Good morning. Hello. How are you? #381
Morning shopping, Fairbanks travel, paternalistic scheduling software, Natasha Bertrand, and way too much about the controversy at Basecamp
Hello! Good morning! What’s up? How are you? What’s going on? What is it today…. Wednesday? Ahh yes. I just got back from the grocery shopping. Adventure-filled, let me tell you. The dudes at the collection center were asleep so they didn’t open the thing till 7:07 AM, which is going to throw off my whole day. Myself and this other car — eerily reminiscent of my ex-girlfriend’s mom’s car in Alaska in the early 90’s — had to wait in awkward positions on a street and we were very confused. I am about 9 minutes behind now, and that’s a huge problem in my intensely scheduled morning.
They had Key Lime and Apple Pie Kit Kats but the Duo Mints and Dark Chocolates were gone. They had these new “Cantina Style” tostitos. They had the $3 bucket special back - but the buckets were only in Blue and Yellow. But, I mean, three dollar buckets. Such a deal. I bought em anyway, since I just used up five of my buckets planting potatoes. Can never have enough buckets out here in the country.
Travel note: I am trying to figure out when to get up to Fairbanks this summer. So if you are headed up there, and know your dates, let me know? My Uncle Jack and Cousin Sherry and friends Jamie and Carrie are going, and I need to go say goodbye to my father. So I’m thinking Solstice time? Trying to find a time that sees the most people.
Speaking of scheduling, Emma and I both recently noticed that the UNC Health System just lies about their appointment times. It’s so weird. When you book an appointment with a human, on the phone or in person, they give you an appointment time: say, 12:30. But then, every single future communication with them — be it phone, text, MyChart, email — they will say 12:15. Every single time. It’s as if they just magically changed the appointment. Now, I understand a lot of people are late for every appointment. This is, of course, because so many places make us wait beyond the appointed time. The whole thing is a perpetual mess of mutual mistrust and blame. And on the one hand, just pretending the appointment is at a different time is kind of a clever ruse: no one has to know! Except the people who do know are people who have their scheduling shit together. I can’t exactly think of a better solution, but it really does irk me. And it seems like it has the risk of becoming like the movie theaters, where everyone’s like ‘Well, the appointment time is more of a guide they don’t really mean it.” Back in the old days, everyone was like “there are seven minutes of previews, we can be a little late.” Now, at my local theater, there are thirty minutes of previews. And people are still late! It’s a no-win, mutually assured destruction punctuality arms race.
Man I can’t wait to go to a movie again. Should I go see Mortal Kombat? I won’t have any time anyway this weekend. I have to do my podcast, and a bunch of gardening, and take my mom to the airport. Maybe next weekend? That might be a nice treat. Oh hrm they have gotten rid of their 10 AM-tier showings. That’s a real shame.
Natasha Bertrand, Politico’s national security chief correspondent, just got a new job at CNN and, I mean, good for her, I am happy for her, but Emma and I are so sad because we’ll never see her on MSNBC again and who’s gonna actually watch CNN. I know people are like “oh CNN and MSNBC are the same, blah blah blah” but they are wrong. MSNBC isn’t perfect but it’s a shit ton better than CNN and I’m not even sure why you’d have this debate with someone who doesn’t actually watch either one ha.
We will miss you, Natasha.
I would like to apologize because these missives are going to be eighteen minutes less good for a few days, maybe up to a week and a half, because I have to stop a bit early so I can water the downstairs plants before going and waking Jane up (I told you, my mornings are absurdly scheduled). There are so many plants down here now. Plus I gotta spray the squirrel spray. I knew that squirrel repellant video had legs. Already has nine whole views. Wow I will get to 1,000 subscribers in no time at all at this rate.
YouTube’s rules really do encourage you to make the most click-baity content it’s kind of sad.
I suppose I gotta talk about the controversy at Basecamp and the memo they sent out. If you haven’t been following this, Basecamp is a company that makes a bunch of self righteous software that is slowly becoming irrelevant due to strong political stands. This is viewed by many as noble. They write books about it and rail about the economic system under which most startups are forced to operate. They are not particularly wrong. They write books about these things. Some shit’s obviously been going down over there, so they wrote this memo that basically said: a) we’re getting rid of all perks and gonna focus on giving employees more cash. No more paternalism. b) no more committees! C) no more 360 reviews, and, most controversially, d) no more talking about politics on work software! B and D were related, because they said that one of the committees they were disbanding was their diversity committee, which would now be overseen by their VP of HR (er, sorry “people ops.” They are not completely immune from startup fashion). Curiously, they did not state whether the VP of HR supported this decision, nor include a quote from her. Which is suspect in itself.
We’ll get the 360’s out of the way first, because actually I think that’s a great idea. I’ve tried 360 reviews and it was an insane amount of work and can’t say that anything particularly useful came of it. Wouldn’t do it again.
The paternalism thing is interesting. I’m sensing a backlash towards Nudge economics, opt-in, opt-out (though Apple sure seems to be getting away with murder mucking about with choice architecture and being applauded like it’s the Obama administration). By and large, I view Nudge economics as sort of like capitalism: the least-bad realistic option for the moment.
But I also think there’s something else interesting at play here, though. An HR benefit is supposed to be a touch paternalistic and help your employees be better, sure, but there is also supposed to be some economies of scale: a company can buy a lot of these things — be it Subway passes or Gym memberships — for a lower per-unit cost than individual members can. So, like, if a gym membership is $50 for an individual, but a company can get it for $40, and then contributes $10 toward it, an employee gets a $50 value for $30, netting a $20 savings, for the cost of $10 of the company. But I think perhaps this has not actually worked out at HR departments around the country for a variety of reasons. I think this is probably doubly true at smaller companies: Basecamp has less than 60 employees. They’re not really big enough to garner a serious discount that makes the offering worthwhile in any meaningful way, unless they operate through a PEO like Justworks, and then you may well be looking at a markup from the PEO. I’m not 100% sure of the economics, but I do think it’s quite possible they’re not as good as they ought to be. So “just giving cash” might be the right move. This would mean that if the company is “just giving cash” instead, in theory, the employee would be losing out on $10, but again, this probably isn’t the case, given participation rates in the program across a populace.
It should be noted that this entire economic calculation is behavioral-free. It might just be a good old fashioned bad bargain. I’d not be surprised. If that were the case, I’d probably have stated it as such, instead of getting moralistic about paternalism which, it should be noted, can be construed as a political stand.
Next, the committees. They’re also disbanding their “small council” (again, not immune from startup fashion) which is presumably a committee of managers? We have one of these. And I can kind of see the point. The meeting can feel useless sometimes, and our agenda is often pretty light. But the logic, I believe, is flawed. A committee holds purpose and utility even if it is not outright solving some explicit problem right in front of them. It keeps lines of communication open. It lets people know their opinions are valued. It gives a company infrastructure to quickly handle emergencies. It prevents duplicative work. It gives a place for pressure to be released. It can do all of these things even if the average regularly scheduled meeting lasts five minutes and no one has any pressing items. It still served a purpose.
This is, I believe, a pretty nuanced discussion, and there are no right or wrong answers. I academically disagree with people who think committees, or meetings, are useless and work toward banning them. But if they want to give that a shot, that’s fine. Just do us all a favor and send out another memo when and if the approach fails, so that we don’t have to have people sending us this link for six years after the company stopped doing it (ahem Holocracy).
The most problematic part of this, of course, is the politics part. To their credit, they went to great effort to stress that this isn’t some major, hard-core new rule that’ll get you fired. People will get gently reminded, people might fail. This is good because, hey, let me just state my opinion here: everything is political? Ninety percent of hard-to-solve problems in the work place are because they are deep structural problems with the company or the world in which the company operates.
The memo really made you think something horrible had happened at Basecamp. It wasn’t addressed, and we were left to wonder. But reporters gonna report, and eventually a well-sourced story came out about what happened at Basecamp. And there were some problems, definitely. A list of funny names had evolved into, basically, a list of racist names. People were feeling guilty. But the craziest thing is that the whole thing seems… easily solvable? A layup when it comes to politics? A great opportunity for a teaching moment? But apparently management botched that completely.
I believe it is impossible to ban political discussion at work. I also believe that discussing the here and now, without explicitly talking about politics, is often an inherently political act, and one born of immense privilege. I have written three books now that offer advice or insights for operating within a capitalistic society: every single one of those books starts with a chapter about capitalism. Because it always, always needs to be discussed. Not acknowledging capitalism in any discussion about business is just silly. It’s like talking about spacewalks without acknowledging the oxygen-free environment in which they happen. Basecamp as a company has vocally, repeatedly, consistently voiced political opinions about how to operate within our capitalistic society. This is a political opinion.
Now, I do believe that companies should be able to state their political beliefs, and people should be able to choose whether to work there based on those political beliefs. This is happening already. I have no problem with making it explicit. I am not disputing Basecamp’s right to take this stance: obviously they can. I just believe it is an instance of taking a sledgehammer to a teeny, tiny windowpane nail. Monstrously optimistic and grossly unrealistic. As one employee stated to The Verge: “How do you talk about raising kids without talking about society? As soon as I bring up public schools, then it’s already political.”
Small businesses, especially, are not hugely responsible for the toxic environment in which they work. It does not seem, to me, a huge trick — a lying trick or an adept trick — for management to position itself in synch with their employees, working to make a shelter from the storm of the larger capitalistic forces that buffet us all. If you want to.
Whew. That was long. Sorry about that.
Anyway, let’s do a mix. Justa mix. Man I am going to go to Fairbanks soon and I am totally gonna stop at Justa store. I love that place. OK what do we have here? Oh yeah, great late-period Spiritualized anthem to start things out. Spiritualized announced their Pure Phase vinyl reissue yesterday. Already have two copies on vinyl, but, you know, can always use another one. Pure Phase is an underrated masterpiece. Oh yeah this is great. Good rock and roll run at the beginning. Oh man. Yeah. Lots of good stuff. New James. Anything, Anything, because, like I said last week, it’s finally on Spotify. Oh man and the last two songs, what a solid ending. That Chris Brokaw solo album is great. Man, that guy just keeps pumping out awesome music it really is inspiring.
Ok. Gotta go. Jane is about to wake up. Got a mom dentist appointment today. And the 10 AM company meeting. Oh god today is so busy it’s ridiculous. I hope your day isn’t so busy. Miss you guys. Talk tomorrow!
Hey Rick, thanks for the story about basecamp, yet another moment where you have enlightened and informed me on a topic I never would have known about otherwise. Never heard of basecamp I mean. And as we run a small business it’s interesting to think about committees and controversies in the context you presented.
Also, we are usually in Fairbanks for solstice time but let us know whenever you go, it’s entirely possible we will be heading that way multiple times this summer for elder caregiving.
Whoops forgot the playlist link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/70HM2Pvfc7n29JewIEQcf5?si=CKpRDFoRTFO5vAMhnZrJFw