Basecamp: A Cautionary Tale in Company Culture
Sometimes I really hate being right. Less than two weeks ago I published an article called “Culture Doesn’t Matter”, in which I outlined a very simple idea: that company culture doesn’t matter unless its actively lived by the leadership. Then just a few days later, Basecamp-gate happens.
For those of you who don’t already know what happened at Basecamp, my colleague John Breen summed it up pretty succinctly on his own blog:
A few days ago, Basecamp, a tech darling helmed by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, announced some policy changes. These changes effectively ban Basecamp employees from “societal and political discussions” at work. Unsurprisingly, these changes received quite a bit of attention on Twitter and throughout the tech industry. Shortly thereafer [sic], Casey Newton reported in The Verge about the underlying issues that prompted the policy changes. [1]
Through the back and forth on Twitter, various blog posts, and even media outlets like The Verge, new details are revealed about how the…
