What Happened at Basecamp

platformer.news

31 points·gainof-function··6 comments

I think the comparison between Basecamp's policy and Coinbase's is a terrible one. They are in no way the same thing.

Coinbase's is a commitment to blindness and amorality. Basecamp's is a request to keep it off of the company group chat/email - they specifically carve-out private employee-to-employee communications.

Note that this was _not_ originally the case -- Jason Fried edited his post after the fact without noting it: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1386810666221150210

Whereas Coinbase basically doubled down on "We're not going to say Black Lives Matter, in either personal or professional capacities, so stop asking."

Coinbase also did a remarkable thing: they forgot that bitcoin itself was a political project. When Armstrong said that if you didn't like his stance you should leave, some of the employees who left were bitcoin libertarians, upset at the company's willingness to get into bed with Hacker Team (who'd hacked for dictators) and Facebook.

Basecamp similarly spent years creating an image of having a social mission, and DHH posting about politics was part of the company image. It looks like the employees were foolish enough to take him seriously.

The time that Coinbase hired someone ex-army, ex-Palantir high up in their security organization was the moment I realized I never wanted anything to do with them or their moral framework.

What a terrible example for a leader to set and a petty, immature way for them to act.

Edit: rather than downvoting silently I’d love to have dialogue indicating why I’d be wrong about DHH’s behavior, but everyone is free to behave the way they like :)

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