Interviews with Basecamp staff on how a “funny” customer names list sparked an internal reckoning and spurred Basecamp's societal and political discussion ban
Casey's reporting for The Verge brought some of the dirty laundry … Charlie Warzel / Galaxy Brain : Can We Do Better Than Deplatforming? — This is Galaxy Brain — a newsletter from Charlie Warzel about technology and culture. Liz Wolfe / Reason : Basecamp Becomes the Latest Tech Company To Ban Talking Politics at Work Sarah Kessler / New York Times : Another tech company bans employees from talking politics at work. Ed Z / Where's Your Ed At : The Problems of a Perfect, Politics-Free Office Adam Fetcher / Fast Company : Basecamp banned social and political conversations at work. Here's what it should have done Fred Wilson / AVC : Paternalism In The Office — Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, posted a message to his team yesterday … Tweets: Casey Newton / @caseynewton : For more than 10 years, some Basecamp employees maintained an open list of customer names that sounded “funny” to them. Last year, amid a broader reckoning over diversity and inclusion, that list didn't seem quite so funny any more. And employees wanted to talk about it. Brian Armstrong / @brian_armstrong : Another mission focused company 👏 it takes courage in these times. https://world.hey.com/... Who will be next? @dhh : “Now that particularly the incident regarding the Best Names List is on the public record, I think it's also only right and fair to share our internal response, as well as the specific comment that ended up being reported to HR.” https://world.hey.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : What followed was a bruising internal fight that played out on the very collaboration software that Basecamp designs and sells. Two employees reported DHH to HR after comments he made to an employee. Then the company banned talking “politics” internally. Federico Viticci / @viticci : I'm a user, and paying customer, of Basecamp products. Their new policy of silencing workplace discussion of political and societal issues forces me to consider taking my business elsewhere. Disappointing, shortsighted, and out of touch. Just wrong. https://world.hey.com/... https://twitter.com/... @balajis : It is now possible to be an apolitical company. You can hit a $50B valuation while pursuing this path. It is a cultural decision like going remote vs in-person. But if you're a founder, you should seize this opportunity. https://twitter.com/... Ashley / @infosec_taylor : The article is eye opening. If you look at the Pyramid of Hate and assume someone is accusing you of genocide, then you are part of the problem. https://twitter.com/... @rakyll : How is this even...? This is a true invasion of privacy and leaking PII to employees arbitrarily. I am done with Basecamp. Contrary to how they portray themselves, this place sounds like a hell. https://twitter.com/... Laurie Voss / @seldo : Just stop doubling down already, oh my god, how do you keep making this worse for yourself? https://world.hey.com/... Ricky / @rickhanlonii : Imagine the gall it must take to triple down in the face of everyone pleading for you to just listen https://twitter.com/... Monica.dev / @indigitalcolor : Sounds about right..."Yesterday, we offered everyone at Basecamp an option of a severance package" https://world.hey.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kelly Vaughn / @kvlly : So what I'm gathering is “our internal work environment turned toxic and we didn't know how to talk it out so nobody can talk now” is the stance being taken https://world.hey.com/... Federico Viticci / @viticci : To paraphrase, “it's just a funny word, and it's inappropriate, but I've decided it is not racist!” - yeah...that's not how it works. Oh and if you disagree, you're welcome to leave. Digging deeper and deeper. 🤦 https://world.hey.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jill Wohlner / @jillwohlner : Only 7 of the names were Asian!! So it's not racist! Imagine writing that. Woof!!! https://twitter.com/... Emily Freeman / @editingemily : Annndddd there it is. 1. Group of humans try to reckon with systemic bias and racism. 2. White people are confronted with their actions and responsibilities. 3. White people use systemic power dynamics to shut down the conversation completely. We gotta do better. https://twitter.com/... Jonas Downey / @jonasdowney : I've worked at Basecamp for a long time because it's a company full of smart and kind people, and together we've always tried to take care and do the right things. I don't agree with the changes announced today, and I'm sad & upset. Nathan Lawrence / @nathanblawrence : Casey did exactly what a good journalist does and got us the “why.” It's....not flattering. https://twitter.com/... Christina Warren / @film_girl : Look, we all knew the brouhaha yesterday was b/c of something. I had no idea it was quite this cringeworthy. And to be clear, I'm not talking about the ill-advised list. I'm taking about one of the founders searching through Campfire for receipts to call-out someone speaking up https://twitter.com/... Jared McKiernan / @jaredmckiernan : having basecamp send you recaps of internal arguments at 9am every day must be horrible https://twitter.com/... Liz Fong-Jones / @lizthegrey : so... yes, this is the company cracking down on protected concerted activity about their working conditions and the level of mockery and harassment non-white employees experienced. https://twitter.com/... @seyitaylor : Oh dear. https://www.platformer.news/ ... Tracy Chou / @triketora : for everyone wondering wtf just happened to cause basecamp to decide to be “not political” in this moment, @caseynewton has you covered https://www.platformer.news/ ... Cyd Harrell / @cydharrell : this is not within miles of a difficult management conundrum. the list was never ok & that's where you should have applied your steely-eyed buck-stops-hereism. the racism makes it worse, but where the hell is it ok to make fun of your customers' names? https://twitter.com/... Ella Dawson / @brosandprose : Some eye-popping behind-the-scenes intel on the Basecamp mess from @CaseyNewton: https://www.platformer.news/ ... @amix3k : It's incredibly disheartening to read details about the Basecamp situation. It makes their books seem fictional, especially “It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work”. Also, excellent reporting by Casey 👍 https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Spiers / @espiers : I realize all of you claim your missions are “changing the world” but didn't realize you meant “for the worse”. https://twitter.com/... Whitney Merrill / @wbm312 : If Basecamp thinks talking about privacy & surveillance are “ok” but politics aren't. Then they're not having REAL, substantial conversations about privacy & surveillance. You cannot talk about these topics in a vacuum. From @dhh's post https://world.hey.com/... https://twitter.com/... Cher Scarlett / @cherthedev : It's awful that @dhh sincerely doesn't recognize that he is able to avoid having these discussions, and the stress of these “conversations” about sociopolitical things because he is a wealthy, white cis man. Not having these conversations is what made tech 90% white and cis men. https://twitter.com/... Sara Wachter-Boettcher / @sara_ann_marie : “Hansson wanted to acknowledge the situation as a failure and move on. But when employees who had been involved in the list wanted to continue talking about it, he grew exasperated.” I believe the technical term for this is a hissyfit. https://twitter.com/... @can : More like base can't #can #not https://twitter.com/... Rhymes / @rhymes_ : LOL @basecamp's clusterfuck of a post is literally being endorsed by @coinbase's CEO while @dhh has been spending lots of his Twitter capital calling out cryptocurrencies for the environmental disaster they are. Is this real life? 🤣 https://twitter.com/... Karla Monterroso / @karlitaliliana : One of the things I think is important to pull out of this @dhh piece is how difficult this work is. He is not wrong in that. The internet changed our relationship to power and that is requiring different power structures in our institutions. https://twitter.com/... @saradietschy : Erm a Coinbase esque type announcement about company policy was definitely NOT expected from the company founders that use Twitter EXCLUSIVELY to virtue signal 🙄 Seems like they're holding employees to an expectation they have well never done?? https://twitter.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Basecamp co-founders feeling some Streisand Effect right about now https://twitter.com/... Scoble / @scobleizer : I am seeing a lot of notes like this one. I agree with Federico. It is a bad look on a company that used to have the moral high ground. https://twitter.com/... @seyitaylor : All this would have remained quiet if the founders hadn't tried to score internet points. But again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://twitter.com/... Jonathan LaCour / @cleverdevil : +1 Societal issues *are* workplace issues. Fundamentally. This policy shows a total lack of empathy for employees, especially URMs. Enable employees to hear one another and learn from each other, don't silence them. https://twitter.com/... Preston So / @prestonso : An avowed wh*te supremacist was openly misogynistic and racist at a previous company. My women colleagues and co-workers of color had 0 resources to speak to apart from our internal channels. Ban these discussions and for whom is it now “stressful, unnerving, counterproductive?” https://twitter.com/... Karla Monterroso / @karlitaliliana : This story really rounded the whole situation out. Seriously, this is about power, what happens when power is restricted due to capital, and who pays the price for a companies organizational and cultural failures. https://twitter.com/... @kimcrayton1 : “Employees say the founders' memos unfairly depicted their workplace as being riven by partisan politics, when in fact the main source of the discussion had always been Basecamp itself” There you have it folx...there's ALWAYS more once you start digging https://www.theverge.com/... Jeff Smith / @darkandnerdy : Emotions dump incoming. I applied for a job at @basecamp 1.5 yrs ago. I saw the posting and it was a dream job really. I was hesitant to apply because I was happy with my current job and I have a MASSIVE case of imposter syndrome. But then I saw this snippet in the job post. (1/ Daniel Vassallo / @dvassallo : Remember folks: The only reason to own a business is to make your life more enjoyable. If it degrades your life, what's the point? https://www.platformer.news/ ... https://twitter.com/... @chanpory : Oof. Having carried shame around my own name for a long time as well as trauma from the genocide in Cambodia, this article hits hard. Thank you @CaseyNewton for writing this. https://twitter.com/... Stephen Hackett / @ismh : Telling your employees they can't have these types of discussions mean you don't care about them as people, and it only marginalizes those who already lack a voice. In the tech industry especially, it's the opposite of what we need. https://twitter.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Read this fair and complex post by @CaseyNewton: 🚨 What really happened at Basecamp - Platformer https://www.platformer.news/ ... Federico Viticci / @viticci : “The point was that dehumanizing behavior begins with very small actions, and it did not seem like too much to ask Basecamp's founders to acknowledge that.” Damning report by @CaseyNewton on the whole Basecamp saga. Wow. https://www.theverge.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : Does this count as talking about politics? https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Basecamp’s dispute emerged amid growing conflict between managers, investors and activist employees over whether workplace discussion of social issues belongs inside technology companies. The related coverage had already placed Coinbase, Expensify and others in a startup culture-war debate over politics at work.
At Basecamp, an internal customer-name list and employee complaints about leadership’s response turned that wider debate into a governance and workplace-conduct issue. The founders’ memos and severance option make the policy a concrete organizational choice rather than a general statement of principle.
First-order effects
- Basecamp employees must operate under a ban on societal and political discussion, while staff dissatisfied with the change have a severance route instead of an internal channel for contesting it.
- Customers and users who object to the policy have signaled possible departures, putting Basecamp’s customer relationships alongside its employee-management dispute.
Second-order effects
- Basecamp’s policy makes workplace culture a competitive and retention consideration for companies such as Coinbase that were already associated with an apolitical workplace model.
- The handling of internal complaints—HR reports, leadership memos and severance—raises the cost for management teams of treating conduct disputes and political-speech rules as separable issues.
Third-order effects
- If more startups adopt explicit limits on workplace politics, company handbooks and exit terms may become the mechanisms for resolving conflicts that previously played out through informal internal debate.
- The pattern points to trust becoming part of operating infrastructure: employers must reconcile employee conduct expectations with the customer confidence affected by their response.
The trend: Tech companies are formalizing workplace-speech boundaries as internal culture disputes increasingly carry employee-retention and customer-trust consequences.