I suspect that this represents a practical consolidation of power by leadership in tech. While you can't come out and say "hey, we want to corner the market in white male nerds", you can say things like "Mean people suck, why can't we all just get along, no politics on slack, we're good right?"
Think of it as the tech-liberal backlash. Tech has been wrestling with representation and diversity for a while now, indeed more visibly than many industries, and some limited progress has been made, maybe not as much in raw numbers than in qualitative stuff like less-hostile workplaces. But it is far from the _worst_ industry for diversity.
Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to hire engineers, and the dominant class isn't going away anytime soon. If you can figure out how to signal to them that "hey, Basecamp/Coinbase/MyCo is a place you can just be you and chat about games and gear without worrisome questions about equal pay" then you potentially achieve a short-term recruiting advantage.
I say "short-term" because of course, it's short-sighted. But worse, it's cynical, as it wants to halt the minimal progress that has been made behind a smokescreen of civility and fairness. And given that it's being openly pushed by white male leadership, it's fully reactionary, and white-male supremacist. It's a harsh term to use but we haven't really uncovered a more accurate one.
Not everything is racially motivated. They are just making business decisions in a small business. The whole reason they are doing it is probably ridiculous and cynical takes like this.
It doesn't have to have a particular animus to have the effect.
The question is, why make a big blog post about it in the first place? They can't claim innocence, since they followed Brian Armstrong pretty much to the letter, and have the walkouts to boot. So we can assume the attention was calculated.
Just look at how many posts on HN are now like "I want to work there!" Recruitment signalling accomplished.
The backlash is real, and to me the interesting part is it's semi-liberal tech dudes leading the charge.
BTW do you mean to say that bringing up issues of equal pay justify overt censorship as a "business decision"? Just asking because that was the issue I mentioned above.
Think of it as the tech-liberal backlash. Tech has been wrestling with representation and diversity for a while now, indeed more visibly than many industries, and some limited progress has been made, maybe not as much in raw numbers than in qualitative stuff like less-hostile workplaces. But it is far from the _worst_ industry for diversity.
Meanwhile, it gets harder and harder to hire engineers, and the dominant class isn't going away anytime soon. If you can figure out how to signal to them that "hey, Basecamp/Coinbase/MyCo is a place you can just be you and chat about games and gear without worrisome questions about equal pay" then you potentially achieve a short-term recruiting advantage.
I say "short-term" because of course, it's short-sighted. But worse, it's cynical, as it wants to halt the minimal progress that has been made behind a smokescreen of civility and fairness. And given that it's being openly pushed by white male leadership, it's fully reactionary, and white-male supremacist. It's a harsh term to use but we haven't really uncovered a more accurate one.