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Jason Fried On Focus and Avoiding Interruptions
BigTimOBrien writes "Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, talks about the day-to-day operations of 37signals. How does the company work, and what are the guiding principles behind the design of Basecamp and Campfire? He talks about the importance of avoiding interruptions and the relative unimportance of both physical space and mandatory meetings."
And wtf is Basecamp and Campfire?
You could actually post some useful info in the summary, like what does the company do and what do they sell...
This thread will be nothing but one big slashvertisement for some company that nobody would otherwise know or care about.
I have found meetings to be an extraordinary waste of time in most cases, and often the result of lack of leadership and/or organizational ability on the part of those in charge.
Such meetings are a waste of time and indicative of poor management. However, meetings can also be productive and useful tool - as long as they have a defined purpose, and someone who ensures that purpose gets met.
You have just helped demonstrate their point.
If you don't like their product then you are free to use something else, a huge number of people are very happy with their products. If they tried to provide everything that you, and everyone, else wants (which will of course be different things), then the end result would be a mess. There are *always* people who don't like a product. 37s are just honest about this and don't try to make out that their products will be right for everyone.
Out of curiosity, what did you move to? Basecamp is too expensive for me, so I'm on the lookout for something that that does that kind of job.
Paul
Paul Leader
While I'll aggree with your main point, actually, it doesn't sound to me like he was having a lecture kind of meeting. A lecture at least involves someone, essentially, telling you, "I know how it's done, I decided it's done this way, I'll tell you in detail how." YMMV, but that's the basic idea. The meetings he's talking about, if I understood him right, are more the kind where someone doesn't want to be personally responsible for taking any decision. Quite the opposite. If he can't back out in dumbly applying some semi-irrelevant regulation or rule, he'll back out into, basically, "we all talked about it until everyone was too bored to give a shit any more, therefore we _all_ took that decision, therefore _I_ am not to blame." That is, if a decision is taken at all. Some end without anything being achieved whatsoever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think you're right that with the right kind of leadership and organization, a company can keep formal internal meetings to a minimum and everyone will be happier because of it.
If that works well all the time for 37Signals, then good for them. But it's important to realize that it works for them to a large degree because of the nature of their work. The "product" that they're producing is fairly simple in the sense that it can be done with a small in-house team. It's feasible for one individual to completely wrap their head around every aspect of a project if needed. That's not possible in every industry.
There are many lines of work where you just need way more people. There are consultants, and engineers, and manufacturers, and code officials, etc.
I know these guys are working hard, but I think they should step back and make sure they appreciate the relative freedom that exists in much of the software industry. It's far less accountable than most jobs and far less regulated. I have many days where I wish I didn't have to constantly deal with safety codes and governmental reviews.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
> Any decent website developer should have heard of them
I've been a web developer for 10 years and I've never heard of them. Why should I have done if I've not used Ruby on Rails? What else have they done for example, in the ASP.NET world? Probably nothing.
That's the 10% that takes the other 90% of the time.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Sigh. The guy is about 30 years old. His company has 10 people after having existed through one of the biggest economic booms of all time, and they make software and sell it.
I ask you: how could you NOT run a company like that in the way he is describing? Nobody would attempt to run a whelk stall like IBM, so how is this news?
Be that as it may, he says they are about to become 12 people. Let's hope they're all as good at doing their jobs as they think they are, because pretty soon they will know the answer. Personally, I would not want to be Jason Fried, and I certainly wouldn't want his name.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"