Seems like there was internal chatter about the fact that some Basecamp employees had kept a list of funny customer names over the years as a joke. And people were discussing how this happened, what they could do to change the internal culture so it doesn't happen again, how it portrays on their internal inclusivity, etc. And it looks like the founders were annoyed by all these discussions about it, so they made a policy change that you can only talk about business on official work channels. Keep in mind this is a fully remote company, all communication is done on official work channels. So after that policy change, a lot of employees felt they now worked at some authoritarian place where they couldn't just chat to their coworkers anymore except for serious business stuff, and they now need to watch what they're saying to others. As a result, about 25% of all employees quit. That said, they also offered a 6 month severance to those who wanted to leave, so who knows if employees all quit fully out of finding the phone policy draconian, or out of simply thinking the severance was a good deal.
Dont know their products well but customers names should clearly be disclosed on a need-to-know basis - if ever. I believe they did the right move (just my opinion). I just agree. Harassement is a bigger subject we think it is. I think harassment is our population regulation mechanism. I think human-to-human violence is always based on harassement. It's our alpha male fight. It is wired in our brain. It is also suffering. With innovation, we may escape the need for population regulation and then suffering goes down (while suffering is everywhere in the animal kingdom, we make it go down, it's fundamental to life innit). I dont have understood it yet completely but trully, it goes well beyong the concept of a school bully. A list of funny names? Population regulation is at play again, beneath the surface.