[the_hangman]

It's been a while but if memory serves me correctly the controversy at that time was actually about him unilaterally deciding that people at basecamp shouldn't be talking about politics in off-topic slack channels after people started trying to organize support for something he didn't agree with. IIRC something like 1/3 of the company quit at that time

[zorpner]

Specifically, it was in a meeting called by Jason Fried to address people who were concerned about the ongoing existence of an internal list of "funny customer names" (which by all accounts was extremely racist), in which Ryan Singer (who had reportedly previously posted a fair bit of politically right-wing content on internal forums -- those were all deleted when the "no politics at work" policy was rolled out) repeatedly asserted that white supremacy/privilege did not exist (he then resigned).

In the aftermath, DHH dug through old chat logs to find a time in the past when one of the people complaining about the list participated in a discussion about same without complaint, and posted it in a way that was visible to everyone saying that their prior participation meant that their current complaint was invalid.

Then they rolled out the no-politics-at-work policy in this post dated April 26 2021 -- I would encourage anyone interested in the specifics to read through the various versions and edits of this post made in the week following, all without noting that it was being actively changed: https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5

[schneems]

“No politics at work” except for Dave who spends company time posting political blog entries on his company built platform.

FWIW I captured a timeline of events in this post but a lot of the Twitter links are dead now. https://schneems.com/2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-ho...

[krmbzds]

Am I the only one who feels like discussing politics at work is inappropriate? While I'm not apolitical, I appreciate having a space where the constant bombardment of politics is momentarily absent. It's refreshing to focus on work without the need for political discourse.

[bigstrat2003]

No, you're not the only one. I think work should be a politics-free zone. We are there to get stuff done, not argue and hate each other.

[crote]

The problem is that everything is political: if politics don't impact you, you are living a very privileged life.

On the one hand, I do agree that endless debating over relatively minor ideological differences is pointless, and only going to lead to time-wasting and resentment. I certainly have the same desire for some peace and quiet, and being able to focus solely on my work.

On the other hand, we live in a society where questions like "am I allowed to use the office bathroom" have been made political, and where your coworkers are genuinely worried about whether they'll get arrested and deported from the country for no reason whatsoever during next week's sprint planning. Their issues are real and by definition require the business as an entity to respond to political developments.

You might have the luxury of putting your head in the sand and pretending they don't exist, but that's not going to magically solve your coworkers' problems. Unless the company wants to restrict its hiring to the absolutely minuscule group of people who will never be impacted by politics, it'll have to engage in some level of political discussion.