Hacker News Reader

Comment by gregd | Hacker News Reader

The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them. Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible until and unless they center marginalized voices and give them positions of power at Basecamp. Otherwise this decision is cowardice wrapped in some arbitrary policies.

View on HN

Well, Basecamp is their company, isn’t it? If they don’t have the right to make those changes... who has?

The people who do the work that produces the value.

This is such a hilarious statement that you see all the time here.

> do the work that produces the value.

who then got paid for said value.

People who say things like that generally consider profit to be stealing because there would be no profit if everyone was paid for their value.

The way I see it is that profit occurs because the value of the end product is greater than the sum of its parts.

Unfortunately this won’t happen until the employee:employer power imbalance is changed, which effectively means a worker co-op.

> The issue I see here is that Jason Fried and DHH state that this decision lands solely with them.

To me that's just sensible leadership. To keep the company productive, you have to let the leaders make decisions while the subordinates focus on doing the work.

> Giving Basecamp the benefit of the doubt is impossible

But maybe the only way to solve the problem of polarization is for all of us to give each other the benefit of the doubt more than we might be comfortable doing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com