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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

I followed the entire conversation and “a founder on a rage bender” is an extreme exaggeration.

They asked the political conversions be kept out of work channels, but continued to encourage people to be active politically, active on social media and even active at work using other platforms.

Framing the entire thing as some extremist plot to silence dissent is absurd.

If someone wanted to come into work channels and constantly tell people about their religion, why they should convert and why other religions were wrong would you think it’s okay to for the business to ask to keep those conversations outside of the main work channels?

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That's not the conversations they are banning though. Many of the conversations are actually about the company itself and its culture. This is not people "wasting time" and sowing discord via typical political topics.

This sounds like you've only read DHH's description of events. Read the Platformer article for more context.

If you’re talking about this one, I just read it.

https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...

When I read that, I see business leaders who engaged for months then asked people to move on when they realized it was never going to go away.

Searching the chat logs and posting in front of everybody was a jerk move for an executive, absolutely.

Everything else seems entirely reasonable.

Same here, read it when it was posted elsewhere in this thread with an implication of “this’ll show you how basecamp management’s in the wrong” and that was the only part that stood out to me as wrong in their handling of this. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, as I read on, but it never did.

I read that as well, and even read the open letter that was included in that post. Seems like maybe Basecamp is better off without those employees who've decided to quit.

Just from the open letter (https://janeyang.org/2021/04/27/an-open-letter-to-jason-and-...) take a look at the kind of attitudes they have; these are some serious snowflakes:

    "As you know, I am writing this while on medical leave from Basecamp, a condition that was necessary in large part because of the extreme emotional duress I have experienced as an employee at the company."

> I followed the entire conversation and “a founder on a rage bender” is an extreme exaggeration.

I don't know, maybe you missed the part where he posted on Twitter about cancel culture and then started blocking everyone who disagreed with him. Rage benders don't need to be limited to the office. =)

The one where he linked to a NYT article/podcast interview and everybody start tweeting at him that he was raging about cancel culture?

This one?

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1387731297980854272?s=21

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!

Posting an article link is hardly raging about cancel culture, especially when it’s a very reasoned interview about it.

If you saw a link posted and see that as rage, it kinda proves the point.

Did you read the NYT article or listen to the podcast? It was very reasonable.

They said--

We don't care what you think about the impact of our poor decisions.

We don't care what you think about diversity and inclusion.

We don't want to be a workplace that cares about your health or wellbeing.

And we are going to escalate any disagreement until you shut the fuck up.

A third of the company (and counting) has decided that this sucks and is leaving.

I'm not calling this an extremist plot. In fact, I think it's the exact opposite of a plot, hence "on a bender". I think this is someone who got angry at work, had the power to win a debate by fiat, and exercised that power, and is now learning the cost of that Pyrrhic victory.

> If someone wanted to come into work channels and constantly tell people about their religion

The conversations inside Basecamp weren't about that at all, so I'm not sure why you raise this example. They were about the way the workplace had been run and citing the shortcomings of those decisions.

> We don't care [...]

Well, this might be contrarian but if I worked for DHH I might very well prefer this situation.

In fact I feel like I've been in and out of situations and I tend to prefer clear command chains: I do what I am told and those under me do what they are told.

The military is a perfect good example as is certain companies.

Maybe twice (including a decade ago and now) have I experienced self organizing teams that worked.

This is a very twisted and biased account of what happened. Nowhere did DHH or Jason state or directly imply these things.

I find it refreshing that you'd defend my right to make grand sweeping blog posts about the mighty weight on my shoulders, telling my employees what they can't talk about, and then in the next post I'm reposting long screeds from an internal message board of me picking on an employee and plaintively playing for the readers approval

They said absolutely none of that, unless you have quotes I haven’t seen.

And a lot of people don’t need or want a workplace to “care about their wellbeing”. A job is not your mommy and daddy, they are not there to take care of you. They pay you money to provide a service. You should be able to take care of your own wellbeing like a normal adult.

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