The Chicago-based company provided employees with a new social etiquette, but one-third walked in response. The CEO has now apologised.
Basecamp CEO Jason Fried has issued a statement apologising for what has transpired at his company in the days following a tweak to its internal policies. The changes, announced last Monday, included a ban on political discussions on its company Basecamp account. They were labelled as a » new etiquette regarding societal politics by co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson. But not all staff were happy with the new etiquette, with reports from The Verge that one-third of the Chicago-based company’s employees had walked out in response. By Friday afternoon,18 of 57 staff had taken the co-founders up on their ramification-free severance package offer. « Last week was terrible, » Fried’s Monday blog post began. « We started with policy changes that felt simple, reasonable, and principled, and it blew things up culturally in ways we never anticipated.
