#10 Read-Watch-Listen

Read

Inside the All-Hands Meeting That Led to a Third of Basecamp Employees to Quit

By Casey Newton

You may not have heard of the company Basecamp. Basecamp is a SaaS (software as a service) company - it’s basically project management and collaboration software. I first learned about basecamp when I started at my current job when I was reading about remote work, remote working best practice and how to keep culture intact, etc etc. They’re opinionated about startup culture and call out other tech companies that cut corners or treat their employees like robots. Which partly why when they released their “Changes at Basecamp” blog post it caused waves of criticism in their company and across startups.

When I say “they” what I really mean is the cofounders of Basecamp. One of them, well known because they started a programming language called Ruby on Rails. They’ve written a popular blog for almost 20 years which they’ve recently decided to stop writing, moving their thoughts, opinions, and musings to their new service called HEY. To give you an idea of how non-startup startuppy they are, HEY is a blogging/email service that is basically the notes-app but in website form (remember these celebrity apologies). Its purpose is to strip back on the obsession of collecting all data everywhere, and just write for the sake of writing.

A couple of weeks ago, Basecamp followed suit with other startups like Coinbase(crypto currency startup) in banning political discussions at work. They did this slightly differently than Coinbase in that they weren’t going to ban employees from participating in activist communities outside of work, they would encourage their employees to continue this outside of work (are you rolling your eyes? You should be rolling your eyes). For Basecamp it all started when employees raised concern over a list of funny customer names that circulated and employees made fun of. Maybe I’m a delicate millennial snowflake but I’d be fucking annoyed if a product I paid for was breaching privacy norms (and decency) and making fun of my name. After Basecamp made their statement (in a blog, of course) more than 30% of Basecamp’s staff accepted a severance package and resigned.

There are some balanced views out there about why moderating political conversations at work are important - they can be really distracting, they effect people in really different ways, can be quite overwhelming, and in some instances trigger PTSD. Plus, there are people who believe work is just work, a direct contradiction to the long time (toxic) startup trend where work=life. If you aren’t part of a socially impactful business, how much time should you dedicate to having conversations about society and topics that are politically important to your life? If your workforce is very diverse, those conversations are going to be very difficult and there isn’t going to be consensus - and people love consensus.

So what do you do? Well, they shouldn’t be banned for one. Broader politics have indirect affect on peoples lives, if not direct. If your company doesn’t and won’t make a stand on political topics, that’s okay. But when these topics are all encompassing, companies should point to them, recognise them, understand their importance and create some space for that. If you don’t, which I imagine may have happened at Basecamp, is that those conversations start to spill and rise up everywhere, which makes doing and showing up to work even harder.

I’m not convinced that this 1. isn’t a trend sweeping start-ups 2. Is a marketing ploy for HEY and 3. isn’t exactly the result they wanted. And here you can read their apology for being completely ignorant, while also confirming they’re not changing anything here.

Watch

The Last Dance, The Shop

By Jason Heir / By Paul Rivera

I get unreasonably emotional about sports for someone who doesn’t watch them. You have to understand, the impact sports has on us is immense. It influences social movements and has an ability to shape society, sometimes quietly over time, and make it more progressive (and sometimes not). It’s the best lens to look at society. Studying sports overtime can give you a good idea if the world has become more progressive, less inclusive, and if things are a little bit better than they used to be.

The Last Dance is such a good documentary. Every episode has some theme, which is good if you want to watch one episode - but I’d recommend watching the whole thing. It has a good backdrop of what was going on in the 90s in basketball, it goes into a little bit of the politics and business about basketball. Episode 5 is about Jordan as a role model and his influence on pop culture. Obama (39 minutes in) has a measured take and talks about the turning point where Jordan turns into an icon and his apolitical stance (or lack thereof) interrupts the idealism we all have about role models. The commentators all have points about why Jordan didn’t speak out and the series does a good job in presenting what Jordan was coming up against and his infamous hot-take “Republicans wear sneakers too.”

The watch for the week is twofold because there is an infinite debate about who the GOAT (greatest of all time) is in basketball. Is it LeBron or is it Jordan? I also think their approach to politics is significantly different, LeBron is far more outspoken than Jordan was and I think the comparison is useful for talking about what happens when you don’t speak out, or when you do.

HBO’s The Shop is an alternative to Netflix’s series about Jordan. Because, sports is never just about sports, these guys are more than athletes, they’re role models, icons, influencers, and tycoons. Athletes, specifically black athletes, are told to shut up and dribble with the most recent examples being LeBron in the US and Marcus Rashford in the UK. There also seems to be a shift in pop culture and media where people are having more conversations about masculinity - what it means to be a man and how can and should men talk to one another. I think The Shop is a much better representation of what this looks like than other shows or clips I’ve seen.

• LeBron Being a Dad
• Magic Once Trash Talked Michael Jordan

Listen

The Chicks vs. The Iraq War

By Sarah Marshall & Michael Hobbes, You’re Wrong About

It wasn’t capitalism all along - sometimes it’s populism - and sometimes its just the internet. Or at least, that’s just the conclusion for the listen this week.

Some consider The Chick’s (formerly known as The Dixie Chicks) fiasco in the early naughties to be the first instance of cancellation. There is a residual fear among artists of being “dixie chicked.” For context, the Chicks got a lot of grief for speaking out and criticising George W. Bush for entering America into an endless war with Iraq after 9/11. They even ended up making their own doc called Shut Up & Sing. You’re Wrong About covers how the then Chicks were cancelled and the misconception they were cancelled by big corporate media. When in actuality, it was small radio programme managers and show hosts galvanising listeners and community organising. The reason why it isn’t capitalism all along is that it actually took much longer for the larger radio stations to catch on and react to what they called “anti-fandom” of the smaller radio stations and fervent disapproval of country fans. However, the hosts don’t really agree that it’s populism or just the internet. And this is where the conversation gets interesting.

The episode is really good because it has a conversation about the consequences of speaking out and how those differ depending on if you’re a woman, if you’re fat, if you’re a liberal, a minority. They end up asking more questions than answering them. What does it mean to be cancelled? Do we have a taxonomy for being cancelled? What is the definition of it? Is it only cancellation if the effects are monetary? Is it really only something that affects famous and rich people? They are also both deprecating about their own irritating social justice warrior tendencies - which I appreciate.

Fascinating stats in the episode:

• When France decided not to join the Iraq War and Bill O’Reilly (now cancelled) whipped up a frenzy, French imports decreased by 15% and exports by 8%

• Half of all MP harassment on twitter is directed to Diane Abbott