
Why you should take everything Jason Fried writes with a pound of salt - JackPoach
https://medium.com/@did_78238/why-you-should-take-everything-jason-fried-writes-with-a-pound-of-salt-5ccfb27b4e5#.wsty5ahbi
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pkd
Author seems to have some deep lying trouble with India/Hinduism.

More on the point, I think this article ignores a lot of things very
conveniently to make the point that we should not listen to Jason Fried
because "Basecamp is a failure".

This is wrong on two points:

Firstly what evidence does the author have that Basecamp is a failure? That
Asana and Trello have more signups? But those tools are targetted at a very
different audience than Basecamp. I know individuals who use Asana and Trello
for personal management and I don't know anybody who uses Basecamp. This also
ignores that Basecamp is not a VC backed startup. They have bootstrapped their
business from the start. This is unlike Asana (VC) or Trello (product from Fog
Creek). I mean, if some vague estimation of weekly/monthly signups is your
idea of what makes a failure then you need to rethink your arguments.

Secondly, even if we assume that Basecamp is a failure, that doesn't mean that
what Jason Fried has to say is invalid. I mean, by making this point the
author has contradicted his own point that we should be listening to the less-
heard voices out there. Jason Fried frequently has some very good points to
make about running a business and people find value in his words. What is the
problem? If you don't like it, don't take it. If you want Andrew Filev to be
heard as much, ask him to write more! I also find it surprising that the
author thinks that nobody challenges the views of established writers like pg,
because I see people call him out all the time!

I wouldn't call this a hit piece but I have no idea what value I derive from
this article apart from the author's bitterness.

~~~
ProxCoques
"Author seems to have some deep lying trouble with India/Hinduism."

Let's ignore that for the irrelevant ad hominem attack it is and get down the
real issue here:

"If you don't like it, don't take it."

The implication of that (even if you don't mean it to be so) is that any old
snake oil salesman or tub-thumper should be allowed to strut their stuff
unhindered by criticism while leading their benighted flock up the garden path
because it's up to them, and not you, to decide. Caveat emptor and all that.

Let me be the first to call that out as _utter_ bullshit. Just because some
swivel-eyed Valley tech preacher has some people swearing he healed their
lumbago doesn't mean they deserve to avoid adverse examination. The author of
the article in question here has every right - and indeed duty - to criticise
Fried in this way if he has the information and the argument to do so. Let
there be more of it, I say.

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brandon272
The team I work on has used Basecamp for years and recently tested out many of
the competitors listed in this article. We were unenthused with all of them
and found them to be missing features that we need and that I would consider
basic to any project management system, one example being project templates.

Others had weird notification systems with no ability to customize or fix what
was bothering us about them, weird and terrible UI issues, etc.

So while I am not an enthusiastic Basecamp user, we are still using it. This
is not to say that the competing products were "bad", but they at least
weren't right for us.

I am also unclear how Basecamp is considered a "failure"? Because it's growth
has slowed as supposedly proven by the fact that they have removed their
weekly signup figure from their homepage and because of stats gleaned from app
downloads? I don't buy it.

If Basecamp is a failure hopefully I will have created a product one day that
is a similar failure!

~~~
criddell
His argument that Basecamp is a failure in part because they don't have as
many features as the competitors makes we wonder if he has actually read
anything Jason has written.

Basecamp makes quite a bit of money, employs a bunch of people, and (as far as
I can tell) the people that work there are happy and productive. I hope I can
fail as hard one day.

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adventured
This is a rather bitter, jealous article. The author frequently gets upset
that someone else is getting more attention than another person the author
favors instead. That's a classic give-away that the "this isn't a hit piece"
is meant to be a hit piece (the preemptive denial approach).

The other standard-issue thing that this article entirely misses - and this
occurs commonly in anti-VC type articles - is that the radical majority of new
technology companies in the US do not rely on traditional VC. They're either
self-funded, funded by friends & family or a mixture. The author seemingly
never stopped to consider that the big money VC direction doesn't resonate
with most people inside the US either, simply because it's not realistic that
more than ~0.01% (20,000 every five years or so perhaps) of American business
founders are going to ever have _access_ to that.

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AndrewKemendo
My charitable tl;dr: Popular technology writing is biased toward people who
are good writers and aren't necessarily the best technologists.

Ok, and? That's literally every field everywhere. People who communicate
better or want others to listen to them are listened to more than those who
can't or don't.

If those "others" wanted to spread their ideas then they would find a way to
do it. But they don't so we can't do anything about that and read those who
do. What is the suggestion here? I see nothing about inducing those "better"
or "different" people to communicate more.

This is like being mad at people for watching big movies over indie films. One
is available and accessible, the other isn't.

~~~
wrs
The point is to think for yourself, be skeptical, and don't conflate "popular"
with any other attribute, like "wise" or "correct". Just because an idea or
company is the most noisy doesn't mean it's the most interesting or valuable.

[Addendum: The other point is to recognize that we're all provincial, and just
because something is popular in your circle doesn't even mean it's globally
_popular_ , much less wise or correct.]

~~~
AndrewKemendo
This sentiment is literally applicable to everything. Had you wanted to make
that point it could have been done in a more direct way about epistemology,
expert bias etc... that is so popular right now in light of the "fake news"
meme.

As it is, the message is lost in a sea of heavily caveated pseudo personal
attacks and weasel words.

------
logandavis
I personally am shocked that this article condemning success bias and
localized thought bubbles, two of the core characteristics of Hacker News, is
unpopular in the comments on Hacker News. :|

~~~
JackPoach
This comment makes my day.

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tptacek
We should all be so lucky to "fail" the way Basecamp has: a stable,
opinionated, lucrative business people fall over themselves to work for.

I'm not sure the kind of success Asana has is the kind Basecamp is gunning
for.

I also don't think that Basecamp and Trello are really comparable (I've used
both a lot). Trello is more straightforward and flexible, like the Microsoft
Excel of project management. Basecamp is more structured and professional; I
would share a project with a client on Basecamp, but never on Trello.

Basecamp and Asana seem directly comparable. Asana seems to me like the VC-
backed shoot-the-moon version of Basecamp.

This guy's Bitrix24 thing, though: wow. What _isn 't_ it? An online hard
drive, a telephony thing, a mail server...

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amyunus
First, I think the author does not share the same value as Jason has. Value of
success and failure. More signups? Ha ha.

Second, I think author wants to introduce us to Bitrix. Well, now I know
another Basecamp competitor.

Well, it is author opinion on Bitrix side. But Jason also has outstanding
opinion by running the company until now.

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jccc
"Let me get a few things out of the way. [...]"

He might have gotten those things out of the way by not using that headline.

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XJOKOLAT
Click bait. Let me use a well known name to generate attention.

tl:dr, Move along, this isn't article you're looking for.

