A Policy of Activism in the Workplace Is Anti-Fellowship
antivalue.blogspot.com
antivalue.blogspot.com
You're very explicitly not describing a job or a company here, as most of them exist today. For all the comparisons to the LoTR trilogy, almost none of us here are working on anything that impactful, or anything that important, and neither are our employers. Most of us are going to show up to work tomorrow and work on another endpoint in a CRUD app, not combat an existential threat.
> If you put other things above your fellows and mission, you're a mercenary, not a fellow.
Yeah, man - I am a mercenary. I joined my currently employer because they are paying me money in exchange for the services I provide them.
In that sense, I like the mercenary analogy very much.
In the corporate world fellowship is rarely discussed and for good reason. I don’t believe most people are blinded by corporate rhetoric; some genuinely want to participate in missions and want to find others who think similarly.
That's what the GP is cautioning against, and that's overwhelmingly the rule today. If you do find a company that treats its employees like a family and cares about them enough to keep them employed during (the employee's) hardship, that's a valuable thing indeed.
And some are lucky enough to be in a position to decree that their employees think similarly, or at least shut up about it.
Most companies are mercenaries and most companies are okay with that. Also most individuals are mercenaries and are fine with it as well.
Upon more reflection I do think the ability for fellowship to suppress infighting via mission driven self sacrifice is more of a fantasy rather than a practical application in real world companies. That’s the function of pay and org structure in most other orgs.
A claim that pro-activism is anti-fellowship is only true if you are dogmatic and uncompromising about putting your fellowship first. Such a fellowship is otherwise known as a ‘cult’.
As an alternative approach, you can cut the gordian knot of being against anti-racism without being in favor of racism by simply noting that the thing is not what it calls itself.
It's a professional thing to do, dammit.
Activism at the workplace is as far as one can get from either fellowship or a mercenary camp: it's your personal beliefs and values above all else, at all cost. Screw the work, screw the colleagues, screw the company, I need to preach on the company dime, or improve stuff no one has asked me to improve.
... is political. What is that purpose, why is it common, and how does the joining work - these are the fundamental political problems.
> If you put other things above your fellows and mission, you're a mercenary, not a fellow.
Yes. At work, you are a mercenary. Your safety, family, health, concern for the decent treatment of your fellow humans, ought to come before your product. If the direction of the company you work for impinges on human decency, you shouldn't put that aside in favour of some weird 'fellowship' complex.
> It promotes people to stick to their beliefs rather than put them aside. [...] It attracts those who have their own interest and want a platform for their own interests
It's possible to have beliefs that aren't purely self-interested, an idea which seems so foreign to the author as to escape consideration entirely. It's possible to have beliefs that help you achieve your 'mission' in a way that's compatible with your values. If laying down your belief that racism is harmful and wrong is necessary for you 'mission', then the mission is itself harmful and wrong, and no amount of 'fellowship' is going to change that.
This post is wrong. It's harmful. It's weird.
Their activism focuses on saying the right words and dis-empower Gen-X and older.
Because, to write off 'how about not being racist' as "saying the right words and dis-empower Gen-X", or "[using] a platform for their own interests" is ...
racist.
And being anti-racist is political activism, and that's good.
I think the author is referring to the mission statement of companies. While some missions statements have political elements, I can see plenty of mission statements that give a common purpose and are not political. Examples: "Accellerate the advent of sustainable transport" -- Tesla, "Build the best CPU" -- Intel (?).
It is well known that a strong mission statement is an important motivation for people to join and continue to work at companies (e.g. Pink's Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose Framework). So to describe a company as a group of people who are joining together for a common purpose is not wrong.
(Of course, there are of course many more factors that influence work-place selection and motivation.)
Can you elaborate where you see this all rooted in politics?
Tesla is extremely political if you want it to be. Exactly what you choose to mean by the word 'sustainable' has all kinds of political implications. The core argument for going electric and solar over internal combustion and coal power is rooted in the environmental movement and based on a belief in global warming and climate change. That is 'political'
Equally pushing for autonomous driving can be seen as taking stance against all the people that will lose their jobs if self driving cars and trucks become a reality. Clearly taking a stance for Capital and against The Workers. That is 'political'.
However, there _are_ plenty of Mission Statements that are a political, just look at your local craftsman or industrial suppliers: "making plumbing work at your home", "creating the best concrete foundations", "selling the best shoes", etc. those are not "fundamentally" or primarily political missions.
In fact, 'being political' is non-normative - per wikipedia:
Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.
So, the first answer to your question is a pedantic one: "joining together for a common purpose" is by definition a political act.
The second, more nuanced argument, is that your even if it's not obvious, these mission statements are political:
- "Accelerate the advent of sustainable transport" - says that 1. sustainable transport is good; 2. sustainable transport isn't coming fast enough; 3. it's appropriate for a private company to influence the transport market
- "Build the best CPU" - 1. CPUs are a good thing to spend energy and finite resources on; 2. something about the validity of calling a cpu 'best'
and so on. I agree that having a clear mission which your employees are aligned to is crucial for morale and effectiveness; but the way that mission is chosen, who influences it, the way that it displays beliefs about what is desirable; and how it evolves over time all are all political.
You are using a broad definition of politics. And yes, a job is clearly also a vote for a purpose/values that is inherent to the business model.
Absolutely! I did not see anyone at Basecamp questioning this.
- The OP's argument is irrelevant to bandcamp, since the antiracism at bandcamp was actually not directed at the 'mission' at all
- If we instead consider the hypothetical that OP is responding to - that being antiracist is in conflict with your 'mission' - then it was a bad mission anyway, and maybe you should change it so that it no longer conflicts with antiracism.
The problem is that in the current hyperactive cancel culture, seeking and destroying anyone who said an off-color joke on social media ten years ago, the workplace becomes a minefield, and it has enough complexities as it is.
There is a reason why we don't talk about politics and religion in the office openly. We learned these lessons the hard way.
I have, however, worked in an organisation that transitioned from a clear fellowship of everyone working towards a common goal and putting their other concerns on hold to one where you felt your interests were competing.
I ultimately left because of this transition (life is too short!), and it’s interesting that it was the introduction of self-interested, mercenary sales guys and a commercially oriented CEO that triggered it.
I like fellowship/mercenary dichotomy.
Totally agree with this article - just do your job and get on the soap box during your own time.
Discouraging people from voting for Trump? Pushing for equal pay across genders? Believing the business should do more to diversify its hiring? Pushing for transgender bathrooms? Being opposed to working on defense contracts?
For some people, these conversations are “obvious facts”, not politics.
How did we ever manage to get past that?
A lot of tribal, identity-based politics is much like religion in this way. For the believers it's simply truth. For outsiders it's just one faith out of many that you should keep private in a secular society.
"I'm going to pick up my kid at school this afternoon, because otherwise he has to spend over an hour on the bus. It would be nice if they had more school buses so kids wouldn't have to deal with such long bus rides."
"Excuse me, Becky, but you cannot be discussing local politics in the workplace. That's a fireable offense, you know."
"No politics" is a smokescreen. What it means in reality, here or anywhere else its instituted, is that "leadership decides the acceptable position on political issues."
Yes there is a need to make sure work that directly brings money into the organisation gets done but part of that work is making sure everyone everyone works equally.
"There's no way the ring is getting to Mordor if Gimli is pushing for elf reparations." This suggests we can't deal with more than one thing at once. We can deal with the big bad of our generation (I would argue climate change), while also improving the material condition of disadvantaged people across society.
The average modern activist in software organizations is well educated, underperforming in terms of actual code contributions and a master at forming committees, work groups and assuming power.
This activist fights for keeping his/her own job while others are doing the work.
Classic leftist/pro-worker policies have been extinct since at least the 1990s.
Here's my read, based on your supporting the blog post and your two comments:
You've constructed this fantasy as a defence mechanism. You use the classification of those with earnest beliefs that you find threatening as worse at 'actual code' and obsessed with 'work groups', and on that basis you reject those beliefs without having to introspect.
As collaboration, design, and people skills become more valued as ways to produce better software alongside sheer lines-of-code output, you fear that the power you derive from skills is being diluted.
As the corporate world realises that people who aren't men or who aren't white might matter, need to be taken into account, and might have something to contribute, you fear that maybe some of what you got you didn't deserve quite as much as you thought, and the fear of being seen as privileged makes you want to cling onto your existing power all the more.
This is an opportunity for growth. You can choose whether to create resentful posts on HN, writing off anyone who cares as a leech, or you can engage with those underlying feelings and become a better human, and better at your job.
For how much longer can we expect people to demand society to be progressive and equal at large and still cope with these small quasi-feudal (at worst) fiefdoms we spend 8+ hours a day in?
Still, Twitter and social media in general have not prepared us to have these discussions at all, and I expect that for this notion to thrive, whole new businesses based on activism and equality and work to have to be created. More Mondragóns, fewer Coinbases. A difference here is workplace activism and not persecution of thoughtcrime, MAGA followers and so on. Except when they believe in Jewish space lasers, of course.
But you have to work with people you might disagree with, including conservatives, religious people, and so on. The point of keeping activism out of business is so that people with differing politics can work together. If you can't in good conscience do that, the honorable thing to do is resign, as happened at Basecamp.
Weird because at companies like Apple where I worked diversity in viewpoints was an important part of the fabric of the company.
But then again they don't seem to be doing so well.
(If you’ll allow me an irrelevant aside, your snarky sarcasm, point missing, and cleverer-than-thou ironic posturing makes it difficult for me to take you seriously. But perhaps it’s considered polite where you’re from. I’m happy to learn.)
I disagree strongly with the premise of the article and think it has logical flaws.
Aren't you more of a mercenary if you put personal believes and convictions aside, just to serve your employer as he wants, without asking questions or trying to do the right thing?
Can a fellowship or ("a group of people that join together for a common purpose or interest") really form around an SaaS-/Adtech-/SocialMedia-Startup whose main goal is to make the founders rich?
If you are doing activism, in the workplace, that runs against the beliefs and opinions of (some of the) the people you work with. How could this be anything but anti-fellowship?
It works both ways I'm afraid. And many people will think that those opinions are somehow good for society and that they're being good team players by pushing them.
OP loves his fellowship analogy, but you can't have a fellowship where the halflings are only getting half-rations and Gandalf refuses to let the Dwarves participate in half of their endeavours.
Instead we get an utterly cringeworthy "everyone should just be quiet and follow the wisdom of Lord of the Rings" which adds absolutely nothing to the discourse.
Flagged.
That sort of behaviour plays into the hands of those who believe that criticism of social activists is shut down by sympathisers rather than countered with civil argument.
It does not deserve to be amplified by HN.
I do disagree with Basecamp's policy, but I certainly wouldn't flag someone for arguing in favour of it. But I'm not sure I'd consider the linked post an argument in favour of it either; that implies that it contained an argument, but this seemed to just be a vague hand wave at popular culture, following by a bare assertion. Okay, how about "the Rebels were good, and the Empire was bad; the Rebels were a group organised for a common purpose, and so is a labour union, so the Rebels are like a union, so you should join your local union, because otherwise Palpatine will win"? Is that all we need?
One reason I wouldn't flag an argument I disagreed with is because the comments would be an excellent place to see people discussing, refuting, or affirming the points being made. But with something like this...what's to discuss? Or refute? The entire post would make at least as much sense (which is to say, not much) if you just flipped the conclusion and left the body alone. ("Fellowship means looking after everyone and not sacrificing people for the greater good, mercenaries just go to work, do their job, and go home without caring about right and wrong or thinking what the job is, etc.")
But if you think that activism is a universally appropriate activity no matter the situation, I respectfully disagree. That’s why I wrote this post. I think pushing activism in a place where you want fellowship is disruptive to fellowship.
I’m sorry my writing doesn’t contribute what you want to hear. I write to gain clarity for myself first and foremost, not for others. I also like discussing the topic with others to form a better opinion and like to use what others have to say to shape how I think. Sorry you don’t feel the same way.
Folks keep acting like it was kids screaming BLM on the company message board and it’s kind of infuriatingly disingenuous.
It feels almost purposeful that folks are ignoring the specific political grievance that employees had, and they are framing it as activist pressure.
I’m genuinely impressed at Basecamps ability to completely control the conversation, and I’m incredibly annoyed that articles posted here about it have completely ignored this argument.
It was a specific political act that upset employees - they didn’t “want to just post activism all day instead of working.” That argument is so manufactured it’s painful, and I’m dissapointed a bunch of educated professionals can’t see the manipulation at play.
“I just want to work at work. I don’t need activism in my workplace.” is an opinion entirely tangential to the actual events. But it’s what people hear want to talk about I guess.
It’s good business sense for an internal team to say “You shouldn’t have a funny names list. If that got out it’d be PR hell for the company. It’s bad business and not related to work.” That’s how these complaints should have been taken.
For DHH's response: https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-all-out-78485e8e
Semi-unrelatedly, I noticed something interesting: People who try to solve problem X seem to dislike other people who try to solve the same problem in a slightly different way almost as much as they dislike the people who cause X in the first place.
I find myself being put off similarly, and it's completely irrational that I'd be put off that someone is against racism as much as I am, but has a different idea of what a solution might look like. Being aware of that is probably a good step towards fixing it, so I wanted to mention it here.
EDIT: unsurprisingly the word privilege is triggering on HN
If someone complains you're too loud, saying "you just don't like what you're hearing" will just further alienate you from people who like what you're saying but don't like the volume.
There is no such thing
I think it shows a lot of PR skill and thought to have shifted the conversation like this.
In my opinion you’re all too eager to argue about politics in the workplace.
Any firestorm is more people arguing over the role politics has in the workplace. The specifics of what happened are a helpful starting point but, going out on a limb here, probably not material to the people who want to discuss it.
Basecamp is without question in the top 5% of most liberal and progressive companies, but they have no desire to be in the top 0.1%. I think there is plenty to criticize on how basecamp handled the communication, but their demands really aren't unreasonable. Basecamp wants to be pluralistic and have people work together despite their differences, and they want to be progressive and inclusive. But they don't want the equity and inclusion efforts to become a disproportionate time sink and something that distracts from the many other goals they have.
It's bikeshedding taken to the extreme. Nanoracism leading to microaggressions, leading to DHH planning a genocide, for fuck's sake. This is insane, those people throwing such words around without even knowing what the fuck they are talking about.
And all of this storm in a teapot seems to be a thing people would spend a weekend mulling over and over and over again instead of going outside or reading a nice book, or solving some, you know, real problems.
E.g. I’m sure most woke people who consider themselves allies in the struggle against oppression would consider a name like “Donald Drumpf” funny. That’s just a property of the specific values of that culture. Does it suck for guys named “Donald drumpf”? Sure, but punishing any specific individual for pointing out his name is funny does not negate the fact that the entire culture itself finds it funny. Better for drumpf to know than not know. He could always move or change his name. Less than ideal but wherever you go some name will be considered funny.
Basecamp, meanwhile, is building good project management tools and privacy focused email ... for lots of money ... while saying don't even TALK about society evils such as deeply entrench racism.
But, sure, let's call the activists "mercenaries".
These conclusion forming anecdotes in the small from a single moment in time between don't provide a strong base for causal arguments.
LOL.
When basecamp bans political discussion it’s a… fellowship issue?
Somebody please wake me up when this philosophical nightmare is over.
But it feels like there's a pretty clear pattern that this wasn't a case of a few politically motivated employees being a distraction and disrupting an otherwise harmonious environment.
A third of the company joined the DEI initiative that was disbanded. On twitter, anonymous interviews, and any other source that I've seen, not one Basecamper has come out in support of Jason and David, and employees seem universally aligned against their actions.
If anything, I'd say the likeliest source of "anti-fellowship" here is Jason and DHH. They are in charge, so they are able to do that, but "fellowship" isn't a good term to describe getting in line behind the bosses' decisions regardless of your personal opinion.
https://janeyang.org/2021/04/27/an-open-letter-to-jason-and-...
It does seem like it may have been a case of some politically motivated employees being disruptive. The part that is just irredeemable is:
> I thought about it through COVID-19, as HEY launched in the midst of a civil rights uprising and we toiled over the customer support cases of people who could afford to pay $99/year for personal email.
This sounds like the person is complaining that their supposedly privileged customers distracted her from activism. If she has a problem working for "people who could afford to pay $99/year for personal email" then she should probably find a different job where she will serve a demographic that is more palatable to her.