The hardest part about making good software that ships on time is knowing what and when to sacrifice. As programmers and designers, we often fall in love with our requirements and are unable to kill our darlings. We mistake what we said we’ll do with what must be done. It’s rarely so; you can always do less.

What stops most people from doing less is the fear of failure. The misconception that if you don’t get it all done, the rest is worth nothing at all. That without this feature or that tweak, nobody will want to use it at all. Bollocks. Most software has a tiny essence that justifies its existence, everything after that is wants and desires mistaken for needs and necessities.

The easiest way to force the insight of what can be lived without is by playing a game of constraints: You have to ship on Friday, you can’t add more people, you can’t work nights. Fixed resources, fixed time. All that’s left to give is scope. It’s amazing how creative the cuts and sharp the sacrifices become when you’re backed into a corner. It’s when you have to choose that you make the best choices.

For every 1 day estimates of a task, there’s a simpler version of that you can do in 3 hours, and an even simpler still you can do in 30 minutes. Back yourself into a corner and these versions will vividly appear before your eye. You can always do less.

We’re looking to hire a junior system administrator to help manage our growing infrastructure. Have a look at the jobs board posting if you think you might fit the bill.

If your company is so big and impersonal that you call the people you have assets, resources, bodies, or any of the many other degrading terms available, you’re doing it wrong.

When you talk about people, it’s clear that they’re neither interchangeable or mechanic. When you talk about people, you’re almost bound to care. Who cares about an asset or a resource? Everyone cares about Peter or Amanda.

This language of impersonality usually comes from visions of growth for its own sake. Not because Eric needs some help and Lindsey might be a good choice. It comes because you’re envisioning a project so big and complicated that keeping names in your head would just make it pop. That’s a bad way to hire.

Instead, push hiring down to the people who will actually care about names. So you might be building a 200-man mega project, but the team responsible for the design of the turbines are the ones in need of a few more hands. Not The Project.

It’s with great honor that we’re announcing our latest addition to the programming team at 37signals: Pratik Naik. I’ve worked with Pratik through the Ruby on Rails core team for almost two years. He’s been a top contributor with about 400 commits since 2007.

We first started working with Pratik as a contractor on Haystack, which he built the backend for. He has also worked on the new Campfire API that was rolled out recently. All great work. A perfect manager-of-one example. We can’t wait to put him to work on all the awesome things we’ll be bringing to light in 2010.

Pratik will be starting full time on February 1st. He will be the 17th signal. The second currently residing in Europe (Pratik is in London, Joshua Sierles in Spain).

The startup world is full of people addicted to work. The addiction often carries a heavy toll of lost friendships, broken relationships, bad health, and a dearth of other interests. All that matters is the next high from work. The next deal, the next milestone, the next round of funding.

If you had a similar addiction to cocaine or alcohol, people would call you sick and ask you to get help. But in the startup world, this addiction is praised by many. You’re a hero for putting in all your chips of life for that off chance that you’ll hit a royal flush.

What’s worse is that most of these addicts know intellectually that plowing through 14 hour work days is not actually a very productive way to get ahead. That more time doesn’t mean more valuable work done. Jason Cohen addresses this in Sacrifice your health for your startup. He recognizes that sleep deprivation is not helpful, but still sees it as a badge of honor. That the extra work is probably not quality product, but somehow still needs to happen.

He talks the talk of reason but walks the walk of an addict. Desperate to find a justification for his ways: You need to be nothing but work because you have to wear many hats. You need to have a single-tracked obsession with work because the nirvana of “financial freedom” is just a few highs away.

Being addicted to your work might be slightly better than a coke habit, but it follows the same pattern of abuse and escapism. And most importantly, it is not a requirement for success. You do not have to become an addict to run a startup. Be passionate, be obsessed, but don’t let it be an excuse for consuming your life.

Facebook sucks you in because everyone you know is using it. You go to eBay to find something because you know someone is selling what you want to buy. Oracle wins in the enterprise because there are tons of experts and plenty of auxiliary software available. All these business rely heavily on the network effect: Their product is more attractive than the competition because of their market share.

Do you know what kind of software doesn’t have the advantages of the network effect? Ours. One Highrise user doesn’t give a hoot whether we have 10,000 or 100,000 customers. Jane Doe doesn’t benefit if we sign up any other customers this year. As long as there’s a sound business behind the product, she doesn’t care about anyone else. In other words, there are no network effects.

Bug tracking has no network effects

Do you know what other kind of software isn’t affected by the network effect? Bug tracking. I don’t care who else is using Trac as long as it’s great software. It doesn’t benefit us to know that the Shopify guys are using it too (short of just sharing tips and tricks). Again, no network effects.

I don’t think Spolsky notices a difference. In Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death, he’s freaking out that a competitor (Atlassian, it seems) is growing faster than Fog Bugz and decides he has to get into market-share mode or face extinction. That unless he puts the turbo on growth, he’s going to be WordPerfect.

Bad decisions come from fear

Fear is ugly because it makes you irrational. Fear makes you jump to conclusions. Fear makes you reactionary. Spolsky’s reaction to the imaginary threat of extinction is all fear:

1) Build every feature any customer would ever want: Apparently, by having all the features anyone can ever imagine, Fog Bugz will “eliminate any possible reason that customers might buy our competitors’ junk”. That’s a faulty conclusion and a terrible idea. Software that tries to be everything to everyone generally sucks. It becomes bloated, hard to use, and in need of big up-front training. (Actually, that’s a pretty good definition of enterprise software right there).

2) Become a sales force-driven company: Hire a bunch of sales people and make them convince people to buy our software. This is even more enterprisey thinking. Side step the actual users, the developers, and go straight to management with steak and strippers. I’ve worked at sales force-driven software companies and they suck. The sales people will invariably promise more than you have and drive you even deeper into “build everything for everyone”.

Stay strong

Companies in non-network-effects businesses don’t become extinct because they only have 50% y/y growth. They become extinct because they fuck up a good thing and become their own worst enemy. They take a successful product and ruin it trying to reach for the moon. Joel, please don’t do that.

Early retirement is a mirage when you’re physically and mentally capable of doing more. Humans are generally not built to derive sustainable happiness from sipping mojitos on a picturesque island somewhere in the pacific. Once you’ve tasted the sweetness of a dedicated purpose, it’s near impossible to be content just sitting on the sidelines.

I’ve talked to a handful of start-uppers who build the company of their passion and then cashed in for this dream. But the pattern was pretty much universally the same: Six months of doing nothing but indulging pleasure is as long as most highly capable individuals can take.

So after a much-needed vacation, the retirement is canceled and they’re back to start a new company. (Not always with as much passion as the first time around, but that’s another story).

There’s nothing more dangerous than an average manager with free time on his hands. When your work is solely coordinating and assigning other people’s tasks, topping off a slow day usually means making up more (needless) stuff for others to do.

This is in part the tyranny of the 8-hour work day paradigm. When the work is progressing as planned and the core issues have been addressed, the right move for the manager is often to step back. But if all you know how do is “manage”, there’s no fallback. Nothing else to fill your time with.

What you’re left with is net-negative management. That the presence of a manager actually detracts more value than not having one at all would do.

The alternative for many smaller teams or shops is the combined idea of managers of one and working managers. That management can be less than a full-time role, it can be a responsibility that people who also does the work can take upon them when needed.

The title of vice president must be the most promiscuous of all in corporate America. Everyone seems to be a vice president these days. Some companies having hundreds of them. Are all of these people truly capable of standing in for the president or CEO of the company should it come to that? Are they really just one step below that person?

Of course they’re not. Vice president is mostly an “all title, no lands” concept that serves as a cheap way to make someone feel important without the authority to actually be important. It’s classic over-promise, under-deliver. “You’re oh-so-important, but please fill out this expense authorization report for your laptop”.

Titles are mostly bullshit at the best of times, but “vice president” seems to be bullshit all the time.