Basecamp fire grows as employees tweet they're leaving the company

As has often been the case before, technicians are once again campaigning against controversial company guidelines and slurred management strategies. This time employees of the decade-old software company Basecamp quit in protest against what a management employee called a "tantrum".

After a week of controversy, during which years of racially insensitive acts were exposed and employees felt management's discomfort to approach them, several employees announced on Twitter that they were leaving Basecamp for good.

Due to the recent changes at Basecamp, today is my last day at the company. I joined them as a junior programmer over 15 years ago and have been involved in almost every product launch since 2006.

- Sam Stephenson (@sstephenson) April 30, 2021

In a corporate chat forum last year, employees reportedly wanted to expect a legacy message board launched in 2009, where sales reps tracked customers' "funny names". They ridicule an important part of a person's identity. For the Lulz.

Long-time tech journalist Casey Newton, who writes the Substack Platformer, first exposed the controversy. (In the following thread, DHH is referring to the company's co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson.)

What followed was a bloody internal battle that affected the collaboration software that Basecamp designs and sells. Two employees reported DHH to the HR department after comments he had given one employee. Then the company forbade talking about "politics" internally.

- Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) April 28, 2021

According to Newton's report, this list was in some ways teenage only, but later when employees were classified as "funny", "inappropriate" and "often racist" names for names of Asian or African origin. Hansson reportedly told Newton that he and CEO Jason Fried had known about the list "for years". But instead of promoting the cultural accounting that employees asked for, Fried issued a memo prohibiting workers from discussing politics or "social" issues in company chats at all. (Hansson also issued a memo lamenting "difficult times" and "terrible tragedies" that ... apparently should not be talked about at work.)

"We all want different things," reads Fried's memo, scratching his head. "Some a little different, some a lot. However, companies need to make up the collective difference, pick a point and navigate somewhere so they don't get stuck in circles."

Some employees interpreted this step as the C-Suite's way of avoiding internal controls. (It should be noted that Basecamp is a completely remote company, so chatting online is an especially essential part of what he does.)

The backlash to the memo came to a head on Friday after what Newton called a "controversial all-hand meeting" when staff announced they would be leaving en masse. Newton reports that a third of its employees are doing acquisitions.

Around a third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today after a controversial all-hands meeting. I've been told there are more to come.

- Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) April 30, 2021

Many specifically stated that they would be leaving Basecamp because of the new guidelines. Some were particularly devastating, accusing management of ill-treating the whole situation. (The following tweet uses Basecamp's previous name, 37signals.)

I will always be grateful for the time I spent at 37signals and proud of the work we have done. There have been and are some amazing people doing an incredible job.

These base camp changes are a fit of rage from extremely privileged founders who have lost the plot. Very sad to see it.

- Mark Imbriaco (@markimbriaco) April 29, 2021

When a founder tries to defend his bigotry by talking about how many other employees * also * carelessly handle customer data * and * admit it has been around for years ... you need a broader policy statement.

- Jason Huggins 💉1️⃣🔜💉2️⃣ (@hugs) April 29, 2021

Tech companies like Google and Facebook have previously advocated open discussion in workplace forums, and this practice is now common among many tech companies. However, discussions about what counts as free speech and what is just racist, bigoted, or hate speech that violates company policies have not only been conducted in the real world and on social networks. They have also spread to the internal forums of the companies building the same networks and other technical tools. This sparked protests from staff on both sides of the political aisle and a patchwork of guidelines about what is and is not appropriate in the workplace.

Basecamp is the latest example of how claims by tech companies that they are working towards more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces sometimes have their limits. Especially if this work means keeping a critical eye on what is going on in the company itself.

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https://businessservicesnews.ca/basecamp-fire-grows-as-employees-tweet-theyre-leaving-the-company/