Knowledge work requires trust. Basecamp’s new policies was management declaring that staff had lost their trust. That made working there untenable. Irrespective of context or politics
(Then the entire thing becomes even more damning taking politics and context into consideration)
I don't want to downplay what was happening inside of the organisation or the sheer, unadulterated, hostile authoritarianism that's at play here.
But the decision was obviously a bad one even before we knew any of what was going on in the background.
The policies are openly hostile to the work force. They amount to a declaration that the work force can't be trusted to do its job.
This is especially galling considering that Basecamp is a software co. Software dev, being a theory-building practice, requires a LOT of trust