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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."
They are also the guys behind Ruby on Rails. Considering that topic is brought up quite often on Slashdot, I'm sure most people here have heard of it.
Not all meetings.
I work for a company that has very few meetings -- basically, we do a Scrum-style meeting every day, and that's it. The rest is just impromptu discussions -- we're all close enough that if there's an urgent question, or something which can't be communicated well via Trac or email, we walk over and talk about it.
Now, the Scrum alone might add up to an hour a week, but I think it's worth it -- makes it a lot easier to figure out who's stuck, and who can help, that kind of thing. And if it sucked, hey, it's over in 10 minutes.
It sounds like what you had wasn't a meeting, it was a lecture. Lectures do suck.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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