It’s taken us eight years to assemble the fabulous ensemble at 37signals. Here’s how we’re split across specialities (counting Jason as a designer and me as a programmer):
“Other” currently constitutes Noah on data, Shaun on video, and Andrea as the office manager.
This year we’re probably going to hire at least two more people for support (we’d love to offer true 24/7 coverage) and one person to help with conversion. No plans to hire any more people in design, programming, or operations at the moment.
Michel
on 05 Jun 12Well, looks like the perfect team would 37 ;-)
Simon
on 05 Jun 122010 was quite the year.
Interesting distribution, however I somehow think Jason and yourself do so much more than just design and programming. Would be interesting to see how much time is spent on each, percent-wise. Would make setting up such a table a whole lot more work to get it accurate of course.
Scott
on 05 Jun 12Math skillz needed on year 2004.
Nate Quigley
on 05 Jun 12As always, really appreciate your willingness to share. Super helpful.
The Design/Programmer/Support ratio sort of says it all for me. Our code has gotten out ahead of our Design and our Quality. Going to fix that.
- long-time listener, first time caller (and happy remote team Campfire user)
kracekumar
on 05 Jun 12in 2004, 2+1+1 should be 4 people, not 5. Else you missed some one
Konstantin
on 05 Jun 12Thanks for sharing this! Also: 2+1+1=5?
DHH
on 05 Jun 122+1+1=4. My bad. Fixed!
Konstantin
on 05 Jun 12Also, goal is to eventually reach 37, right?
Diego
on 05 Jun 12Your people/client ratio surely is amazing.
This year I will apply for your fantastic support team.
PD: There are 4 people in 2004.
Kyle West
on 05 Jun 12Turnover would be equally interesting. Particularly resigned vs. terminated.
Matt
on 05 Jun 12Be interesting to hear your thoughts on why the numbers dropped and you never re hired someone in that area, for example in 2011 you had 9 supporters but this year you only have 7. Same with programmers and other
DHH
on 05 Jun 12Matt, the numbers represent the number of different people that worked for the company in that year in that role. So for support, we had 9 different people in 2011, but they didn’t actually overlap to be more than 8, I believe.
DHH
on 05 Jun 12Number of people who’ve left 37signals in those eight years: 3 supporters, 2 programmers, 2 operators, 1 other, 1 designer.
Viktoras
on 05 Jun 12How many of the current Designers know Ruby? ( i’m not talking about able to handle a view file, but working with a simple CRUD ++ )
And… front-end developers are counted at the programmers column? ( Although i don’t remember a job specification like that @ 37s )
Al
on 05 Jun 12Why do you need so much designers? Do they code(HTML/JS)?
JF
on 05 Jun 12Al: All of our designers code their own HTML/CSS. HTML/CSS is design. Some are better at JS than others, but we can all make our way around the basics.
DHH
on 05 Jun 12Viktoras, we don’t have “front-end developer” as a role at 37signals. Designers make their own HTML/CSS/JS and programmers all share the same tasks.
Mike
on 05 Jun 12Does this mean you’re still accepting applications for conversion?
Michael
on 05 Jun 12Interesting table! Could ou break down designers? I recall you hired Mig Reyes to design marketing sites. What do other designers work on?
Brady Wetherington
on 05 Jun 12Interesting – I’m curious to see if the revenue/employee number continues to grow, or if it hits a ‘hump’ some year – perhaps when you guys were doing more with less – then dropping off a bit.
I’m also curious about departures – anyone actually fired ever? Or have all departures been voluntary. Anyone “strongly encouraged” to move on?
DHH
on 05 Jun 12Brady, we’ve continued to grow the business at a healthy clip every year. But we don’t share financial numbers, so it’ll have to stay at that ;).
Also, I don’t think it’s prudent to discuss the reasons of people leaving in public.
Anonymous Coward
on 05 Jun 12No QAs? Who does QA?
Peter
on 05 Jun 12Sharky
on 05 Jun 12That there are no Salespeople in the organization is amazing and a testament to the Market/PR savvy founders (JF & DH).
Quite an amazing company!
business plans
on 05 Jun 12Amazing page indeed! Glad that I bookmarked this page.
Matt Watson - Stackify
on 05 Jun 12Amazing how much you guys do with such a small staff and no salespeople. Kudos to your team.
Alex Dieulot
on 05 Jun 12What is the role of the “Operations” folks?
Jan Palounek
on 05 Jun 12If you hire more 5 people then you will be really 37 signals!
By the way I think that you are one of most profitable bussinesses when you divide revenue with count of employees.
Thumbs up! Good job
Stanley Lee
on 05 Jun 12David,
Thanks for sharing that chart with the 37Signals fan base. Out of curiosity, is this related to your tweets about how the social media penny stock companies growing their headcounts quickly (e.g. FB, GRPN, YELP, ZNGA, and ANGI)?
Stanley
Mark
on 05 Jun 12Interesting. Curious why you and Jason don’t count yourselves as Operations and Other as well, since as the faces and names of the company you do so much more than design and program.
In fact, I would think you’d do much more of the “other” stuff than you do with design or program, or at least, you had some periods within that 8 years when you did.
Rob
on 05 Jun 12Nice. Thanks.
JF
on 05 Jun 12Alex/Mark: Operations is technological infrastructure. The hardware, software, and internal systems that keep our apps running.
Ben Edwards
on 05 Jun 12Super interesting guys. Thanks for your openness as always. We have grown to 13 (3 designers, 9 developers, 1 business developer) and are contemplating 2-3 additional development/design hires right now. Really wondering when additional operations / office management makes sense. We’re definitely feeling the lack of support but don’t want too much overhead.
ADI
on 06 Jun 12Wow, gaining 25% growth from 2008-2009 is very impressive, especially with everything going on in the economy.
Devan
on 06 Jun 12I am curious to know if, now that you are at 32 staff, whether the ‘no meetings’ mantra of the early days still holds true? How do you currently communicate ideas, happenings and vision to such a large (and I assume widespread) team?
Also, do you have someone dedicated to HR type matters?
Ahmed
on 06 Jun 12This is really impressive. What amasses me is: 1- I have noticed that comments are been read by 37signals members, which is not “always” the case with many companies where they use blogs as “notifications/news” area kind of thing. But here I see JF, DHH and others really reads our comments and reply to it. Really caring about business.
2- Also noticed. there no roles for Project Manger, CEO, OOC, DDT, BBC :) or any of this kind of “titles” that “some” people fights for.
Right now I’m jobless [designer-developer], and don’t know If would I fight for those titles every time i gain experience? Do you? I remember there was 37signals member left because she wants to be recognized by having title [if i remember correctly].
Q. for JF and DHH, how much time you give for your roles as (designer-developer) compare to (management) while 37signals have more members now?
Good job, Thanks.
Ahmed
on 06 Jun 12Sorry guys, i meant “amazes” not “amasses” ... My apology.
karter
on 06 Jun 12Take this comment with a pinch of salt. 37signals used to be a company I looked up to for inspiration in terms of pioneering the way web apps were conceived and built.
However impressive your growth has been, over the past 2 years, with all those talented people – I expected much greater things from 37signals which did not happen (nothing radically different about new basecamp).
Perhaps it’s just a reminder to others that no matter how great you are – as you get older as a company, cruft accumulates, and there is a burden of supporting legacy products. And that does take a toll on how much you can keep innovating and coming up with constantly great things.
Michael
on 06 Jun 12karter, let me guess. Radical means gantt charts? Facebook-style accounts for every user?
Steve
on 06 Jun 12Ahmed:
Jobless? You in Chicago? I am hiring PHP, JS, MVC, HTML / CSS
Jeremy Britton
on 06 Jun 12Jason, David and team,
Most people congratulate themselves and others for hiring. It’s rare you get to look back and congratulate somebody for not hiring, for saying “no” to a thousands things. That’s something to be proud of.
Congratulations.
David
on 07 Jun 12Hey David, side question:
Do you use a special service to track support happiness or did you build the system inhouse?
http://smiley.37signals.com/
Thanks! David
Kev
on 07 Jun 12Do any of you guys know how to code a HTML table?
Meow!
JF
on 07 Jun 12David: We built Smiley ourselves.
Faseeh Shams
on 07 Jun 12This is amazing. 4 – 32 really shows how steady the company’s growth has been throughout the years and it amaze’s me how your company has transformed into becoming one of the best software’s in the world.
congratulation guys.
Brandy
on 07 Jun 12You guys are an inspiration. Great to see the growth distribution.
Adrian
on 07 Jun 12Your slow growth is quite inspiring.
Tyler
on 07 Jun 12I find it amazing that even in 2007 you didn’t have a dedicated support person. Was Jason doing nothing but support at that point? Were you leaning heavily on community forums?
Steve Z.
on 08 Jun 12Thanks for sharing this data and being transparent.
DHH
on 09 Jun 12Tyler, Jason did support all the early years.
Steve
on 10 Jun 12Without sharing any confidential details what were the reason(s) for the amazing growth from 2009 (15 people) to 2011 (34 people) ? That is very impressive. Thank you and keep up the great work.
This discussion is closed.