Recent Jobs posted to the Job Board

At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy.

Here’s are a few of the things we’ve implemented so far:

Shorter work weeks

Last summer we experimented with 4-day work weeks. People should enjoy the weather in the summer. We found that just about the same amount of work gets done in four days vs. five days.

So if that’s the case we could either push everyone to work harder during those five days or we could just skip one of those days. We decided to skip one of those days.

So recently we’ve instituted a four-day work week as standard. We take Fridays off. We’re around for emergencies, and we still do customer service/support on Fridays, but other than that work is not required on Fridays.

Three-day weekends mean people come back extra refreshed on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people come back happier on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.

Funding people’s passions

We decided that 37signals would help people pay for their passions, interests, or other curiosities. We want our people to experience new things, discover new hobbies, and generally be interesting people.

For example, Mark has recently taken up flight lessons. 37signals is helping him pay for those. If someone wants to take cooking lessons, we’ll help pay for those. If someone wants to take a woodworking class, we’ll help pay for that.

Part of the deal is that if 37signals helps you pay, you have to share what you’ve learned with everyone. Not just everyone at 37signals, but everyone who reads our blog. So expect to see some blog posts about these experiences.

Discretionary spending accounts

We’re in the process of giving everyone at 37signals a credit card. If you want a book or some software or you want to go to a conference, it’s on us. We just ask people to be reasonable with their spending.

If there’s a problem, we’ll let the person know. We’d rather trust people to make reasonable spending decisions than assume people will abuse the privilege by default.

We’ll post updates if we have them

The ideas above are active experiments. We’ll report back if we learn anything – good or bad – about what we’re doing and how it’s working.

MacBook Air selling strongly, surprised?

David wrote this on Mar 04 2008 59 comments

Color me not surprised: The MacBook Air seems to be selling really well for Apple. So says a report from Ars Technica that quotes retail anecdotes from Apple stores, Best Buy, quoting Amazon lead times, and noting:

The MacBook Air has been the top selling Mac since before the middle of February, outselling the MacBook, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro—this, despite week-long shipping delays.

Geeks have a tendency to drastically overestimate the value of extendability, number of ports, and benchmarks while drastically underestimate the value of design, feel, and convenience as perceived by regular people. This would seem a case in point.

I’ve now used the Air for over a month and so has my girlfriend. Neither of us have ever been annoyed by any of the perceived shortcomings, but we’ve both been thrilled and continue to be so by the advantages.

If you’re on the fence, I’d heartily encourage you to jump on board. I highly doubt you’ll be disappointed. You can see availability for your state on the Apple site.

(Now Apple, where’s my kickback :)?)

Safari why must you be such a cookie monster?

David wrote this on Mar 03 2008 50 comments

Safari 3 is awesome. It’s really fast, it finally got decent debugging tools, and it just feels so native in ways no other browser on OS X does. But all is not well. Safari 3 is one hungry hound for cookies!

Every time Safari crashes and burns, which is a surprisingly frequent occurrence when Flash or a media player is involved, it decides to take all my cookies with it and munch away. That’s pretty effin’ annoying.

It means logging in to a ton of sites that already had the “remember me” setting put. It often even means requesting a new security token from Chase Bank before I can see my statement. It just blows.

So please Safari team, can we get the cookie lust under control? Of course, it would be even better if Safari didn’t go down as much, but I recognize that media players and flash can make that hard (Firefox often goes down on the same counts, but leaves the cookies alone).

Behind the scenes at 37signals: Postscript

Matt Linderman wrote this on Mar 03 2008 8 comments

This is the seventh (and final) in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots from the series are from real usage and were taken during a single week.

To wrap up the series, we’ll take a look at some of the nuts and bolts features of Campfire (e.g. search, transcripts, guests, etc.).

Search previous chat transcripts
It’s easy to search through all of your previous chats and files. one week in CF

Browse previous conversations
You can also browse transcripts to find specific conversations or files. one week in CF

Continued…

[Sunspots] The skillful edition

Basecamp wrote this on Feb 29 2008 7 comments

Programmer happiness is the most important factor in making quality software: “Code is meant to be read by humans first and computers only secondarily — in order to write software that addresses real human needs we need to approach the problem of software development from a more human perspective…Performance is cheap. On the other hand, creating, customizing, and maintaining huge (and hugely complex) bases of inscrutable software code is very expensive. There is increasing sentiment in the software world that we should be happy to take performance hits if it means the process of software development can me made more sustainable, pleasant, and simple.”
The advantages of closing a few doors: ”’Predictably Irrational’ is an entertaining look at human foibles like the penchant for keeping too many options open…In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy.”
Video: "How to Speak": “In this skillful lecture, Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers tips on how to give an effective talk, cleverly illustrating his suggestions by using them himself. He emphasizes how to start a lecture, cycling in on the material, using verbal punctuation to indicate transitions, describing ‘near misses’ that strengthen the intended concept, and asking questions. He also talks about using the blackboard, overhead projections, props, and ‘how to stop.’”
The power of micro-specialization: “Become the expert in what you do. Which means micro-specialization. Who is the single-best agent for condos in your zip code? Or for single family homes for large families? Who is the one and the only best person to turn to if you’re looking for investment property in this part of town? As I wrote in The Dip, you’re either the best in the world (where ‘world’ can be a tiny slice of the environment) or you’re invisible. This means being Draconian in your choices. No, you can’t also do a little of this or a little of that. Best in your world means burning your other bridges and obsessing.”

Continued…

Product Blog update: Webware 100, "a design freelancer’s best friend," Basecamp and GTD, Backpack reactions, etc.

Basecamp wrote this on Feb 28 2008 16 comments

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Reactions to the new Backpack from around the web
“I’ve always been a big fan of Backpack, but this is a whole new thing. If you’re part of organization that has always wanted a single place where staff and volunteers could share information, calendars, even reminders (including SMS), definitely give Backpack a try. I can’t think of better option, especially for churches and non-profits.”

Basecamp is a Webware 100 finalist (again)
From a list of thousands of nominees, Webware editors selected 300 finalists for the Webware 100 Awards — and we’re pleased to announce Basecamp is one of the finalists. If you’re a fan, please go to Webware and vote for Basecamp.

“They call it Open Bar, I call it awesome!”
“You’ll see a change in your Basecamp like below, where my three accounts are listed at the top, and you can move between them seemlessly. They call it Open Bar and I call it awesome!”

A look at Abunga’s Open Bar.

DesignSessions calls Basecamp a design freelancer’s best friend
“One aspect users have described as a ‘godsend’ is the ability to merge time-tracking with project deliverables, allowing you to set up milestones and to-do lists for a project and time-track as you check tasks off your list.”

An update to the “People on this project” section on the Basecamp Overview screen
Instead of “last login” we now show “latest activity.” This way if someone logged in a few days ago, but just accessed a project a few minutes ago, we can show an accurate “few minutes ago” access in the list.

Continued…

Design Decisions: Calendar picker for Backpack Reminders

Ryan wrote this on Feb 28 2008 29 comments

Last night we added a calendar picker to Backpack’s Reminder form. You don’t need to choose a date or time for Reminders if you use the preset options like “Tomorrow morning.” However you can select “At a specific time…” and set the exact date and time yourself. Before today, you had to use pulldowns for the day, month, and year to do this. Here’s the old design:

Old reminder pulldowns

Now you can use a little calendar to visually select the date:

New reminder calendar picker

Let’s take a look at the design process. We had the idea to replace the pulldowns with a calendar picker because we did exactly that in Basecamp a few months ago. Here’s the calendar picker on Basecamp’s New Milestone screen:

Continued…

A great quote about size

Jason Fried wrote this on Feb 27 2008 18 comments

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” -Betty Reese

Share a negotiating story

Matt Linderman wrote this on Feb 27 2008 60 comments

Do you have a good negotiating story? Tell us about it. Leave a comment about how you got a great deal on your house, negotiated a raise, or handled some other transaction. (And feel free to stay anonymous on this one.)