While enjoying the tweets of the various Basecamp employees that were virtue signaling their resignations, I came across a tweet by someone named Casey Newton who was commiserating with the brave golden parachutists who were flouncing into unemployment. Turns out he is a “reporter” at the The Verge and he has written a breathless tell all expose laying bare the sordid heart of “Basecamp-Gate,” as I like to call it.
And I’ve got to say the lameness of the whole thing is extraordinary. It started back in 2009. Now, that was back before the woke monster had terrorized all normal people into keeping their heads down and genuflecting to whatever golden idol had been thought up by the SJW’s at work. Well, some computer geeks at Basecamp had been amusing themselves by going through the database of customers and picking out the names that were the funniest to their tenth-grade psyches. You can only imagine the hilarity, Seymour Johnson, Dick Steele, etc. Fast forward ten years and those employees are gone but the list surfaces and the SJW’s spring into action. One of the geniuses points to an Anti-Defamation League incitement document that claims there is a “pyramid of hate” that provides a clear and inescapable escalation from school yard rank-out sessions all the way up to death camps.
To their surprising credit the owners of Basecamp have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to smooth over this kerfuffle. Without dismissing the concerns of the always outraged SJW’s they have steered a middle course of acknowledging the inappropriate nature of the joke but deciding that nothing terrible happened or would happen because of this incident and attempting to move on without the necessity of firing anyone or moving heaven and earth to change human nature.
When the SJW’s would have none of it, the owners took the action they did Monday and ended the company’s involvement in social justice on the job. And the rest is history. From what Newton has written there were about twenty employees who were part of the DE&I council and had been politicking to expand their authority over everything from hiring to how Basecamp employees were allowed to socialize, to even which vendors the company hired. In other words, they were the SJW rabble-rousers looking to dictate what went on at Basecamp. And if we had the list of these twenty employees, I’ll bit it matches up almost one to one with the employees leaving the company.
So David Hansson, one of the owners, responded to the Verge post with all the details of the funny name list “investigation.” I’ve got to say, based on their written words, these guys must be the calmest human beings alive. Everything is so measured and rational. Everything seems so moderate and reasonable. Even his stance on severance packages is more than decent. I mean these people resigning en masse is meant to be an assault on the viability of the company. And yet he discusses it in the friendliest of terms in his post. It’s like having Ned Flanders as your CEO.
With all the details now available it’s more than apparent that what was done by management was a bold move to save the company from a very bad situation. When a third of the employees are attempting to subvert the CEO’s control over all the most important decision-making functions in the company, well, having them quit en masse may be the best result you could possibly hope for.
Basecamp has now provided a master class in how to rid your company of parasites. Anyone else who has the courage and the foresight should look to their example for inspiration and details.
This is becoming curiouser and curiouser! The company from which I’m now semi-retired has around 100 employees but they tend to older, male and Southern. The sort of thing I’ve been reading about at Basecamp is simply. not. possible. Nor would it be tolerated for a microsecond, by anyone. I can’t begin to fathom trying to work in an environment dominated by a critical mass of these poisonous SJW’s on a hair trigger looking for offense and responding with vicious swarming attacks. The thought of that is more frightening to me than any Alien! Where in the hell did these… Read more »
It’s the millennials. They believe in this woke stuff. But even older companies have moved into the woke stuff. My friends at the last place I was working at are so disgusted with the constant “equity” crap they keep talking about quitting. But the cash is really good so they’re gritting their teeth.
I wonder if it is worse in academia for the non woke–teachers as well as students.
Well, the schools and colleges have been enemy territory for much longer so probably they are worse for the most part. But some of the tech companies are pretty bad too. Look at the culture at Google.