Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rusty-rust 1877 days ago
Many of the comments in this thread appear to be missing the context of what has happening at Basecamp.

From the Verge; > While Basecamp does not publish diversity statistics, it is still, like most tech companies, majority white and male, employees said. But the idea of worker-led efforts on diversity issues got a frosty reception from the founders last year, employees told me. They were allowed to work on the project, but did not feel as if the founders were particularly invested in the outcome.

> Nonetheless, the DE&I ( Diversity and inclusion) council attracted significant support. More than a third of the company — 20 out of roughly 58 employees — volunteered to help. They began examining Basecamp’s hiring processes, which vendors the company works with, how Basecamp employees socialize, and what speakers they might invite to one of the all-remote company’s twice-yearly in-person gatherings.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-politic...

2 comments

It would be really creepy to have a workplace committee examining how I socialize.
HN guidelines are to steelman what you are responding to.

So, assume "examine how employees socialise" means "consider events where people go beyond who their usual contacts are, to enable more mentoring". Rather than, "spying on me and building a graph of contacts".

I suppose you are right and there is a range of implementations a committee comprised of a third of the workforce could use to "examine how employees socialize." Maybe its unfair to react simply to the text and not do the work of broader interpretation.

In terms of the guidelines, I am not a guideline lawyer as perhaps you are. When I think of the strongest plausible interpretation I often turn to Occam and accept the plain language meaning. For example, if a goal of the committee were to encourage mentoring, then the article could have said that.

In terms of strongest plausible interpretation of what I wrote, I did not write "spying on me and building a graph of contacts." I'm a person who is appreciative of privacy and would be annoyed by a group of colleagues who decided to "examine" me in any way. As I think about it now I can feel a wave of revulsion and annoyance toward a posse of busybodies who must not have enough actual work to do that they have time to "examine" me. Maybe you like being examined; me I still think people who volunteer to do that are creepy.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

[...]

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Impressive I would have quite maybe a month into this debacle.

Did they manage to setup a tribunal and a committee of public safety?