I recently re-read It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier of Basecamp. Here are some of my favorite ideas.
I started out in the Ruby on Rails community, where Fried, DHH, and Basecamp are well-known. We don’t always agree, but I’ve found their company to be fountain of interesting ideas about technology teams. I’ve read every book they’ve written.
These are the ideas that grabbed me on this read-through. I agree with them, except where noted, and they’re currently “strong opinions, loosely held.”
Top Three Ideas
Important conversations require careful thought. Discourage knee-jerk reactions to a careful presentation, and instead push people to think and write. (pg. 134)
Disagree and commit. We aren’t going to get consensus on every idea, but once the decision is made, we commit and get it done. (pg. 153)
Empathize with customers. What you do with the problem is up for discussion, and sometimes resources are limited. But you must give customers the impression that you care, or you’re going to fail no matter how great your service is. (pg. 214)
Other Favorite Ideas
Being married to a previous plan or a backlog of old, long-running ideas is a waste of time and resources. What are we going to build now? (pg. 33)
Companies often don’t realize how valuable their employees’ time and attention are, and squander both. (pg. 43)
Instead of thinking about what you can do, think about what you can cut out, your “to don’ts.” (pg. 50).
“Office Hours,” an idea borrowed from academia, are a way to make experts available in a controlled, predictable setting. (pg. 57)
Calendars should not be public. This one is tough for me! I see a lot of benefit to public calendars. The idea is that how I spend my time isn’t relevant to my team; it’s my output. (pg. 62)
The status icon in chat was a bad idea, because it broadcasts, “I’m interruptible!” to everyone on the team. (pg. 66)
JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) should be celebrated as much as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). It’s okay to miss things. Nobody is expected to know everything that goes on at a company all the time. (pg. 70)
Executives’ words weigh a ton. “We should look at TikTok” can be casually said and forgotten by an executive, but stay on an employee’s TODO list for months or years. (pg. 88)
“Low-hanging fruit” often means “We don’t really understand this area.” The fruit you’re seeing might not be low-hanging in the eyes of an expert. Putting that expectation that your hired expert is a recipe for misalignment. (pg. 90)
“Library Rules” prevail at Basecamp: quiet, don’t interrupt, calm, respect. I work from home, but I love this idea. (pg.120)
No Fakecations: when you’re on vacation, you’re on vacation, and when you aren’t, you aren’t. My personal exception here is that it’s okay to visit family for events like wedding or funeral weeks and work part of the time. Just be transparent about it and guard your boundaries. (pg. 122)
Unlimited PTO has been shown to lead to people taking less PTO. I’m personally a fan of unlimited PTO, because I take the time, and I like not having to track the hours. But I think it doesn’t work well for many organizations. (pg. 123)
When someone is leaving, immediately send an email explaining the departure and celebrating them, from them or their manager. (pg. 126)
Compromise on quality. You can’t do everything well. You must be willing to say, “This is good enough.” (pg. 155)
Start polishing your work near the end of a project, not the beginning. (pg. 158)
Teams of three are ideal: no extra people, communication is easy, and there are no ties in voting. (pg. 174)
Product roadmaps can turn into collections of things we said we were going to do that aren’t relevant anymore. Promise not to promise. (pg. 200)
People copying your product is good. It means you have something that is valuable. They will never do it as well as you, because they are copying a moment in time. You own the people and process that produced it. (pg. 205)
Conclusion
Have you read this book? What were your favorite ideas?