Sometimes Cancel Culture is self-inflicted – and that can be a good thing.
The Silicon Valley company Basecamp, which makes management and communications software for businesses, just sent an important message to its employees – but more importantly to Corporate America – about the risk of entertaining wokeness in the workplace.
Last week, the news came when company co-founder Jason Fried announced the end of political discussions on the job and the end of his company sounding off on Social Justice Warrior issues.
Here’s an excerpt from Fried’s directive to employees, which was published as an open letter:
“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,” Fried said.
“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,” he added.
But Fried also signaled that the management was done micromanaging its workers.
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For example, he killed a “paternalistic” benefit packages that covered things like fitness programs, wellness initiatives, utilizing a farmer’s market, and continuing education.
“They felt good at the time,’ Fried said, “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.”
He also announced an end to management by committees, which had recently “sprung up.” “When we need advice or counsel we’ll ask individuals with directly relevant experience rather than a pre-defined group at large,” Fried said. “Back to basics, back to individual responsibility, back to work.”
And then Fried said what most businesses likely understand but, because of Cancel Culture, are fearful to say aloud:
“We are not a social impact company. Our impact is contained to what we do and how we do it. 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,” Fried said.
“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,” he concluded. “We’re responsible for ourselves. That’s more than enough for us.”
As a result, as of Friday, a third of the company’s employees quit.
A website called TheVerge.com reported on the turmoil created by Fried’s memo. It noted that one problem was that the company kept something called a “Best Names Ever” list,” which began a decade ago and apparently mocked the names of some of its actual customers.
TheVerge.com reported that “current employees were so mortified by the practice that none of them would give me a single example of a name on the list. One invoked the sorts of names Bart Simpson used to use when prank calling Moe the Bartender: Amanda Hugginkiss, Seymour Butz, Mike Rotch.”
Really? Not one example so readers could judge for themselves?
Nonetheless, TheVerge.com continued, “What once had felt like an innocent way to blow off steam, amid the ongoing cultural reckoning over speech and corporate responsibility, increasingly looked inappropriate, and often racist.”
Last December, a new employee began to seek volunteers for a group to work on diversity, equity and inclusion, better known as DE&I, issues, which apparently prompted Fried’s point about committees.
“Interviews with a half-dozen Basecamp employees over the past day paint a portrait of a company where workers sought to advance Basecamp’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by having sensitive discussions about the company’s own failures.”
TheVerge.com’s reporting indicates that the Basecamp wokesters obviously felt Fried’s memo and the changes he implemented with co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson, which were intended to force staffers to focus on business, were too much to bear.
Ironically, TheVerge.com notes, “Both founders are also active — and occasionally hyperactive — on Twitter, where they regularly advocate for mainstream liberal and progressive views on social issues.”
Check out our ‘Cancel Corner‘, a section we launched in February, where we report on the latest Cancel Cases and stories from around the globe.