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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I do not love the ideological turn 37signals took after the DEI blow-up. But this piece is as ideological and blinkered as DHH's affirmative action posts have been. It's nice to want things, I know, but: I wish I could have had this piece just as a dry list of ways in which 37signals has waded, unbidden, into culture war topics, without the piece itself staking out the opposite sides of all those issues.

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In what ways has 37signals become ideological? My understanding is that the company is apolitical. All the DHH come from his personal blog

In modern times, leaders are not allowed to have mainstream opinions. The service they're changing to will also have leaders who have opinions that they don't like, they just have larger HR/PR institutions to protect themselves from "problems" like these.

But I'll reiterate a basic fact everyone has in these threads: Duke University obviously has the right to choose their service providers on ideological basis. It might not be smart, but that's another thing.

There's no such thing as being apolitical. Only being wilfully ignorant of the politics that is happening around you and opting to do nothing.

There's also accurately noticing when your employees are engaged in political activism that is harming your company.

Agreed. Which is why 37signals ended up losing a bunch of its best employees.

Hardly 'best' when they're up to these antics.

There is no separation of “it’s my personal blog” when you are in senior leadership of a company. When you’re SLT/founder/owner you represent that company on a personal level.

Imagine buying a condo in Trump Tower and thinking that that you can separate Trump’s personal life away from his real estate business. If you do that in 2023 you have to know that your house guests are going to think about that in some way every time they step foot inside.

I don't know if that's generally true, but it seems clearly to be true if your personal blog is about how you run the company.

Trump Tower is owned by GMAC Commercial Mortgage. Aside from the name, it's entirely divorced from Trump. It's like saying you support slavery because you live in Washington.

The parent comment isn't saying that locating in Trump Tower indicates support for anything. What it's saying is that the vast majority of people will think of the former president every time they walk into a building named Trump Tower, forming an association in their mind with the tenants of that building. It's quite possible that that's an unfair association to make! But the point is that the tenants should know that people will make that association, whether warranted or not. It's the same reason why Disney and Apple are so careful about what they position their brand next to: people make associations, whether or not they're justified.

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