It's too bad this well-reported piece of what led to Basecamp's "no politics" decision isn't getting as much discussion here as the initial decision announcement [0], as it is really a case study in poor leadership and decision process. Whatever the merits and tradeoffs of a "no politics" policy, it seems rash to jump into it for an incident that was hugely preventable and had nothing to do with politics:<p>> <i>A day later, Hansson responded with a post of his own. He had conducted a forensic analysis of who created the document and how it had spread around the company. He called it a systemic failure on the company’s part. In a conversation with me today, he acknowledged that he and Fried had known about the list for years.</i><p>> <i>“There was some awareness at the time within the company that that list had existed and it wasn't acted upon. That is squarely on Jason’s and my record.” The list, he said, “in itself is just a gross violation of the trust … It’s just wrong in all sorts of fundamental ways.”</i><p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944192" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944192</a>
> Hansson’s response to this employee took aback many of the workers I spoke with. He dug through old chat logs to find a time when the employee in question participated in a discussion about a customer with a funny-sounding name. Hansson posted the message — visible to the entire company — and dismissed the substance of the employee’s complaint.<p>If this telling of the events is accurate, what a petty way of handling the situation. Especially for an executive and company leader. It's like when somebody on Reddit digs through your comment history to try to win an argument.