
Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's? - kxr
I am a big fan of how Basecamp is run as a company, and of the work environment they create for their employees. (Or at least seem to. I don&#x27;t have first-hand experience.)<p>You can get a sense of their philosophy by reading what the company&#x27;s cofounders have written on the subject [0][1]. They&#x27;ve even written a book about it.<p>You may not buy it, and that is absolutely fine.<p>If you do however, and if you&#x27;ve ever worked at a company that works similarly, can you post about it here?<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@dhh
[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@jasonfried
======
bdcravens
Plenty of companies if you don't limit yourself to "startups".

For instance, my company (I'm the Director of Technology) is like that (just
listened to DHH's interview on Ruby Rogues this morning, so many of these are
fresh in my mind):

1) Pay talent fairly

2) Customers are more important than technology

3) Small team

4) Reasonable hours

5) Tight focus

6) Trust your talent

7) Remote friendly (people think this first when they think Basecamp, but I
think that's just one piece of the culture)

(And since it will be asked: No, we're not currently "hiring", but always
interested in conversations if you reach out to me)

~~~
erlend_sh
Great advice. Here’s a good list of remote-friendly companies:
[https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-
jobs/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-
jobs/blob/master/README.md)

Discourse is not hiring right now but we will definitely be hiring a lot more
in the year to come. We’re all of the things above, plus a 100% Rails based,
open source product.

------
pixelmonkey
I'm the CTO at Parse.ly, you can visit us at
[https://parse.ly](https://parse.ly).

We run a fully distributed team. We have commented on our culture around this
in these two blog posts--

The How & Why of Parse.ly's Fully Distributed Team:

[https://blog.parse.ly/post/3203/the-how-and-why-of-parse-
lys...](https://blog.parse.ly/post/3203/the-how-and-why-of-parse-lys-fully-
distributed-team/)

Fully Remote, But Here For Each Other:

[https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/](https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/)

We actually recommend "Rework" and "Remote" as two reading materials for new
hires when they join the company.

As for financing, Parse.ly is no longer a bootstrapped company, but we do take
a "lean" approach to SaaS VC fundraising.

My co-founder wrote a bit about this in this post--

A Different Way — Thoughtful Financing, Or Why We Said "No" to a Lot of Money:

[https://blog.parse.ly/post/6282/why-we-said-no-vc-
money/](https://blog.parse.ly/post/6282/why-we-said-no-vc-money/)

~~~
frankquist
Slightly offtopic but I went to your homepage to check it out. Immediately
loved how it looked, but found it hard to find out what products are actually
on offer until I went to the separate product pages. In the first two screens
of the homepage, the general gist of your products doesn't become clear to me,
only your specific Facebook/AMP product. After the first screen ("Do
incredible things with your data") I expected the second screen to tell me
what those were, and so I would've thought you offered only AMP/facebook
stuff, hadn't I noticed later on that it was a "product update".

Just my 2 cts.

~~~
pixelmonkey
Thanks for the feedback. Interestingly, we plan on revamping our homepage and
flow a bit in early 2018 to make that sort of thing clearer. Appreciate the
comment!

------
skrebbel
Hijacking the thread a bit, but are there any published _negative_ experiences
about working at Basecamp? Everything I know about Basecamp's culture comes
from their owners - obviously it is in their interest to be very enthousiastic
about it, especially since their product supports a company with their culture
_particularly_ well.

There must be downsides. Right? Are there any? For real people at Basecamp?

~~~
nickbauman
I have a friend who's close to DHH. He claims that Basecamp has a very very
very selective recruiting process. To the point where finding talent is
extremely difficult. I suspect their litmus for excellence is the real reason
their seemingly "guardrail-free culture" works as well as it does, not the
other way around.

~~~
johne20
Is there any insight publicly available regarding their hiring processes? I am
interested in successful small software companies practices in particular, not
google/facebook/et al, scale.

------
peterlk
I work for Aha![0]. I'm wary of trying to define the culture of one company in
terms of another, so I'll just tell you about where I work, and you can
decide.

We are a fully distributed team, and we build a lovable product. We published
a book called Lovability[1] to help explain how we do it. We support each
other, congratulate each other, and push hard to make it happen; these things
require trust and talent in every part of the organization. I am a better
person (and engineer) for having worked at this company.

Here are the pillars of our culture[2]:

    
    
        * Have purpose: You know what you are working towards. You are aware of what success is and guided back to the purpose if you wind up in the weeds.
        * Value work: You have the opportunity to achieve and to do something important. Doing great work is valued and recognized.
        * Teach hard: Direct feedback is given on a regular basis to help you improve your skills every day.
        * Grows talent: There is a framework for success, people are trained on it and given room to grow. There is trust that people will step into challenging roles as the organization needs them to. Promotions occur from within.
        * Honor reality: Neither time nor money is invested in manipulation. Work is guided by values and purpose.
        * Work it: Work sometimes requires great effort. However, it does not burn you out but instead keeps you going.
    
    

Some of my favorite blog posts:

    
    
      * https://blog.aha.io/your-success-think-like-a-grandpa/
      * all of these :) - https://blog.aha.io/author/why-i-joined-aha/
      * https://blog.aha.io/your-remote-co-workers-feel-left-out/
      * https://blog.aha.io/hey-boss-stop-telling-me-to-bring-you-solutions/
    
    

[0] [https://aha.io](https://aha.io)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Lovability-Build-Business-People-
Happ...](https://www.amazon.com/Lovability-Build-Business-People-
Happy/dp/1626344035/)

[2] [https://blog.aha.io/signs-you-love-your-job/](https://blog.aha.io/signs-
you-love-your-job/)

------
MrDrone
I work at Zapier and have for more than 2 years. Internally, we talk about
Basecamp as one of the ideals we strive for and reference their writing
frequently.

We're all remote and pride ourselves on being humble, helpful and have a
proper work life balance. We sometimes describe it as a midwestern work ethic.

I'm not a founder or executive at Zapier so I can't pitch it from that
perspective but as a happy employee and fellow fan of Basecamp I think you
should check us out.

[http://zapier.com/about](http://zapier.com/about)

------
nathantotten
Auth0 is probably pretty close. I spent 3 years there (recently left, but not
because of anything negative with the company). They hire remote, they are
super flexible with work hours, etc. Culture is that of basically be
responsible and get your work done. Really high bar on hiring though so it can
be tough to get in, but if you do get in it’s an awesome place to work.
Retention is super high - I was one of the few people who have ever left the
company voluntarily. ;)

I know they are hiring for lots of positions as well. auth0.com/jobs

~~~
Ecco
I assume you meant retention is super high :)

~~~
nathantotten
Yes. Thanks. :)

------
manuelflara
A similar one IMO would be Buffer. Remote, extremely transparent, treating
their employees and customer well, etc. One big difference is that Buffer,
while initially bootstrapped, did eventually raise VC money, while Basecamp
famously never has. You can read more about Buffer at their company blog:
[https://open.buffer.com/](https://open.buffer.com/)

~~~
EpicEng
What does this company actually do? I read through their site and it's just
really vague, to me at least.

~~~
jimminy
They provide a tool set for scheduling marketing content across multiple
social media services.

Originally, it was built just to schedule tweets in the future.

~~~
oelmekki
Also worth noting that they are highly popular among marketers and community
managers. It does not say anything about "what they do", but I guess it says
something about how well they do it :)

------
balsamiq
We (Balsamiq) look up to Basecamp quite a bit, and people have compared our
culture to theirs. Check out our blog for some of our policies and other
stuff. Any questions, I'm here.

Peldi

~~~
mangoceylon
As a user and recommender of your product in the past, that was always the
vibe I got from your company. You seemed to espouse many of the same
characteristics as basecamp, and I thought of you as very closely related in
my mind.

If you were building a super minimal web CMS, what features would be a must
have?

~~~
balsamiq
Thank you! About a super minimal web CMS... I wouldn't build one. We can
discuss more over email if you'd like, so we don't highjack the thread:
peldi@balsamiq.com

------
meesterdude
it's a great question to ask. Lots of great takeaways to be had from their
culture, and many would do well to try and adopt some of them.

But what i've observed is there is a tendency to rationalize away much of what
basecamp advocates. Sure, it SOUNDS smart and good, but who needs frameworks
really? "Rails is overkill" Or work/life balance? "it's about the hustle" or
job satisfaction? "we're changing the world of ___".

Basecamp is championed because at every decision, a reflection is made on the
impact it has on the workers. That's why they created ruby on rails and why it
is the most productive and enjoyable to use. That's why they hire remote and
build a tool that helps remote workers. That's why they have sane project
schedules, sane work schedules, and give back where they can. They are a
creator focused organization, and optimize for creativity and focus.

Most companies do not make such optimizations for their workforce. They have
their own specific vision, their own timetable, and their own checkboxes to
hit: staffing numbers, tech stack choices, retention numbers, sales goals,
etc. To them, workers are more cog-like and treated as such. There's also
often venture funding involved - which creates specific pressures that
basecamp is specifically free from.

TLDR: It takes a degree of humility, stubbornness, charity, empathy and
perspective to do the things basecamp does for the reasons basecamp does it;
that most do not posses or have interest in. But we would do well to raise
these as standards and expectations; the demand for real leadership of a
company.

------
bruncun
I work remotely for WorkBeast, a staffing company. We're not tech-driven or a
startup, but we're bootstrapped and profitable. My workdays are spent on our
custom internal CRM (Rails + AngularJS). I respond directly to the CEO, and
have a lot of freedom and responsibility when it comes to my job.

Prior I worked for a handful of local startups and digital agencies - this is
the closest to Basecamp culture I've found so far.

Some small non-tech companies share more in common with Basecamp than a lot of
tech companies do.

(Sorry, we're not hiring.)

~~~
scrumper
I realize this is off topic. Hope you don’t mind a couple of questions - I’m
always interested in companies which choose to invest in custom-built software
for seemingly non-core functions.

What was the justification for building an internal CRM vs customizing an API-
rich commercial system like Pipedrive. How was the decision made? Did you
review SAAS or installed offerings first? Do you consider CRM to be a core
part of the business, or does it offer a competitive advantage to the company?

Cheers!

~~~
bruncun
No worries! Unfortunately, the decision was made long before my arrival, so
I'm not entirely sure - but I asked about that too during my interview. My CEO
reviewed a few SAAS including Salesforce but none of them made sense for how
he worked.

Now, I've reviewed SAAS for other purposes with him, and my guess is that
pitches went poorly. My boss is particular about his business, and I've
witnessed more than one demo fall apart when customization came up.

The CRM could someday be a core part of the business. It probably offers us
the same competitive advantage that a secret recipe benefits a restaurant.
I've also integrated into it some nifty functionality I haven't seen yet on
the market. But ultimately, the business is driven by staffing.

------
w0rldart
Cloudreach is an amazing place to work for!

Been voted amongst the greatest places to work a number of times, and it's for
good reason... the projects are challenging, the perks are amazing, the people
are wonderful, company is growing very fast and they live up to its core
values:

    
    
      * Be easy to work with
      * Promote personal growth
      * Be one step ahead
      * Respect the individual and individuality
    

Feel free to find me, I'd be happy to help out.

------
misiti3780
My company runs a very similar operation -- everyone works remotely, open
hours, etc. The main difference is do not code in ruby (python) and we build a
variety of different products for clients, we are not maintaining our own
software.

For more info, see:
[https://www.mathandpencil.com](https://www.mathandpencil.com)

------
wedaugtwo
I've seen companies that share some (or most) of Basecamp's culture, but I've
yet to see one that truly values "personal time" by having a 4-day work week
during the summer.

And not that 10 hours for 4 days schedule, but actually 8 hours for 4 days.

~~~
dasmoth
Treehouse had a (year-round) 4day/32hour week for a while. But seem to have
abandoned it now...

(I’m all for shorter work weeks but the seasonality of the Basecamp version
seems to make a few assumptions...)

~~~
wedaugtwo
Good point about the seasonality issue. I do wonder if they will eventually
make it the norm if they see there is no real productivity drop.

------
_____s
Customer.io will come pretty close! Fully remote, great team, great culture.
I've only recently started working here, but it's been a great place to work.
Their interview process was also the best I've come across so far.

------
jdc0589
Check out GitLab. I don't know how similar their culture actually is to
Basecamp, but they seem to put a lot of importance on doing everything
possible in the open, so you really get what seems like a good sense of what
they are about from reading job postings, their public ops runbooks, mission
statements, etc...

In no small part due to that, they are one of the very few companies that I
would actively like to work for and frequently check job postings.
Unfortunately production ruby experience is a hard requirement for them now,
and I've always been in .net/c# + nodejs at work, and my side projects have
always been java, node, and python. When I start looking for a new job, the
opportunity to get some production Ruby experience somewhere is going to be in
the back of my mind as a benefit, just so the door to a job at GitLab _might_
be open in the future.

~~~
stefantheard
Is it just me or is their published compensation algorithm not competitive at
all? I put in my information and it had me at a ~40k pay cut which seems
silly.

~~~
jdc0589
I've noticed that. I'm not 100% sure what the deal is.

From what I know, my one major gripe is that they devalue you based on where
you live.

~~~
stefantheard
Yeah, I actually removed myself from their recruitment pipeline a ways back
because I saw the salary calculator. It does not and will not ever make sense
to pay talent based on anything other than productivity. Where I choose to
live should have no bearing on how much I get paid, ever.

------
CryoLogic
Lots of remote companies if you look hard enough. Wikipedia and Automatic come
to mind.

~~~
rahoulb
It’s about more than just remote working though. 4 days a week to allow
personal time in summer, treating employees as adults (for example credit
cards with no approval process for purchases), using asynchronous
communications wherever possible so no-one is interrupted are just a few of
the things they implement.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Healthy work/life balance and career/personal development as well.

------
resca79
I like this question. Well I can talk about my company. I'm the CTO of
[http://prestofood.it](http://prestofood.it) a small delivery food company
based on Sicily. We started with fews resources and we made around 3.000
orders per month. We started from one city with a small team 2 developers.
Here our initial configuration:

* Heroku 7.00 per month

* Rails app

* Android and iOS app developed with Turbolinks plugin.

Now we are in 3 other cities and we made a cms and backoffice to handle the
orders workflow and we developed a printer system with raspberry-pi. Currently
we are the biggest company of delivery food in the south of Italy. We have no
investors

~~~
jasongill
Your reply reads like an advertisement for your company, and doesn't mention
anything about your corporate culture, which is what OP was asking about.

~~~
resca79
I think that people that read this news are not our potential customer :) Our
culture is implicit in our It stack, we started really small and growing
around of orders number with no following the current startup culture(that
basecamp team doesn't like it ) We started small and stay still small.

