It’s, quite ironically, the height of privilege to be able to engage in distracting culture wars rather than working, be able to throw shade at your employers on Twitter and then leave with 6 months severance.
I'm afraid many of them will be in for a rude awakening.
Basecamp has really stood out it seems.
This is what stood out to me. Basecamp pay 90th percentile Bay Area salaries regardless of where you choose to live. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm not sure that's going to be easy to find without relocating.
Even if you're not a rabid mercenary you're certainly going to feel the impact, if not on your day to day life then on your future plans, of taking a possibly massive pay cut, if you don't want to relocate.
Maybe remote working will become more the norm post-pandemic, and that will put upward pressure on remote salaries, but I don't by any means think that's a foregone conclusion.
I'd say "I've been here too long, let's shop around since IT is a buyers' market, and take advantage of this one-time buyout offer" is a far more probable explanation than "no political discussions at work rule makes this untenable for me"...
Without the buyout or in a worse job market, we'd see much closer to 0 "principled" exits...
Choosing to leave for greener pastures may be an easy decision if you're at an early stage of your career, but there's a reason these extraordinarily talented folks stayed with Basecamp for as long as they have. It's not because they just couldn't get Google to pay them more.
I'm absolutely sure of the above. Just not these people.
Framing this as 'these people' vs Basecamp is ludicrous. It's 1/3 or more of Basecamp vs. Basecamp's management. Important people in important roles, entire teams. They are this company. Or were.
Management took a stance. "Against the employees" is a reading, not a fact.
As I see it, there was nothing against the employees in the stance.
>Management cancelled their employees, removing their platform to talk about internal politics.
Because other companies have such a thing?
Or because it wasn't being abused to talk about BS (genocide accusations, and such).
And they are not entitled for it. They were encourage to do it elsewhere on their own dime and time, not the company's. Do these employees not know what are they hired for exactly?
Good. What exactly is the problem here?
Banning politics is impossible because everything in life has some hand in politics. When they say it can't be discussed, in the context of what is being discussed, it's really just a ban on the topics that management don't want to discuss.
You don’t?
> Banning politics is impossible because everything in life has some hand in politics.
Hard disagree. You can talk about how houses are too expensive right now without someone getting political about why. It’s simple. Just don’t get political.
Another example is if you are a US company do you work with China knowing you will have to share your Chinese users data with the Chinese government. These are political and moral conversations that are decisions that should align with the companies values thus they HAVE to be discussed.
It's delusional to think you can avoid personal politics completely in a business. Basecamp is picking and choosing what is appropriate, and that's really the issue. It's an emotional response from their employees based on inconsistent behavior of management.
>If you are an international company you have to discuss these things
No, you don't. These are business discussions. You discuss the issue, not the politics behind it. You do it professionally because you are a professional adult making business decisions. You leave the politics of it for Twitter on your own free time.
>It's delusional to think you can avoid personal politics completely in a business.
It's delusional and absurd to think that you need to bring politics into any discussion at work.
No, they aren’t. You’re trying to make them political. This is entirely of your own doing.
Take housing. It’s too expensive! Many people would agree. We can talk about houses being expensive without someone detailing the conversation by injecting politics into it. It devolves into politics when you try to let other people know why YOU think housing is too expensive. You are the one injecting politics into conversation where it isn’t needed, and absolutely isn’t wanted.
If you want to talk about politics go get a Twitter account.
You might be tolerant but many people aren't.
In my experience politics, religion, and money are all generally regarded as off topic among anyone but close friends and family. Unless any of the three specifically effect your business directly (or a member of staff is being illegally discriminated against because of their personal beliefs) I don’t see how you feel like you can’t work without discussing them.
it was a brilliant strategic move. accidental, as far as i can see from the outside , but brilliant nonetheless.
the leavers are in for a rude awakening when they find that most workplaces in fact don’t want their ilk
1) They were heavily incentivized for leaving. If you even considered a carreer move, the 6 month severance is your call to action.
2) I don't know that them leaving is so bad. They disagree, they leave (with generous compensation), not a huge issue in my book. Everybody is being treated fairly here, it seems. But for some reason, people have to insist that basecamp is evil, while to me it looks like they're going above and beyond the call of duty to treat their employees right.
yep, the best gilded cage around. You aren't allowed to have any opinions when you show up to work, but man the dental plan is amazing!
Peter Sloterdijk once said that the person we're going to be building statues in a 100 years will be Lee Kuan Yew, for his construction of a prosperous country that is also devoid of any freedom or political expression. That's the tech CEO ideal in the valley as well if they had it their way.
One of the arguably nicest companies to work in, which treats employees well, has a sane work/life balance and advocates so, pays well, embraces remote work, gives back to open source (RoR, etc.), and has good products, with no shady anti-consumer practices, that people actually like and pay for (as opposed to somewhere where they sell ads and attention).
It's like these people took a stance against the nicest possible employees this side of a hippie co-op.
Those leaving: (1) given the IT demand, will get a job elsewhere pronto, (2) will get the money of the buyout, and (3) will get to play the principled martyrs, too. It's a triple win for hypocrisy.
At some point in the future, this will be marked as a time when cancel culture jumped the shark in IT.