Signal v. Noise

I saw the Senior Programmer offer one day before going to bed. I decided I wasn’t going to apply. I had tried four times since 2013, and I never got to pass the first filter. Each attempt took me a good amount of time and energy, and I didn’t want to go through that pain again. That feeling didn’t last much: the next day, I was already working on my application. 

I knew I had made a mistake in the past: a too long cover letter. So this time I decided to fit it into two pages:

• The letter itself on one page.
• A distilled list of my relevant projects and articles on another.

The self-imposed two-pages constraint was arbitrary but served its purpose: reducing my big initial dump of assorted ideas and projects into something essential and easy to digest.

I decided to add a third page with a “Basecamp timeline” of my previous attempts. I wanted to highlight my genuine motivation, as well as referring to a demo I prepared years ago. I considered this secondary, so I placed it as a light appendix at the end.

I tried to make the application look nice with my limited design skills. They asked for a PDF, but I didn’t want to deliver a boring document. This was the version I sent.

They liked the application, and I was asked to do a technical exercise. Not too big, but interesting and fun. I could solve it on my own terms, and it let me show some technical and communication skills. Then I had three interviews: one with Andrea, the Head of People Ops; another with members of the team: Rosa, Jane, and Justin; and a final one with Jeremy, the team lead. Each interview left some candidates out, and I always knew how many of us were left.

Interviews were not hard. No difficult questions or puzzles. They felt like chatting about my background and Basecamp with colleagues. They tried to make me feel comfortable and gave me their full attention, which was a big contrast with other past experiences I have had. I listened to this episode about how Basecamp hires many times during the process, and it is a pretty good depiction of what to expect.

Because I imagined how good other candidates would be, I always thought it wasn’t going to be me. At first, that worked as a self-defense mechanism against the likely rejection. But the final interviews, when I knew I had a chance, were incredibly nerve-wracking.

I hate describing rare fantastic outcomes as just the logical consequence of some actions. I am proud of the job I did but, when it comes to selecting people, there is no best or right, and I was very lucky to be the one. Said that, I hope sharing my cover letter and experience can inspire other future candidates, like I was inspired by others Basecampers before.

You’re bound to make mistakes as a new manager – but here are the biggest, most common pitfalls to avoid in your first 30 days as a new manager.

I’ve never quite known the proper word to describe the feeling of being simultaneously elated and terrified — but your first 30 days as a new manager is that feeling.

You don’t want to mess this up. You’ve been reading The Effective Executive and High Output Management, googling “management 101” and “first 30 days as a new manager”, and talking to mentors about the “should’s” and “should not’s” of leadership… all in hopes that you won’t make any egregious blunders during your first month on the job.

But quite frankly, it’s bound to happen. You’re going to make a mistake, or two, or twenty. When we’re new as leaders, we operate out of instinct. It’s an instinct formulated from what our former bosses have done, honed by our own value system of what we personally prefer, and our best guess for “So I think this will work?” But we don’t really know if it’ll work.

That’s where I can help 🙂

Keep reading “6 mistakes to avoid during your first 30 days as a new manager”

What should you do for your end-of-the-year review with an employee? Use this one-on-one meeting template.

With December upon us (already!), many managers have been asking me if I have a one-on-one meeting template for their end-of-the-year review with a direct report.

Yes, I do have one 🙂

The end of the year is an opportune time — an ideal time, truly — to reflect together with your direct report, on what went well, what didn’t, in what they were most encouraged, and in what ways they weren’t.

Keep reading “The one-on-one meeting template for your end of the year review”

Get out your Bunsen burner! It’s time to do some experiments. In the latest episode of the Rework podcast, we talk to two businesses that aren’t afraid to try new things. First, the three founders of The Mad Optimist, a soap company in Indiana, talk about letting customers choose what they pay for their products. Then Natalie Nagele, the co-founder and CEO of software company Wildbit, talks about an ongoing experiment with four-day work weeks and what she’s discovered about productivity, happiness, and deep work.

Dave Teare is the co-founder and official “heart and soul” of 1Password, which recently raised $200 million in its first round of venture capital. Basecamp is a longtime happy customer of 1Password and also a longtime critic of venture capital, so the funding announcement led to some back-and-forth on Twitter between Basecamp co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson and Dave Teare. In the latest episode of the Rework podcast, DHH and Dave get on the phone to hash out their feelings about venture capital and what this funding round means for 1Password’s future. (A transcript is also available on the episode page.)

If you’re new to Rework and enjoyed the conversation between Dave and DHH, be sure to check out this episode where DHH and Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg get on the phone to discuss power in open source communities. And subscribe to Rework via your favorite podcast app so you get our new episodes as soon as they’re released.

Workplace cultures in politics and tech share many similarities: Overwork is glorified; long hours are the norm; employees are expected to respond to communication instantly, no matter the day or time; and those that opt out are seen as lacking hustle or ceding ground to competitors. Marty Santalucia, a political consultant in Pennsylvania, wanted to do things differently. In the latest episode of the Rework podcast, he talks about applying calm work principles to an industry that’s known for the opposite dynamic.

Basecamp has cut back its reliance on Amazon and Google, but there’s one area where it’s tough to find alternatives to Big Tech: cloud services. Even so, there are ways to cut spending on this $3 million annual expense while keeping the company’s apps running smoothly. In the latest episode of the Rework podcast, Blake Stoddard on Basecamp’s Ops team talks about how he volunteered to look for savings on cloud services and really delivered—to the tune of over a half-million dollars.

A transcript of this episode is also available. And if you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to Rework in your favorite podcast app so you get all of our new episodes as soon as they’re released.

Over the past 2.5 years, I’ve interviewed 49 leaders for our podcast on leadership, The Heartbeat. These are the leadership lessons that have influenced me the most, personally.

“What are the biggest leadership lessons you’ve learned from others, that have changed or affected your own management style?”

No one had ever asked me this question before – let alone on my own podcast show – until recently.

Who asked me this? None other than Jason Fried, CEO and co-founder of Basecamp. I’d invited Jason back on The Heartbeat, our podcast on leadership, for our 50th episode. He’d been our very first guest back in 2017 when I started the show. (Jason also sits on our board and originally spun out Know Your Team back when it was a part of Basecamp).

For this 50th anniversary episode, I thought I’d turn the tables: I asked Jason if he might interview me. And so, Jason asked me this never-before-asked question, “What are the biggest leadership lessons you’ve learned from others, that’s changed or affected your own management style?”

Keep reading “7 leadership lessons over 2.5 years”

The @AppleCard is such a fucking sexist program. My wife and I filed joint tax returns, live in a community-property state, and have been married for a long time. Yet Apple’s black box algorithm thinks I deserve 20x the credit limit she does. No appeals work.

— DHH (@dhh) November 7, 2019

DHH sparked a national controversy this week when he posted a series of livid tweets about how his wife received a much lower credit limit than he did on their Apple Cards, despite applying with the same financial information. What began as a rant against opaque algorithms turned into a regulatory investigation and more.

We wanted to dive deeper into some of the issues that (re) surfaced in this dust-up, so we put together a special episode of the Rework podcast featuring Dr. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University and entrepreneur Mara Zepeda. Ruha, the author of Race After Technology, discusses algorithmic bias and how our propensity to rely on technology for fixes to systemic problems often results in more discrimination against marginalized communities. Mara, who’s helped create organizations such as the XXcelerate Fund and Zebras Unite, talks about the “capital chasm” that persists for women and people of color who are trying to navigate the financial system.

Both women share ways that everyone can get involved to interrogate these systems and their underlying technology, and they discuss how to move from “paranoia and paralysis,” as Ruha says, to a place of action to build something better.

A transcript of this episode is available on the episode page. And if you’re new to Rework and like what you hear, please do subscribe via your favorite podcatcher app! We’ll have two episodes next week, our regular Tuesday one and a bonus later in the week about the launch of Basecamp Personal.

Since the beginning, Basecamp has been marketed as a project management and collaboration tool for small businesses (or small teams inside larger businesses).

However, over the years we’ve also heard from thousands of people who use Basecamp outside of work. They’ve gone off-label and turned to Basecamp to help them manage all sorts of personal projects too. No surprise there – it really works!

But one complaint we’ve heard is that Basecamp is priced for businesses, not for personal side projects. We felt it was finally time to do something about that.

So today we’re formally introducing Basecamp Personal – a completely free Basecamp plan designed specifically for freelancers, students, families, and personal projects. Why should businesses be the only ones who get to use Basecamp to manage projects? We The People deserve a Basecamp for us, too!

• You deserve a Basecamp for home improvement projects
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your girl/boy scout troops.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your weddings.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your hobbies.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your volunteer projects.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your family events.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your sports teams.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage your neighborhood association.
• You deserve a Basecamp for small freelance gigs.
• You deserve a Basecamp for personal side projects.
• You deserve a Basecamp to manage all sorts of personal stuff!

And you want it for free! You got it.

What do I get?
Basecamp Personal includes 3 projects, 20 users, and a gig of storage space. So kick off a couple projects, invite some friends, family, teammates, or volunteers. Stretch your wings a little, and discover the benefits of organizing your personal projects the Basecamp way.

No credit card required. No justification required. No obligation required. No ads. No selling your personal information. It’s Small Tech at its best. It’s The Basecamp Way. Basecamp Personal is on us, for you. Check it out and claim your free account today. We’d love to hear what you end up using it for.

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BTW, if Basecamp Personal sounds familiar, it’s because we used to have a Personal plan way back when. It was $25 per-project. This new one is completely free, so it’s better in every way.