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By saying "these changes" plural you don't only mean the "no talking about politics" policy I guess; are you also talking about "No more committees" (of any kind; only reporting-line authority), "No more 360 reviews", and "No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions" (sounds like a rule on questioning decision-making to me)?

Primarily the "no politics" but I also see the wisdom in dropping 360 reviews. We did that several years ago and it was an amazingly positive change. As for no more dwelling on past decisions, that is the same thing as Intel's cultural value of "Disagree, but then commit." Basically, debate fiercely but then once a decision is made, commit to to it even if it didn't go your way and move on. This is a key part of being a team player. Things aren't going to always go your way and even leadership will sometimes make mistakes but it undermines everything if someone keeps harping on a prior decision. "See, I told it wouldn't work" is about the most immature and unhelpful attitude to have - no matter how correct it may be.

The Intel motto you quote is a much better formulation of this concept, if in fact the recent noise from Basecamp is a sign that they agree with Intel on this. Communication is also an important skill for leaders, and that seems to be lacking.

>As for no more dwelling on past decisions, that is the same thing as Intel's cultural value of "Disagree, but then commit."

You mean the company who is flailing in the market, losing employees and generally considered a bad place to work?

>"See, I told it wouldn't work" is about the most immature and unhelpful attitude to have - no matter how correct it may be.

Blame free post mortems are vital for an organization to grow and improve with time. If you cannot review past bad decisions and learn from then then you will be forced to repeat the same mistakes while your competitors evolve.

>but it undermines everything if someone keeps harping on a prior decision.

If accepting a mistake was made and then publicly coming up with a plan to not have it happen again undermines your ability to lead then you are a horrible leader.

Oh please. Intel may not be the legend it once was but that hardly invalidates a value first forged some 40 years ago.

Intel has enough cash to finance a possible comeback down the road. I'm shocked at how people seem to minimize their future options.

Not only does Intel have the cash, but it has a quarter century of fab capitalization left and a history of come backs, first with the shift from memory to CPUs in the 80s and then overcoming AMD in the 2000s. Ironically, Intel's biggest safety net is spinning off their fabs like AMD spun off Global Foundries, which gave them the capital to claw themselves back from the grave and create this competition for Intel today. I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen an Intel chiplet design.

We're seeing shortages of chips made on everything from 30 year old processes to cutting edges fabs and that demand is likely to be relatively sticky going forward. Intel's going to have to try even harder than it is now to fail and it's going to take decades for the dust to settle, if it ever does (hello Intel Business Machines).

> As for no more dwelling on past decisions, that is the same thing as Intel's cultural value of "Disagree, but then commit." Basically, debate fiercely but then once a decision is made, commit to to it even if it didn't go your way and move on. This is a key part of being a team player.

Hmm... Does (or should) "Disagree, but then commit" contain a corollary of "...and let's look at it again in X months/years"?

I mean, if you do argue for something, say some particular technical solution, but the decision goes against you, and you do actually accept and commit to the outcome... Is this commitment eternal?

If, say, you're still convinced the programming language / framework / style you originally advocated would be a better fit for your team / department / company, are you bound to shut up forever or can you raise it again at some point in the future? And if you can re-raise it, then when -- is there some general waiting period for stuff like this, or should it perhaps be an explicit addendum to every decision?

N.B: Not asking for myself, just a hypothetical that I find interesting... OK, come to think of it, perhaps actually asking for myself after all: I haven't been turned down on any such suggestion... Yet, but am thinking about raising one. And if I get a "No" at first, how long do I go on nagging / wait before I remind everyone of it?

May I ask why you felt things we better post 360 feedback?

I find it amusing how close this brings Basecamp to Lenins idea of 'democratic centralism'.

> I felt these changes were made with the best interests of all stakeholders.

Then why where a significant portion of their employees - the only stakeholders (apart from literally Bezos) - extremely vocal in their disappointment the minute it went out?

I agree. There are lots of people who will never raise their voice but in quiet moments will tell you that political fights are very uncomfortable. Political flame wars are usually driven by a small animated group of loud voices. Another way to frame this policy is “let’s keep the workplace professional”.

This. 1000x.

If you've never experience a spittle-inflected rant disrupting a meeting, because some individual felt it their duty and privilege to engage with everyone on their particular viewpoint ... you simply don't know how disconcerting this can be. I have. I don't care much about my co-workers political views. I'm always happy to have a beer and discuss things after work (well, virtually these days).

But making people uncomfortable because you feel entitled to push your world view at work, makes you more of a liability to the company than an asset. Which in the case of Basecamp, the owners may have addressed well for all concerned.

The changes do enforce a stratification in the organization, This may have been the intent in part.

Another thought I had was that they wanted to slim the company down. In that case, you look at what you want to keep and what you want to lose. You make it easy for those who you want to leave to make that decision. If there was a faction that loved a hypothetical free breakfast, and these folks caused discontent and discomfort among others, elimination of that breakfast, and a way for them to bow out gracefully, thinking that they took the W, would be 4D chess for the stakeholders.

You may lose some people you'd prefer to keep, that's always a risk. But if you have a way to cluster the people you are reasonably happy about parting with, by noting common behaviors (the hypothetical breakfast model above), lowering their interest level for staying (removing the thing they like), while providing an incentive to leave (a pretty good severance/buy out), this is a win for most people.

I've seen various really bad takes on Twitter, that miss almost all the (fairly obvious) nuance of these moves. The bad takes seem to cluster about the "attack" on peoples "rights" to talk societal and political issues at work. And some sort of joy at seeing a company "suffer".

I don't think these are even in the right ballpark. There's lots of missing information, and we can speculate about it, in a way that resembles blindfolded dart playing.

However, the management response is pointed, and as they seem to be fairly specific, one could (likely far more accurately) speculate what caused them. And why they are being considered.

The bans on political/societal talk likely originated from conversations that made some folks quite uncomfortable, or unhappy. They were likely sustained after being advised to stop. Rather than allow such talk to disrupt the organization, the owners had to make a decision. So they did, and provided a mechanism for the most vocal folks to ease their way out.

Or at least it looks this way to me.

What looks to me is that the people who were made uncomfortable were mostly the owners. So they would like to make it clear that no employees may ever make them uncomfortable again. Stratification in the organization indeed.

I share a similar background to yours (employee, leader, founder, diverse org size) and would have agreed with you if it were not for the context of these changes. I too want to ensure people will safe and respected.

However:

* I don't believe any enlightened leadership posts publicly about wide-spread and company affected policy changes before informing and/or discussing with your staff. That's disrespectful to the people you serve.

* no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.

* I don't believe at all that enlightened leadership discards its values the moment that they become difficult to uphold.

* If the new policies weren't in reaction to the leader being called to be accountable to the people he served and the mission he told them they were on, I'd probably be more agreeable to your point. In a vaccuum a safe place for people of all politica and creeds (short of outright hate) to work together is what you want. What I don't want is an unsafe space where no one feels they can question the leadership or hold the company to its values.

That being said, I totally respect your coming at this from a different angle and I agree that there's certainly more than one way to look at this (as the reactions in this thread indicate).

> That's disrespectful to the people you serve.

Perhaps this is not an enlightened view, and I would not have used the word “serve,” but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. This is a company, not the government. As a citizen, the government serves me. As an employee, I serve my employer.

Which is why, as an employee, the employer pays me, and not the other way around.

"but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. "

Leadership is all about serving the people you're shepherding. There is a responsibility and a stewardship that comes with wearing the crown, and it's not always for everyone. =)

> no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.

To be fair to them the world has changed a lot in the last few years.

I used to talk politics with friends and family but I've have had to stop over the last couple years because because of how divisive it's gotten. I now avoid those conversations because I don't want to lose family or friends. I'm center left and people who preciously were slightly left of me would probably consider me a nazi, and people who used to be slightly to the right of me would consider me a communist.

I could see the same changes happening at work. And conversations that used to be ok escalating into insanely heated situations.

I'll bet that people with material experience in management will have a similar take.

Even if I kind of disagree with how it unfolded, I still sympathize with leadership if they've given people options, generous out-terms etc..

The only way you can consider these policies as well-considered is if you are not threatened by them.

If you have a group identity that does not match the founders, these policies will feel as if they are trying to silence you and your input when new policies arise that don't take your group identity into account.

The only fair and sustainable approach is to see humans as entire beings and not robots on a production line.

That doesn't mean the work and customers are forgotten, in fact it's exactly the opposite.