Hacker News Reader

Comment by benjaminwootton | Hacker News Reader

I understand why Basecamp have made the decisions they have on this.

As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I would be frankly terrified of hiring a woke SJW who wanted our business and all of our employees to become wholly dedicated to solving their pet causes.

Solving large scale societal injustice would be great, but it’s a long way down my list of priorities when logging on in the morning.

It’s even worse with the ever present threat they would then breach NDAs and bring the raging Twitter mob to the door when they don’t get their own way.

There are a million injustices in the world, but engaging and supporting them should be a personal decision. Keep that stuff away from the office.

View on HN

>but it’s a long way down my list of priorities when logging on in the morning.

You're missing the point, people who are marginalized don't have the luxury of putting it down the list of their priorities. That's why they're marginalized. Please don't use rude and emotionally loaded terms like "woke SJW" to label people and dismiss their concerns about the work environment. This is not the way to run an inclusive business, and using those words in that way suggests that you think it's somehow wrong of your employees to desire justice or to care about the experiences of marginalized individuals.

> people who are marginalized don't have the luxury of putting it down the list of their priorities

Yes they do. High income tech worker are not oppressed in any meaningful way. It’s just a coincidence that they look similar to people who have real problems.

I'm very confused as to what you mean. Are you saying it's not possible for people who get paid above a certain threshold to be bullied and harassed at work? I strongly disagree with that.

"woke SJW" is a term for a specific kind of political activist, which can be _very_ harmful to a business.

Not wanting to deal with SJWs has nothing to do with dismissing concerns about the work environment and expressing concerns about the work environment does not render someone an SJW.

And a business is, as the name implies, about the business. Not about inclusivity.

I strongly disagree. Businesses do not exist in a vacuum. The second you hire one employee, it becomes about inclusivity. That's why every business has to follow the same employment laws. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in continuing this conversation further when you keep using that loaded term to dismiss concerns. In my opinion, that term is only used to shame people who take a stand on issues of justice, as if it's somehow wrong for people to do that publicly because they don't happen to work for your company.

I'll be blunt -- if it's harmful to your business when activists on twitter discuss potential HR violations that your company might have committed, then your business has issues and you are not qualified to be running that business in that way. Please, hire a qualified HR professional who knows how to deal with this stuff, and let them handle the hiring and personnel issues, that's what they're there for. In my experience technical founders are notoriously bad at noticing when conflict is growing overboard and they need to expand HR, I know because I made the same mistake!

I never claimed that businesses "exist in a vacuum", and no, it isn't about inclusivity as soon as an employee is hired: The sole reason why businesses hire people is because they have some work on their hands they want to get done to make money. Others want these decisions to be about "inclusivity" but from the business perspective it isn't.

Employment laws don't exist because business is about inclusivity, they exist because we as society don't want businesses to do what they want to do. Employment laws work against business interests, not in favor of them.

Regarding that dismissing concerns line, some concerns are not relevant for some people: If you are a doctor and you wish to save the lifes of your patients and to do that you use some sort of specialized software the interfaces with your medical equipment, concerns about the energy of efficiency of the x86 processor it runs on can be dismissed by "I don't care whether this computer draws 100 or 45 Watts, I need it to save lives". Many business people do the same thing but with their goals: "I don't care about inclusivity, I need employees who work for the business and not against it".

And I'll be blunt aswell -- If you allow SJWs to disrupt your workforce with irrelevant junk, and thereby harm your business, then you are not qualified to be running that business.

And regard HR professionals, yes they are there to keep the workforce productive, not to be inclusive for political activists.

I've read the posts again and I think there is still a misunderstanding regarding the term SJW: I'm not using SJW as a term to dismiss something, as I already stated I use it to describe troublemaker/activist-types not normal-acting people who have concerns. That's a huge difference.

>I've read the posts again and I think there is still a misunderstanding regarding the term SJW: I'm not using SJW as a term to dismiss something, as I already stated I use it to describe troublemaker/activist-types not normal-acting people who have concerns. That's a huge difference.

It really doesn't make much of a difference, you're still shaming activists as being "not normal acting" and for not doing activism in a way that explicitly benefits your business. Please don't do this, you're an observant individual, you know this is not the point of activism and it's pointless to look at it that way.

I don't have much more to say to you when you're saying that employment laws don't help business and that activists advocating for workplace fairness are "disrupting with irrelevant junk." This is completely wrong, the point of employment laws is to make sure your workers are treated fairly and are able to continue doing their jobs. When you say "keep the workforce productive" that's exactly what it means. If you're saying this is irrelevant junk, well, that's a really great way to get a bad reputation and to get sued for violating employment laws, which would then harm the business. The point of being inclusive is that you're making an effort to avoid pushing people out who DO want to help the business.

> for not doing activism in a way that explicitly benefits your business.

no, for explicitly damaging a business. politics and drama don't contribute to a productive work environment.

I'm indeed shaming activists who promote violence or similar b/s (ie. punch a nazi, or BLM rioters, ...) for not being normal acting. Would you describe them as normal acting?

> when you're saying that employment laws don't help business

if they would help business, they wouldn't be needed because businesses would implement them as corporate policy on their own.

> that activists advocating for workplace fairness..

Again I'm not talking about people advocating for fairness. SJWs are troublemakes, not advocates. If you don't get the difference compare extreme examples like trigglypuff to your average every-day feminist. This makes indeed a huge difference. If you where in HR and in charge of a hiring decision who do you pick trigglypuff[SJW] or Ms. Average Feminist[not SJW]? See the difference and why it's important?

> the point of employment laws is to make sure your workers are treated fairly and are able to continue doing their jobs.

The fist thing is correct, employment laws are there to protect people from unfair treatment. But think about the second claim. If a lack of employment laws would prevent employees from doing their job, what would employers do to keep the company in business? They would implement an equivalent to said employment laws internally, because they want their employees to keep working.

> When you say "keep the workforce productive" that's exactly what it means.

I don't see how inviting troublemakers helps productivity in any way.

>no, for explicitly damaging a business. politics and drama don't contribute to a productive work environment.

I mean, that's the point of inclusivity, marginalized people just want to be able to do their jobs and avoid politics and drama. But it's hard to do that when they're being marginalized.

>if they would help business, they wouldn't be needed because businesses would implement them as corporate policy on their own.

A lot of them do. Small companies don't have resources to come up with extensive policies so that's where the laws become helpful.

>I'm indeed shaming activists who promote violence or similar b/s (ie. punch a nazi, or BLM rioters, ...) for not being normal acting. Would you describe them as normal acting? [...] Again I'm not talking about people advocating for fairness. SJWs are troublemakes, not advocates.

These comments are exactly why I say the term is emotionally loaded and you should avoid using that term, please don't draw false equivalences to attack stereotypes and claim that everyone who advocates for justice is troublemaking and promoting violence. You might not mean to do that but that's what you're doing when you use those derogatory terms in that way. This is getting really close to flamewar territory again and I don't want to continue this conversation.

I've tried to explain the difference between SJWs and non-SJWs like three times now.

I'm not the one drawing flase equivalencies. You keep conflating SJWs with advocates and people who have concerns not me.

> please don't [...] claim that everyone who advocates for justice is troublemaking and promoting violence.

I never did and I don't. Read my comments again I explaind exactly this distinction like three times already.

People who get a job at Basecamp are not marginalized. They are incredibly privileged both financially and professionally.

Would love to hear from the downvotes who disagree. How is that incorrect?

If I were worried about a raging Twitter mob I wouldn't announce company policy to my staff by posting a missive on Twitter.

They knew they had employees who would attack them for the change either way. Being proactive seems pragmatic. It's also on brand for them, unlike a lot of other companies where it would seem strange for the founders to suddenly post a controversial blog post. Not commenting on the merits of the change, just how they communicated it.

Had it been a purely internal communication, it would have quickly leaked to the press. The press would then distort and misconstrue the info to make Basecamp look as controversial as possible. Better to get in front of that by having a polished public communication.

Also Basecamp is a rather open company. Their employee handbook is on Github: https://github.com/basecamp/handbook

Reply on news.ycombinator.com