/bottom line of the company, then it's "non-political".

busterarm2• 5 years ago

I loved everything about what I read here.

I'm not surprised at the backlash as most of the Ruby community in the west has been extremely political.

busterarm2• 5 years ago

#ruby-lang is famous for K-lining people who say "guys", for example.

eclat2• 5 years ago

Really? That’s a shame.

astrange7• 5 years ago

Seems like they handled the paternalistic benefits well also by just providing direct compensation instead.

This one's odd to me, because I thought the point of non-cash benefits was that it was much cheaper than giving out cash because the employer has more bargaining power than you.

omegote• 5 years ago

Totally. Not sure about the US, but at least in Spain that kind of benefits (private health insurance, restaurant tickets, etc) tend to be a lot cheaper for the employer often just for being a company, but usually for the large quantities they work with.

hardwaresofton2• 5 years ago

Well it depends -- it's fairly simple math equation. The more paternalistic benefits you have, the more they cost, and the more people take advantage of more than one of them the more you risk hitting the value requivalent to the 3-5% promotion you have given that employee over 2 years.

Just my opinion, but if you were happy to take a 90k job because you live somewhere with a low cost of living for relatively less strenuous engineering work (let's be honest, Basecamp isn't pushing the boundaries of what can be done on the technical side, more on the product side), you're probably fine with waving off the extra 10k or whatever by thinking to yourself they'll pay for schooling if you ever do that (you probably won't).

Also, important to note that their 10% thing is performance linked ("profit sharing") -- so it pays for itself. If sales at the company grow 10% so they increase your pay 10% (and that isn't even necessarily what it is, they didn't clarify what the 10% is), the incentives are aligned and the company makes an outsize gain compared to each individual employee. It's a win-win-win, but most of the wins are on the side of the company, as usual. Compounding effects are much stronger than 10% yearly gain -- and what's even crazier is that you have to keep moving the company forward to keep getting the 10% -- essentially if you keep doing that, it's exponential improvement for the company, and each new person that comes in has to get on the hamster wheel. It's brilliant (which is why it's so common).

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

Not at all. They probably just got tired of people complaining that providing benefit X that could only be used by some slice of the workforce was therefore unjust. Which is absolutely ridiculous. But here we are.

drusepth6• 5 years ago

At an individual level, that's often true.

An employer might, for example, negotiate a gym membership or online classes for their employees at 70% of the normal price. If you take advantage of those benefits, you're basically getting a 30% discount on something you'd otherwise pay full price for.

To continue the example, however, if less than 70% of your workforce uses that benefit, the company is now typically paying more in total than the individuals would be paying to just buy that thing on their own. (Obviously, this depends on how your perks are negotiated, but even then you also have overheads in paying someone to acquire/negotiate/maintain these kinds of nontangible benefits.)

Not to mention it falls into the Gift Card problem of dictating what those employees get to spend their money on, instead of giving them the freedom to spend it as they wish, which devalues the per-dollar benefit every time there's a perk that goes unused. (Food for thought: second-hand $100 gift cards often sell for $50-75 cash online.)

I don't have any inside numbers on what % of people take full advantage of all of their company benefits, but I'd venture a guess that there's not as much cost-savings as it seems at first glance.

zwily2• 5 years ago

Basecamp isn’t a huge company. The bargaining power probably wasn’t that significant.

lupire5• 5 years ago

Dropping group-rate benefits is a sort of a pay cut, but only if employees were using the benefit enough. You'd have to do the math to see how it shakes out.

nonameiguess• 5 years ago

In-kind benefits aren't taxed as income, so benefit both employer and employee in that sense, but they're also more likely than cash to never be used and thus become a waste for both parties.

Note in this case they're giving the cash value of the benefits for one year only, so presumably this will save them money in the long run unless they end up having to permaboost salaries, but that is doubtful. Market rate's the market rate and I don't think many people seriously make a decision based on whether one employer offers discounted gym memberships or not.

xpe8• 5 years ago

Calling benefits "paternalistic" is both loaded language and inaccurate:

paternalistic : relating to or characterized by the restriction of the freedom and responsibilities of subordinates or dependents in their supposed interest

What restriction do these benefits impose?

Let's just call them benefits.

mradzikowski• 5 years ago

I understand the motives (at least the official ones) behind those changes, and I agree with most of the points there. I would say that to some extend, joining social/political discussions by companies becomes marketing.

My biggest issue is that companies do not live in a politics-free bubble. The bigger the company the more it cares and tries to influence the politics, either publicly or not, because politics influences the business.

But business influences politics too. And I think this is a reason that employees want the companies to take a stand. A company employing 10k people can make a bigger impact than those 10k people themselves, so people want to leverage this.

Theoretically, it should be a bad thing, in democracy, we want every vote to count equally. But in sad reality, individual people choose politicians, but after that, the politics is shaped by powerful. 10k people are not powerful, the company they work for - may be.

lovetocode• 5 years ago

I love Ruby but I don't share a lot of common ground with Twitter hungry rubyists.

paxys7• 5 years ago

"Staying out of politics" is a bold move from a company that just launched a blogging platform.

theshadowknows• 5 years ago

Hard for me to take it seriously when providing a gym stipend is “paternalistic” but not trusting your employees to discuss certain topics is supposed to be smart business.

starik362• 5 years ago

I am totally on board with this. I get extra subsidy for health insurance at work if I walk 7000 steps a day - $750 per year.

I was already walking over 10k steps daily for years. But what if you have bad knees or live in a dangerous neighborhood or simply don't like walking?

That to me is paternalistic behavior. If you want subsidize my health insurance, just do it. But I don't need my employer to be my mommy, no matter the intentions.

xref• 5 years ago

But what if you have bad knees or live in a dangerous neighborhood or simply don't like walking?

Then your health insurance billings will likely be higher, and you’ll be more expensive to insure, which pushes up the company group rate. Measures like getting employees to exercise more fall under the umbrella of “preventative care”

gls2ro• 5 years ago

I don't know if it is good or not to have gym benefits so I cannot comment if removing it is a good or bad decision.

With regards to "But what if you have bad knees or live in a dangerous neighborhood or simply don't like walking?"

This is very simple to fix: thing about this in terms of equity not equality. Do not eliminate a benefit but think how can include more people by changing the metric.

If someone has bad knees or don't like walking but still want to participate in this subsidy then the fix is not to eliminate the subsidy for everyone, but to have different metrics for people to opt in.

yerwhat010107• 5 years ago

I get extra subsidy for health insurance at work if I walk 7000 steps a day - $750 per year.

Really? How does this work? Your company tracks how many steps you take?

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

But what if you have bad knees or live in a dangerous neighborhood or simply don't like walking?

Don't walk 7000 steps and don't get $750?

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 5 years ago

I think what is important to recognize is that a company saying that some discussions are off limits is not commenting on the value of the discussions. It is saying that they do not want to be a battle ground in the cultural war.

In the Middle Ages, there was the concept of the Truce of God. That meant on certain feast days or on Sundays, you were not allowed to fight. It didn't mean that your fight wasn't legitimate. Maybe Lord Ronald over there killed your family and stole your castle and you had a legitimate reason to fight him. But, it did mean that when you were in Mass on Christmas, you did not pull out your sword and start fighting Lord Ronald, even though you both might be in the same cathedral.

In the same way, we are in the midst of a cultural war. And there are very legitimate issues and deep hurts. However, that does not mean that warfare has to take place in every venue. There should be some venues where cultural warfare is banned. Kind of like the equivalent of the old Medieval Truce of God.

chipotle_coyote• 5 years ago

There's a great blog entry I just read about this, "On Politics At Work". I think the author effectively hits on a real problem with a lot of these discussions.

https://json.blog/2021/04/26/on-politics-at.html

To some folks, "politics at work" means "endless battle royale political debates among coworkers in a Slack all day long; why wouldn't you be against that?

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt and assuming they're trying to stave off the former. But it's not that easy to do that without also affecting the latter, because if you ask questions that boil down to is our company discriminating, even unintentionally and do our LGBT and minority employees feel as safe and valued as our straight cis white employees, someone will be super upset that you're "bringing politics into the workplace." (I guarantee someone reading this is thinking "ugh, 'cis' is a slur, why you gotta be so political," and, bang: somebody has just made recognizing the existence of trans people into something inherently political, and now we get to argue over whether that somebody is me or the cis-is-a-slur guy.)

Here's a thought: if your goal is to try to keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work, then don't say "don't be political." Say "keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work."

gregd2• 5 years ago

The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible until and unless they center marginalized voices and give them positions of power at Basecamp. Otherwise this decision is cowardice wrapped in some arbitrary policies.

mwcampbell4• 5 years ago

The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them.

To me that's just sensible leadership. To keep the company productive, you have to let the leaders make decisions while the subordinates focus on doing the work.

Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible

But maybe the only way to solve the problem of polarization is for all of us to give each other the benefit of the doubt more than we might be comfortable doing.

jschulenklopper• 5 years ago

Well, Basecamp is their company, isn’t it? If they don’t have the right to make those changes... who has?

rpdillon• 5 years ago

In a follow-up on DHH's blog[0], he says:

Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products. This means topics like antitrust, privacy, employee surveillance. If you're in doubt as to whether something falls within those lines or not, please, again, reach out for guidance.

I would read this to mean that political issues that are tied to business decisions (like pay equality and recruiting practices) are in-bounds for discussion at work.

[0] https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-s-new-etiquette-regarding...

bo1024• 5 years ago

Very interesting - the Basecamp statement addresses both discussions about politics broadly, and discussions about internal company policies related to diversity, ethics, and inclusion. In fact, it changes the power structures around those to make them more top-down. It seems a bit disingenuous to lump these changes in with the first kind.

StanislavPetrov3• 5 years ago

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

These are questions for people at work whose job description involves hiring, payroll, and the corporate charter. These aren't collective questions to be debated and answered by employees whose jobs are completely unrelated. If, for example, you are hired to be a programmer, then your job is to program - that's all. Its not up to you to decide what the company's mission should be, or, "whose problems we are trying to solve". While a programmer is debating these philosophical and political questions with other programmers, they aren't doing the job they were hired to do - program. Certainly if the ownership of a company decides that they want to hire people to not only program, but also opine on their political and moral beliefs, that is their right. But is also their right to decide they don't want to pay people they hire to opine and debate during work hours on issues that have no direct relevance to the job they were hired to do. Just as it is your right to refuse to accept a job at a company that hires you to exclusively do a job without bringing your political baggage into the workplace.

angry_octet12• 5 years ago

There will now be signs in the break room:

NO GOSSIP

NO POLITICS

YOU WERE NOT HIRED TO HAVE OPINIONS OF YOU OWN

JUST CODE

astrange7• 5 years ago

"Are we hiring diverse people I want to work with" is a question relevant to everyone, because it falls under workplace conditions, which is something you're not allowed to prevent employees from discussing.

Also, we're talking about tech workers who get stock compensation, right? They literally own (part of) the company.

lindy20215• 5 years ago

We already have a solution for the issues you described, HR.

Defiling work communication channels with political opinions only serves to distract, deride, and divide.

villasv2• 5 years ago

We already have a solution for the issues you described, HR.

Surely you must be joking.

kalleboo• 5 years ago

HR is on your employer's side and in most companies gets nothing done aside from avoiding liability.

As a European person, I'd say keep the political discussion to your union. Unions also often have much better political affiliation and can make things happen on a broader scale.

reducesuffering3• 5 years ago

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

Because there is only one accepted answer. Anyone who drifts from that into the opposing side will be reprimanded, scarred for their remaining tenure at the company, and/or fired. Good luck objecting to your company having N number of positions literally reserved for only certain races. Source: company X recruiter.

angry_octet12• 5 years ago

No doubt you would be offended and angry if your CEO instituted a policy of workplace secularism, that extended to no career progression if you were a churchgoer. Or if important people commented on how smelly you were, and everyone laughed about Mr Stinker and your funny food. Banks wouldn't lend you money for a house in the nice part of town, because they all knew you were a snollygoster and they didn't want your kind at the local school.

You'd probably be angry at their prejudices. But I'm sure you'd understand, because groupthink is bad.

cgag• 5 years ago

What the hell is water?

People can't even see politics anymore they're so steeped in it.

temp89643• 5 years ago

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

I don't understand why would any company want employees to openly discuss "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" This is a terrible question for any specific company to answer. Calculate the average wage of male and female employees? Very likely it won't be equal. And run regression to control different variables (experiences, skills)? If this is not inviting unnecessary internal fight, I can't think of anything else. Not any sane person would want to do this its own company.

"are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" Same spirit, if you don't believe it, nobody can prove it.

"what problems does our company sole, and for whom?" not sure what's the point here.

wmf3• 5 years ago

I don't understand why would any company want to openly discuss...

That's the point; companies don't want to discuss it but oppressed employees do.

ngc248• 5 years ago

Even salary between men at the same level may not be same. there are too many variables.

kristofferR• 5 years ago

Sounds just as dumb as when Hacker News banned "politics" for a period, and people were discouraged from posting EFF blog posts and the like, because "politics" is an impressively vague word.

Politics is life, it doesn't have to be toxic.

tmp538394722• 5 years ago

Eh, feels pretty different.

HN’s ban was intentionally a short term reboot/cooldown, during a particularly hot time - not a broad and indefinite ban.

Society is hard. I think it’s good to experiment, and when you’re explicit about a timeline, it seems like the stakes are reasonable.

SpicyLemonZest2• 5 years ago

In my experience, when people say "I don't want politics at work", what they mean is they don't want what you'd call toxic politics. For example, I consider my workplace generally apolitical despite our large and active DEI committees, because they consistently frame their work in positive terms: lots of "here's how we can make people happier and more successful!", occasional "suchandsuch was a tragedy and we hope to work towards a better future", nothing in the vein of "X group is bad" or "Y politician must be defeated".

yosito4• 5 years ago

Starting a comment with "sounds dumb" isn't a great way to make your case that "it doesn't have to be toxic".

tylermenezes• 5 years ago

I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt

I'm not, especially as the post then moves straight into dissolving the DEI committee and moving its responsibilities to HR.

sidlls6• 5 years ago

That is a net benefit to the company and employees. The DEI committees I've seen are filled with some of the most viciously aggressive people. It's simply not possible to have a conversation with them about these issues that doesn't start with "you're right, I'll shut up and listen to you tell us how we should fix things."

11235813215• 5 years ago

They moved it back to an employee who cares and was doing a good job without being a toxic coworker. That seems good for future hires as well as current employees of all kinds.

wmf3• 5 years ago

Say "keep company Slack channels civil and focused on work."

You have been canceled for "tone policing".

jimkleiber• 5 years ago

I appreciate this. I think often we will frame things in a negating way, which doesn't end up working that well. I find "don't be political" as telling me to not touch something...I end up wanting to touch it. Whereas "keep channels civil and focused on work" tells me what the goal is and helps me recenter on that when I stray. Because I think the goal is not to be "not political" but really to "be civil and focused" as you mentioned.

Thank you!

TearsInTheRain2• 5 years ago

My company has mandated that 40% of our recruiting contacts for engineers are women. We have spent weeks talking about bias in our interview process and despite having no metrics showing bias is a problem we have made changes to combat it (i.e. no video on the call) that have led to worse experiences for our candidates. Suffice to say we have had a lot of trouble hiring engineers.

Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

Imho companies that try to tackle the woke political issues are going to end up worse off and never make those few employees that keep bringing them up happy.

tomlockwood4• 5 years ago

Are you saying you'd prefer to talk about politics, at work? Because it sounds like you consider this to be a political issue, that you'd like addressed.

SNosTrAnDbLe2• 5 years ago

How many woman engineers are in your team as a percent of total?

pradn• 5 years ago

The more general problem is the same words can be interpreted differently by different people. On the internet, given a large enough audience, every interpretation with every possible emphasis will be brought out.

eweise3• 5 years ago

Seems pretty clear to me that they mean general political discussions and not those that relate to the company. Imagine being on a team where there are differing opinions on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and it keeps getting brought up in threads? You think that team is going to gel?

LightG• 5 years ago

Hmm, my jury is out on all of this, but you raise a good point. I was in exactly that position where I had to work closely with someone who I knew had strongly differing opinions to me on Israel/Palestine.

I'm not sure if it was an unspoken agreement or just lucky, but we made damned sure not to bring it up at work ... and we managed to work effectively together.

My gut here is that the founders just botched the delivery of these policies, but I'll keep thinking about it.

caffeine3• 5 years ago

Your latter example is also expressly undesirable in the workplace. You are hired to build product, not obsess over the diversity of the employee base, unless you are hired in a DEI role specifically.

Asking the questions you are asking is political. Discussing people’s membership in groups like cis or Native American or whatever else IS an unwanted political act. Those group identities are fundamentally political tools. Treating people as anything other than individuals is a political act.

Discrimination happens against an individual. If you see discrimination happen against an individual, and you privately and discretely address it with the appropriate people (could be with those directly involved, with superiors, with HR, whatever seems appropriate in that situation), that is not a political act, it is a moral act of taking care of a coworker.

krainboltgreene• 5 years ago

You are hired to build product, not obsess over the diversity of the employee base, unless you are hired in a DEI role specifically.

pssst those two things are connected

Discrimination happens against an individual.

This is just weirdly wrong?

If you see discrimination happen against an individual, and you privately and discreetly address it with the appropriate people (could be with those directly involved, with superiors, with HR, whatever seems appropriate in that situation), that is not a political act

This is an incredibly political act.

danielscrubs• 5 years ago

“Treating people as anything other than individuals is a political act.” - this is such a great line and very easy to forget.

zorpner2• 5 years ago

Discussing people’s membership in groups like cis or Native American or whatever else IS an unwanted political act.

Unwanted by whom?

madeofpalk6• 5 years ago

You are hired to build product

When making a product, have you ever given your feedback on it? Or are you just a "warm chair" churning out code that was instructed to you?

tomjen34• 5 years ago

Treating people as anything other than individuals is a political act.

Absolutely, but so is treating them as individuals.

koonsolo12• 5 years ago

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

I really detest such things, and the "problem" is easily solved by "I don't give a fuck".

I don't give a fuck if you are male or female, or anything in between, if you are, black, white, yellow or whatever, neither do I care about your sexual preferences, or your religion. And neither should anyone else care.

I do care about how well you can do your job, how well you fit in our team, etc.

I helped hire most of our team members, and by luck they are very diverse in all of the above mentions traits. But who should care?

This is 2021, nobody should give a fuck about those things anymore. If you do, in either direction, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

ck425• 5 years ago

That's a position of privilege. Only people who aren't discriminated against can afford to take a position of indifference.

ryanbrunner2• 5 years ago

"How well you fit in our team", especially when applied to things like interviewing and hiring, often has a strong correlation with "are you not a member of an underrepresented group", often unintentionally.

Kye2• 5 years ago

I've seen too many people say stuff like this then go on to blatantly discriminate to think people who say it are self-aware enough about unconscious biases to not discriminate. There is stuff everyone picks up along the way to becoming an adult that they didn't have any say in picking up, but it's there anyway, and it's not going to go away if you pretend like it's not there.

Personally, there's a part of me deep down that does want to discriminate, and I have to kick that part's ass any time it rears its ugly head. Even being part of several marginalized identities is no guard against it.

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

Whilst this is reasonable and well-intentioned, the unfortunate truth is that wokeness is used as tactic for gaining power. And in a company power struggles are bad for the company.

YetAnotherNick• 5 years ago

But to others, "politics at work" means "are we paying women and men the same for doing the same job?" and "are our recruiting practices leading to a non-diverse workforce and missing out on great people who should work here?" and "what problems does our company sole, and for whom?". These are really important questions. Why wouldn't you want to bring them up at work?

Because if you have data(like Google had) that women are paid more for same skillset or try to argue that the company is focusing too much on diversity at the expense of talent, do you think it doesn't count as politics. Honest question, I don't have strong opinion in these topics, but I know people who have.

madeofpalk6• 5 years ago

To some folks, "politics at work" means "endless battle royale political debates among coworkers in a Slack all day long; why wouldn't you be against that?

This is just so alien to me. Maybe it's an American thing but I've never been in a workplace where this has been a thing. I've never seen these "quickly turning unpleasant" conversations in the workplace.

'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt and assuming they're trying to stave off the former. But it's not that easy to do that without also affecting the latter

In 2021, I think we've moved past the point of benefit of the doubt. DHH and Jason Fried and (supposed) to be smart switched on people who recognise their own privilege. They (should) know that you cannot ban the former without impacting the latter and genuinely hurting people.

jsiepkes• 5 years ago

I find the boundaries which the "On Politics At Work" blog sets to be very narrow and centered around what that the author thinks is the most pressing issue. The author names 4 points out of which 3 are about equality on the workfloor and one vague one about "what problems do we solve?".

I find it odd that no one even speaks about questions like: "Is this company a net-win for society? Are we perhaps making the world a worse place?". For example is it not important if you work at Uber to discuss how far "disrupting" is allowed to go? When does "disrupting" become eroding workclass rights? Shouldn't you discuss if it is ethical to get a large group of people to work below minimum wage? Or in case of Apple if it is acceptable that the supply chain becomes time and again "contaminated" with suppliers who use forced labour?

jasonpbecker2• 5 years ago

For what it's worth, this was hastily written as I was thinking about what was happening at Basecamp. I would agree that it's very important to ask the questions you're asking-- that's why I added the final bullet. It wasn't the set of issues that were top of mind for me in the context of what was happening at BC, but I think they are critical, political questions that companies should ask.

jononomo3• 5 years ago

Forget banning politics at work -- that's obviously such a good idea that it should be considered an assumption. This post from chipotle_coyote makes a good argument for banning Slack at work.

vfulco2• 5 years ago

Well put...

jasonpbecker2• 5 years ago

I'm glad you enjoyed my post.

spopejoy2• 5 years ago

I suspect that this represents a practical consolidation of power by leadership in tech. While you can't come out and say "hey, we want to corner the market in white male nerds", you can say things like "Mean people suck, why can't we all just get along, no politics on slack, we're good right?"

Think of it as the tech-liberal backlash. Tech has been wrestling with representation and diversity for a while now, indeed more visibly than many industries, and some limited progress has been made, maybe not as much in raw numbers than in qualitative stuff like less-hostile workplaces. But it is far from the _worst_ industry for diversity.

Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to hire engineers, and the dominant class isn't going away anytime soon. If you can figure out how to signal to them that "hey, Basecamp/Coinbase/MyCo is a place you can just be you and chat about games and gear without worrisome questions about equal pay" then you potentially achieve a short-term recruiting advantage.

I say "short-term" because of course, it's short-sighted. But worse, it's cynical, as it wants to halt the minimal progress that has been made behind a smokescreen of civility and fairness. And given that it's being openly pushed by white male leadership, it's fully reactionary, and white-male supremacist. It's a harsh term to use but we haven't really uncovered a more accurate one.

bitexploder• 5 years ago

Not everything is racially motivated. They are just making business decisions in a small business. The whole reason they are doing it is probably ridiculous and cynical takes like this.

garrison• 5 years ago

I'm giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt

It's not clear that they deserve the benefit of the doubt, if we are to believe Casey Newton's article, "What really happened at BaseCamp":

Employees say the founders’ memos unfairly depicted their workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself.
“At least in my experience, it has always been centered on what is happening at Basecamp,” said one employee — who, like most of those I spoke with today, requested anonymity so as to freely discuss internal deliberations. “What is being done at Basecamp? What is being said at Basecamp? And how it is affecting individuals? It has never been big political discussions, like ‘the postal service should be disbanded,’ or ‘I don’t like Amy Klobuchar.’
Interviews with a half-dozen Basecamp employees over the past day paint a portrait of a company where workers sought to advance Basecamp’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by having sensitive discussions about the company’s own failures. After months of fraught conversations, Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson moved to shut those conversations down.

https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...

EDIT: formatting

louiskottmann• 5 years ago

I disagree. Discussions about diversity and equality are absolutely political debate. It's even boringly trending I must say.

It's barely a 30seconds discussion between founders, not a company-wide debate. You follow it up with a yearly report on actual diversity vs real world distribution. That is, if you're big enough a company to be compared to it.

For example: if you have zero women in tech, there is a problem, and you have people to remove from recruiting roles. If you're close-ish to the median of your recruiting pool, you're fine. What need do you have for ceaseless internal discussions about it?

rexreed3• 5 years ago

How does the 10% profit share work?

Do they take 10% of profits and divide them equally among all employees? Contractors? Full time? Part time? Interns?

Does someone know how the profit share works?

ativzzz• 5 years ago

Typically you can either give everyone the same percent or say you set aside 10% of your profit and divvy it up proportional to people's salaries

rexreed3• 5 years ago

Yes but how is it being done in this case?

adolph• 5 years ago

People close to [Steve Jobs] over the years say he sees himself as a "progressive industrialist" who eschews moral gestures and views succeeding in the marketplace with innovative products as his central mission in life.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/in-the-politics...

vmception2• 5 years ago

I was a fan when Coinbase did this, I am a fan when Basecamp did this, I don't want or expect companies to "use their platform" just because they have one. If that's the premise of the company, go for it, if not then don't.

I am not a white cis male, as some might assume.

nightski• 5 years ago

This is why I have been self employed for over a decade and there is no going back. I have no interest in dealing with any of this. I just want to work on solving problems.

Gatsky• 5 years ago

It seems quite shocking to claim that an important sociopolitical issue is not important everywhere and at every moment.

madeforthispost2• 5 years ago

Had to make a throwaway because I was nervous to discuss opinions even remotely related to politics with my personal account, but wanted to share regardless.

This is an interesting move and I really don't think we are getting the whole story on what caused such a drastic change. It's interesting because, for the most part, I think it is safe to assume that most basecamp employees are liberal leaning, including the founders. My first thought was, why not just deal with these specific problem employees individually? Well, surely they must have tried. I can't imagine going public with such a drastic change if they didn't first at least try to correct the behavior of misbehaving employees. What's misbehaving? I would classify that as slinging personal insults/threats across the room. Would you fire these employees if they didn't stop this behavior? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like something basecamp would do. In fact, it might make it _worse_ for them from a PR perspective if they did this, even if the employees were completely out of line for what is appropriate workplace conversation.

So not sure. In this situation, I would give them the benefit of the doubt(other than on the poor communication). I've never worked at a place where politics was discussed heavily in either work chat or in person (outside of friends talking with friends, which IMO, is perfectly acceptable), but I've seen some conversations (such as the leaked Github chat) that are just plain toxic and I wouldn't feel comfortable rebuttaling extreme views without fear of retribution. I personally don't think that people should have to deal with that in a work environment, but just my 2c. I guess it's just where do you draw the line, and internally, they must have hit that point.

madeforthispost2• 5 years ago

I guess, I have more to say. This is such an interesting choice from so many perspectives. Thinking about it more, I think the blanket banning of all political discussion is kind of a silly notion. Now, as many others have already pointed out in this thread, employees may be wondering what's okay to discuss at all. But like they said in the post (and as others have seen from internal leaked chats), political conversations and opinions can get out of hand and become extremely toxic. Fast. It's a bit surprising how they handled this and how they possibly figured it could go over well. Especially considering their apparent already open political discussion friendly environment. Like I said before, I've never been involved in a company that has active public political discussions. To me, this does actually seem like breeding grounds for toxic coworker relations. However, as I already stated, it seems like this was already part of their internal culture. I think the right decision would just be to ban toxic arguments (and also define what a toxic argument is), and settling on a "agree to disagree" type of policy. Idk. Tough one.

natemo• 5 years ago

I actually suspect this statement blindsided most of the company. It seems the way DHH and Jason operate is to lead with big philosophies and work backwards to the practical implications. This is not just evident in their company practices, but how they develop software.

I also suspect things weren't necessarily toxic within Basecamp. Given their recent book title "It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work" and activity on Twitter, maybe they just see the writing on the wall and would prefer to nip this in the bud. "Political talk" (however we're defining it) has become all-consuming in the past year and perhaps they recognize it as a big distraction for anyone trying to get work done.

It is a privileged stance, but I'm sure there are many who appreciate the workplace being a venue where employees are encouraged to talk about other things.

tcbasche2• 5 years ago

Interesting; working at a company with a fairly high degree of psychological safety there is almost no heavy political fighting on Slack or other communication channels (except for the odd comment here or there). There is a high degree of focus on completing actual work and a level of professional behaviour that arguments like these would be very out of place. This is probably due to the size of the org; maybe with more people there would be higher levels of discussion overall and therefore more political chitchat; but I couldn't see it devolving into the bowels of Twitter...

I feel like a productive and healthy work culture basically eliminates the toxic discourse that can run rampant on Slack (I've seen it before; it led to the organisation banning Slack entirely!) and by having a safe workplace you wouldn't even need to mandate the removal of political or societal discussion.

To me this signals that there is a wider problem within the organisation and I'm not sure banning anything will change it.

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

Is your company remote or in-person? Because I think the problems that Basecamp might have been having (reading between the lines on twitter) is more likely to occur when people do not have to face each other on a daily basis.

tcbasche2• 5 years ago

It’s in-person but now a mix. That’s interesting because I think after a few months into the pandemic while being totally remote, I noticed an increase in confrontational behaviour... I wonder if that disconnect means it’s easier to forget you’re talking to a real person.

wnevets• 5 years ago

I certainly don't regret passing on an @hey.com email address anymore

kundi• 5 years ago

Changes at Basecamp published on Hey.com?

yerwhat010107• 5 years ago

You realise that Hey.com and Basecamp are the same company, right?

Ericson2314• 5 years ago

We introduced 360s, which required peers to provide feedback on peers. The problem is, peer feedback is often positive and reassuring, which is fun to read but not very useful.

The whole point of 360 reviews is to collectively confront management when doing so 1-1 would be too awkward and risky. This list of changes here is honestly pretty suspect, and seems like the owners are trying to recentralize their power.

wbc• 5 years ago

How has 360 reviews confronted management in your experience?

illustriousbear• 5 years ago

Hopefully the obnoxiously loud people will learn that no one wants to hear their crap at work (or anywhere else).

Your take on race? I don't care

Your take on gender? I also don't care

Your take on politics? Nope, don't care.

Insert cause here, still don't care

I go to work to do my job and get money. When some person starts carrying on about politics, I walk away.

If I wanted to engage with this stuff, I would on my own time. I shouldn't be dodging it at work.

beshrkayali• 5 years ago

We make project management, team communication, and email software. We are not a social impact company.

Someone should remind Github.

FemmeAndroid• 5 years ago

I found this Twitter thread by a Basecamp employee quite revealing about what did and did not happen in the lead up to this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/conormuirhead/status/138689059590...

NeutralCrane• 5 years ago

Without seeing the actual discussions themselves, I don't believe anyone's personal account of what happened. Every single person I've ever encountered that fit the bill of being politically obsessive/extreme seemed completely incapable of recognizing that fact, and always framed their conduct as completely unremarkable.

ketamine__• 5 years ago

archived link: https://archive.is/ekqAy

phendrenad2• 5 years ago

How is this any different from the rules at any company, say Google or Facebook. Can you start a public political debate on the Facebook company chat? This just sounds like 37signals is all grown up and has decided to take the inherent risks in political discussion in the workplace seriously.

ceras• 5 years ago

At least when I worked at Google a couple years ago, you could indeed start political discussions. Communications are very open at Google, and employee activism is quite visible. Political questions also come up in Q&A's, and some employees expect leadership to comment on societal issues/events. There has been some tightening in the past couple years, due to how loud it got in the last few years. But still quite open from my understanding.

One sample consequence was that open derision of Republicans was fairly common at Google, from both individual contributors and managers.

doublejay1999• 5 years ago

fried never stops talking

mytailorisrich2• 5 years ago

No more paternalistic benefits. For years we've offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmer's market share, and continuing education allowances

I have had a gripe with this sort of 'benefits' in previous companies. For example, paying for membership at the local gym. Reply to criticism tended to be "Oh well, use it or lose it".

Glad Basecamp saw the light on this. Just pay employees well or set up a benefits self-service like some companies do: Employees have a benefits budget that they can choose to assign to a list of individual benefits or to pocket in cash.

Obviously political discussions on company channels are always a bad idea.

randomsearch9• 5 years ago

What's wrong with a benefit that some employees cannot or choose not to use? I'm genuinely curious as to what your thinking is.

If my company provides free coffee and I don't drink coffee, is that also a problem, for instance?

hn8788• 5 years ago

If you don't use the benefit, it's effectively compensation that you don't get. I'd much rather a company just pay everyone an extra $30 a month than include a free gym membership that most people won't use. Stuff like coffee is used by enough people and is so cheap that it's a negligible cost, but I've had jobs that included gym memberships, personal financial counseling, unlimited re-imbursement for new certifications, etc. Making those "benefits" instead of just paying people more to spend how they want is employers trying to lock you into staying at the company.

mytailorisrich2• 5 years ago

There are two aspects. One is the purpose of offering benefits, the other is fairness and inclusivity.

Companies offer benefits because they want to make employees happy enough to stick around. It thus makes sense that all employees can take advantage and feel good about it.

For the same reason, benefits should be designed so that no employee feels excluded or that they fell they are told how they should live their lives.

At then end of the day, for the company it's only a matter of budget. So, to me, it makes sense to let each employee decide. This is the best way to address the two points above. That's exactly how it works at some companies (as hinted in my previous comment): The company tells you that you have a budget of x per year that you can allocate to a range of benefits with any cash left added to your cash pay. It's flexible, empowering, and employees tend to be quite happy about the system.

Or, as I mentioned, decide to pay well enough that you can tell employees that you don't offer additional benefits but compensate through the pay cheque, which they can obviously spend however they please.

Regarding your example, I would think that a good company would provide a range of free drinks, not just coffee or even one type of coffee (again the point it to make employees feel valued).

kgin• 5 years ago

100% in agreement that all "gift card" benefits are ridiculous.

There are some benefits where getting something as part of the organization benefits individual employees in a way that individual employee couldn't access on their own. For example health insurance rates and coverage are exponentially better as part of a group/corporate plan.

Giving someone a farmer's market allowance is not that. That's just prescriptive + locked money.

skyzadev• 5 years ago

Whether this change is good or bad is still to be seen, however, what is great is that the elephant in the room is finally being addressed - how are all these social issues REALLY affecting (tech) companies today? So far we have just accepted that it's all good and the way we have been dealing with it is fine and we are better off this way. But are we really?

Let's stop fighting and start figuring out how to properly handle deep social issues troubling the workplace today.

lukaszkups• 5 years ago

Most discussions here at HN are about the changes about "Politics".

Honestly, I don't really care what political views have my colleagues and I don't care to share my thoughts about this at my workplace. Talking about politics makes place a lot more toxic. Politics are toxic (because of the politicians, most of the time).

What really makes me smile is #2. Like really, most of the IT companies has their lucrative offers with TONS of benefits, e.g. that they're sponsoring you gym, fresh food etc.

I REALLY DON'T CARE - I'm an adult person, give me more money instead, let me decide by myself how I spend it.

bob33212• 5 years ago

I think a lot of people have trouble empathizing with owner's perspective.

What if a tree fell and knocked out power to your house. And the power company showed up to fix the power lines.

Would it be OK for the workers to take a break from their work and discuss gender equality if they found out that a female executive was just hired at their company and she was paid 8% less than the man she replaced. If so, how long could they discuss the issue? 10 minutes? 1 week? At what point would you ask them to fix the power and then discuss the gender equality issue after?

And if you do set a time limit does that mean that you don't care about gender equality?

darthrupert3• 5 years ago

Using your workplace to further political goals is such a white upper-middle class privilege.

wreath2• 5 years ago

The type of people who continue to discuss politics and say "X IS political" even when it clearly isn't, are the most toxic people to be around particularly in the workplace. I really wish my current workplace implements such rules. Since we hired more of the activist variety of techies, the company culture went to shit, and became like a parody of an SF startup.

danjac• 5 years ago

Setting aside arguments whether "Politics at work" is good or bad, this looks like an avoidable HR and PR disaster.

1. This was announced on social media, apparently catching Basecamp employees by surprise.

2. Several employees (going by Twitter accounts) are looking to lawyer up or even exit the company.

3. This appears to be result of some long-running debate over a list of "funny" customer names. If so, the over-reaction shows a lack of maturity among the founders.

While Basecamp-the-company might be just an "apolitical" project/email set of apps, the founders - particularly DHH - are leaders in the Rails community and they also publish a number of bestselling books on management. These actions - whether well-intentioned or not - are both a middle finger to many, many people in the Rails community, particularly those in marginalized groups, and make one question their wisdom as management thought-leaders. Rails and ShapeUp are priceless marketing that have given their company exposure and goodwill other small companies would have loved to have, and this whole event has single-handedly killed that goodwill. It may result in the loss of key employees a company their size cannot afford to lose.

Furthermore, it comes across as hypocritical given DHH's frequent public tirades against Apple, monopolies, government lobbying, and support of controversial figures such as Glenn Greenwald. One rule for me, another for thee?

This is the kind of PR/HR disaster even an average newbie junior manager in a mid-size company would have avoided, and shows the danger of getting high on your own supply.

NationalPark6• 5 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963708

There's been a lot of new information published on what lead to this change that isn't getting nearly as much discussion.

nickjj• 5 years ago

I'm super late to this thread and not that anyone cares what my opinion is, but why are so many folks against this new policy and are quitting Basecamp (as employees) over this?

From the looks of it you can still openly talk about whatever you want on your personal Twitter and other social media accounts.

It seems reasonable IMO to not talk country politics at work on a work account with other employees, especially on a medium where it's posted online, persisted and mixed in with other work related things as opposed to a private casual conversation in the parking lot or in a break room with no one else there.

I didn't look into this beyond Jason and DHH's blog posts but I saw Sam Stephenson quit Basecamp[0] a few hours ago over this change. He mentioned working there for 15 years and it's his life work. I don't get it, why would someone quit over this alone?

[0] https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/1388146129284603906

nemothekid• 5 years ago

"No politics at work" to me is a crazy rule. It will almost always boil down to "Don't discuss what makes management unhappy". There are no clear rules at all. For example - let's say I don't like how Amazon treats open source and I say we should use more AGPL. Is that political? I would think so - copyright law and the DMCA have been political issues for years for many creators. Obviously I would think most people on this forum wouldn't consider AGPL vs MIT "political" even though the very subject of the matter is how the government should respect copyright law. So for most, AGPL vs MIT would fly under the political radar. What is really being said is "don't discuss the issues pertaining to minorities" and how people don't view that as insane is worrisome. There was an uproar last year about how Zoom would shutdown your stream if you talked about uyghur muslims. Can you imagine how different the reaction to this news would be if DHH implemented a no politics rule after some employees were discussing uyghur muslims?

jmadsen• 5 years ago

I'm curious to see how many of these people who make SF level salaries while living in the Midwest stand up for their beliefs and refuse the 6 months severance

Not that most of them wouldn't be able to afford to

"Read all about how I refused Basecamp's buyout and spend a year snorkeling in Belize to make myself feel better"

pete_b• 5 years ago

I hope it works out for Basecamp. It is simply not ok to allow anxious or bitter people to be wearing each other out with political beliefs when they are being paid well to do a job. The twitter parade of martyr complexes is predictable but it is disappointing that so much talent has lost perspective on what professional conduct looks like in a workplace.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

I'm very much opposed to this. Society has everything to do with companies, and most of our current societal and environmental problems are a direct result of the way we do business. Externalising environmental and societal consequences for example. Wasting the environment by not taking pollution into account. Having drivers pee in bottles because it's not the company's problem if they can't meet their targets. Bullying of people who are different and HR turning a blind eye.

As an employee I want to make sure the company aligns with my ideas about equality and environmental protection. As a customer I don't want to do business with a company that doesn't. This is why it's important that a company takes a stand on these issues.

Also, it seems to me these things will not be applied equally. Will someone be told off for wearing a cross or a church group badge as much as someone wearing a gay rights ribbon?

Companies are the cause of many if not most of the world's problems and this feels like they're getting back to closing their eyes to them. I'm glad I don't work for Basecamp nor do business with them.

throw000away• 5 years ago

Saying that companies are the cause of most or all of the world’s problems with is just saying that people are the cause. Which they are. People are the problem. All have been, always will be. In all their institutions that they occupy or by themselves.

So what? It’s not a very useful observation. If we are going to live together in peace we have to accept each other and move on with life. We have to move past seeing others who have different views, culture, and beliefs as an existential threat. Continually pointing at people and calling them an existential threat is terrifying and wrong. Stop doing it.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

Companies are led by people, but in the neoliberal society we have elevated companies as an entity above people. Companies have more rights and less responsibilities than people, and more influence due to lobbying.

As well as being bound by certain rules (making profit for shareholders, due diligence) that binds them to certain decisions even if the people leading them want to do differently. It binds them to prioritise profit over any other concern.

So I do think companies are a different force than people yes. This is why I thought it was a great thing that companies were developing an identity and a conscience. Due to the power I have I want to target my buying decisions to companies which are aligned with my ideals.

This new direction takes them back to being just money makers which IMO is a bad thing. It's not all about money, considerations like environmental impact are more important right now, on the verge of a climate crisis. I want companies to have a stance on this so I can stimulate the ones that do well on this front. That in itself makes their social/environmental identity an influence on their profits.

Changes at Basecamp

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