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.
Are we pretending that all that corporate lobbying and political donations that have been going on for years and years was non-political?
I'm not surprised at the backlash as most of the Ruby community in the west has been extremely political.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
- 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".
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".
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.
Now that I think about it, banning some kinds of political talk (discussing pay disparity, forming a union) is probably illegal.
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.
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".
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.
I took one day off for the birth of my first daughter. I was in college. I couldn’t afford more time.
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.
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.
And the severity of the punishment isn't what is being debated here, but the fact that there can be punishment at all.
> 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.
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.
That seems entirely reasonable to me.
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.
Any topic can be political if you are enough of a jerk.
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Can you explain what this means without using the word "cancel"?
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.
It's the same reason unions only work in the biggest, most established companies. Everything slows to a crawl otherwise.
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."
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Absolutely, but so is treating them as individuals.
Unwanted by whom?
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.
Politics is life, it doesn't have to be toxic.
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.
I'm not, especially as the post then moves straight into dissolving the DEI committee and moving its responsibilities to HR.
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.
Thank you!
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Also, we're talking about tech workers who get stock compensation, right? They literally own (part of) the company.
NO GOSSIP
NO POLITICS
YOU WERE NOT HIRED TO HAVE OPINIONS OF YOU OWN
JUST CODE
You have been canceled for "tone policing".
> 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...
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
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.
People can't even see politics anymore they're so steeped in it.
You'd probably be angry at their prejudices. But I'm sure you'd understand, because groupthink is bad.
Defiling work communication channels with political opinions only serves to distract, deride, and divide.
Surely you must be joking.
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.
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.
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.
I am not a white cis male, as some might assume.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/more-sustainable-and-beautiful-...
is this a serious thing actually happening to anyone?
When the conversations get to a point where even opting out is perceived as the "wrong answer", things get ugly.
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.
I wonder what's the context here
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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?
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.
> you uninvited certain people entirely
Can you elaborate on this? I What makes a person unable to work without bringing those political issues up?
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".
This mindset is demonizing and insidious, full stop. It's simply unacceptable in a civil society
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.
https://mobile.twitter.com/conormuirhead/status/138689059590...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If my company provides free coffee and I don't drink coffee, is that also a problem, for instance?
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?
> 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.
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.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/in-the-politics...
Someone should remind Github.
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
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.
Let's stop fighting and start figuring out how to properly handle deep social issues troubling the workplace today.
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.
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.
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.
One sample consequence was that open derision of Republicans was fairly common at Google, from both individual contributors and managers.
Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Rahsfan/status/1387042197321633792
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"
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?
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.
There's been a lot of new information published on what lead to this change that isn't getting nearly as much discussion.
This seems like one area that is usually unavoidable in tech companies.
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.
If these have existed for 30 years they are scarcely "trendy".
live feed of employee reactions https://twitter.com/i/lists/1202647
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...
> 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...
Cutting benefits and calling it a feature. Amazing.
A lot of "work will set you free" vibes from this.
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
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.
Also, posting this publicly feels like a very, very bad idea.
> 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.
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.
If people demand companies lie to them so they can feel moral about purchasing their products... That is just bizarre.
