Basecamp Update: Boardroom Whitelash and Fragile CEOs

In a letter both grating and unsurprising, issued less than 30 days shy of the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, a pair of very grumpy white founders at Basecamp have declared an immediate end to all internal conversations and processes that threatened their absolute power. They quote Aldous Huxley, but it reads more like an angry teenager’s Ayn Rand essay; and it takes itself very, very seriously.

If you clicked the link above and are feeling TL:DR, here’s the (paraphrased) summary of the decisions from Basecamp:

• Headline: Retreat!
• Employee affinity groups are a waste;
• DEI doesn’t even deserve a committee;
• Peer feedback in reviews is useless — and discontinued;
• While the rest of the world reckons with racism in one of the biggest movements in history, a global pandemic rages and inequality hits a 100 year peak alongside diseases of despair, discussing any of the above at Basecamp is now banned;
• Responsibility for our collective future? It’s “too much” and they are “done with it”;
• They also turned all benefits into a check so employees could be “free” — because we all should want to tear off the yoke of wellness benefits and the indignity of advanced education…

I’ve started or been on the early stage team in 5 organizations and 2 businesses, including the creative agency I run now. I get it — it’s a tough job, almost impossible, and trying to meet the needs of diverse constituents from staff to clients to investors could make anyone want to pull the covers over their head. I wake up every day knowing that I have a long way to go to live up to the responsibility of leadership. But as a Black, gay CEO in a business that centers equity in everything we do while experiencing tremendous growth, what is disturbing about this letter is that these guys may be a sign of the whitelash to come — a wave of reactionary aggression coming from a set of white, male leaders finally held consistently accountable for their behavior and failures. How many leadership teams are debating out loud or in their heads about reverting back to a day when they could win the debate on company culture through the silence and stifling of women and people of color? “I can just change the rules and go back to the good old days before #metoo and #blacklivesmatter messed up the good thing I had going.” To all the Basecampers and other employees trying to organize for change in white dominated businesses: Beware your boss if they are in a position to think like this, act on it, and get away with it (because, well, history).

How do you know if your leaders are at risk of making this kind of move? Is your business model propped up by VCs (famously discriminatory as a profession, if not outright racist), and will they pat your boss on the back for putting the Black head of an employee resource group in her place? Is your leadership team stacked with other white people and men who have more to gain than lose from a reactionary shift in direction? Have your CEO’s personal commitments been consistently focused on their advancement without a basic understanding of how our tax dollars created the infrastructure and stability that made their misadventure in the marketplace possible in the first place? If your boss sounds like this, you might be looking at a similar fate to the Basecamp team.

I guess boardroom whitelash isn’t that surprising; but it is thoroughly disappointing.

There is a viable alternative; a better way to meet the challenges of a modern workplace culture — to go deeper instead of retreat, to build a business that works because it is diverse at every level, not reliant on centering white/male/straight/cis leadership. There’s a way to recognize that opting out of social change is opting into a racist status quo and to use all that startup creativity and ingenuity to build a revenue model that reflects who you actually want to be in the world. It’s a harder road but a lot of us are walking it.

And for the employees of Basecamp and similar places, there’s also an alternative for you. Stop fighting to change the dudes who don’t actually want you — vote with your feet. Others of us do want you and your insights. You shouldn’t have to fight for basic respect; you should be able to put down your sword rather than having it snatched from you; the environment you show up in should allow you to focus on doing what you came to do — show your talent, build with other people who treat you as equals and in doing so make an improvement in your corner of the world.

Only backwards thinking can get you to the letter like the one above — don’t get mad, just don’t let it happen to you next.

• Photo Credit: The Verge