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Comment by valyagolev | Hacker News Reader

> 1. No more societal and political discussions at Basecamp. Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it at Basecamp.

I wonder what's the context here

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I think those are particularly choice words coming from Basecamp, who have been particularly active in calling out Apple's treatment of iOS and the App Store, which is in at least some sense political advocacy. Life is necessarily political; and they should be more aware of it than most others.

I'm not endorsing Apple's behavior with the App Store, but seriously, this is very out-of-character and I don't like the tone or the content of the messaging here.

They also say, "We're in the business of making software, and a few tangential things that touch that edge."

Advocacy on the policies of one of the world's foremost software distribution gatekeeper seems well within how they define "their business". I don't think it takes much squinting to see how they can view this sort of advocacy as in their lane, while the popular political discussions of the day are not.

In other words, “some political advocacies are good for our business and some are not. As a result, let’s ban all of them.”

DHH's follow-up post says this:

> Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products. This means topics like antitrust, privacy, employee surveillance. If you're in doubt as to whether something falls within those lines or not, please, again, reach out for guidance.

I think some (not all) of the changes outlined in the post make some degree of sense, but the overall tone of the blog post just comes off as incredibly condescending

DHH specified that advocating for things on personal accounts is fine.

The context is the same as many other companies - employee activists creating strife and division internally and causing other employees to feel uncomfortable.

The expression “employee activists” makes it seem very one-sided.

What about old-school companies where everyone played golf. If you were, say, someone who liked hiking and canoeing, you might have been made to feel like you don’t fit in. Is that the same thing as being made to feel uncomfortable about social issues? Or is it somehow different because “playing golf” is normal, but “advocating for social justice” is not?

A word like “activist” is extremely imprecise. Any time someone is making other people uncomfortable, isn’t that important?

If I was a woman and the water cooler discussion every Monday morning was about various men and their misadventures picking up women in bars, I’d say there was discussion causing strife and division, but few people would say “activists” were involved. If I then complained about the unprofessional water-cooler talk, would I be the activist trying to change the company culture?

If it’s the “strife and division” that’s the problem, we need not restrict ourselves to discussion “activism.” But if the real problem is that we’re ok with some strife and division, but not others, well...

We ought to come clean about that and say, basically, “Don’t try to change anything, not even the stuff that makes you uncomfortable, because this is how we like it, and if something has to change, that something is you."

But this post isn't about playing golf..? None of this is. What?

The point is that "creating strife and division internally and causing other employees to feel uncomfortable" can happen without an employee activist pushing a politically charged agenda.

My personal interpretation: If the primary intent of the policy is to reduce the instaces of exployees feeling ostracized, there are better ways to achieve it than a blanket ban on "political discussion".

Shutting down all discussion of things that affect their employees is an extreme overreaction.

thanks for the inference. I wonder about the particulars, though

At Coinbase, employees demanded that the company take an official public position on Black Lives Matter. Probably the same was going on at Basecamp.

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