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Comment by jokethrowaway | Hacker News Reader

I've seen it happen in a company which was doing just fine.

It happened randomly and completely out of the blue: one software engineer mentioned he didn't believe in the gender gap and he was promptly replied 1000 words essays by other leaders in the company shutting him down, to show that "we don't tolerate certain behaviour".

Guidelines were created to avoid future political discussions in the workplace. No-one left because of it (immediately) and we sadly didn't become famous. The engineer who brought that up quit a few months after.

After that, half of the employees hated thinking there were people thinking something different from them in the company, the other half was afraid to talk in public.

Again, I don't think there was a particular situation in the company: just a naive person who likes to talk frankly and people who get offended and are quick to attack in order to defend the "safe space" for the people who share their beliefs.

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Maybe. But this is (was) a 60-person company. That's about the size of the company I'm currently working at. In other words, you should know everyone and interact with a sizeable chunk of these people somewhat regularly. It strikes me as very odd that you would suddenly so fundamentally distrust your co-workers with whom you share so much. But I'm also not in the US and maybe this is just the current climate over there.

(Or maybe it also shows that being a fully-remote company can have downsides, such as coworkers not socialising enough and therefore not trusting each other? Who knows. DHH certainly has championed the "remote work for everyone" approach countless times.)

> It strikes me as very odd that you would suddenly so fundamentally distrust your co-workers with whom you share so much. But I'm also not in the US and maybe this is just the current climate over there.

Yes, it absolutely is the climate here. it’s awful. tribalism, division, distrust and eagerness to demonize anyone who doesn’t tow your line.

we’re doomed

We also may be reading a lot into how large this committee was.

If I were at a company of ~58 people, and ~20 of them were forming a DE&I committee to evaluate the company's vendor relationships, speakers, etc., I'd be tempted to join just to get the potential target off of my back. They're not going to fire 1/3 of the workforce, after all.

Our group has hours of meetings every week. One coworker was PIPd and he immediately joined the group. Less work and off pip now!

a true hacker :)

The culture here is getting bad. We have an "inclusion council" that hands out these diktats. The word ban list (not blacklist!) is approaching 100 words including husband, housekeeping, normal, hacker and meritocracy. Worse part is we're a security company

edit: "here" is okta, not basecamp

Why hacker?

their explanation: it's "gendered and not inclusive"

And what's wrong with husband? Or housekeeping?

How am I supposed to talk about my husband doing the housekeeping?

you say

"My Man Spouse is doing the domestic science"

Not sure about housekeeping but husband is gendered so I assume that is the "problem".

"hacker" isn't gendered.

> 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

That seems like they don’t understand the word. I can’t think of many more communities more inclusive than hackers. It’s certainly not gendered either.

Are all gendered words banned?

Oh boy! No having cash cows or taking bullshit, or taking a gander, or goosing the numbers, etc., etc.

What the hell happened to us?!

My daughter will be a hacker if she wants to follow in her old mans footsteps. Please don't take that away from her.

mines only 6, shes defeated some child locks and found a "cheat" in one of her kid games on the iPad and presses every button on every machine she sees. Hack the planet kiddo!!

Good! we'll need her in a few years once these kids' anxiety drives them out of the wokeforce

If Paul Graham doesn't rename this site "Hackex News" tomorrow, the woke brigade must cancel it immediately!

It’s tomorrow and not renamed. Surely, his silence on this issue means that he endorses the patriarchal dominance of hackers.

Come to us. First of all it’s Florida and second of all you can say and think what you like. In fact unique points of view are deeply appreciated and widely supported - and engaging contrarian intellectual conversations most welcome.

> husband

Yup. Pro tip: If you're at a SV-influenced company and you find yourself talking about your personal life, don't say "husband," "wife," "boyfriend," or "girlfriend;" say "partner." That signals that you're an Ally rather than an Enemy.

You'll notice other weird speech patterns too. Pay attention to them; they're meaningful.

Truth. from the "guidance" page:

"More inclusive: Spouses/partners <> Less inclusive: Wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends"

Curious about the context here - is the guidance page suggesting how to refer to your own relationships, or when referring to an abstract group of relationships?

But isn't your restriction of my language and how I refer to the people I love pretty much the opposite of "inclusion"?

What if my wife would prefer if I referred to her as my "wife" instead of as a generic, faceless "partner"? By insisting that I refer to her as a genderless "partner", you are failing to respect her chosen pronoun.

This is almost certainly for product or marketing materials, and not for you talking about your personal relationships. That is Okta should not talk about building a security tool for you and your wife to use, but instead for you and your partner to use.

Because I have no clue who your partner is (or really if you have one) so I shouldn't assume until I have that information. Note that the words in the example are all plural, presumably referring to multiple other peoples' partners.

Oh, I see what you are saying. I can definitely get behind the use of gender neutral language in product and marketing materials. That part makes sense anyways.

I often see that peculiar speech pattern here on HN! It's like they're afraid to say 'wife' out of fear of offending the woke mob. The same people who are OK with work being a constant struggle seminar.

I use "sibling" rather than "brother" or "sister" and "parent" rather than "mother" or "father" to reduce information leakage. "Partner" could find the same use.

This isn't any woke thing - its just a "don't reveal information that isn't necessary."

Ah, yes. Let's just obfuscate every humanizing aspect of our lives to ensure we are seen as a replaceable cogs in the money making machine instead of real people with feelings.

^^^ This. So much this. My boss isn't entitle to know the details of my life, nor is the company, nor are my co-workers.

You earn the details of my life by being my friend, not through a contractual relationship.

What word do they suggest in place of 'hacker'?

"Husband" is banned? That's mental - I'd consider that a hostile work environment.

It's bad where I work too. I'd call myself anti-woke. I just keep to myself. The sad thing is that I feel completely demoralized by it all. Like no one is on my side and I can't express myself at all anymore. I can't understand the people who say quit, because for every Basecamp or Coinbase there are 10,000 other companies who haven't banned it where it's taking over.

When anyone tries to prescribe language, it's time to look for the exit. For anyone who has not read the book Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)[1], or seen the movie, I strongly recommend reading or watching. George Orwell understood the power of language when he wrote about Newspeak[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

https://basecamp.com/about/jobs

The most crazy about this stuff in the stirring-stuff-up sense person that I know went to okta specifically because they sensed it would be a good place to engage in this behavior.

Anyone work at Okta that can confirm this?

What’s wrong with husband?

Do we have any examples of this D&I stuff working? All I hear about are campuses and companies literally imploding. I never hear any places that were bad, and then got better. Is there any data at all to suggest that these ideas work and result in a better world?

Got a good chuckle reading the Twitter Bio of Okta's founder & CEO:

"Co-founder + CEO of @okta, proud husband + father, addicted to exercise."

Similar verbiage on their company site as well haha

> husband, housekeeping, normal, hacker and meritocracy

wtf

I work at a Fortune 500 company that has gone woke, complete with critical race theory training. I'm literally the only white person in my department. I'm the racial minority. Do you think any of the training even considered that a possibility? Before this change in the company I had never even noticed my race in relation to my coworkers and I absolutely hate them for bringing it to my attention and forcing me against my will to focus on the fact that I'm a racial minority. I've had employers destroy my retirement plan value (pension) and others try to avoid paying me. This feels much more depraved and personal because they are attacking me psychologically. I'm on my way out.

> (Or maybe it also shows that being a fully-remote company can have downsides, such as coworkers not socialising enough and therefore not trusting each other? Who knows. DHH certainly has championed the "remote work for everyone" approach countless times.)

I’d bet remote work was a strong contributor. People don’t form the same humanizing attachments remotely as they do in person, in my experience.

I agree. For the record, I am pro-remote work and was fully onboard long before COVID, but I also suspect that the erosion of social trust can be accelerated in a company by fully remote work. It's a tradeoff that a company can either handle badly or well.

Did you read that comment about Basecamp employees "crying and screaming at their screens" after the Zoom meeting? That just sounds so much like people who are both venting their spleens and at the same time have no connection to their workplace.

Yep, that line in particular stood out to me. It sounds like there was a lot of assuming bad faith going on. For example, taking DHH’s refusal to take a stance as condoning bad behavior, when it looked to me like he was trying to listen rather than talk, and also blindsided.

At the risk of armchair quarterbacking, the whole thing looks like a broken culture, and I get the impression nobody knew just how broken it was until now. Nor do I think any one person or action is to blame. I’d bet that it’s been festering for years.

It’s a fascinating case study, though, and I’m glad we have a view into it.

> I've seen it happen in a company which was doing just fine. It happened randomly and completely out of the blue: one software engineer mentioned he didn't believe in the gender gap

You don't have to leave it anonymous; I think most people know what Google is.

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