REWORK

"Fail early and often." You hear this all the time in the tech start-up world. Failure has long been held up as a badge of honor for new start-ups. This week Jason and David take on this idea and make a pitch for learning from your successes instead of your mistakes. Show Notes 06:22 - Backpack 06:29 - Highrise 10:39 - Adobe Creative Cloud 12:27 - Campfire 12:31 - Slack 16:28 - HEY for D...

We continue our revisit of Rework with the essay, "Ignore the Real World." Topics include new ideas failing, risk avoidance, and Marvel movies. Show Notes 09:13 - HEY 16:49 - Black Widow 19:54 - Ruby on Rails

In this episode we dive deep into the introduction and chapter 1 of Rework , The New Reality. Show Notes 02:09 - It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work 02:14 - Remote: Office Not Required 05:15 - Zoom 05:35 - rework@37signals.com 07:52 - JavaScript 11:18 - HEY 11:53 - Ruby on Rails 12:37 - Shopify 13:07 - GitHub 13:07 - Airbnb 13:08 - Twitch 18:05 - Stripe Atlas 18:37 - Squarespace 20:50 - Upwor...

Rework is coming back for season 2 this September! In the meantime here's a little bonus to tide you over. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, during the dot com bubble, Basecamp cofounders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson both had run-ins with venture-backed tech startups. These experiences would form many of the ideas later published in Rework. Show Notes 03:27 - Leo Burnett 03:5...

Tibet Sprague is a "communitarian technologist" with a vision for building companies and communities outside of investor-driven, for-profit systems. His current project is Hylo, an online platform for collaboration that's governed by its users. Show Notes "Truss the Process" and "Success is Surviving," our episodes on pay equity - 00:18 "Coops: The Next Gene...

How Basecamp's Michael Berger approached accessibility during the development of HEY, including collaborating with a blind Basecamp user on accessible features that ultimately improved the experience for everyone. Show Notes Michael Berger on Twitter - 00:52 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - 3:49 Apple's Voiceover - 5:32 JAWS - 5:39 NVDA - 5:41 Scott Ballard-Ridley on Twitter - 12:4...

When Robin Petravic and Cathy Bailey bought Heath Ceramics from the company's founders in 2003, they promised to keep the dinnerware maker and its manufacturing workforce in its home base of Sausalito, California. The pandemic provided an opportunity for Heath to recommit to this pledge and create a Living Wage Initiative, which in turn prompted a radical overhaul of the company's 401(k)...

Upsolve makes a free tool that automates the process of filing for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy. The organization is an atypical tech startup that's also an atypical non-profit. Co-founder and CTO Mark Hansen comes on the show to talk about how Upsolve alternately embraces and subverts the norms of the tech and non-profit worlds, and why the "right" corporate structure won't n...

In 2016, software infrastructure consulting firm Truss made salaries transparent across the entire company. Salaries were revealed internally for all employees, from the executives on down. In this episode, Truss CEO Everett Harper and COO Jen Leech talk about why and how they approached their salary transparency project, and how they've adapted this system as the company has grown. For more...

Imagine if gig workers like rideshare drivers or grocery shoppers were compensated for their labor through ownership stakes in the Lyfts and Instacarts of the world. Imagine if companies distributed profits not just to founders and investors, but to their employees and customers. Start.coop is an accelerator for startups that are doing just this—reimagining concepts like scale, investment, and gov...

Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about HEY World, a new feature of the HEY email service where customers can create a super simple blog. HEY World has no templates, no endless scroll, no ads, no trackers, and no JavaScript. It represents Basecamp's attempt to create a Web 1.0 typewriter for our current digital age. In this episode, we talk about the return of...

Equilibria, a company that makes CBD products for women, has a team of dedicated dosage specialists who do one-on-one consultations with customers. During the pandemic, this team has taken on an unprecedented amount of customer support—bearing witness to the heightened stress and anxiety that their customers are feeling around job security, caregiving, and family life. Equilibria's Marcy Capr...

A career climbing the ladder in tech and software left Jesse Noller feeling disillusioned and isolated. He found connection, community, and purpose in a different kind of complex distributed system—mushrooms. Today he's the proprietor of a spore-to-table business called The Humble Fungus. (Content warning: This episode mentions suicide.) For free and confidential emotional support, you can co...

Basecamp recently set out to do a carbon accounting, looking at the company's emissions, as well as meaningful ways to offset and mitigate those impacts. Jane Yang and Elizabeth Gramm, the two Basecampers who took on this daunting and nuanced project, come on the show to discuss not just the work itself, but how they've been processing the fear, skepticism, grief, and hope that come with...

Comfort and joy were in short supply this year, but we're doing our best to end 2020 on a cozy note. Merissa of Basecamp support talks about surprising customers with gifts throughout the year, whether it's to thank them for their fandom or apologize for a disappointing experience. Then Wailin shares a few items from her 2020 gift guide, and Joan of Basecamp customer support reviews a sc...

HEY launch, App Store, we can’t take it anymore Antitrust, masks a must, let’s go eat the upper crust Comfy pants, TikTok dance, POTUS rants, protest chants COVID cruise can't disembark, David's back in Denmark We didn’t start the fire—well, in this case we did. Show Notes Andy Didorosi on Twitter - 00:09 "Meet Andy," our episode about Andy joining Basecamp - 00:18 Signal v. No...

Basecamp is winding down a busy year with one more thing: the rollout of its HEY email service for the workplace. Co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about privacy, marketing, onboarding, and the other considerations that went into making HEY for Work. They also reflect on the roller coaster ride of the last year. Show Notes HEY - 00:41 HEY for Work - 00:46 Jason Fried on Twi...

In the last several years, a group of Basecamp customer support representatives has developed an expertise around "on-call support," or tackling some of the thornier technical issues that require diving into the code base of our applications. This team of self-taught specialists grew out of curiosity, creativity, and an approach to programming that emphasizes fixing over building. Show N...

Since releasing Shape Up, the book by Basecamp's Ryan Singer about our approach to product development, we've heard from other companies who've also adopted this methodology. David Nichols is the co-founder and CEO of Loupe, a company that helps design machines for clients in sectors from aerospace to packaging. He comes on Rework to talk about using Shape Up principles with clients...

In 2019, Basecamp released Shape Up, a digital book by head of product strategy Ryan Singer about our approach to product development. Since then, Ryan has added sections in response to reader feedback and released a print edition. Ryan comes back on Rework to talk about connecting with other business owners using Shape Up, and how he approached the editing, design, and distribution of the physica...

Unlimited paid time off is a common perk in the tech industry, but as one company discovered, an open-ended vacation policy led to confusion and even burnout. Dan Jimenez of Chatbooks comes on Rework to talk about how they shifted from unlimited to mandatory PTO, and how they're recalibrating expectations for work, productivity, and rest during a turbulent time. Show Notes "How the &apos...

More than ever, the tech industry is re-thinking how work gets done and how great ideas come to light when people are no longer linked by their physical location. In this episode, we have frank but hopeful conversations with Deldelp Medina of Black & Brown Founders and Michael Berhane of People Of Color In Tech. They talk about the ongoing work of building intentional communities in tech and m...

Better Product is a podcast by Innovatemap , a digital product agency. We are playing their episode featuring Basecamp's marketing designer, Adam Stoddard, who joins them to talk about Basecamp's design philosophy and the thought process behind the look of HEY.com.  Show Notes Adam Stoddard on Twitter - 1:04 Basecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson discussed Superhuman in a p...

We talk to two very different small businesses about their Babies at Work programs, where new parents can have their infants with them at the office. With COVID sending so many office workers home—and pushing women out of the workforce altogether—acknowledging employees' whole selves is more important than ever. The companies in today's episode talk about how they've adapted their p...

Imagine a corporate privacy policy on a website that was actually comprehensible and written by and for human beings. We talk to companies who have done just this, and what it means to build a business that has respect for privacy baked in from the outset. We also talk to a researcher who's witnessed the difficulty of navigating online privacy settings. Show Notes Mark Asquith's website...