However, if DHH’s verbatim quote of his response is accurate, it sounds like things had gotten out of hand with this company’s culture.

If a leader says “this is unacceptable - we will do better going forward”, that should be enough in this kind of situation. But apparently it wasn’t for the employee that you allude to.

A third of the company had joined some D&I committee and that committee apparently felt that its scope extended to the entire operations of the company. It sounds incredibly disruptive.

Oddly, according to the coverage, the owners had previously said publicly and internally that they thought it was important.

The owners had previously been very publicly and assertively taking very "liberal" and "progressive" positions. They have been on the "wrong" side of the "culture wars" for those who think it's "off the rails" to be spending signficant time and effort on DE&I. "Hansson had encouraged employees to read Between the World and Me, a memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and The New Jim Crow... Both founders are also active — and occasionally hyperactive — on Twitter, where they regularly advocate for mainstream liberal and progressive views on social issues."

I wonder how it will feel to them to become the darlings of people very opposed to those positions they had been taking, as seen in these threads. I wonder if the owners will become born-again to the right-wing side of the "culture wars".

Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, right wingers are not the only people opposed to woke insanity.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a 2D plane of opinions: liberal/conservative on one axis, moderation/extremism on the other.

If that sub were defining things, you would be right. But the people they're making fun of are defining things. My vote for the new axis goes to individualism vs. collectivism.

The only difference between me and you is that you think it means something when you say you've been left-leaning all your life. It doesn't. You're in the outgroup, just in denial about it.

> Oddly, according to the coverage, the owners had previously said publicly and internally that they thought it was important.

No owners would publicly say D&I are not important.

> I wonder how it will feel to them to become the darlings of people very opposed to those positions they had been taking, as seen in these threads.

I'm sure these decisions only came about after some hard looks in the mirror.

These well-meaning D&I enthusiasts are pushing on a rope -- and then, when another innocent man gets killed by the cops the next week or whatever other newsworthy thing happens, they push harder. That's not how ropes work.

A few reasons:

* They weren't hired or asked to do that

* It doesn't bring more value to the business

* It contributes to a toxic working culture

And it's especially bad in a small company, because you're no longer looking at high level statistics. With only 58 people, you're not saying, "we've got too many white men, statistically." You're implicitly saying, "Mike and Jeff shouldn't have been hired. We should have found people of the race / sex I want to see more of." And, implicitly, "We're going to have to really lean on them to not hire another white guy." Now hiring managers are hesitant to do what's best for the business out of fear of being called -ist.

This idea that employees are entitled to organize privately on company time to try and leverage the company to focus on some unrelated special interest at the expense of being as successful as possible as a business is not as widely accepted as some here seem to think.

It express the reality that having good intentions may have nothing whatsoever to do with outcomes and that misalignment can be exacerbated under more pressure.

The issue at Basecamp and every other socially minded startup is obviously that people don't realize they are pushing on rope, and they lament anyone pointing out the fact as some kind of obstacle.

The clear majority of these kinds of 'social blow ups' are happening at companies where leaders and staff tilt way over to the Left/Liberal and Libertarian/Openness side of things, which should give pause for people consider that maybe those 'pushing back' aren't remotely trump-loving alt-righters, in fact probably the opposite.

The very nature of these threads is exhausting and frankly if I had to work at once of these places I would take respite in not having to deal with it. If there were some kind of pervasive evil that needed to be dealt with, then of course we'd have to do that, but I strongly doubt that this is the case.

You realize those who think it's important don't think that's what it is, right?

If 20 employees were on the "social" committee planning a holiday party, would you consider that as "off the rails", because you are paying them (some here unspecified number of hours) to throw a damn party? I doubt anyone would get that up in arms about it.

I get it, you think DE&I is a mistake, (unless you think coming up with new ways to tell people to stop being racist is not a mistake? But I think you were clear), so the more people involved in it, the bigger the mistake. But if someone thinks it's important, perhaps even more important than a holiday party, then the more people involved in it the better, and having a large portion of the company involved in it is not a mistake. That's it.

The party planning committee would presumably not try to dictate which vendors the company deals with and which speaker is at the next all-hands meeting.

There's no other way for 20 out of 58 people to spend any significant length of time focused on D&I of the company they work for.

1 out of 58? Maybe. But 20? There's only one way this thing can end.

> If 20 employees were on the "social" committee planning a holiday party, would you consider that as "off the rails", because you are paying them (some here unspecified number of hours) to throw a damn party? I doubt anyone would get that up in arms about it.

A party planning committee is not targeting the rest of the company.

> I get it, you think DE&I is a mistake,

I didn't say it was a mistake. I said 1/3 of a small remote company focused on it shows it was off the rails.

Maybe they should have just joined in. Each of the 58 employees could be brainstorming ways the other 57 employees can be less bigoted. Just hope they could find some time to write software, too.

Sounds like a pretty lame party if they're not inviting the rest of the company.

Also, that you think discussing how to make a workplace more diverse, equitable, and inclusive is somehow "targeting" the other employees says a lot about your stance on those things.

Wonder how that balances out.

> 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.’”

Well, of course! If you are working for a private company then this is exactly what you are signing up for.

If my team spent months debating these issues I would be concerned as well.