I’m no management guru, but my takeaway from the drama at Basecamp is “Don’t confuse your management and your marketing.”
Perhaps if the policies hadn’t been communicated so publicly, not so much trust and goodwill would have been lost. As an employee, I wouldn’t feel good about my company making my workplace an example in the latest culture war—regardless of which side of that war I was on.
Of course, up till now Basecamp’s marketing has been basically all about revealing their management secrets. The consequences seem only now to be catching up with them.