predaking

Wasn’t sure if this was sarcasm but for anyone thinking this as a serious one, heavy recommendation to Innovators Solution and Innovators Dilemma, which go into why this isn’t the case pretty much ever.

Awesome. Would you mind answering the question posed above you? I’m definitely curious myself.

"I've been in so many meetings where an engineer, a PM, or a director would say, "oh, compared to the backend, the mobile part should be simple enough... it's just another frontend, right?"."

You sold me on the book with this sentence alone. =)

Fair enough! Thanks. I’ll edit! (or apparently I can't, but I'll note it for the future - feel free to take out my last sentence there if you have editing privileges!)

The timeline of events is pretty evident from DHHs twitter feed + this article. They had the meeting in the morning, and by the afternoon he had mustered up the energy to go back on Twitter to fight with Apple. :)

> (There is already so much bad, that his absence/presence is a moot point)

This dude is one of the two founders of the company and has a leadership/ownership responsibility. I don't think his deciding to duck out is a moot point at all. It's that exact attitude that led to what's happened there.

You're enacting a no hire rule for 30 people specifically?

Appreciate you too!

LOL I take it you’re not a fan of design or marketing by this response? ;)

(Just having fun btw and not meaning to insult/offend)

I elaborated on this more in my other response but:

“ I never would have thought to not work there because they didn't share my race. That would have been bigoted.”

There’s a wealth of factors that go into a choice to work somewhere, and someone not choosing to work at your company because they don’t see themselves represented isn’t necessarily bigotry, but then also wanting an assurance of a safe space and not always knowing whether it will be. I wish I could tell you otherwise but I’ve had these conversations with a wealth of marginalized groups over my career and the teams I’ve built, so it’s not unusual. It’s not a “oh I don’t want to work with these people because I’m [x] and they’re [y]” matter the majority of the time. It’s more often “man, I’m going to be the only [x] on a team of 30 [y]s” which is often culturally uncomfortable for a lot of people.

And yes sometimes on occasion it is “man, I don’t want to be working with a company of 10 [y]s where I’m the only [x]” or “if the executive team is all or majority [y]s, do I know for sure there’s career advancement opportunities here?”

We do have a rampant amount of sexism, racism, etc in our field (just like many others) and so that is something unfortunately people sometimes suspect. I’m not at all saying that this is the situation at your company - far from it - just saying the choices for people are most often verrrrrry far from bigotry.

Not sure of your background but it’s also not too hard for a CIS white male to not sweat working on any other team composition (say, all Indian) vs the reverse, because hey - even if you’re paying a pioneer tax, you’re probably not paying it for long. There’s a lot of advantages that group has that are often taken for granted. :)

Actually that’s not at all why I brought it up. There’s a concept called “the pioneer tax” where being the first X of anything means you’re the pioneer. For example, the first female in a team of 3 engineers pays a much lower pioneer tax than the first female engineer in a team of 20 engineers. Replace female with black or Latina. It’s the same thing there. Career choices are a huge choice; why wouldn’t you choose to work where you’d feel most comfortable with the culture?

Ideally the earlier you can intentionally focus on diversity the better. This also goes for leadership too - both for hiring other leaders and it’s an easy demonstration that the company’s commitment to diversity isn’t just for token representation purposes.

Anyway...yeah, nothing about catering to candidates biases or people judging you as bigots. I sense the anger here at that but hopefully you can see that’s not where I’m approaching it from.

Just a note that I’m astounded that a remark saying “hey, I’ve hired a diverse team, here are some structural things I’ve found that helped - tell me more about your team makeup” is something that garnered any downvotes at all. Are there seriously people here who believe this is a bad idea? I’d love to hear more about why you do!

Guess the experiences here are pretty diverse. I’ve not had a problem hiring or competing with FAANG for excellent+qualified female / non-white talent.

What’s the current gender makeup % of your engineering team, if I can ask? As well, what’s the non white makeup of the engineering leadership and overall leadership team? I found it got easier the less that ratio skewed towards 100%M engineering team and 100% white leadership team :)

“I don’t see a single standout among the folks leaving” (emphasis mine)

Considering that those folks include one of the Rails core contributors, the Head of Design, and the Head of Marketing, either:

A) you’re mistaken in your read

B) you’re not mistaken, and Basecamp made some massive hiring and staffing flaws including but not limited to who they put in leadership positions

I’m not saying which is which, just pointing out the limited possibilities.

"but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. "

Leadership is all about serving the people you're shepherding. There is a responsibility and a stewardship that comes with wearing the crown, and it's not always for everyone. =)

So to preface this response a bit...I don't know that for me as a leader, it should or would be about adding fuel to the fire or enraging more people; if I'm DHH, it's not the feelings of Twitter that I'm concerned with today*, it's the feelings of the people who have left my company.

My top answer here would be "nothing". =) Several hours after 1/3rd of your workforce leaves isn't the time to start going after Apple again like nothing of note happened.

Hypothetically (and this is off the cuff) if I had no choice but** to post something on Hey or Twitter - it would be something to the effect of:

"You've likely heard that a large number of people left Basecamp today. They were very talented people, great contributors, and I want to thank all of them for contributing to this company.

I still strongly believe in the changes we are making, but I respect that the people who have left today don't agree with those changes and have exercised the option to leave. As promised we have provided them with 3-6 month severance packages and wish them all the best in the future."

Again, I think the best thing would have been for David to have been quiet today instead of going on a blocking spree and posting about cancel culture the night before the all-hands; but at least this statement would indicate some degree of respect for the people that had given a lot of their time to Basecamp.

* and clearly from his rampant blocking behavior (to the point that "dhh block" is the second autocomplete suggestion of twitter), he definitely cares a bit too much about it today ;)

** again, there's always a choice =) Some of the best advice I ever received was "Before you hit send, sleep for at least 8 hours."

And many other people do see it as such. What are we gaining from pointing out there are many people seeing it in both ways? =)

You should give "The Alliance" by Reid Hoffman a read. Excellent book - the first half, anyway - and I think it might give you a different perspective (or at least some food for thought).

Person you're replying to was mentioning customers quitting, not employees (and I have seen a number of people mentioning they've cancelled their Basecamp or Hey subscriptions today).

FWIW I hire (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) and I believe it.

“I’ll bet Basecamp is a better place to work now than it was a week ago”

I don’t know, if my week at work concluded with one of the founders going on a blocking spree and leading the Rails community to start discussing disassociating itself from him, I wouldn’t consider that “better”. :)

> But still it's absolutely innocent fun.

Not if you're one of the injured parties.

Appreciated, and glad I was able to clarify things for you!

I share a similar background to yours (employee, leader, founder, diverse org size) and would have agreed with you if it were not for the context of these changes. I too want to ensure people will safe and respected.

However:

* I don't believe any enlightened leadership posts publicly about wide-spread and company affected policy changes before informing and/or discussing with your staff. That's disrespectful to the people you serve.

* no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.

* I don't believe at all that enlightened leadership discards its values the moment that they become difficult to uphold.

* If the new policies weren't in reaction to the leader being called to be accountable to the people he served and the mission he told them they were on, I'd probably be more agreeable to your point. In a vaccuum a safe place for people of all politica and creeds (short of outright hate) to work together is what you want. What I don't want is an unsafe space where no one feels they can question the leadership or hold the company to its values.

That being said, I totally respect your coming at this from a different angle and I agree that there's certainly more than one way to look at this (as the reactions in this thread indicate).

For me, here's a common thread going through everything that's happened to Basecamp in the last several days and in laser focus today.

Today 1/3rd of the employees left Basecamp.

Also today: DHH is back to tweeting and fighting with Apple like nothing of note happened and it's just another day.

The original situation that sparked everything was brought about largely by dismissive and irresponsible leadership that disrespected and devalued the feelings of the other people the leader served.

Today's reaction is more of the same. To project to the public - whether pretending or legitimate - that 1/3rd of the company leaving barely registers with you? It's that same devaluing and disrespect, just shown off in a different form.

I’ve worked with people who were passionate about each of those issues (maybe not all at once). None of them encouraged or participated in the dehumanizing of other people and all found that kind of behavior towards others to be abhorrent. I can tell you that if they were confronted with a list making fun of people's names in this manner said list would not have survived with any one of them being at the company, let alone all of them. =)

I would note as a follow up to this re: leadership and culture; 30 people left Basecamp today. DHH is hanging out on social media like it’s no big deal, back to talking about Apple. You know what’s consistent between the start of this incident and today’s behavior? The derisive and dismissal treatment of people that have been a part of his company for many years.

Oh man, 100 thousand percent agreed with this. I'm not sure why this seems to have escaped the notice of a lot of the discussion here. If you suddenly are confronted with the fact that the company you worked for isn't what you thought it was, you're left with a pretty significant choice to make. If I had something like that happen to me, I wouldn't have needed the severance to bolt.

I think "couldn't agree to stop bitching about politics on the company dime" is really minimizing the leadership vaccuum that caused this in the first place.

As someone who hires I'd have zero issue with a talented person who also felt passionately about not working with people who enable racism or toxic environments. That's part of how you build good companies.

It's pretty common in a situation like this to also carry a no disparagement clause along with the severance. That's also why you see a lot of "today is my last day at Basecamp" with no other "because I disagreed with the policies", etc.

Yeah! They tweeted at him such because that's what he was doing. Other people just said, "Maybe you should take a break" and got blocked. =)

I guess if we're just going to go in a circle confirming that we've both observed the same thing vs. discussing, I'm happy to bounce! =) Have an awesome one!

I'm guessing it might be that 1/3 of those employees were upset that they found out about the initial policy change via a public facing blog post, possibly felt that the behavior of one of their main leaders was increasingly toxic and poisonous, didn't want to be associated with him and got a buyout. I mean, if I was working for a raging asshole who suddenly said "if you don't like me, here's 6 months salary" you bet your butt I'd take that. =)