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Comment by DiNovi | Hacker News Reader

It is accurate to say a founder self immolates their company if a decision they made led to 33% attrition in a week

It's fair to say that the founder has done some level of self immolation, but intentionally or not, your original comment focuses on the reason why they self-immolated which is what I think is inaccurate:

> And if you did and someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list and they tell you why, you don’t self-immolate.

No, whatever self-immolation that occurred didn't happen because someone pointed out how it can become problematic to have foreign names in the list. They acknowledged that it was hugely problematic and wanted to correct the mistake and move on, which is a pretty normal response. The problem occurred when some employees clashed with the founder over acknowledging a specific political accusation.

I find it uncharitable & inaccurate to portray this as evidence of the founders' vanity because they shutdown when someone criticises the list, because that's not what happened. A heated political clash happened, and losing your cool over a deeply political issue is not surprising or a demonstration of vanity, it is exactly why many people don't discuss that kind of thing.

Depends if the attrition is people you wouldn't want working for you anyway. If not for business reasons, for human reasons.

The kind of backstabbing people to jump at the chance to make a grand-standing against a good employer and get a buyout bonus at a time the company is in the spotlight for BS reasons...

It makes no business or human sense to have your entire iOS engineering team quit at once with no one to replace them, which happened. It makes no human sense to make your company appear so toxic that it will be difficult to train or even recruit new hires, Etc etc.

There's no doubt that it's causing significant harm now, but I think you're not seeing this from a longer term perspective: if they think continuing to allow political discussion is likely to create more workplace problems in the future, then that could outweigh any problems they cause now in their hiring pipeline. Two possible points in favor of this trade-off:

1. I've heard vague hearsay that it's hard to get a job there and they don't hire that often, they're not a big company with a big revolving door. Hiring new employees may be a less frequent and less consequential problem than avoiding workplace issues that affect existing employees.

2. This has apparently enhanced the company's image amongst some people, just read over this HN thread. It's not clear that this will damage their hiring appeal and overall ability to competently fill positions.

There is no long term if you can’t keep the lights on

I find it quite a stretch to consider this an existential threat to 37signal. They're famous for having no VC/shareholder obligations or debt while continuing to be very financially successful for a very long time. Their products are well-liked and admired. Their founders are fairly wealthy.

DHH and co made a mistake: they thought that by treating employees well, and building a good working environment, they'd get some loyalty back.

But at the first chance of them proving otherwise, money (the buyout) and the faux-hero points ("principled" exit), won for many.

Notice how for ~20 years we haven't heard any pain stories or exposes from there, until this BS story of the "name list" (which is an inside joke blown out of proportion), and the "intolerable" pain of employees told not to discuss politics at work...

Oh, the humanity...

Sure it can, if the situation has gotten so bad that you need drastic measures, it makes sense. It's not ideal, but that's a totally different thing that "making sense". People have to make hard decisions with temporarily uncomfortable and problematic consequences all the time at the executive level. Getting rid of a big chunk of the workforce is hardly uncommon in terms of drastic measures, no matter how it's done.

And to many people, this is going to make Basecamp appear more attractive not less. They won't have a hard time filling seats.

If a third of your small company are people you actually don't want working for you, that would be a sign of some pretty awful hiring and management.

You'd be suprised how many of your "real friends" are epeople you actually don't want near you.

It just takes a crisis to find out...

And has little to do with failure in personal relationships or management. Many people are inherently shitty.

Indeed. Imagine you’re paying for Basecamp and you need to file tickets and get support ASAP this week? What do you think of them when 1/3 of the employees are gone in a flash? Whatever you think of the debate’s impact on workplace culture, the capitalist point of view is that the founders have most certainly scuttled their company because they couldn’t manage their chosen workforce.

We've been using Basecamp for years now, I wouldn't notice if the entire company went on vacation for 6 months.

It just works.

Hey customers might notice a difference.

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