<story><title>Changes at Basecamp</title><url>https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stephsmithio</author><text>While I hear the, &amp;quot;But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, &amp;quot;But if you make a mistake, it&amp;#x27;s not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we&amp;#x27;ll move on. This isn&amp;#x27;t some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;From my POV, they&amp;#x27;re taking a difficult stance to rid the workforce of the extreme forms of toxic distraction (which happens across the political spectrum and is pretty recognizable) and for the most part, doing exactly what you articulated: returning to reasonable adult conversations that 99% of people are capable of doing.</text></item><item><author>paxys</author><text>Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a &amp;quot;societal and political discussion&amp;quot;? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless&amp;#x2F;drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp?&lt;p&gt;People are going to say &amp;quot;obviously stuff like this is okay&amp;quot;, but to me that&amp;#x27;s even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever &lt;i&gt;they&lt;/i&gt; think is unacceptable political speech.&lt;p&gt;And if they do strictly enforce that employees must only ever communicate about work (and the weather or whatever), then that sounds like a very depressing and dystopian workplace.&lt;p&gt;Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a &amp;quot;major distraction&amp;quot;? And is the best response to this really to bow down to the loudest voices on either side and shut down conversation for the 99% who are just...normal?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tyingq</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t feel like it&amp;#x27;s a strawman.  I don&amp;#x27;t know the culture there, but what about:&lt;p&gt;- Talking about unions, or pay equity (Might be illegal to ban either)&lt;p&gt;- &amp;quot;Hey Jodie, my partner and I are marching in a Gay pride parade this weekend, wanna come?&amp;quot; (Is that political at Basecamp?)&lt;p&gt;- Some ex-military employees form an informal group to welcome and mentor new employees coming out of the military.  (Is that political?)&lt;p&gt;- One of our new clients is a controversial group&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;etc, what should we do?&lt;p&gt;I could keep going for a while...it&amp;#x27;s difficult to avoid &amp;quot;politics&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Changes at Basecamp</title><url>https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stephsmithio</author><text>While I hear the, &amp;quot;But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, &amp;quot;But if you make a mistake, it&amp;#x27;s not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we&amp;#x27;ll move on. This isn&amp;#x27;t some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;From my POV, they&amp;#x27;re taking a difficult stance to rid the workforce of the extreme forms of toxic distraction (which happens across the political spectrum and is pretty recognizable) and for the most part, doing exactly what you articulated: returning to reasonable adult conversations that 99% of people are capable of doing.</text></item><item><author>paxys</author><text>Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a &amp;quot;societal and political discussion&amp;quot;? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless&amp;#x2F;drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp?&lt;p&gt;People are going to say &amp;quot;obviously stuff like this is okay&amp;quot;, but to me that&amp;#x27;s even worse. The company can and will apply arbitrary rules to whatever &lt;i&gt;they&lt;/i&gt; think is unacceptable political speech.&lt;p&gt;And if they do strictly enforce that employees must only ever communicate about work (and the weather or whatever), then that sounds like a very depressing and dystopian workplace.&lt;p&gt;Is it really that hard to hire adults who can have reasonable adult conversations (with sometimes differing opinions) without it being a &amp;quot;major distraction&amp;quot;? And is the best response to this really to bow down to the loudest voices on either side and shut down conversation for the 99% who are just...normal?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>detaro</author><text>Part of the problem is that no, we do not know what they are referring to. Lots of murky lines, lots of people with bad experiences that what for them is essential is considered over lines, worry that it&amp;#x27;ll be used to silence internal discussion of things the company does, ... (and of course if you impose it on a company used to something different, it&amp;#x27;s potentially a massive culture shift)&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;you can take it to private channels&amp;quot; can play out either way I guess: it can be a completely valid replacement of using company channels, but it is an additional hurdle if you have no signals to go by who to talk to. And if you actually have a problem with work channels getting out of hand, I feel like it&amp;#x27;s a gamble to hope it works better in the dark.&lt;p&gt;If my employer told us we had to move the more social&amp;#x2F;less technical chat channels outside of company infrastructure, I&amp;#x27;m not sure that&amp;#x27;d be better overall. And sort of odd to go with each new hire &amp;quot;oh and btw there&amp;#x27;s this second chat without the bosses, come join&amp;quot;.</text></comment>