REWORK

Latest Episodes:

Learning from Mistakes is Overrated Sep 21, 2021

Show notes

"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 Domains
18:16 - Work at Basecamp
20:33 - Hire good writers (Getting Real)
20:38 - Hire managers of one (Signal v. Noise)
23:09 - Microsoft Project
27:04 - Remote: Office Not Required

Ignore the Real World Sep 14, 2021

Show notes

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

The New Reality Sep 07, 2021

Show notes

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 - Upwork
28:11 - FAANG
30:50 - Bookshop.org

Before Basecamp Jul 27, 2021

Show notes

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
03:54 - Daily Rush
04:03 - 37signals
04:15 - Quokka (the animal)
04:54 - The Around Alone
11:38 - Basecamp
18:18 - Ernest Kim
18:18 - Carlos Segura
19:12 - Copenhagen Business School
19:40 - Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter
21:34 - Bitcoin
21:34 - Ethereum
21:34 - NFT
22:34 - Skype
22:35 - Zendesk
22:39 - Ruby on Rails
24:24 - Ammon Haggerty
24:40 - Josh Ulm
24:59 - John Johnson
25:36 - An Oral History of Quokka, The Company That (Almost) Shook Up Sports - Sportico

You Had Me At Hylo Apr 20, 2021

Show notes

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 Generation" and "Exit to Community," our episodes about cooperatives - 00:21

Hylo - 00:29

Tibet Sprague on Twitter - 1:08

Terran Collective - 1:30

NRG acquired One Block Off the Grid (renamed Pure Energies Group) in 2014 - 4:10

Holo - 7:48

Announcement about Holo giving Hylo to Terran Collective - 9:08

Sociocracy for All - 17:30

"Mass vaccination site in Gary draws Chicago-area residents" (Chicago Tribune) - 24:32

"Gary, Indiana" from The Music Man - 24:42

Tibet's List of Resources

Prosocial
Reinventing Organizations
Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons
Emergent Strategy

More books, articles, and resources can be found on Terran Collective's website.

HEY, Is This App Accessible? Apr 13, 2021

Show notes

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 - 12:47

HEY for Work - 18:32

Ruby on Rails Core Team - 23:33

thoughtbot - 23:44

Aspiritech - 24:12

CSUN Assistive Technology Conference - 26:29

HEY's Accessibility page | Michael's write-up of his work on HEY - 29:51

Wailin's tweet complaining that Shaun doesn't insert enough airhorn - 30:10

Adam Stoddard on Twitter - 30:43

Manos: The Hands of HEY - 30:50

Success is Surviving Apr 06, 2021

Show notes

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) program. Robin Petravic comes on Rework to talk about walking the walk on equity, resilience, and equipping Heath for the next 200 years.

Robin and Cathy wrote about the Living Wage Initiative in Heath's January newsletter.

Show Notes

Heath Ceramics website | Instagram - 1:02

"Edith Heath: A Rebellion in Clay" (KCET, 2019) - 1:14

"A New Year, 166 New Owners" - 6:30

"Marin County's intensive effort drove down a COVID surge among Latino residents" (San Jose Mercury News) - 10:46

MIT Living Wage Calculator - 15:46

Eau de Space - 25:16

From Insolvency to Upsolve Mar 30, 2021

Show notes

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 necessarily prevent an organization from causing harm.

Show Notes

Upsolve website | Twitter - 00:40

Mark Hansen on Twitter - 00:48

"HHS failed to heed many warnings that HealthCare.gov was in trouble" (Washington Post, February 2016) - 1:52

Rohan Pavuluri on Twitter - 2:28

Jonathan Petts on Twitter - 2:29

A 2014 study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that many payday loans trap borrowers in revolving debt - 3:45

Upsolve's explanation of a bankruptcy discharge - 5:37

Upsolve's explanation of the "meeting of creditors" - 8:17

The Legal Services Corporation's Technology Initiative Grant Program - 10:17

Philadelphia Legal Assistance - 10:22

Certified B Corporation - 10:32

Sidewalk Labs - 12:00

"YC-backed Upsolve is automating bankruptcy for everyone" (TechCrunch, January 2019) - 13:28

Yvon Chouinard's 2019 interview in Fast Company - 20:28

Truss The Process Mar 23, 2021

Show notes

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 details, check out Jen's write-ups of the project on the Truss company blog: "Why We Made Salary Transparent" and "How We Made Salaries Transparent."

Show Notes

Truss website | LinkedIn | GitHub | Twitter - 00:30

Everett Harper's bio | @everettharper | Jen Leech's bio | @jennifermleech - 1:20

Buffer's policy on open salaries - 3:27

"The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap," a 2016 Freakonomics Radio episode - 3:47

"Demystifying the Gender Pay Gap: Evidence from Glassdoor Salary Data" - 4:52

Dreyfus model of skill acquisition (Wikipedia) - 6:43

Coops: The Next Generation Mar 16, 2021

Show notes

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 governance under a cooperative ownership structure, and trying to create a more equitable economic system in the process.

Show Notes

Exit to Community - 00:13

Start.coop | Twitter | LinkedIn - 00:37

Greg Brodsky on Twitter | LinkedIn - 00:54

Greg's dad, Howard Brodsky - 1:25

Greg was on the board of directors of the Cooperative Development Institute, a nonprofit for coops - 1:38

Start.coop's graduates - 2:29

Jessica Mason on Twitter | LinkedIn - 2:54

40 Acre Cooperative - 5:31

The U.S. Federal Reserve says the typical white American family has 8x the wealth of the typical Black family - 6:50

Equitable Economy Fund - 7:20

Driver's Seat Cooperative - 11:11