

Why Jason Fried gave his company a month off - timjahn
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201209/jason-fried/why-company-a-month-off.html

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jetti
I definitely wasn't expecting that because Jason Fried didn't give his company
a month off. Jason Fried just gave his company a new role for a month. People
still had to show up to work and do work, it was just they could do whatever
work they wanted.

For me personally, I wouldn't enjoy that month. The main reason would be
purely selfish. I know that my idea and implementation could make money and
instead of releasing it on my own and profiting, it would become property of
the company. I would also feel pigeon-holed into working on stuff that the
company already does or in the same realm (which in my case is Business
Intelligence tools to work with Cognos) which, while interesting, is not where
my interests lie which would also limit my creativity.

It should be interesting to see what comes out of 37Signals in the next 6
months to a year.

~~~
hndude
In the article it sounds like they improved a lot of internal stuff, so
perhaps they took the time to improve what they found as their biggest pain
points in their day to day work. I do agree that my truest interests do not
entirely align with what I'm doing at work.

Also, if I had a company and were to do this, I would implement a bonus system
so that employees could receive additional compensation for putting forward
their best ideas and efforts.

~~~
jakejake
That would be wonderful. I notice that a lot of people are really generous
with bonuses for their imaginary companies. But people with actual companies
are always kinda stingy. What's up with that?!

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johnnyg
A big part of the 37signals play book is awareness through blogs and
magazines. Their business model can't be "hey, we're going to sit here for 70
hours a week and crank out code" because then there is nothing to write about.

In one sense, they built a business that allows them to do crazy/fun/oddball
things. Great.

In another, their model is not the model of a typical HN style start up, and
following their advice without tempering it to your own set of realities is
likely a bad idea.

~~~
batista
> _A big part of the 37signals play book is awareness through blogs and
> magazines. Their business model can't be "hey, we're going to sit here for
> 70 hours a week and crank out code" because then there is nothing to write
> about._

I'd say that the majority of their customers could not care less what they
write about on blogs and magazines. They just use their services because they
work for them.

That is, their business model is not "promotion through doing various stunts
and writing/having others write about it" as you maybe imply. It's mostly to
use, fellow developers, HN/Rails crowd etc that this writing gets known, and
we constitute a tiny minority of their customer base, judging from the
customer stories they post.

~~~
dasil003
Sure, 37s products are good enough to spread by word of mouth, and they have
an awesome customer base, so stricly speaking they don't need any press. They
could shutter their blog and stop all interviews and continue on as a
successful business indefinitely.

However if you're a young company learning the ropes and looking to emulate
37s' success, you have to first understand that 37s is a company that is built
on PR. They were around for years doing consulting work before they ever built
a single product. They were one of the early noteworthy web design blogs, and
they built a significant audience right around the time people were figuring
out how to go beyond brochure websites. So when Basecamp launched in 2004 they
had the most valuable possible audience in the palm of their hands. It didn't
hurt that true web applications were in their infancy, and they were
essentially competing with bloated desktop software like MS Project, but it's
important not dismiss their reach in the web design blogosphere. Without that,
there's no telling if the product would have had the uptake to become their
sole focus or whether they would have gone back to more consulting work.

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j_baker
I think a better title for this would be "Why Jason Fried gave his company a
month-long hackathon", because that's basically what he did.

~~~
AtTheLast
This is a great way to generate new ideas and get everyone involved. Google
kind of did this with the whole spend 30% of your time on working on new
projects. But yeah, this is a hackathon not a vacation.

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aresant
"How can we afford to put our business on hold for a month to "mess around"
with new ideas? How can we afford not to?"

Taking advice from today's 37Signals on how to build your company is like
taking advice from Michael Phelps on how to become a competitive swimmer.

They are both FREAKS of nature: a perfect combination of natural talent,
decades of hard work, expert coaching, and unlimited resources.

I love being an observer to their dominance, but you have to look hard at
these "lessons" to take away what's the signal vs. what's the noise for your
average start-up!

~~~
jbigelow76
Attributing 37Signal's success, partially, to "unlimited resources" seems off.
Except for a small investment by Jeff Bezos after they were already
bootstrapped they had to make due with what resources they could get in
exchange for their products and services. Twitter, Facebook, Zynga... those
are the kind of start ups that can be accurately tagged with the "unlimited
resources" descriptor, for 37Signals to get the resources they currently have
they had to execute in ways none of those other "start ups" have been expected
to.

~~~
mibbitier
point is, by following 37signals advice, you will not be 37signals. You
probably won't be successful either.

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ww520
This actually is better than the 20% dev time in Google and other places. 20%
dev time sprinkled now and then won't help to develop an idea fully since
there are still daily tasks that distract the pursuit. Development of an idea
requires a long stretch of concentrated effort. 4 weeks off to experiment
sounds right.

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ChuckMcM
For me the interesting bit is that web 2.0 companies, unlike brick and mortar
companies, have to some extent disassociated the manufacturing part from the
service part. So you can take a month (unless you are in Ops :-)) and do
something completely different and its not visible outside.

Now if a McDonalds franchise said our employees are going to spend this month
figuring out ways to improve or innovate in the fast food space, nobody could
buy food for a month.

Since this feature is relatively new, its not commonly thought of as an
option. To be fair though in professional practices like Law Firms, this has
been implemented in the more 'we are getting out of the office' kind of thing.
In that case it seems to counteract burnout from the insane hours that people
put in during litigation.

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andyl
Erm - the company didn't take a month off.

Is there an app to auto-rewrite misleading headlines?

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ndemoor
"For the entire month, we set aside all nonessential product work (everything
besides customer service and keeping our servers running)"

Who did they offload the work to then?

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ruggeri
Ugh. Title is wildly inaccurate.

Love the nonsensical barbecue photo.

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biot
Previously discussed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4404167>

