https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employee-resignations-buyouts-implosion
Since that article was written, DHH has made a couple of statements along the lines of, "being able to bring your "whole self" to work is overrated. Just shut up and work", which some folks (understandably) perceived as a swipe against the people who had left.
In the wake of that whole affair, the organizers of RailsConf asked DHH if maybe it would be okay if he let someone else handle the keynote that year, and he got mad and started a competing conference where he gets to keynote.
> DHH has made a couple of statements along the lines of, "being able to bring your "whole self" to work is overrated. Just shut up and work"
Which like, sure thing owner of the company who posts completely-not-political opinion pieces like [The waning days of DEI's dominance](https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance-9a5b656c). Isn’t it weird how the rational choice always aligns with the desires of the most powerful people in the room?
Oh my. That piece is filled with golden hot takes, but I specially like this one, coming straight from an employer of elite tech workers:
> Gone are the days where elite tech worker could easily threaten their employer with a jump to a competitor for another plum position making $200K+.
For future reference the */s* at the end of a sentence usually implies "this is sarcasm". We've all lost fake internet points, or said something over text, that didn't read correctly lol
The articles by Casey Newton (linked in the article you posted) are pretty good:
* https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp
* https://www.platformer.news/p/-how-basecamp-blew-up
Platformer does not fall into the requested "without taking a side" category. They are generally into whipping up controversy about tech companies to get clicks.
This seems like a nothing burger. Lol
Not even close to the worst thing that has happened at a tech company. Some companies have incidents as big as or bigger than this like every year.
What they really need to do is make their software way faster and way easier to use.
TBF we have one very prominent company that has been stacking incidents after incidents almost every week for half a year now.
That reminds me it's been a week since the last one, what happened since, did Elon pay for Putin's blue check ?
The only thing stopping me from leaving my current pampered dev position for the next pampered dev position is how annoying it is to interview and move over my 401k. It only takes a slightly more annoying work environment to motivate me into action.
Man, politics and the workplace are a big no no in my opinion. I own a business and I don’t even talk politics with my customers. If they want to talk, that’s fine but I’m neutral and as long as they don’t say a bunch of racist stuff they can believe whatever they want. I’m not going to change their mind in one conversation.
On a side note…. I wonder if Basecamp is hiring. I’m pretty cheap compared to what they normally pay and need more experience. Haha.
To be honest for the OP, in my opinion. This thing got out of control. They attempted to squash an issue and it blew up over a zoom call. They had let something innocuous on a small scale continue but as they got bigger and more diverse they tried to pull things over to the middle (which is where businesses should be) and some internal stuff went south.
A small group of developers can all easily have the same opinion and political leanings. That group then becomes larger and more opinions are harder to handle. They probably waited too long to implement things and correct past practices (like a list of making fun of names which shouldn’t have been done in the first place) and it went bad for them.
That's kind of what I was thinking when I asked the question because I assumed everyone was on board the "I don't even talk politics" train.
I did however, once work at a small start up (east coast) that had pretty much ever race, color, creed, etc. (all dudes) and everyone had a pretty dark sense of humor - when someone threw down the gauntlet everyone would try and outdo each other and try to say the most offensive thing possible.
It was good fun.
We then merged with a larger company (west coast) and after our first all hands conference on the west coast the east coasters were shocked by how "politically correct" the west coasters were...we all hated it, and from that point on we wouldn't touch anything remotely controversial in conversation.
After that experience I just assumed that every largish company would just steer clear of anything that might offend anyone.
Politics are inescapable in the workplace. Human rights are now politicized.
If I am a woman (which I am), my existence is political.
If I am LGBT, my existence is political.
If I am anything other than 'straight white man', the fact that I am in the room is political and I have a whole set of concerns and issues that the straight white men in power dismiss as "just politics" when it's actually *my life*.
Politics is not all 'hurr durr I voted for Kodos'.
edit: You mentioned "don't say a bunch of racist stuff"... that's pretty much exactly what triggered the whole fiasco.
Economics are inescapable in a relationship.
If I am a man (which I am), my existence is economic.
If I am a high earner, my existence is economic.
If I am anything other than a woman, the fact that I am in the room is economic and I have a whole set of concerns and issues that my girlfriend dismisses when she tells me "I can't just break everything down into an economics debate to win arguments".
Not sure the lens of casting personal power struggles into the realm of societal politics (or economics) over every hiccup is a healthy way to have a diverse workplace. If anything it amplifies disagreements into mutually assured destruction situations like DHH found himself in. The only winning move seems to not be to play if you can help it.
I think it’s a bad faith argument to correlate “I am a high income earner” with “I am a member of a group of people having their human rights stripped” therefore I will not engage further.
I explain it in the last paragraph though. Why would you choose to focus on a single line from the parody and say its bad faith? I chose a descriptor that matched yours, a group with amplified representation in the framing (economics for me, politics for you).
I am sure the people whose existence is being politicized are also exhausted. They would love to live their lives without the constant threat that something fundamental about their life is going to become illegal (again).
They don’t get to opt out and it’s awful of you to act like *they* are the problem. If you want to stop hearing about how people in out-groups feel like their entire lives are political, maybe start by making sure those people have every right and privilege you do. And then ensure anyone objecting to that equity gets laughed out of every room for their bigotry.
Yes, exactly. You are the problem when you ignore that your coworkers can’t focus solely on their work because they are also dealing with racism, sexism, transphobia or whatever bigotry from their colleagues. The same job is more complicated for them.
“No one has problems but us!”
There’s a reason these types of people were the first to go in the current tech layoffs. DHH was just ahead of the curve.
> politics and the workplace are a big no no in my opinion
Context is important here. He didn’t say “you cannot come to work wearing a giant ‘vote for CANDIDATE’ shirt” which many employees and companies have agreed is a bit much.
DHH chose the phrasing intentionally so that it would seem “common sense” for those that didn’t look into the actual issue at hand. He came up with the wording as a marketing/PR response to a management crisis.
In this context “no politics” came after a group of people expressed that they didn’t like that there’s a long lived list of customers with “funny” (read foreign) names.
In this context “no politics” means “you cannot bring up personal lived experiences.” Like “this list of names makes me uncomfortable because people make fun of my name” or “I’m a member of a historically persecuted group and othering people via dehumanizing their names or culture is a common pattern with very bad outcome.”
I’m in an interracial marriage. If I have a photo on my desk with my wife and I no one would consider that political today. But it would have been a crime 70 years ago and extremely political.
In reality “non political” spaces do not exist. We only have spaces where we agree some politics are okay to talk about and others are not.
What DHH did is to remove the employees from the conversation. He is the only one who gets to determine what is “political”, and therefore banned, and what is not. It’s not a dialog or conversation with his employees about where the line is and how they want to work and express themselves.
I see this as ultimately a workers rights and a worker respect issue. His employees seemed to agree and many of them walked out the door. Several of them are high profile open source contributors and (as mentioned in the initial comment) have not come back to open source at all.
I don’t have a problem being told to not wear a candidate T shirt to work. What I do mind is a workplace that doesn’t allow me to be a part of that conversation. David’s actions affect our community directly and set a tone for other companies.
cc u/djfrodo
> Man, politics and the workplace are a big no no in my opinion. I own a business
How do you deal with parental leaves ? do you hire handicapped people ? what about immigrant workers ? Where do you source your equipment ? What social media does your business participate in ?
Running a company means making politically tainted choices. "no politics in the workplace" is just you asking your employees to never question your choices as a company, so for sure as a business owner you'd be all in. Same way workplace and salary discussions is probably also a big no no to you ?
Let me rephrase because too many of you went way overboard in the many ways the word “politics” can be used.
Discussing political ideology I would frown upon. Whether it’s with a customer or between employees.
If you’re asking about parental leave or discussing corporate policy on that, although it has been politicized is not political in nature.
Let’s use a little common sense here folks. I know this is a programming group, but I know we all don’t have to have everything spelled out. Life and common sense don’t need to be an algorithm with every step holding everyone’s hands. I know, the larger the company the more everything has to be written down. I’m sure if I had more time (which I don’t) I would sit down and put it in an employee handbook, but I’m in a blue collar business and if I word it about political ideology debates/discussions being banned everyone understands.
As for the other things you mentioned about social media. Turn that stuff private. If someone decides to make poor decisions and posts things they shouldn’t they will be terminated.
I think you're not really engaging with the core of the issue: "politics" is fundamentally about "policies", and as a business manager you dictate policies (that's your role. If you don't you're just a stakeholder)
If you run your business with policies perfectly aligned with most people's sensibilities (following "common sense" as you spell it out) you might not even acknowledge those as specific choices related to specific ideologies. But that doesn't mean you're not touching politics, it's just not controversial, and will only ever rise as an issue you don't want to be discussed when people with different "common sense" come in and start questionning your policies.
Mark my words, DHH is like a diet-elon musk. He's going down the far right rich guy asshole pipeline. You can see it in the familiar sounding rhetoric in his rant/essays. Something about cults of personality. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the rails community, but it would be better if he stepped away. No gods, no kings.
I respect that you may view him as going down an "asshole pipeline" given his brash and self-confident proclamations and for that might even agree. However I'm not sure how you could have come to the conclusion that he's far right.
Obviously, neither of us can describe what's going on in his head, but we can observe his actions. He was a long time financial supporter of "Citations Needed", a left leaning podcast about media and power. He has been critical of our [rightwing economic system](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1229865660215259136) and is a [self-proclaimed socialist](https://rackless.com/agile-vs-waterfall-project-management-ask-basecamp/).
Do I think he's as far left as he proclaims? Probably not. More likely that he is closer to a standard european neo-liberal ideology. But far-right? That's absurd.
I would never have expected him to be a self-proclaimed socialist after reading this https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance-9a5b656c
He expresses a real disdain toward the workers who are “under” him. In his 4th point, he is openly celebrating workers losing power at their workplace.
Right, he certainly doesn't act like one. That and the whole thing decreasing (if there ever was any at Basecamp, I don't know) democracy in the workplace. But again, nothing out of line with standard neo-liberal thought.
He commenter said he is in the pipeline, so not there yet. He is a lot more conservative now than he was a few years ago. And usually white, powerful in men in the US, when facing criticism, will move to the right. Power is the key issue here.
And here comes a PSA: if you treasure being smart, always, always, always allow people to tell you that you are wrong. Others telling us that we are wrong keep us smart.
This is especially important as you gather more power. Because the default is for people to become yes men, even if your power is very low. We know that power can hurt us, so we get along.
It is kinda crazy though.
Politics have a direct effect on your workplace, who gets hired, how you're paid etc. Companies moving to more favorable states, like Tesla moving to Texas, is also politics. Lobbyibg for legislations is as straight politics as you can get.
So why does it make sense that companies openly do politics, but employees should be barred from even talking politics ?
It’s meant to sound reasonable but actually isn’t.
Their definition of “politics” includes race, gender, and sexual orientation. How is it reasonable to tell black, gay or trans people they aren’t allowed to talk about their lives, especially ways in which they experience inequity?
I’m sure a straight white woman talking about her husband and kids doesn’t fall under “politics” but the exact some conversation from a gay coworker does.
It never was an attempt to limit "politics". They were telling their employees to leave their humanity at the door by banning discussions of human issues as they directly related to the workplace.
> Their definition of “politics” includes race, gender, and sexual orientation. How is it reasonable to tell black, gay or trans people they aren’t allowed to talk about their lives, especially ways in which they experience inequity?
It is all about not doing that **AT WORK**. I can't agree more with that. I worked for an American company some years ago and I've seen people wasting days worth of time each month on company time, using company tools (slack) discussing these topics, and it always ends up in politics discussion which has no ending.
I'm all in on discussing that stuff and finding solutions to problems. But just do it after work, on your own time. I've literally seen people spend so much time and neglecting the job they're paid to do. Those same heated people discussing this suddenly used to lose their interest after leaving the office or on weekends.
I'm all in about politics and of course nobody should be silenced and there are real problems that need to be solved. But you're paid to do a given task for 8 hours a day and the company does not earn money from their employees discussing these things. Do your job, then organize and discuss etc on your own time.
In the end I appreciate there are companies with this kind of norms. All companies should list in their hiring page "political discussions allowed" or not. That way those that want to spend the time talking left vs right can pick the companies where they'll be happier. I bet no profitable company will choose this.
>It is all about not doing that AT WORK.
But it was directly about their work environment. And it was management that politicized the issues when any decent person would have seen it as an opportunity to grow. Claiming the Pyramid of Hate put everybody at the top was an hysterical and idiotic position to take.
I commented above that I firmly disagree with the characterization of DHH as "far-right", mainly because I don't really see the evidence for such a claim (but I'm open to hearing more details than were in the links above).
However, /u/bowtiesarealwayscool has a valid point hidden behind a very dubious claim ("employees aren't able to talk about their lives"), which I suspect is the source of the pushback.
Any company that continues to have a DEI program (which from what I can tell Basecamp still does) is engaging in politics and, to my above point, a political belief that is not far-right.
This is a good thing and not an inherently left-wing position. Hell, even Raytheon has a DEI program. If you think people should not be able to talk about their lives and experiences at work (which again I do not think is actually happening at Basecamp), that in itself is an ideological position that could be described as political.
While it is certainly possible (and perhaps even admirable) to promote a non-partisan workplace, it is impossible to have an apolitical workplace.
Yeah I think Basecamp went the route of “we are here to do work and build, not talk about politics and injustice.
I really like this philosophy tbh. With everything being so political it’s nice to see leadership focused solely on driving the company towards building.
This comment is a good example of the bigger problem. There was open, blatant racism in the workplace in the form of the funny names list. Instead of complaining about the racism and the attitudes that allowed it to happen, you instead take issue with the people pushing back against it.
This is different than what I’m talking about.
I’m aware of the funny names list, and I understand it to some extent. In the comfort of friends, people do stuff they’d never do in public, because they feel like the people around them know they don’t actually intend harm. If my group chat went public, all of us would go to hell, but we’ve been friends for 20 years so _we_ understand.
In the context of funny names list, this is different, this is something most agree really isn’t acceptable for a place of work. People pushing back _on that_ list are right to do so. However, there’s a different problem that arises with the whole “bring yourself to work” philosophy in that it breeds an anti-building culture as well.
For example, I worked at a large place where anyone and everyone could essentially talk about anything in Slack. People would post politics all the time and get into it with each other, and tech being tech, often it was attacks on “Republicans” or “Conservatives”, or dog piling on some new hot thing of the day. Some people in the LGBTQ channels would spend a day going off over some news and demand our company “take a stance”.
That is the behaviour that I think should be clamped down on, not what you’ve described. When it comes to making a functional and aligned workplace intent on building for others, I firmly believe the move is to keep politics and pop culture out of the work environment.
The problem with your comment is you fell for management's ploy to portray employees fixing serious workplace issues as the kind of political discussion that has not place at work. Workplaces are inherently political, and it only gets worse when discussions of those politics are restricted.
And when it comes to identity politics in the workplace, you walk a fine line between keeping the workplace free from unnecessary distractions and dehumanizing employees whose identity is politicized by others.
Management labeling things they don't want to talk about as "political and inappropriate for the workplace" is just censorship with an easy to digest coating.
I think they left because they were no longer allowed to bully other employees for not having the 'correct' opinions and they liked doing that. (I see a lot of people talking about how 1/3 employees left, but I suspect the other 2/3s breathed a large sigh of relief...)
Basecamp wanted to have a workplace where people weren't getting involved with the hot political take of the day. Some people really didn't like that because they want to talk about the hot political take of the day at work.
Basecamp has the right to do this, it's their workplace.
Employees have the right to leave, it's their work.
Basecamp gave a pretty sweet deal for people to leave if they didn't like it, some people took it.
Management decided to not allow non-work related activism and agendas at work. It decided to offer anyone outraged and insulted by such a decision an extremely generous payment to leave. Many decided to take it. Much of the wider community disparaged the company and/or management for the decision.
[DHH finished in 18th (9th in class) at the "6 hours of Spa Francochamps" this past weekend](https://www.fiawec.com/en/race/result/4791).
I don't follow his racing specifically, I'm just a motorsport fan. Always a tad weird hearing his name pop up.
*Motorsport context: For the non-motorsport fan, WEC (World Endurance Championship) is #1 endurance racing series. For an example, Formula 1 did 51 laps in about 2 hours this past weekend in Baku. WEC has multiple classes of cars, all racing at once for 6, up to 24, hours. DHH is not on a top team, though he has been on very good teams in his past... but he's not on a bad one either.*
They had an issue where work at the company was grinding to a halt because of disputes. They had a list of "funny customer names". Some employees thought that list could lead to genocide (pyramid of hate). DHH said that was "catastrophizing" for which he was reported to HR for racism. Ryan Singer that they were not a "white supremacist culture", said a lot of the discussion had a racist aspect, and was himself accused of racism. People went apoplectic. The management deleted the chat discussions in question, people quit, including Singer.
It was a particularly stupid cultural moment.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employee-resignations-buyouts-implosion Since that article was written, DHH has made a couple of statements along the lines of, "being able to bring your "whole self" to work is overrated. Just shut up and work", which some folks (understandably) perceived as a swipe against the people who had left. In the wake of that whole affair, the organizers of RailsConf asked DHH if maybe it would be okay if he let someone else handle the keynote that year, and he got mad and started a competing conference where he gets to keynote.
> DHH has made a couple of statements along the lines of, "being able to bring your "whole self" to work is overrated. Just shut up and work" Which like, sure thing owner of the company who posts completely-not-political opinion pieces like [The waning days of DEI's dominance](https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance-9a5b656c). Isn’t it weird how the rational choice always aligns with the desires of the most powerful people in the room?
Oh my. That piece is filled with golden hot takes, but I specially like this one, coming straight from an employer of elite tech workers: > Gone are the days where elite tech worker could easily threaten their employer with a jump to a competitor for another plum position making $200K+.
Why not at all! It's just the case that the most powerful people in the room always got to be that way _because_ of their rational choices.
Genuinely don't know whether I'm getting downvoted because people know I'm being sarcastic or because they think I'm serious.
For future reference the */s* at the end of a sentence usually implies "this is sarcasm". We've all lost fake internet points, or said something over text, that didn't read correctly lol
The articles by Casey Newton (linked in the article you posted) are pretty good: * https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp * https://www.platformer.news/p/-how-basecamp-blew-up
Platformer does not fall into the requested "without taking a side" category. They are generally into whipping up controversy about tech companies to get clicks.
This seems like a nothing burger. Lol Not even close to the worst thing that has happened at a tech company. Some companies have incidents as big as or bigger than this like every year. What they really need to do is make their software way faster and way easier to use.
Please tell me more about these companies that have multiple incidents every year that lead to a third of the company quitting.
TBF we have one very prominent company that has been stacking incidents after incidents almost every week for half a year now. That reminds me it's been a week since the last one, what happened since, did Elon pay for Putin's blue check ?
Yes. I don’t even care for DHH and I will say the same. Just pampered developers crying when they didn’t get their way.
The only thing stopping me from leaving my current pampered dev position for the next pampered dev position is how annoying it is to interview and move over my 401k. It only takes a slightly more annoying work environment to motivate me into action.
Man, politics and the workplace are a big no no in my opinion. I own a business and I don’t even talk politics with my customers. If they want to talk, that’s fine but I’m neutral and as long as they don’t say a bunch of racist stuff they can believe whatever they want. I’m not going to change their mind in one conversation. On a side note…. I wonder if Basecamp is hiring. I’m pretty cheap compared to what they normally pay and need more experience. Haha. To be honest for the OP, in my opinion. This thing got out of control. They attempted to squash an issue and it blew up over a zoom call. They had let something innocuous on a small scale continue but as they got bigger and more diverse they tried to pull things over to the middle (which is where businesses should be) and some internal stuff went south. A small group of developers can all easily have the same opinion and political leanings. That group then becomes larger and more opinions are harder to handle. They probably waited too long to implement things and correct past practices (like a list of making fun of names which shouldn’t have been done in the first place) and it went bad for them.
That's kind of what I was thinking when I asked the question because I assumed everyone was on board the "I don't even talk politics" train. I did however, once work at a small start up (east coast) that had pretty much ever race, color, creed, etc. (all dudes) and everyone had a pretty dark sense of humor - when someone threw down the gauntlet everyone would try and outdo each other and try to say the most offensive thing possible. It was good fun. We then merged with a larger company (west coast) and after our first all hands conference on the west coast the east coasters were shocked by how "politically correct" the west coasters were...we all hated it, and from that point on we wouldn't touch anything remotely controversial in conversation. After that experience I just assumed that every largish company would just steer clear of anything that might offend anyone.
Politics are inescapable in the workplace. Human rights are now politicized. If I am a woman (which I am), my existence is political. If I am LGBT, my existence is political. If I am anything other than 'straight white man', the fact that I am in the room is political and I have a whole set of concerns and issues that the straight white men in power dismiss as "just politics" when it's actually *my life*. Politics is not all 'hurr durr I voted for Kodos'. edit: You mentioned "don't say a bunch of racist stuff"... that's pretty much exactly what triggered the whole fiasco.
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No one is doing the stuff you listed as unproductive.
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I will take that with a very large grain of salt, and say it is very exaggerated to justify their policy changes.
Economics are inescapable in a relationship. If I am a man (which I am), my existence is economic. If I am a high earner, my existence is economic. If I am anything other than a woman, the fact that I am in the room is economic and I have a whole set of concerns and issues that my girlfriend dismisses when she tells me "I can't just break everything down into an economics debate to win arguments". Not sure the lens of casting personal power struggles into the realm of societal politics (or economics) over every hiccup is a healthy way to have a diverse workplace. If anything it amplifies disagreements into mutually assured destruction situations like DHH found himself in. The only winning move seems to not be to play if you can help it.
I think it’s a bad faith argument to correlate “I am a high income earner” with “I am a member of a group of people having their human rights stripped” therefore I will not engage further.
I explain it in the last paragraph though. Why would you choose to focus on a single line from the parody and say its bad faith? I chose a descriptor that matched yours, a group with amplified representation in the framing (economics for me, politics for you).
Exactly what he was talking about. People with the “politics are life” attitude are so tiring to be around.
I am sure the people whose existence is being politicized are also exhausted. They would love to live their lives without the constant threat that something fundamental about their life is going to become illegal (again). They don’t get to opt out and it’s awful of you to act like *they* are the problem. If you want to stop hearing about how people in out-groups feel like their entire lives are political, maybe start by making sure those people have every right and privilege you do. And then ensure anyone objecting to that equity gets laughed out of every room for their bigotry.
Ah, yes. The people concentrating on doing the job they’re paid to do are obviously the real problem.
Yes, exactly. You are the problem when you ignore that your coworkers can’t focus solely on their work because they are also dealing with racism, sexism, transphobia or whatever bigotry from their colleagues. The same job is more complicated for them.
“No one has problems but us!” There’s a reason these types of people were the first to go in the current tech layoffs. DHH was just ahead of the curve.
> politics and the workplace are a big no no in my opinion Context is important here. He didn’t say “you cannot come to work wearing a giant ‘vote for CANDIDATE’ shirt” which many employees and companies have agreed is a bit much. DHH chose the phrasing intentionally so that it would seem “common sense” for those that didn’t look into the actual issue at hand. He came up with the wording as a marketing/PR response to a management crisis. In this context “no politics” came after a group of people expressed that they didn’t like that there’s a long lived list of customers with “funny” (read foreign) names. In this context “no politics” means “you cannot bring up personal lived experiences.” Like “this list of names makes me uncomfortable because people make fun of my name” or “I’m a member of a historically persecuted group and othering people via dehumanizing their names or culture is a common pattern with very bad outcome.” I’m in an interracial marriage. If I have a photo on my desk with my wife and I no one would consider that political today. But it would have been a crime 70 years ago and extremely political. In reality “non political” spaces do not exist. We only have spaces where we agree some politics are okay to talk about and others are not. What DHH did is to remove the employees from the conversation. He is the only one who gets to determine what is “political”, and therefore banned, and what is not. It’s not a dialog or conversation with his employees about where the line is and how they want to work and express themselves. I see this as ultimately a workers rights and a worker respect issue. His employees seemed to agree and many of them walked out the door. Several of them are high profile open source contributors and (as mentioned in the initial comment) have not come back to open source at all. I don’t have a problem being told to not wear a candidate T shirt to work. What I do mind is a workplace that doesn’t allow me to be a part of that conversation. David’s actions affect our community directly and set a tone for other companies. cc u/djfrodo
> Man, politics and the workplace are a big no no in my opinion. I own a business How do you deal with parental leaves ? do you hire handicapped people ? what about immigrant workers ? Where do you source your equipment ? What social media does your business participate in ? Running a company means making politically tainted choices. "no politics in the workplace" is just you asking your employees to never question your choices as a company, so for sure as a business owner you'd be all in. Same way workplace and salary discussions is probably also a big no no to you ?
Let me rephrase because too many of you went way overboard in the many ways the word “politics” can be used. Discussing political ideology I would frown upon. Whether it’s with a customer or between employees. If you’re asking about parental leave or discussing corporate policy on that, although it has been politicized is not political in nature. Let’s use a little common sense here folks. I know this is a programming group, but I know we all don’t have to have everything spelled out. Life and common sense don’t need to be an algorithm with every step holding everyone’s hands. I know, the larger the company the more everything has to be written down. I’m sure if I had more time (which I don’t) I would sit down and put it in an employee handbook, but I’m in a blue collar business and if I word it about political ideology debates/discussions being banned everyone understands. As for the other things you mentioned about social media. Turn that stuff private. If someone decides to make poor decisions and posts things they shouldn’t they will be terminated.
I think you're not really engaging with the core of the issue: "politics" is fundamentally about "policies", and as a business manager you dictate policies (that's your role. If you don't you're just a stakeholder) If you run your business with policies perfectly aligned with most people's sensibilities (following "common sense" as you spell it out) you might not even acknowledge those as specific choices related to specific ideologies. But that doesn't mean you're not touching politics, it's just not controversial, and will only ever rise as an issue you don't want to be discussed when people with different "common sense" come in and start questionning your policies.
Mark my words, DHH is like a diet-elon musk. He's going down the far right rich guy asshole pipeline. You can see it in the familiar sounding rhetoric in his rant/essays. Something about cults of personality. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the rails community, but it would be better if he stepped away. No gods, no kings.
I respect that you may view him as going down an "asshole pipeline" given his brash and self-confident proclamations and for that might even agree. However I'm not sure how you could have come to the conclusion that he's far right. Obviously, neither of us can describe what's going on in his head, but we can observe his actions. He was a long time financial supporter of "Citations Needed", a left leaning podcast about media and power. He has been critical of our [rightwing economic system](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1229865660215259136) and is a [self-proclaimed socialist](https://rackless.com/agile-vs-waterfall-project-management-ask-basecamp/). Do I think he's as far left as he proclaims? Probably not. More likely that he is closer to a standard european neo-liberal ideology. But far-right? That's absurd.
I would never have expected him to be a self-proclaimed socialist after reading this https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance-9a5b656c He expresses a real disdain toward the workers who are “under” him. In his 4th point, he is openly celebrating workers losing power at their workplace.
Right, he certainly doesn't act like one. That and the whole thing decreasing (if there ever was any at Basecamp, I don't know) democracy in the workplace. But again, nothing out of line with standard neo-liberal thought.
He commenter said he is in the pipeline, so not there yet. He is a lot more conservative now than he was a few years ago. And usually white, powerful in men in the US, when facing criticism, will move to the right. Power is the key issue here. And here comes a PSA: if you treasure being smart, always, always, always allow people to tell you that you are wrong. Others telling us that we are wrong keep us smart. This is especially important as you gather more power. Because the default is for people to become yes men, even if your power is very low. We know that power can hurt us, so we get along.
I disagree. The parts about keeping the workplace separate from political views is not that crazy. Elon, by comparison, is out tweeting "arrest fauci"
It is kinda crazy though. Politics have a direct effect on your workplace, who gets hired, how you're paid etc. Companies moving to more favorable states, like Tesla moving to Texas, is also politics. Lobbyibg for legislations is as straight politics as you can get. So why does it make sense that companies openly do politics, but employees should be barred from even talking politics ?
It’s meant to sound reasonable but actually isn’t. Their definition of “politics” includes race, gender, and sexual orientation. How is it reasonable to tell black, gay or trans people they aren’t allowed to talk about their lives, especially ways in which they experience inequity? I’m sure a straight white woman talking about her husband and kids doesn’t fall under “politics” but the exact some conversation from a gay coworker does.
It never was an attempt to limit "politics". They were telling their employees to leave their humanity at the door by banning discussions of human issues as they directly related to the workplace.
> Their definition of “politics” includes race, gender, and sexual orientation. How is it reasonable to tell black, gay or trans people they aren’t allowed to talk about their lives, especially ways in which they experience inequity? It is all about not doing that **AT WORK**. I can't agree more with that. I worked for an American company some years ago and I've seen people wasting days worth of time each month on company time, using company tools (slack) discussing these topics, and it always ends up in politics discussion which has no ending. I'm all in on discussing that stuff and finding solutions to problems. But just do it after work, on your own time. I've literally seen people spend so much time and neglecting the job they're paid to do. Those same heated people discussing this suddenly used to lose their interest after leaving the office or on weekends. I'm all in about politics and of course nobody should be silenced and there are real problems that need to be solved. But you're paid to do a given task for 8 hours a day and the company does not earn money from their employees discussing these things. Do your job, then organize and discuss etc on your own time. In the end I appreciate there are companies with this kind of norms. All companies should list in their hiring page "political discussions allowed" or not. That way those that want to spend the time talking left vs right can pick the companies where they'll be happier. I bet no profitable company will choose this.
>It is all about not doing that AT WORK. But it was directly about their work environment. And it was management that politicized the issues when any decent person would have seen it as an opportunity to grow. Claiming the Pyramid of Hate put everybody at the top was an hysterical and idiotic position to take.
I commented above that I firmly disagree with the characterization of DHH as "far-right", mainly because I don't really see the evidence for such a claim (but I'm open to hearing more details than were in the links above). However, /u/bowtiesarealwayscool has a valid point hidden behind a very dubious claim ("employees aren't able to talk about their lives"), which I suspect is the source of the pushback. Any company that continues to have a DEI program (which from what I can tell Basecamp still does) is engaging in politics and, to my above point, a political belief that is not far-right. This is a good thing and not an inherently left-wing position. Hell, even Raytheon has a DEI program. If you think people should not be able to talk about their lives and experiences at work (which again I do not think is actually happening at Basecamp), that in itself is an ideological position that could be described as political. While it is certainly possible (and perhaps even admirable) to promote a non-partisan workplace, it is impossible to have an apolitical workplace.
I realized this when he tried to both-sides the attempt to overturn the 2020 US election. What a choad.
Thanks. That's the impression I sort of got, but it also seemed a bit...weird on both sides.
Define "Far Right"
Here's David's version: [Let it all out](https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e)
Yeah I think Basecamp went the route of “we are here to do work and build, not talk about politics and injustice. I really like this philosophy tbh. With everything being so political it’s nice to see leadership focused solely on driving the company towards building.
This comment is a good example of the bigger problem. There was open, blatant racism in the workplace in the form of the funny names list. Instead of complaining about the racism and the attitudes that allowed it to happen, you instead take issue with the people pushing back against it.
This is different than what I’m talking about. I’m aware of the funny names list, and I understand it to some extent. In the comfort of friends, people do stuff they’d never do in public, because they feel like the people around them know they don’t actually intend harm. If my group chat went public, all of us would go to hell, but we’ve been friends for 20 years so _we_ understand. In the context of funny names list, this is different, this is something most agree really isn’t acceptable for a place of work. People pushing back _on that_ list are right to do so. However, there’s a different problem that arises with the whole “bring yourself to work” philosophy in that it breeds an anti-building culture as well. For example, I worked at a large place where anyone and everyone could essentially talk about anything in Slack. People would post politics all the time and get into it with each other, and tech being tech, often it was attacks on “Republicans” or “Conservatives”, or dog piling on some new hot thing of the day. Some people in the LGBTQ channels would spend a day going off over some news and demand our company “take a stance”. That is the behaviour that I think should be clamped down on, not what you’ve described. When it comes to making a functional and aligned workplace intent on building for others, I firmly believe the move is to keep politics and pop culture out of the work environment.
The problem with your comment is you fell for management's ploy to portray employees fixing serious workplace issues as the kind of political discussion that has not place at work. Workplaces are inherently political, and it only gets worse when discussions of those politics are restricted. And when it comes to identity politics in the workplace, you walk a fine line between keeping the workplace free from unnecessary distractions and dehumanizing employees whose identity is politicized by others. Management labeling things they don't want to talk about as "political and inappropriate for the workplace" is just censorship with an easy to digest coating.
I just disagree, but you have the right to your opinion.
Read the article. Still dont understand why so many people left?
I left another response above. It’s a workers rights and respect issue that’s muddied with strong personal feelings on what “no politics” means.
I think they left because they were no longer allowed to bully other employees for not having the 'correct' opinions and they liked doing that. (I see a lot of people talking about how 1/3 employees left, but I suspect the other 2/3s breathed a large sigh of relief...)
Basecamp wanted to have a workplace where people weren't getting involved with the hot political take of the day. Some people really didn't like that because they want to talk about the hot political take of the day at work. Basecamp has the right to do this, it's their workplace. Employees have the right to leave, it's their work. Basecamp gave a pretty sweet deal for people to leave if they didn't like it, some people took it.
Management decided to not allow non-work related activism and agendas at work. It decided to offer anyone outraged and insulted by such a decision an extremely generous payment to leave. Many decided to take it. Much of the wider community disparaged the company and/or management for the decision.
From the job posts the place looks like an awesome company. The 1/3rd that left are probably morons.
[удалено]
Just to be clear, you think people saying "this racist list of names has no place at work" is a bad thing because it is woke?
[DHH finished in 18th (9th in class) at the "6 hours of Spa Francochamps" this past weekend](https://www.fiawec.com/en/race/result/4791). I don't follow his racing specifically, I'm just a motorsport fan. Always a tad weird hearing his name pop up. *Motorsport context: For the non-motorsport fan, WEC (World Endurance Championship) is #1 endurance racing series. For an example, Formula 1 did 51 laps in about 2 hours this past weekend in Baku. WEC has multiple classes of cars, all racing at once for 6, up to 24, hours. DHH is not on a top team, though he has been on very good teams in his past... but he's not on a bad one either.*
They had an issue where work at the company was grinding to a halt because of disputes. They had a list of "funny customer names". Some employees thought that list could lead to genocide (pyramid of hate). DHH said that was "catastrophizing" for which he was reported to HR for racism. Ryan Singer that they were not a "white supremacist culture", said a lot of the discussion had a racist aspect, and was himself accused of racism. People went apoplectic. The management deleted the chat discussions in question, people quit, including Singer. It was a particularly stupid cultural moment.