We’ve just added four new people to our 37signals team. This brings us to 25 people which is both a little scary and also incredibly comforting. We’re growing without having to sacrifice quality. Being able to work with 25 world-class people every day really is an honor and a pleasure.
Merissa Dawson, Support
Merissa joins us from Austin, Texas. Merissa will be working with Michael, Jason, and Ann to make our support team the best in the universe. Merissa is one of those people who loves helping people with a smile. She wants to make everyone around her happy. It’s great to have her on the team. She’s in Chicago for the next couple weeks for training.
Andrea LaRowe, Assistant
We’ve been looking for months, and we’re beyond thrilled to have someone of Andrea’s caliber joining our team. Andrea will be helping everyone out with administrative tasks, research projects, basic HR, event planning, general organization, and keeping everything at the company running smoothly. Before 37signals Andrea worked as a executive assistant at a non-profit here in Chicago. She starts on February 28th.
Javan Makhmali, Programmer
Javan is based in beautiful Ann Arbor, MI. We really enjoyed getting to know him when he came to Chicago for his interview. He’s going to fit in perfectly here. Really curious guy who asks all the right questions and is focused on all the right problems. Before 37signals, Javan was a rails developer at Inkling Markets. Javan starts on March 7th.
Will Jessop, System administrator
Will has increased the European wing of 37signals to three people. He joins us from Manchester, UK and has been working with Joshua, John, and Taylor since December. He came from Engine Yard with deep knowledge of running Rails applications and we’re thrilled to have him.
Peter Baker
on 11 Feb 11Totally right about Javan, he’s gonna be a great snag for you guys.
John Cozen
on 11 Feb 11Congrats to the new team members and 37Signals, sounds like win-win all around
Ed
on 11 Feb 11Here’s an interesting question. Now the 37s team has more-or-less doubled in size over the last few months, is there any gettingreal/rework concepts that you think you’ve outgrown. i.e. are there some concepts that no longer apply to 37s?
Anyway, congrats on the additional staff and we look forward seeing how the expansion of the team affects product development and support.
Ed
PS: Please build a support/helpdesk web app. Most of the others suck!
JF
on 11 Feb 11Ed, we’re quite happy with Assistly for support.
DHH
on 11 Feb 11Ed, it’s actually really interesting. The more people who’ve joined 37signals, the more important we’re finding the core values of Rework. Doing less, restricting scope, saying no.
We’ll definitely keep our eyes open for principles and practices that might change, though. I’m sure that there are some ideas that work better at 15 than at 40. But for now we’ve been positively surprised at how well they’ve spanned the 4-25 spectrum (our growth over the last 7 years).
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Feb 11It’s interesting to see 37 Signsls shifting from hiring people at the top of the industry to total unknowns. It seems like they’re consciously choosing to bring in younger less experienced people since they know they can pay them less and not have worry about egos or demands of high end employees. Sad to see such a shift since it will most definitely affect quality.
DHH
on 11 Feb 11AC, we hire great people regardless of their public pedigree. Always have. That’s how the company was founded. I didn’t have any credentials when Jason hired me. Neither did Ryan.
A few of the programmers here had previous public work, but it’s certainly not been a rule or a requirement to land a job here. Never was, never will be.
BradM
on 11 Feb 11AC, I take it you didn’t get the job? Didn’t George Lucas always hire unknown actors for his little project called Star Wars? Also, didn’t ‘The Office’ go with several unknown actors/actresses for their sitcom?
Scott Newcomb
on 11 Feb 11“Marissa Dawson: She’s in Chicago for the next couple weeks for training.”
Aw man, I thought you guys were only looking for local candidates for support this time? Or did I misunderstand?
Gordon Kennedy
on 11 Feb 11If it’s the same Merissa Dawson from Austin that I know… then you’ve got a great catch. Congrats on the new role!
Dan Cornish
on 11 Feb 11Warning!!!!!!!!!!
You have just hired an employee in the state of Texas. Therefore you have established a business nexis in Texas. Going forward you HAVE to charge TX state sales tax for any of your customers in Texas. If you think I am kidding, just look at what happened to Host Gator, Amazon and Rackspace.
Kyle West
on 11 Feb 11Did Sarah leave?
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Feb 11@37signals
How many Support individuals is that now?
Must be 7-8 (unless some quit). I assume Sarahs still around.
JF
on 11 Feb 11We have 4 full time people on support right now. Looking for a 5th and soon after a 6th. David, Jason Z, Ryan, and I are all pitching in on support to help out until we build up the team a bit more. Support is one part of our company that has to scale with customer growth, and we’re growing there. Plus we just want to be absolutely incredible at support so we need some more people.
Yes, Sarah has moved on to start her own company called CoSupport where she’ll be helping other companies build their support teams and improving their help/site/documentation copy.
Stephen Jenkins
on 11 Feb 11Man, if you need a Rails dev, go hang out in a coffee shop for 20 minutes in Ann Arbor, they are coming out of the woodwork there.
Anonymous
on 12 Feb 11You guys just used the term “HR.”
Welcome to corporate hell.
Christian Huund
on 12 Feb 11Erm, what is CoSupport doing? I visited the website and it looks more like a blog than a company that offers a service that I could easily identify.
JK
on 12 Feb 11Funny how Google Reader shows me 2 new articles:
Four new people join… Three new people join…
Forgot someone? ;)
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Feb 11This is the pre-launch blog of Cosupport, the company that will provide support for web and mobile apps.
JF
on 12 Feb 11Anonymous: No corporate hell. HR = healthcare, 401k, FSA stuff. We’ve offered this for a while, it’s just that I’ve handled it which means it wasn’t handled as well as it should have been.
Michael
on 12 Feb 11Kiran Weber also left for Zendesk.
Ian
on 13 Feb 11Why Sara and Kiran left 37s?
SH
on 14 Feb 11Congrats to everyone, especially Merissa! I’ve known Merissa since high school (gah!) and when I left 37s she was my top choice to step in.
@Ian and whoever else – Kiran is now doing great work for Zendesk and I’m on my own putting everything I learned from 37s into practice at my own company. I learned so much from David and Jason about running a business, meeting niche needs, and being your own boss that it was time I started putting those lessons into practice. I can’t thank them enough for being supportive of my dream!
Matt Wright
on 15 Feb 11Javan is an awesome programmer with a keen design eye and thoughtful approach. I’m sure he’ll be a great fit for you guys. Well done!
This discussion is closed.