Basecamp messes up big time

I think it’s really impossible to tell without seeing the list. The complaints could be people being very sensitive or it could be that the list was extraordinarily offensive.

I tried to poke around and find actual examples of what was on the list, but the closest I could find was the article I quoted where the reporter says that all the employees he talked to were so mortified that they wouldn’t provide any examples — which I think leans toward the list likely being more on the offensive side. If the list was pretty mild, I’d expect at least someone would provide examples of how it wasn’t that bad.

Yep, that’s totally possible. Maybe the list was really bad. That’s the only way it makes sense to me.

See, this reads the opposite way to me. For one, there’s a whole lot of self-selection going on in the population of (now presumably ex-) employees talking to reporters at the Verge. For another, there’s a long tradition of sharing things like this not for publication, but so the reporter can verify a source’s claims and perhaps offer her own analysis.

“Oh, we’re just too mortified to share any. But trust us – SUPER RACIST OMG.”

They can be done concurrently. In fact, Basecamp argued that they had found the way to do just that, and published books and podcasts on the subject. Apparently that was not the case.

Putting it like that, it sounds reasonable. But employees were concerned about diversity and inclusion, formed a comittee to work towards that internally, and the comittee was disbanded before anything could be done. That was seen as a lack of interest - by the owners - to commit to diversity, and for many people who left that was a legitimate concern.

But maybe what the owners wanted is a company with employees that don’t care about diversity, all focused on the business and all thinking the exact same thing in the exact same manner. Maybe they’ll start defending homogeneity as the real trick to have a productive, successful company. But it doesn’t match how they sold Basecamp as an ideal, which is why so many people feel betrayed. It’s like many of them joined Basecamp because they believed it was different from soulless profit-oriented corporations, and when they find that’s not exactly the case, they move on.

Well, maybe the plan will work. Maybe the owners will now be able to hire people who won’t care about politics because it doesn’t have any significant effect on them. I’m sure they’ll try to spin it in the future as a major success. Though I don’t think it will be, because the ripples extend far beyond the immediate impact now. For instance, major supporters and maintainers of Rails are bailing as well, and that hurts that platform as an option in the future, potentially. There’s a push for diversity and inclusion and that’s pretty ingrained in the tech people I usually follow, so things might get tricky for Basecamp. We’ll have to wait and see.

It’s not that I don’t see the problems. It’s a complex issue. But their problems are not dissimilar to problems with democracy at large, when it’s so much easier to be an autocracy. You must believe that reaching consensus, while difficult, is worth the fight. It’s easier to be an autocrat and say “my way or the highway”. And in the end, in a way, it’s all politics, all the way down. They just don’t see it that way.

That’s true in theory, but populations often don’t do the things that are good for them. There’s a reason, for example, that forced-savings plans are more successful than paying employees in cash and letting them engage with their own retirements.

So IMO nudges often are necessary.

Diego

I don’t know if there was a right way per se - it’s a difficult problem, for sure - but in picking a solution they made a political statement. And they’re paying the price for that, which is fair.

There’s no arguing that, by American standards, they were good about severance.

I’ve never heard of Basecamp, and after looking them up, I still have no idea how so many of you know about them. What am I missing here? Do they have a much bigger influence than I’m missing?

When there are trillions in “tech”, ie, software startups, a lot of cash money can be made by selling services for business and between businesses. They made Ruby on Rails, for ex.

IE, they’re a software company making software for software companies. Unless you’re actually in a software company (or in a very large highly structured other organization) you’ve no need for it and have never seen it. There are a lot of tech people here, so a lot of people here have presumably used them or at least know about them.

Although it’s not one of the only viable options anymore, like it was 10-15 years ago, lots of marketing agencies/creative shops use Basecamp. So do other small businesses that work on projects with clients, like photographers and wedding planners Software companies use it too, though a lot less since agile and kanban became so popular.

One of the cofounders started the Ruby on Rails project, which a lot of software is built on, like Enidigm said.

They’ve also written a few books and one of them, Rework(?), was really popular. All their books sell well in the business category.

Definitely a company that punches above its weight as far as headcount goes. Especially now!

They used it for the beta testing of Gettysburg: the Tide Turns (the board game!) which I took part in. Otherwise, I would never have heard of them, either.

It’s been said already, but they are well known because they are one of the most aggressive companies in the world at promoting their development company culture. Pretty much on a level with Google, Netflix and Spotify, who also have pretty well-known organization models/cultures, but unlike the above they go out of the way to promote theirs. To the point where their employee handbook is public (GitHub - basecamp/handbook: Basecamp Employee Handbook) and as has also been mentioned, multiple books (e.g., Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters) and naturally tons of speaking gigs. They have been considered one of the standout examples of development company organization for more than a decade.

So, of course, it is a big deal when they so spectacularly implode their own organization. And it’s not particularly the SJW angle that is the big thing here - it is that they so spectacularly misjudge their own organization (and arguably violate the principles on which the org was built).

You summarized the key point perfectly, @strategy . Much better than I could even dream of doing. Well done.

Appreciate the explanations, thank you!

This struck me as a thoroughly reasonable response, neither an epic failure nor an abandonment of the company’s principles. And sometimes communities fracture into seemingly unreconciliable factions where every disagreement reinforces group membership and inter-group divisions; QT3 has of course seen this happen. It’s a social dynamic that seems very hard to escape from, especially when ideology is involved.

I don’t think their solution is the only solution, or the best one. But I’m pretty sympathetic to the owners and managers at such a small company feeling that they don’t have other options.

My employer has managed to facilitate regular conversations around diversity and inclusion issues, and (to my surprise) seem to have successfully created an atmosphere and a culture where people can talk honestly and treat each other with respect. But then we’re several times bigger than Basecamp, and making this happen is the full-time job of at least one person and requires serious time and effort on behalf of the senior executives.

Hansson definitely had a well-earned reputation as a jerk. He also seems to have mellowed and grown up over the last few years. But maybe the behavior he modeled then shaped the internal culture and expectations around how to disagree with other people. It’s hard to say from the outside.

Having worked for an (in)famously asshole CEO and observed the lingering cultural effects over the decade since the transition to a very different kind of CEO, I think this is highly likely.

Good, well sourced read on the meeting that preceded the resignations.

Reminds me of some other organizations I’ve been in, where there’s enough heartache that both sides of a debate crumble away.

There’s exactly the point where a good leader makes a difference. As @Mark_Weston mentioned upthread:

This is extremely hard to do, and it takes very talented leadership to pull off, and it seems to be what Basecamp was lacking in this specific case.

A little late…

…a bit too little, too.

We have a lot to learn and reflect on, and we will. The new policies stand, but we have some refining and clarifying to do.

Yes, they have a lot to learn yet, I suppose. But they will. Oh, and how.