39 minutes ago, DaEagles4Life said:

Pfizer and Moderna's revenues this next year is why the vaccine came out so fast, not Biden nor Warp Speed. 

Yep, and their revenue is why they're blocking 3rd world countries from developing generic knock-offs of the vaccine. Sure, the pandemic is bad and all, but we can't lose out on profit just to save some lives and stop a deadly infectious disease from spreading.

Acosta dropping bombs! 

 

Basecamp, a software company, made this policy announcement. 1/3rd of their employees immediately quit, and the company is better off for it.

1. No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account. Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it on our company Basecamp account where the work happens. People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can't happen where the work happens anymore. Update: David has shared some more details and more of the internal announcement on his HEY World blog.

2 hours ago, The_Omega said:

Basecamp, a software company, made this policy announcement. 1/3rd of their employees immediately quit, and the company is better off for it.

 

 

I was hoping the link would share some examples... I wonder which group/side quit their job over the new policy.

I watched the movie Bombshell with my wife this past weekend... meh. It does have some media, lies & censorship in it though.
 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6394270/

 

14 minutes ago, MidMoFo said:

I was hoping the link would share some examples... I wonder which group/side quit their job over the new policy.

the group that wanted a nice severance package.

company co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson said the company would offer generous severance packages to anyone who disagreed with the new stance.

Yesterday, we offered everyone at Basecamp an option of a severance package worth up to six months salary for those who’ve been with the company over three years, and three months salary for those at the company less than that. No hard feelings, no questions asked. For those who cannot see a future at Basecamp under this new direction, we’ll help them in every which way we can to land somewhere else.

In fairness, there was more to it than just the ending of political discussions

https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5

 

Quote

 

April 26, 2021

Changes at Basecamp

At Basecamp, we treat our company as a product. It's not a rigid thing that exists, it's a flexible, malleable idea that evolves. We aren't stuck with what we have, we can create what we want. Just as we improve products through iteration, we iterate on our company too.

Recently, we've made some internal company changes, which, taken in total, collectively feel like a full version change. It deserves an announcement.

In the product world, not all changes are enjoyed by all customers. Some changes are immediately appreciated. Some changes take time to steep, settle in, and get acquainted with. And to some, some changes never feel quite right — they may even be deal breakers.

The same is true when changing your company, except that the customers are the employees. And when you get to a certain count — customers or employees or both — there's no pleasing everyone. You can't — there are too many unique perspectives, experiences, and individuals.

As Huxley offers in The Doors of Perception, "We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude."

Heavy, yes, but insightful, absolutely. A relevant reminder. We make individual choices.

We all want different somethings. Some slightly different, some substantially. Companies, however, must settle the collective difference, pick a point, and navigate towards somewhere, lest they get stuck circling nowhere.

With that, we wanted to put these directional changes on the public record. Historically we've tried to share as much as we can — for us, and for you — so this transmission continues the tradition.

1. No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account. Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it on our company Basecamp account where the work happens. People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can't happen where the work happens anymore. Update: David has shared some more details and more of the internal announcement on his HEY World blog.

2. No more paternalistic benefits. For years we've offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmer's market share, and continuing education allowances. They felt good at the time, but we've had a change of heart. It's none of our business what you do outside of work, and it's not Basecamp's place to encourage certain behaviors — regardless of good intention. By providing funds for certain things, we're getting too deep into nudging people's personal, individual choices. So we've ended these benefits, and, as compensation, paid every employee the full cash value of the benefits for this year. In addition, we recently introduced a 10% profit sharing plan to provide direct compensation that people can spend on whatever they'd like, privately, without company involvement or judgement.

3. No more committees. For nearly all of our 21 year existence, we were proudly committee-free. No big working groups making big decisions, or putting forward formalized, groupthink recommendations. No bureaucracy. But recently, a few sprung up. No longer. We're turning things back over to the person (or people) who were distinctly hired to make those decisions. The responsibility for DEI work returns to Andrea, our head of People Ops. The responsibility for negotiating use restrictions and moral quandaries returns to me and David. A long-standing group of managers called "Small Council" will disband — when we need advice or counsel we'll ask individuals with direct relevant experience rather than a pre-defined group at large. Back to basics, back to individual responsibility, back to work.

4. No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions. We've become a bit too precious with decision making over the last few years. Either by wallowing in indecisiveness, worrying ourselves into overthinking things, taking on a defensive posture and assuming the worst outcome is the likely outcome, putting too much energy into something that only needed a quick fix, inadvertently derailing projects when casual suggestions are taken as essential imperatives, or rehashing decisions in different forums or mediums. It's time to get back to making calls, explaining why once, and moving on.

5. No more 360 reviews. Employee performance reviews used to be straightforward. A meeting with your manager or team lead, direct feedback, and recommendations for improvement. Then a few years ago we made it hard. Worse, really. We introduced 360s, which required peers to provide feedback on peers. The problem is, peer feedback is often positive and reassuring, which is fun to read but not very useful. Assigning peer surveys started to feel like assigning busy work. Manager/employee feedback should be flowing pretty freely back and forth throughout the year. No need to add performative paperwork on top of that natural interaction. So we're done with 360s, too.

6. No forgetting what we do here. We make project management, team communication, and email software. We are not a social impact company. Our impact is contained to what we do and how we do it. We write business books, blog a ton, speak regularly, we open source software, we give back an inordinate amount to our industry given our size. And we're damn proud of it. Our work, plus that kind of giving, should occupy our full attention. We don't have to solve deep social problems, chime in publicly whenever the world requests our opinion on the major issues of the day, or get behind one movement or another with time or treasure. These are all important topics, but they're not our topics at work — they're not what we collectively do here. Employees are free to take up whatever cause they want, support whatever movements they'd like, and speak out on whatever horrible injustices are being perpetrated on this group or that (and, unfortunately, there are far too many to choose from). But that's their business, not ours. We're in the business of making software, and a few tangential things that touch that edge. We're responsible for ourselves. That's more than enough for us.

This may look like compression. A reduction, an elimination. And it is. It's precisely that. We're compressing X to allow for expansion in Y. A return to whole minds that can focus fully on the work we choose to do. A return to a low-ceremony steady state where we can make decisions and move on. A return to personal responsibility and good faith trust in one another to do our own individual jobs well. A return to why we started the company. A return to what we do best.

Who's responsible for these changes? David and I are. Who made the changes? David and I did. These are our calls, and the outcomes and impacts land at our doorstep. Input came from many sources, disagreements were heard, deliberations were had. In the end, we feel like this is the long-term healthy way forward for Basecamp as a whole — the company and our products.

When you've been around 20 years, you've been through change. You're used to it, and comfortable with it. These changes are part of a continuum in the experiment of independence that is Basecamp (and 37signals before that). We'll eventually run headlong into big change again. This is what we've done, and this is what we'll do — time guarantees it.

We're very much looking forward to this new version of the company. Once the construction site is cleaned up, and the dust settles, we believe we'll see a refocused, refreshed, and revitalized Basecamp. Here we go, again.

 

 

 

AP reporter fired for expressing pro-Palenstine views, critical of Jewish billionaires, while she was in college:

If AP has such a problem with her college work, then why did they even hire her in the first place?

Also, this is an example of the problem with college in the modern age. If views expressed as a student follow you into the workplace, then it's no wonder colleges don't want to hold any deep-thought discussions anymore.

 

On 5/21/2021 at 10:36 AM, toolg said:

AP reporter fired for expressing pro-Palenstine views, critical of Jewish billionaires, while she was in college:

If AP has such a problem with her college work, then why did they even hire her in the first place?

Also, this is an example of the problem with college in the modern age. If views expressed as a student follow you into the workplace, then it's no wonder colleges don't want to hold any deep-thought discussions anymore.

Defending an overt anti-Semite. Nice.

44 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

Defending an overt anti-Semite. Nice.

A Jewish anti-Semite?   She is Jewish.

8 hours ago, toolg said:

A Jewish anti-Semite?   She is Jewish.

MOAR SELF HATING LIBRUULLZ

12 hours ago, RPeeteRules said:

 

Here’s what I always come back to.  Who is on the board of directors?   Because they’re hiring the President.  It doesn’t matter if you have some liberal faculty members because they’re not making important decisions.

Take a look at last week’s drama with Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC for example.

 

38 minutes ago, Dave Moss said:

Here’s what I always come back to.  Who is on the board of directors?   Because they’re hiring the President.  It doesn’t matter if you have some liberal faculty members because they’re not making important decisions.

Take a look at last week’s drama with Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC for example.

 

I do see what he’s saying and what you’re saying.  I think the issue is that if the professors, the ones who are interacting with the students the most, are mainly left leaning, it seems counter intuitive to call it a right wing institution.

3 hours ago, Dave Moss said:

Here’s what I always come back to.  Who is on the board of directors?   Because they’re hiring the President.  It doesn’t matter if you have some liberal faculty members because they’re not making important decisions.

Take a look at last week’s drama with Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC for example.

 

https://www.chronicle.com/article/behind-nikole-hannah-joness-tenure-case-a-decade-of-political-interference-in-college-leadership?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_2371110_nl_Academe-Today_date_20210524&cid=at&source=&sourceId=

 

On 5/21/2021 at 10:36 AM, toolg said:

AP reporter fired for expressing pro-Palenstine views, critical of Jewish billionaires, while she was in college:

If AP has such a problem with her college work, then why did they even hire her in the first place?

Also, this is an example of the problem with college in the modern age. If views expressed as a student follow you into the workplace, then it's no wonder colleges don't want to hold any deep-thought discussions anymore.

Hit

2 hours ago, RPeeteRules said:

I do see what he’s saying and what you’re saying.  I think the issue is that if the professors, the ones who are interacting with the students the most, are mainly left leaning, it seems counter intuitive to call it a right wing institution.

I've always considered this a dramatic overstatement. Yeah, when I was in college a lot of professors leaned left, but in most cases we weren't learning anything remotely political. In the instances where I had a class that touched on politics in some way, the professors went out of their way to try and be objective as possible. And there were absolutely voices on the right, oftentimes they were the loudest honestly (and often peppered with "right wing views as victims on liberal campuses" rhetoric)

Some of the best conversations I've had from a political point of view during college were with a loud and opinionated gay Catholic Republican. Yeah.

But the impression in the minds of many right wingers is that college campuses are manufacturing communists. It's basically dogma at this point, and questioning whether someone can possibly come out of college without being brainwashed with liberal hysteria is tantamount to .. well, suggesting Trump didn't win the 2020 election.

Many state universities get some oversight from the state gov't in one form or another, but in most cases it's not super overt. NC is a bit of an exception, where the Republican dominated state legislature has never been afraid to throw its political weight around (contrary to "small government" mantras). 

It's hard for me to care that much about Nikole Hannah-Jones not getting tenure. The 1619 project was fraught with historical inaccuracies and false narratives based on race-driven conjecture not historical fact. But it's also pretty ridiculous to see a state board whose members are hand-picked by the legislature (12 of 13 are anyway) override what should be a university level decision. Decisions of tenure shouldn't be politically driven, and it's quite clear that in this case it was.

11 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

I've always considered this a dramatic overstatement. Yeah, when I was in college a lot of professors leaned left, but in most cases we weren't learning anything remotely political. In the instances where I had a class that touched on politics in some way, the professors went out of their way to try and be objective as possible. And there were absolutely voices on the right, oftentimes they were the loudest honestly (and often peppered with "right wing views as victims on liberal campuses" rhetoric)

Some of the best conversations I've had from a political point of view during college were with a loud and opinionated gay Catholic Republican. Yeah.

But the impression in the minds of many right wingers is that college campuses are manufacturing communists. It's basically dogma at this point, and questioning whether someone can possibly come out of college without being brainwashed with liberal hysteria is tantamount to .. well, suggesting Trump didn't win the 2020 election.

Many state universities get some oversight from the state gov't in one form or another, but in most cases it's not super overt. NC is a bit of an exception, where the Republican dominated state legislature has never been afraid to throw its political weight around (contrary to "small government" mantras). 

It's hard for me to care that much about Nikole Hannah-Jones not getting tenure. The 1619 project was fraught with historical inaccuracies and false narratives based on race-driven conjecture not historical fact. But it's also pretty ridiculous to see a state board whose members are hand-picked by the legislature (12 of 13 are anyway) override what should be a university level decision. Decisions of tenure shouldn't be politically driven, and it's quite clear that in this case it was.

I actually think there are a lot of left-wing types in academia.  And in liberal arts classes they still read people like Karl Marx.  What are they talking about down at the business school though?  I don’t think it’s communism...

3 minutes ago, Dave Moss said:

I actually think there are a lot of left-wing types in academia.  And in liberal arts classes they still read people like Karl Marx.  What are they talking about down at the business school though?  I don’t think it’s communism...

There absolutely are. I'm just saying they weren't usually overt.

I did go to engineering schools, not liberal arts. So YMMV.

7 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

There absolutely are. I'm just saying they weren't usually overt.

I did go to engineering schools, not liberal arts. So YMMV.

What I get a kick out of is these conservative politicians who haven’t been on a college campus in 30 or 40 years telling us what’s happening in college classrooms. Why? Because you sent your son or daughter to Duke or Stanford or some Ivy League school and they had a liberal professor?  GTFOH

3 hours ago, Dave Moss said:

Take a look at last week’s drama with Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC for example.

 

On what grounds is she denied tenure? You can't just say politics. That's stupid. Did she do her job? I think so, and she achieved recognition for it. Who or what's holding her back?

20 minutes ago, toolg said:

On what grounds is she denied tenure? You can't just say politics. That's stupid. Did she do her job? I think so, and she achieved recognition for it. Who or what's holding her back?

The faculty recommended she be given tenure.    That she didn’t get it isn’t really surprising though.  The UNC board is made up of a bunch of old white men.  Not too hard to read between the lines there.

19 minutes ago, toolg said:

On what grounds is she denied tenure? You can't just say politics. That's stupid. Did she do her job? I think so, and she achieved recognition for it. Who or what's holding her back?

The stated reason was lack of an academic background. Which has never been an issue for others nominated for tenure.

1 minute ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

The stated reason was lack of an academic background. Which has never been an issue for others nominated for tenure.

She earned her Masters degree at UNC... How much more background do you need?  It seems the Board is seeking to invalidate her position, by refusing to offer tenure. How is she supposed to do her job? With the board constantly breathing down her neck? That's what they want, right?