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Comment by setgree | Hacker News Reader

> Nonetheless, the DE&I council attracted significant support. More than a third of the company — 20 out of roughly 58 employees —

I had no idea we were talking about such a small company (the company I work for is 10X as large and has a much smaller profile). This has clearly touched a nerve with HN (and twitter [0]), but we are talking about one very particular group's culture-internal disputes. I don't assume that any lessons drawn about it will generalize well.

[0] https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1388212468510380034

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This is such a strange statement. Do you think your company's policies will apply to other companies better because it's larger?

I would also argue that Basecamp's "internal disputes" very much reflect the current broader political climate.

> I would also argue that Basecamp's "internal disputes" very much reflect the current broader political climate.

In that a large contingent on either side of any discussion feels that they can do anything they like out of moral righteousness?

Yes. I wouldn't put it exactly like that, but that kind of is the political climate right now, isn't it?

I think that bigger groups generalize more easily to the population at large, yes.

I didn’t meant that my employer is exemplary or representative, just that it’s a literal order of magnitude larger and you’ve likely never heard of it; and as a result, I’m surprised that this drama is so high-profile. It seems disproportionate to its scope.

On the one hand, this could be because basecamp is an effective stand-in for broader trends. On the other, it could be that basecamp has done an incredible job marketing itself as an effective role model for other companies, and people are enjoying a bit of schadenfraude at its expense.

I think the second explanation fits better. This looks like a feeding frenzy to me.

YCombinator is an incubator for startups. There's a lot of people working at companies that are much smaller than yours. There are more small companies than medium or large companies.

Basecamp has made an impact on software and startups. They created Ruby on Rails. Their founders are outspoken.

https://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307704513

I think large organizations and small ones are almost entirely different organism. For about 50 people, you get to meet and know most of them. For an organization that is 300 or even 10k large, you may only know people by their team name and title. So I think it's a legitimate concern that culture and dynamics of small organizations do not apply well to larger ones.

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