if you're outside tech then they're obviously awful people just based on this story, but there's a huge amount of schadenfreude inside tech too because they've written a bunch of very strident "here's how to run a company" books.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 4 May 2021 17:02 (two years ago) link
Picked this book authored by the Basecamp co-founders off of the shelf and opened it to a section I had highlighted when I first read it. 🙄 pic.twitter.com/aJHptrC8XK— JT (@thejoshtorres) May 4, 2021
― lukas, Tuesday, 4 May 2021 17:16 (two years ago) link
more coverage: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employee-resignations-buyouts-implosion
― underminer of twenty years of excellent contribution to this borad (dan m), Tuesday, 4 May 2021 17:46 (two years ago) link
I’m learning some leadership lessons certainly, like “don’t call in to the very sensitive all-hands from bed”
I thought this had to be a joke
― 80's hair metal , and good praise music ! (DJP), Tuesday, 4 May 2021 17:59 (two years ago) link
dan m, I think that Verge piece is exactly the same as what mookieproof posted?
weird, I assumed since it was a separate URL that it would have been different, my bad
― underminer of twenty years of excellent contribution to this borad (dan m), Tuesday, 4 May 2021 18:10 (two years ago) link
So this kerfufle was triggered by employees posting to ilx's "Abysmal Real Names" thread?
― everything, Tuesday, 4 May 2021 21:21 (two years ago) link
Feels good to not know what Basecamp does.
― Joe Bombin (milo z), Tuesday, 4 May 2021 21:35 (two years ago) link
^^
― DJI, Tuesday, 4 May 2021 21:56 (two years ago) link
dan m, I think that Verge piece is exactly the same as what mookieproof posted?― 80's hair metal , and good praise music ! (DJP), Tuesday, May 4, 2021 1:59 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― 80's hair metal , and good praise music ! (DJP), Tuesday, May 4, 2021 1:59 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
i think the author has a deal where he's allowed to post his stuff to his own site (which he sells subscriptions for) and the verge pays him to syndicate it.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 4 May 2021 22:02 (two years ago) link
the basecamp thing is definitely one of those “we’re the good guys” scenarios where leadership was even “doing the work” by telling the employees about the books they were reading, only for the employees to say “hey, maybe we’re doing some things wrong” only for the boss to point at the “we’re the good guys” sign on the wall
― mh, Wednesday, 5 May 2021 14:56 (two years ago) link
Ha otm.I read their book about remote work when I went remote and it’s no better than any airport business book but it’s written in that y combinator style that simulates clear thinking.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 5 May 2021 15:07 (two years ago) link
Ironically for ilx I am reading this right now https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902 (who was into this idea and posted about it in re: Arsenal? I can’t remember). I kind of thought it was a cult 70s thing like the whole earth catalog and chaos theory etc. bit I saw it recommended a bunch and it is at least very short so I’m giving it a shot.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 5 May 2021 15:09 (two years ago) link
I was going to post "The Limits to Growth was a huge deal" but my supervisor is writing a book about the history of models, so I may have a pretty skewed perspective on this
― rob, Wednesday, 5 May 2021 15:33 (two years ago) link
Re not knowing what they do. This talk of "building cool shit" is much funnier when you do. What a bizarre economy.
― maf you one two (maffew12), Wednesday, 5 May 2021 15:56 (two years ago) link
the line between the Whole Earth Catalog and Q running through silicon valley, the free software foundation, and gamergate is a very bright and straight one
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Wednesday, 5 May 2021 15:57 (two years ago) link
someone on twitter reminded me that the guy who was canned from Google for “just asking questions” originally had @Fired4Truth as his twitter handle
this will never not be funny
― mh, Wednesday, 5 May 2021 17:14 (two years ago) link
I'm asking what you think. You say it's a bad idea to hire people who say things for shock value. Presumably you mean to include Antonio, or you wouldn't have mentioned this. So are you saying that in a world of properly run companies, he should never work again?— Paul Graham (@paulg) May 13, 2021
― mh, Friday, 14 May 2021 12:41 (two years ago) link
I ain’t clicking through on that
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Friday, 14 May 2021 13:40 (two years ago) link
I think you can get the point without clicking. PG just being obtuse and acting like “don’t hire jerks” means that all of our best thought leaders will be unemployed
― mh, Friday, 14 May 2021 13:50 (two years ago) link
Ex-Facebook VR exec says he'll turn U.S. troops into 'invincible technomancers,' just raised $450 million https://t.co/xufDyzkh0n— CNBC (@CNBC) June 17, 2021
― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Thursday, 17 June 2021 20:52 (two years ago) link
"ex-facebook vr exec" doesn't really capture that guy's bio tbf
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 17 June 2021 20:54 (two years ago) link
Is that the worst beard in the world?
― DJI, Thursday, 17 June 2021 20:57 (two years ago) link
Indeed. I don't usually notice facial hair but that's outstandingly bad
― kinder, Thursday, 17 June 2021 21:07 (two years ago) link
an acquaintance launched the public sale of his startup's crypto token, yesterday. it aims to eliminate global poverty by creating "a regenerative, bottom-up universal basic income (UBI) that can elevate all participants above the global poverty line."
"if the Torus can return $2/day to its participants (as Anatha Token), it can make poverty a disease we’ve cured"... so, peak silicon-valley optimism. it would be cool to see crypto/distributed finance eliminate poverty at any scale.
https://anatha.io/blog/token-salehttps://www.morningstar.com/news/globe-newswire/8255815/anatha-announces-its-accessible-equitable-public-token-sale-accepting-fiat-and-crypto
― davey, Thursday, 17 June 2021 21:37 (two years ago) link
xpost that Facebook guy is Parker Luckey, who I interviewed once and might have been the most awkward conversation I've ever had, absolute basement boy
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 17 June 2021 21:40 (two years ago) link
his sister is engaged to matt gaetz.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 17 June 2021 21:51 (two years ago) link
the Oculus acquisition still baffles me. "we integrated the phone with the ski goggles. now we want 3 billion dollars."
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, 17 June 2021 21:57 (two years ago) link
India was the Y combinator of the British empire— Daniel Tenreiro 🦧 (@TenreiroDaniel) August 5, 2021
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 6 August 2021 13:59 (two years ago) link
I know he means something stupid, let's click through and see if he clarified his thoughts at all
An outsize portion of the empire’s great talents were nurtured in the Raj. Fascinating phenomenon . . .— Daniel Tenreiro 🦧 (@TenreiroDaniel) August 5, 2021
*screaming intensifies*
― mh, Friday, 6 August 2021 14:28 (two years ago) link
I heard Zuck on the radio awhile ago, and he has big plans for VR. Facebook has never been a leader in the hardware world, and he sees this as the future; you'll go to the office in VR, maybe have lunch while in VR, then attend a 'concert' after work in VR. If that doesn't sound dystopian, I don't know what is.
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 6 August 2021 17:07 (two years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/AFDRfK0.gif
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 6 August 2021 17:11 (two years ago) link
I don't think you need to spend that money just to get into VR. Certainly none of that ip will make up zuck's horrible vr hell.
― "Rocky Top" and "Funky Bitch" are songs I never look forward to (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 6 August 2021 22:51 (two years ago) link
I don't think VR will ever be a real hit until they devise a blowjob machine that actually feels like a mouth to get the porn-driven mass adoption of VHS/DVD/streaming.
― Joe Bombin (milo z), Friday, 6 August 2021 23:02 (two years ago) link
tragic lol @ this thread
25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0, its first real salvo in the “Browser Wars”. This launch taught taught me how a giant corporation could move at the speed of a startup. Here’s the story: pic.twitter.com/ZEYcxYrUgI— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 14, 2021
this bit in particular:
Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it.— Hadi Partovi (@hadip) August 14, 2021
the distance between their ideology and the reality of what these people produce is astonishing / beyond parody
― rob, Sunday, 15 August 2021 15:54 (two years ago) link
ah, I just noticed this dude is a director at the company that makes tasers and police drones
― rob, Sunday, 15 August 2021 15:56 (two years ago) link
moving at the speed of a 100-person startup
― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 15 August 2021 17:00 (two years ago) link
lol seriously
I just can't get over how this was all in service of developing a product that was indistinguishable from an already massively popular one. I want to read the breathless thread about how people wrecked their lives to put out the Zune
― rob, Sunday, 15 August 2021 17:15 (two years ago) link
"yeah I worked 90 hours a week, destroyed my marriage, and didn't watch my kids grow up but hey we shipped an important product""ah well at least you're rich now""oh no, no no no, but i have the satisfaction of having made other people rich"completely deranged— Kat Cosgrove (@Dixie3Flatline) August 15, 2021
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, 15 August 2021 23:54 (two years ago) link
in retrospect, the zune was the first time i really became aware of tech overbloat. it's still funny to think about. and the word 'zune' has to be a nadir of the english language. it still makes me cringe-laugh at how bad it is.
― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Monday, 16 August 2021 03:06 (two years ago) link
https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/z0kxIIl4fc0WfO3u7uB9B_TkCeP919kzD8xY5rqR0fiGzvHGGQfMaSsC7CCmQ3GRneB0Gb3Al07Z=s200
― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Monday, 16 August 2021 03:07 (two years ago) link
I just can't get over how this was all in service of developing a product that was indistinguishable from an already massively popular one.
That sort of product defined the Steve Ballmer era at Microsoft. Microsoft thought they learnt from Internet Explorer that they could crush any hot new tech product or service from another company simply by throwing money at it and melding it into Windows, but what worked for IE didn't work for Zune, Bing, Windows Phone, and several others - all reactions to competitors who got there first and did it better. Even IE itself would later crash and burn. Microsoft has since replaced it with Edge, a web browser most of us use exactly once, to download Chrome...
― Lee626, Monday, 16 August 2021 04:41 (two years ago) link
Now Edge is just Chrome
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Monday, 16 August 2021 05:06 (two years ago) link
don’t forget that msft bought the world’s most popular video calling software and rendered it an unusable add-on to Teams right before the pandemic hit. has to be in their top 5 galaxy brane moves
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 16 August 2021 07:00 (two years ago) link
oh yeah Bing! lmao
― rob, Monday, 16 August 2021 13:20 (two years ago) link
Tracer, which one? I’m thinking of Skype here, but they bought that in 2011 and have been fucking it up in various ways for a decade
― mh, Monday, 16 August 2021 15:41 (two years ago) link
I don't use Chrome anymore, now Firefox is my best friend
― aegis philbin (crüt), Monday, 16 August 2021 16:27 (two years ago) link
Chrome is spyware tbrr, and on the user end I feel like the diffs between browsers are super minimal now. heck I barely see a diff between DuckDuckGo and Google Search now
― rob, Monday, 16 August 2021 16:46 (two years ago) link
i agree that chrome is spyware and no one should use it, and ff is equivalent for almost all users, but the new safari is pretty drastically different from either for better or worse (well, it's definitely worse, but it's good to see someone trying something new i guess).
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 16 August 2021 16:50 (two years ago) link