Comment by shados | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shados | Hacker News Reader

This is a tricky one. On one hand, there's the obvious issues: almost everything you can talk about is societal or political. Talking about your lawn growing is societal because it means you can have a lawn and that gets into the housing crisis sooner or later. If people can't speak about politics, marginalized group will have difficulty bringing up tough issues that impact them in their day to day job.

On the other hand, I haven't seen a company where the various politics Slack channel didn't devolved to a couple of white guys in an eco chamber trashing anyone who isn't agreeing with their favorite issue of the day. And god forbid you're NOT part of that channel, because then you're the "one person who doesn't care" or some such. Some issues may be fairly one sided, at least at a high level (gender and race equality), others are much more nuanced (gentrification and housing, the school debt crisis) and the discussions are always bordering on needing HR involved to avoid people screaming at each other. Some are extremely subjective but just as heated in Slack (the whole working from home thing).

So how do you handle it? Let people talk about it but ban the slack channels? Ban it altogether? Have HR moderating the discussions? I honestly don't know. Right now it seems like the status quo of "let it happen and hope for the best" is the best of the bad options you have in front of you, but eventually something goes sour and you have to do something. Basecamp's approach is likely missing the mark, but I'd be curious what others are doing.

If your answer is "Nah, we have tons of political discussions at work and its all positives", you're probably not looking very hard.

Grass lawns are also just flat-out bad.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/more-sustainable-and-beautiful-...

Which is a perfect example of how nothing is truly apolitical.

Yep, exactly.

I'm extremely late to the thread, but why is pointing out that manicured lawns may have negative environment effects now political? I'm genuinely curious because after reading this thread you get the impression that you shouldn't be allowed to exist because to do so would be a political act.

The climate crisis is political, and this has bearing on that.

> And god forbid you're NOT part of that channel, because then you're the "one person who doesn't care" or some such

is this a serious thing actually happening to anyone?

+1 exactly what I was wondering. And if it is, what’s stopping a company from defining the culture as, “It’s ok if you want to talk about this at work, and it’s also ok if you don’t want to.”

Because the people who don't want to will then have to eat lunch alone at their desk talking to no one. They're a tiny company.

But yes, there were likely other solutions to try before this one, including but not limited to: not blogging about whatever solution they picked.

Then the activists will say that the company is problematic because they know about the discussion and don't take a stance on the issue.

I worked at a company that had to institute a similar policy for more or less this reason: The people pushing certain political agendas wanted to force everyone else to pick a side on certain political issues.

When the conversations get to a point where even opting out is perceived as the "wrong answer", things get ugly.

Even on the same side, there's quite a few shouting matches that quickly spirals out when idealists "call out" pragmatists who compromise on a few things.

Not sure how appropriate it would be from a US context, but say Bernie-bros and Clinton / Biden supporters.

That's the biggest thing imo. Twitter is filled right now with this idea that it was probably an ultra conservative person ruffling people's feather and they were tired of the arguments between transphobic and lgbtq people or something.

I don't work at Basecamp, but I find that unlikely: they'd likely have fired the transphobic person (or at least I hope they would have). They didn't say they wouldn't do politics, just that they didn't want politics discussed over company infrastructure.

But even if the room was all on the same side of the political pendulum, things still get pretty ugly.

Basecamp's post specifically called this out as a problem.

Then I think their problem is not “politics” but being unable to deal with individual employees who are being unreasonable and uncivil.

That's easy to say until you see how it actually happens. Basecamp would likely still be in the news, just instead of being about banning politics talks, it would be because they're somehow preventing their employees from supporting some cause or another.

This move is generating even more unrest and publicity for them

Oh for sure. Writing the blog post (at all) and putting that policy in without discussing it within the company was a REAAAAAAALLY bad/tone deaf move. When they announced it originally I assumed it had been implemented for weeks and they had the expected all hands meeting internally and concerns/edge cases worked out.

They clearly didn't. Saying that was dumb would be the understatement of the week.

It would have been instantly leaked by employees, might as well get ahead of things.

It would have, but after the employees had time to raise their concerns internally. Instead many of them felt kind of betrayed, as they learnt the new policy at the same time the rest of us did. Not really cool.

One place I worked at had a politics channel, designed to keep the chat out of the general spaces. Mainly because the team worked across the world and politics were US-centric first and UK-centric second, and nobody wanted a ping on one of the global chat channels only to get a link complaining about a sleazy American politician or the debate on Brexit as if none of the rest of the world (and the politics there) existed.

As it happened, we noticed the few people with even vaguely right-wing opinions or ideals were dogpiled by a much larger contingent of left-wing people. It was an ugly sight, and I wasn't happy with that at all. It eventually settled down and the diversity of opinion opened up enough for people to have a sensible chat, but those first few months were utterly fucking shameful. It was about then that I stopped identifying as left wing and decided that there isn't a side to pick unless you've made it who you are.

I still disagreed with most of the conservative viewpoints, but disagreement is fine. A bit of healthy back and forth, get another drink, and then change the topic.

Reminds me of this essay: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

That touches on what I feel, I think. In my own words, once you have something as an identity, criticism or disagreement very quickly turns into an attack on who you are; an attack on your being. It's not about the issue any more, it's about you feeling threatened and fighting back to protect yourself and feel safe.

Ultimately I identify as myself and that encompasses a small collection of things where I feel intensely vulnerable but also very secure in knowing that, relating to my experience of growing up, abandonment, attachment, my mental health, and so on. Attacking those aspects of my being is likely to hurt me, and is the point where I would decide whether this person needs to be present in my life or not.

So I would speak out strongly on the topic of depression and suicide, for example, because part of who I am - my identity - is that I tried multiple times and survived each time, and that long-term state of depression significantly changed who I am.

If someone made fun of me for being some bleeding-heart liberal whenever I talk about compassion or some spiritual experience? whatever...I don't care. It's not for everyone.

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