
Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company  - duck
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110401/jason-fried-why-i-run-a-flat-company.html
======
mhp
Fog Creek and 37Signals are probably more alike than either of us would care
to admit (ha!) and I could see Joel writing a very similar article a few years
ago when we had 20some people at the company. But what works there, or at FC,
is not a one size fits all answer.

Having managers when there are 10 people are at your company makes no sense.
The hierarchy starts out flat, you add a few more people and you're at 20, and
the idea of making someone a manager seems like a waste and something a
'BigCo' would do. "We need people who get stuff done, not people who sit
around doing nothing but managing", you think. Then you get to 50 people and
everything breaks down. You wonder why people are frustrated they can't get
things done, while other people are doing things that embarrass your company
or compete with other things you are doing. And you realize your company isn't
a special little gem that is wholly unlike every other company in existence.
You need management.

Just make sure you give the devs a professional ladder and compensation
structure that doesn't involve moving to management, because managing isn't
something everyone is good at or even wants to do. And make sure that
management knows their job is a support role to the people at the company who
are making things happen, not the other way around.

~~~
jasonfried
"But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer."

Absolutely. I'm simply sharing our experiences with how we run things - that's
what my Inc. articles are about. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do what we
do because we do it. Find your own comfort zone. There are plenty of ways to
do plenty of things.

~~~
ry0ohki
I really like your approach, especially making everyone manager for a week. I
think the only problem I see with it is that if people want to find another
job, their 37signals title makes it seem that they essentially "went nowhere".
So even if you are paying them a lot more then when they started and they are
the best customer service person ever, their resume still says: "Jane Doe -
Customer Service Rep 2005-2011" which looks unimpressive elsewhere.

~~~
dhh
We solved this in part by using "cocktail titles". So anyone who works here
can call themselves senior. So we have "senior designer", "senior programmer".
At least that has some ring of fancy.

~~~
chegra
Sounds like you are following Ricardo Semler philosophy(author of The
Maverick). Are you? [<http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308>]

~~~
tylerrooney
If you liked Maverick, you should definitely check out Seven Day Weekend by
Semler. I found it much more readable and relevant. It's crazy that it's out
of print in the era of the Kindle

[http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-
Works/...](http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-
Works/dp/B0009S5AVW)

------
ChuckMcM
"Even as we've grown, we've remained a lean organization. We do not have room
for people who don't do the actual work."

That is a priceless comment. It exposes Jason's huge blind spot. Worse, it is
on this undefended flank that great future pain may be inflicted. I look
forward to the post-learning article.

The underlying premise/assumption is that a 'manager' is not only not doing
'the' work, but they aren't really doing 'any' work. Its a very common meme in
engineers, "The company makes money on the code I write, it makes no money at
all on this guy telling me what do, it just costs them money."

Let's reason about this using a fairly simple analogy. We will start by
positing that we are all rats in a maze. Our maze is, unfortunately, filled
with rat dung. We further stipulate that walking on dung would kill us so the
only way we can move through the maze is by shoveling the dung in front of us,
to the pile behind us and then moving into the space we opened up. All the
shoveling burns up calories, if we don't eat we will eventually starve to
death. Finally, we add that there is a cheese _somewhere_ in the maze, and
once _any_ rat makes its way to the cheese, everyone gets to eat of the
cheese. That resets the rat’s hunger level, after the the cheese is located
the maze resets around all the rats and process begins again.

Now in our analogy our engineers are the rats. And writing code is shoveling
rat dung. And the cheese is a monetizable opportunity. Eating the cheese is
collecting money from the opportunity.

In a small company, having everyone shovel as fast as they can, is a great
strategy for finding the cheese(s). Some mazes have more than one cheese in
them, sadly some mazes have no cheese in them. A manager, whether its the
founder/CEO, or someone in that role, is given the opportunity to stand above
the maze and see if there is a cheese nearby or in the distance, by seeing
both the maze and where the cheese is relative to where in the maze rats are,
they can direct rats that have the best chance of getting to the cheese
quickly in the direction they should turn, otherwise each rat would be
following his/her internal idea of the best way to find a cheese in a maze
like ‘always follow the left wall’ or ‘alternate left and right turns’ or
‘leave marks in the dung piles of parts of the maze you have already passed
through so that you can pick new passages the next time.’

So the leadership role of management in any technology company, is measured by
their ability to get teams to the cheese while shoveling the least amount of
rat dung. Good leadership will understand that there are many cheeses (and
flavors of cheese, some more nourishing than others) and be able to evaluate
the choice of going further for a very nourishing cheese vs going out of the
way to munch a nearby, but less satisfying, cheese.

So back to the comment tail … “who don't do the actual work.” briefly.

It is pretty easy for an engineer to recognize a problem in one of their
colleagues, even though their colleague is ‘doing’ a “lot” of work, that work
is inefficient and thus ‘poor’. Someone checking in version after version of a
subroutine, trying to get it correct, when that subroutine is doing something
that is provided by the underlying operating system. Lots of ‘work’, lots of
‘check ins’, but someone who had a bit more breadth might have done in a
couple of hours what this loser is taking a week to do. As an engineer, one
can easily appreciate that this person is taking up an employee spot that
could be put to more efficient use by a better quality engineer.

And yet it may be hard for that same engineer to understand that a manager is
helping him, and his colleagues, be more efficient by working excellently on a
component that will get them to a good cheese, versus working excellently on a
component or a technology that does not proportionally have the business value
they need to pay their own salaries.

A real world example was a shopping cart company that had, at one time, all of
its engineers working on a universal language independent component for
presenting product descriptions in over 100 languages and nobody on the team
was working on making the shopping cart code play nice with various payment
services. Which is the more nourishing cheese? English only and you accept any
kind of payment, or any language but you have to have one type to payment card
from one vendor ? The engineers were all writing excellent code, using all the
latest best practices and the language support module they came up with was
best in class, but _product_ was a shopping cart and the “high order bit” for
a shopping cart implementation is “can it take money from customers and put it
in the bank?”

So when an engineer makes a comment like Jason’s about valuing ‘doing’ over
‘directing’, it can sound like the oarsmen in a galley complaining that he
should be accorded higher status than the navigator since without him the boat
wouldn’t go anywhere. But the reality is that without the navigator the boat
wouldn’t _arrive_ anywhere. Considered in the larger context, the navigator’s
role is both more stressful and more important to the overall success of the
trip than the oarsmen.

What Jason’s comment misses, and it sounds like a blind spot, is the
understanding that you cannot successfully navigate and row at the same time.

~~~
tptacek
Also, sometimes the cheese is Gouda. When the cheese is Gouda, it is the
cheese of customer service, and the job of the person standing above the maze
it to identify if there is Gouda and where it is. But sometimes the cheese is
Emmenthaler, and when the cheese is Emmenthaler, then there is a rule† that
the Gouda manager and the Emmenthaler manager must share the cheese or else by
finding maze paths that don't connect directly to each other immediately but
eventually do connect get _more_ Gouda than Emmenthaler or vice versa, in
which case they take all the cheese, and you can see now that this might
possibly be the most least helpful analogy ever constructed to make a point on
a message board ever.

I promise it is all love with me and this comment.

Without employing any additional analogies, I believe I can respond to your
underlying point by suggesting that in a well-managed organization, one
President or CEO can structure roles such that everyone is clear about the
business value they provide and can manage their effort accordingly. This
requires that you be careful about who you hire, what roles you create, and
how you scale the company.

It does not however require that you not scale your company past 20 people.

That strategy, however, will not work in the (bad) kind of Silicon Valley
startup that grows by buying Pasteurized Processed Product Managers. Your CS
reps need to know what "service" means and how your specific customers
perceive and value it. That can be hard to do. Thus, some companies probably
do need management structures.

† _Though only in the US edition that Rio Grande publishes, not the original
German game_

~~~
ChuckMcM
Excellent. This is the key bit for me:

"...in a well-managed organization, one President or CEO can structure roles
such that everyone is clear about the business value they provide and can
manage their effort accordingly."

And once achieving this point, you neither change the people in the
organization, nor do you change the direction of the overall effort. Life will
be grand.

So 100% agreement on the goal of what every CEO/Founder is trying to achieve
which is "Structuring the roles such that everyone is clear about the business
value they provide and can manage their effort accordingly," Keeping the
organization as close as possible to that goal in the presence of change, the
limiting factor of using people that happen to be available in the job market
at any given instant in time, and with the added constraint of operating
within a viable business model. Well that separates the good ones from the bad
ones does it not?

It has been my experience that people who are not able to evaluate the
relative contributions of others who are in dissimilar roles make poor
choices.

When I read a comment like 'we value doing over not doing' in the context of
leadership, I wonder under what set of constraints is leading a group or team
not a form of 'doing'? I can't come up with a case where someone who was, as
part or all of their role, leading, felt that the 'leading' task wasn't a form
of 'doing.' I have also not experienced anyone who, was in a leadership or
management role felt that 'leading' (or in our case 'managing') they were
doing was 'less hard' or 'less useful' than technical work (designing, coding,
debugging, Etc.)

However, I've encountered people whose experience is dominated by technical
work firmly believing that managing or leading was both easier and had less
impact than the technical work they were doing. And I've known managers who
have been managers for most (or all) of their career and felt that is was
harder and more relevant than what the technical people did who worked for
them.

So, to my way of thinking, if someone does value 'doing' over 'not doing'
(which is good) and they understand the different values between what managers
do and what engineers do, then the question of 'vertical movers' vs
'horizontal movers' is not a cultural thing its a 'what do we need right now
for the business' kind of thing.

It's like reading an article that says "We had to fire Bob today because he
came to me to say ask if he could spend more time on gcc, you see our
organization is all linux kernel hackers and we like it that way." And yet
that pre-disposition to kernel hacking completely misses the benefits that can
be achieved if you your compilation environment improves. Anyway, enough
analogies, I can tell they obscure the point too much.

~~~
jgesture
He doesn't necessarily miss the value of managers, in fact he says that he has
managers, just not one person who's sole role is a manager, they rotate every
week.

When you mention technical workers being suspicious of managers and managers
believing that there job is more difficult than technical work, you're talking
about the exact situation that Jason mentions trying to avoid. One way of
being less suspicious of the value of someone is to do the work that they do.
That's what he's talking about.

------
jwr
I've started companies that grew from 1 to 50 people. I find that business
advice from 37signals is often quite naïve and I hope people treat it as a
data point, not as a set of guidelines.

Managing a company below 25 people is relatively easy. You can still talk to
most people every day, you can gather them all in one room, information flow
is unrestricted. But staying under 25 people means for most companies that you
are stifling growth.

Once you get above the magical 25 people threshold, you'll find that it is
simply impossible to manage the company effectively using a completely flat
structure. Also, you'll discover a lot of new problems you never suspected
existed before: you'll need internal PR, for instance, as people in one part
of the company won't know what people in other parts are doing. There will be
myths to dispel, growing animosities, lack of direction. And there is simply
no way you can keep your pretty flat structure with 45 people.

I know that 37signals' advice resonates with people. They are the cool kids.
But keep in mind they are an exceptional company, in every sense of the word.

~~~
mhartl
It's distressing how often, especially among technical people, the equality

    
    
        flat == good
    

is taken as a given. Hackers have a healthy skepticism for arbitrary
authority, but we often erroneously extend that attitude to hierarchical
structures in general. In the limit of large numbers of people, hierarchies
are the only structures that scale; moreover, they can do so over many orders
of magnitude, from small businesses with 10^2 people up to huge organizations
with 10^4, 10^5, or even 10^6 people (such as GE, IBM, Walmart, or the U.S.
military).

~~~
wladimir
That's why small organizations are preferable to most hackers. I don't see how
that changes flat == good. GE, IBM, Walmart, or the U.S. military would be
places I'd never work, given any choice. Scaling is not necessarily good, it
usually means dumbing down to the average.

~~~
jwr
Fair enough. But in that case most hackers should also accept that they won't
make a boatload of money. If you refuse to grow your organization, don't
expect to be a millionaire, especially if you follow the philosophy of running
a cash-positive business in the long term, without selling it.

You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

------
tptacek
This really resonated for me because we have almost exactly the same company
dynamics at play (we're of roughly the same size).

I'm not sure we have similar answers, but one response to the problem of not
being able to afford people who don't do real work is to make sure everyone is
doing real work. We're primarily a services firm, and everybody in that org,
including Dave, our President, is billable. It's something I tell people in
interviews, and that I'm sort of proud to be able to say; everyone's grounded
in the actual work that our actual people are actually doing for actual
clients.

In that spirit, one way to address this problem might be to have team leads
instead of managers.

I feel like Joel wrote about this a few years ago too, and while I'm probably
wrong about this, off the top of my head it feels like their answer to this is
that when they have too many senior people, they think about new products.
Isn't the highest level on their comp ladder (not a fan of that thing)
reserved for people who can run products?

Would love to hear more about what people in the 20-40 employee bracket are
doing here.

~~~
mbesto
20-40 employee bracket here! All of our employees are billable (sort of). It's
hard to explain our structure but needless to say our CEO/COO/Operations
Director/Consulting Director/CFO all work as a team and are never really
limited to their "designated" positions. Our Operations Director has been
billing on a project for 4 years.

Our company has an interesting dynamic. I would say everyone has the ability
to "speak up" but we have designated management roles. I speculate there are
some reasons for this:

1\. Leadership - "junior" people need a certain level of mentorship. Many of
them don't understand process and need managers to guide them on those
processes. Hiring the quality of people (even at "the bottom") that your firms
may attract is VERY difficult for the other 99% of companies like us out
there. We simply don't have the whole techie seen watching our firm day to day
and thus don't attract them to our company. Hiring SUCKS. Is that our issue?
Sure. But this utopian business world isn't always possible -- even though we
want it to be.

2\. External client view - Our company works almost exclusively with blue chip
companies. They expect to see CV's with years of experience and fancy titles
like "Principal Consultant", "Management Consultant", etc. etc. With these
titles comes the responsibilities of managing people. When I used to work for
the largest biz software vendor in the world I remember there was a title
"Engagement Architect". I was basically told that this position only existed
because the client contact (mainly the CIO) needed a contact at our company
that was on his same "level". Also, some people flat out do not have soft
skills.

I think the overall point is this... this is not a lesson in how to run a
better business. This is a lesson in how Jason is happiest in running his
small business and wants to keep it a small business. Many of us love the
agility of being in a small company and fear if we add more numbers we will
lose that agility. (and that's probably true) 37signals has only increased
it's employee base to 26 over 11 years. With the amount of press they have
drawn there is no reason why this number shouldn't be 260. For the record, I'm
not saying that it should be 260, I'm saying that they have probably favored
higher profit margins on their existing employee base rather than to scale the
business out vertically.

Fred Wilson once wrote "Marketing is for companies who have sucky products."
In order to do this with 26 people, you need to find 26 very good people. Do
you know extremely difficult that is to do? It's even difficult with just 2!
Face it, most people SUCK at business. I applaud Jason (and others) who have
had the fortune and ability to do such a thing.

~~~
nl
I know this isn't quite what either of you have said, but someone needs to
point this out

"real work" != "billable work"

"Everyone does billable work" seems great from the $ POV. That doesn't mean
that people who are never billable aren't critical too.

------
michaelchisari
I really appreciate the idea of having a career path that doesn't involve
moving "up" to management. I'm a developer because I love development, and my
own personal hell is managing a team and never getting to code.

~~~
josefresco
Imagine how the engineers at Google think now that they're "back in charge"
(/sarcasm) I'm sorry, I know it's fun to bash on managers but they exist for a
purpose and asking engineers to be in charge is a burden I don't think many
want.

~~~
generalk
> I'm sorry, I know it's fun to bash on managers but they exist for a purpose

The point is that it's possible to run a company where managers _don't_ have a
purpose and aren't necessary.

~~~
pmjordan
At Google's scale? Successfully? I find that rather unlikely. If you have any
examples of this, please do share. Otherwise, all I can imagine is reducing
the depth of the tree, and in some cases not to make it a strict tree, but a
somewhat interconnected graph. (that said, throwing people into distinct
"manager" and "engineer" bins is disingenuous anyway, a manager managing
engineers had better have some kind of engineering understanding)

~~~
michaelchisari
The Mondragon worker cooperative federation has 85,000 employees. If you look
at how it's structured, it's not hard to imagine how Google could operate
similarly.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation>

~~~
kwis
Mondragon has annual revenues of €174/employee. I have trouble viewing that as
a proven model.

~~~
michaelchisari
I'm pretty sure the revenues on Wikipedia are off, and I can't find what
reference they're using to get that number.

This study from around 2002/2003 puts their revenues at $8 billion annually
with 60,000 employees. That puts their per-employee revenues at around $133k.

[http://www.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/cst/conferences/bilbao/p...](http://www.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/cst/conferences/bilbao/papers/Herrera.pdf)

This puts their revenues at $24.2 billion in 2008, which is almost $300k per
employee, if you use the ~85,000 employees figure.

[http://willblogforfood.typepad.com/will_blog_for_food/2011/0...](http://willblogforfood.typepad.com/will_blog_for_food/2011/01/the-
mondragon-cooperative-a-blueprint-for-america.html)

~~~
kwis
It looks like I got confused because whoever edited the wikipedia article came
from a country that uses '.' as a thousands separator.

Looking more closely, they're a strange sort of conglomerate. At a glance, I
see two banks, two insurance companies, roughly two hundred industrial
companies, a dozen retail shops, a dozen food-related businesses, a dozen
research firms, and ten education companies.

In a way, it reminds me of Idealab, in that each new company is a new pool of
equity (with the associated incentives that result from ownership), and that
failures are not punished, but rather result in retraining or placement in a
different firm. (for full co-op members).

It's also interesting to see that the founder was a priest who started off
with a co-operative polytechnic school and bootstrapped everything from that
base.

------
hapless
"The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not
know how much power they would have."

This quote really, deeply bothered me. One of the major differences between
alpha males and the rest of the population is that _they will always assume
they'll end up in the top spot._ Your prototypical alpha male won't even
consider the odds of being on the bottom in that lottery.

To push it further, those same aggressive types will have the passion and
voice to draw support for their views, no matter the substance. A "flat"
structure overvalues the opinions of the loud and aggressive, with little room
for more pensive contributors, especially women.

In other words, if you leave the authorship of the social contract to the
loudest people, you may end up with a rather oppressive outcome. This is a
universal rule, often overlooked by the alpha males who spend their time
talking to Inc. Magazine.

~~~
Wolf_Larsen
You aren't making a very clear point. Are you saying that : "Alpha males will
always assume they'll end up in the top spot, so when they choose rules for a
situation regarding two competing agents, their choices will favor the agent
in with the most authority"?

If so, then you are assuming a context in which the agents of the situation
can change the roles in which they are assigned permanently. That is not the
case in this context, because the agents (Jason Fried's support team) are
rotated between management and worker, and no one is getting promoted
vertically.

~~~
jdp23
I thought hapless' point was very clear:

"A "flat" structure overvalues the opinions of the loud and aggressive, with
little room for more pensive contributors, especially women."

Coincidentally enough, Jason leads off the article with an anecdote about a
talented woman leaving the company because of their flat structure.

~~~
Wolf_Larsen
He was referencing a quote, not the structure of 37 Signals.

------
rosenjon
The thing I've always liked about Jason's writing and approach to business is
that he isn't afraid to say that they might not have the exact right answer.
At the same time, they refuse to accept the "conventional wisdom" as being the
correct answer; I think too often we believe that because most companies do
things a certain way, that all companies should be run that way.

The takeaway for me is that you should be constantly questioning whether there
is a different way to run things that enhances the performance of your
organization as a whole. I have personally been privy to how the people with
the most impressive titles frequently have the least connection to what's
going on in the business. Some of the methods taken at 37Signals seem to be
aimed at fixing this problem, which I think is commendable.

At the same time, it seems a shame to have to let go of a good employee
because they want to take on more responsibility. If their view on more
responsibility is simply a bigger title, then perhaps they weren't the right
fit for 37Signals. However, in my opinion, ambition and competence should be
rewarded, so it seems like there may have been a better way to handle the
situation than choosing between staying in the same role and leaving the
organization.

~~~
jasonfried
Thanks for this comment.

You're right - we don't have the exact right answer. We're always trying to
find the right answer for the right time. We may have a different opinion in 3
years or if we have 35 people. Who knows, but we're open to figuring it out
once we get there.

In the end we want to build a company that allows people to do the best work
of their lives.

------
tom_b
Love the idea of rotating "managerial" or "lead" person in a small group.

I'm on a small team within a larger organization that we support (in dev and
tool usage). A challenge for us is that people in the larger org are used to
having a manager to route their requests to.

I may give a rotational approach a whirl. But right now, one of my primary
roles is as s&!t umbrella and I don't want to overly burden my real producers.

~~~
dude_abides
So what he is essentially saying is, they're an anarcho-syndicalist commune,
taking it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, and all
the decision of that officer must be approved at a bi-weekly meeting by a two-
thirds majority.

~~~
dugmartin
There is some lovely muck over here.

~~~
hdctambien
Is this getting downvoted because people didn't catch the Monty Python joke?
Or because they didn't like this specific reference (but accept the parent's
reference)?

~~~
EricBerglund
It might be because a movie reference that's relevant to the conversation at
hand can be humorous, but a movie reference in response to another movie
reference is just regurgitating a script. The child comment doesn't really add
anything to the conversation other than "I saw that popular movie as well."

------
abbasmehdi
I would like to commend Jason Fried on establishing a source of free and
recurring advertising in a massively distributed publication that has had his
target audience cornered for years. Not only is this free advertising, but it
is the highest quality of advertising congratulating small and medium size
business on being flat (which they usually are because in a small army, even
the Generals are on the front lines) and reassuring them about the benefits of
being so (imagine you’re a 6-person company where everyone does everything and
you have just read this article: now decide between buying MS Project and 37
Signals’ Basecamp for your PM needs - cloud over your head says "Jason gets
me, man!"). Jason, if you’re reading this I know you’re smiling - you have my
vote for strategy!

There is a PR lesson in this for all of us!

~~~
dasil003
I'm the first one to be skeptical about the universal feasibility of 37signals
bootstrapping principles (that's an easy philosophy to espouse when your
product was bootstrapped by leveraging early success in client work and
community mindshare in what was a nascent market at the time), but your
dripping cynicism is quite offputting. The fact that Jason's ideals serve his
interests is not necessarily an indication of of any machiavellian scheme. In
fact if you think about it, this is a necessary byproduct of the marketing of
ideas by anyone with integrity.

~~~
abbasmehdi
Since when is benefitting oneself by adding value to something a bad thing or
a "Machiavellian scheme"? This is what you need to do all day: figure out how
to establish yourself inside your customer’s head, no matter where he or she
is - get the singer they listen to, get in the publication they read, get on
the radio show they listen to etc. As a CEO you should chart out your
customer(s) and go after them - establishing yourself as the best choice
(every demographic has a different definition of "best" so be careful here)
through all and any mediums.

Also, think about it like this if you feel "evil" doing this, as a CEO you are
the mind of the organization, you must think for the organization because like
a baby it cannot fend for itself. I am commending Jason for being creative -
most companies throw away money year after on ads in magazines like Inc that
barely get glanced at - Jason, on behalf of his organization, has sold you his
product - correct me if he hasn’t.

------
ssharp
37signals can do this because of their hiring practices. They need to be
extremely picky with the type of employee they hire. Their hires need to be
able to function within their unconventional structure.

This type of information doesn't translate well to most other companies. I
hope 37signals' audience gets that. For software startups, many of their ideas
are exceptional and it's fantastic to see real-world examples. For already-
established companies and companies that can't be as picky as 37s, testing
this type of structure seems unnecessarily risky. I believe 37s has addressed
this in the past, and Jason has in his Inc. writings. I just hope people are
paying attention.

------
tomlin
What Jason Fried is expressing is something I've been pondering for a while.
And I think we'll (hopefully) see more of it (sorry, manager-types).

In my experience, managers in most departments have essentially taken the role
of sheep-herders. So, I started to ask myself: why do I need a manager when I
work well on my own, making smart, educated decisions that are based upon the
ideals and successes of other smart, educated and passionate people?

After all, I'm being hired for my prowess, no? If I am, do I need a manager?
And shouldn't you always hire people who have these sensibilities?

I think the message I find within this rubble of contemporary and progressive
ideologies is: _Hire smart_. If you have a good team who understand their
roles and how it pertains to the goals of the company, you don't need managers
- not for a small or mid-sized company, anyway. Basecamp has been the best PM
I've ever worked with - alive or binary. Software has already begun to
facilitate the role perfectly for me.

~~~
dailyrorschach
Though I am a dreaded project manager, I agree mostly to what you are saying.
But in the field I work in, advertising, I do think that its necessary and
that my value is additive.

My responsibility is mainly to be a shit umbrella, so my creative and
developers can do work, especially when we're all working on multiple clients.
I'm not doing my job when I have to have them in meetings, in fact we don't
meet save for face-to-face discussions.

That and of course dealing with the rowdiness of clients, hammering out scope,
keeping things to scope, and being the bad guy when necessary with the client.
(This is actually harder then people realize, our default human reaction is to
help people, and it requires taking abuse in the extremes that is simply part
of your job)

This article sums up my views nicely:
[http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/project_managers_not_ca...](http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/project_managers_not_calendar.php)

~~~
tomlin
I would say in high-output environments that a PM is a good thing, if the PM
in question is good at being a PM. I've met a few, but many more terrible PMs
unfortunately.

Oftentimes PMs (or _better_ , their organization culture + workflow) have
thrown a wrench or 2 into production and caused cascading failures because
they forgot a detail, or couldn't admit to fault. The culture is surely to
blame amidst most of these catastrophes.

The fact that you _can_ admit that your PM skills need work already makes you
a frontrunner for being a much better PM than most.

~~~
dailyrorschach
The central problem I see is most PMs don't want to be PMs, and are tricked
into being hired as account people. I like what I do, and my team knows I have
their back, we do quite well together.

------
dansingerman
While I totally buy what this espouses, I think it is probably incredibly hard
to scale. They are doing well if they keep things flat(ish) for 26 employees.
I can't really see it working at all for > 50.

And while they may not have anyone with the job title CTO, I'd be very
surprised if DHH was anything other than the de facto CTO.

~~~
dhh
Why does it have to scale? 37signals took 11 years to get to 26 people. It
might take us another 11 to get to 50. We can optimize for that future when
and if it arrives. But making your environment worse today because you worry
about some possibly maybe future is the essence of premature optimization.

~~~
bdclimber14
I agree it doesn't have to scale, and you certainly shouldn't setup an
organization around projected growth 2 years out. That may never come, and you
also may not want it to come.

However, if you want your company to grow into a Groupon or Zynga, and you
have the rapidly expanding demand to support that, then you need to scale. I
don't think Groupon could run on 26 people, so they needed to scale to get to
such massive revenue figures.

I specifically didn't use Facebook as an example because I know your feelings
about them. I figured Groupon at least has the revenue to support their
valuation :)

~~~
dhh
You have it backwards. You don't design your company structure in the hopes or
anticipation of becoming Groupon or Zynga. You deal with that growth when it
happens. You optimize for that scenario when it occurs.

You can't "want" your company into becoming a Groupon or a Zynga by design a
certain organizational structure. Startups try that all the time by
preemptively hiring tons of people to sit around and wait for the hockey stick
growth that never comes.

~~~
bdclimber14
I know, I'm not saying you should design your organization or hire around the
idea that you'll be at Groupon's level in a year. That would be a waste.

Well let me ask you this. When is it the right time to reorganize and evolve
from the flat structure because you are growing like gang-busters and can't
keep up with the pressure on all areas of the company (support, development,
sales, etc.)

~~~
dhh
I'll tell you when we get there, if ever. Although, as mentioned elsewhere in
the thread, there are some good examples of enormous companies running
counter-intuative-for-thier-size organizational models and doing great.

------
ibejoeb
It's unrealistic to not promote people. If you run a "flat" organization,
you're telling your employees "I don't care that your resume indicates no
progression." That's a real career limiter, and it can be perceived as an
underhanded way to retain talent.

Also, more pragmatically, how realistic is it to have 30 direct reports?

~~~
bowmande
I would think working for 37 signals alone would be a big enough evidence of
how awesome you are. Also the kind of company that is looking at your
"progression" probably isn't the place to go.

~~~
ibejoeb
Maybe for a designer. What about the accounting clerks, administrative
assistants, CSRs, etc. that any company of size needs?

It's "unrealistic" because there are social realities that exist outside of
the valley and tech blogs. It's true that it's a good company, and it's true
that it's a darling company here, but there will be sectors that haven't heard
of these kinds of places.

And, again, once you hit something of size, some delineation is a necessity.
You don't have to model the Marine Corps, but when you have 30 people arguing
over something, the buck has to stop somewhere.

~~~
dhh
Unrealistic implies that it's not going to actually take place. It is taking
place. We've been running like this for years. We've had very little turn-over
and remain good friends with people who left. So it seems to be working out
excellently for people presently and formerly employed by 37signals.

The buck always stops somewhere. Whether you're two people or three people. At
37signals, the buck stops with Jason and me. Now it happens to be that when
you employ smart craftsmen and women who care about what they do, there's very
few loose bucks to stop.

------
abuzzooz
Jason seems to imply that managers are useless when he says "We do not have
room for people who don't do the actual work".

I think this is very naive of him, and a little selfish. He's enjoying the
title of "President" which, to me, is a purely managerial position. I doubt if
he considers himself useless, but he's happy to label other managers useless.
I might be wrong, but it seems that he's either too selfish to see other
people take away some of his control or he's afraid to tackle the problem of a
growing company. Both of these will have negative consequences in the future.

Just for the record, over my 14+ years in a technical field, I have been a
manager for 5+, and have given up that title twice before to focus on more
technical work.

~~~
brown9-2
_He's enjoying the title of "President" which, to me, is a purely managerial
position._

I doubt that what he does in that position is purely managerial. I think you
may have a hard time seeing why they value what they do if you impose your own
viewpoints on them.

~~~
abuzzooz
Perhaps you're right. With a smallish company, it's possible for everybody to
jump in and do whatever needs to be done. As a company grows, though, this
will become impossible. Many a great company in history have suffered
spectacular deaths simply because they couldn't scale correctly with their
success.

In my opinion, it will be impossible to have 200 employees with a flat
structure.

~~~
jasonfried
I don't care about what 37signals might/could look like at 200 employees. We
have 27 employees today and we grow slowly. We're optimized for today. If we
have to change down the road we will, but there's no sense in spending even 5
minutes worrying about if what we do today will work when we're 10x as big.

~~~
mbesto
> _What we learned is that adding a dedicated manager and creating a hierarchy
> is not the only way to create structure._

I think the misconception with the article is that the title (and focus) is
"Why I run a Flat Company" as if this should be the standard for modern
business. This works for 37signals, because (1) you have actively chosen to
grow very slowly when you could have otherwise grown much faster and (2)
you've had the fortune and ability to attract some very good people. Many
businesses don't desire to do number 1 and find it very hard to do number 2.

------
grimlck
What about creating a career path that doesn't involve moving people into
management? One that involves more prestigious titles (e.g.: sun had a 'sun
fellow' title), and significant salary growth (20% here and there isn't
significant, imho)

As the organization grows, i can't see a totally flat structure working -
you're going to end up with people who have been there 5 years, wake up one
day and realize they have the same role and similar salary to what they had
where they started, realize they have no career path with their current
employer, and will move on.

~~~
jasonfried
"you're going to end up with people who have been there 5 years, wake up one
day and realize they have the same role and similar salary to what they had
where they started"

1\. The people who are worth the most to us are the people who do the best
work. We pay accordingly. "Management-like" salaries go to the best workers.

2\. You assume people want different roles. Some people do, but we work hard
to hire people who love their craft and want to keep crafting. A programming
being pushed away from programming, just because they've been at the company
for five years, is not the desired path for most programmers who really love
programming. Same goes for designing, etc.

Speaking of titles: We tend to avoid those too. We've had a good bit of debate
inside the company about this, but we're sticking to staying as title-less as
possible. I don't think they're worth it in the long term. They set up
boundaries between people that I don't believe are necessary. Might that
change if we had 100+ people? It could, but I'm concerned with the now instead
of the imagined future.

------
antidaily
Looks like Sarah has started her own thing: <http://cosupport.us/>

~~~
dasil003
If you're interested in hearing more about it, she was on Dan Benjamin's Daily
Edition in February:

<http://5by5.tv/dailyedition/25>

------
sreitshamer
I like that he mentioned in 2 places how he/they supported people in the best
way for those people even when it was clear they weren't going to work for
37signals anymore. (In one case they helped someone find another job, in
another they helped someone start her own thing.)

It's important to set other people up for success, whether it's success at
your firm or at someone else's. They're not "human resources", they're people!

------
mmcconnell1618
I believe some sociologists found that personal relationships begin to break
down at about 150. Beyond that it is very difficult to maintain meaningful
interaction in person. Online relationship numbers are much higher so maybe a
distributed team like 37Signals can get away with this for a while longer.

~~~
arctangent
You're referring to Dunbar's Number:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number>

~~~
mmcconnell1618
Thanks for the concrete link! I never knew the name.

------
vacri
Skimming the comments, it seems a lot of people are missing a significant
point - the employee is in _customer service_. Customer service is a dead-end
job. It doesn't take long to get on top of your game, and there's really
nowhere to go.

Managers and marketers get new products and changing business conditions to
keep them interested, developers get new tech to explore and tech debt to
resolve.

Customer service... is easy to master and once done there's no new fields to
conquer. It's ultimately boring. Fine if you want a job to show up to and just
do, but if you want to be interested in developing/advancing skills, it's not
going to happen in customer service.

I actually find it a little insulting that the tone of the article is a little
"well, the developers can handle 'not advancing', why can't the customer
support person?".

The professional development tree for customer support looks like a stump.

~~~
robryan
I dunno, they could get more involved in the product so that they can diagnose
more simple issues without having to pass it on to one of the devs. They could
get more involved in design based on the feedback that gets passed through
them, they would have a good sense of what is well received and doesn't work
well.

For straight up customer service person you would be right, but I think there
is a lot of room to move there in a flexible organisation. Depends on the
person I guess, it doesn't surprise me really they would see more turnover
here than they would of developers.

~~~
vacri
There is still only so far you can go as customer support. I wear that hat in
my current company (along with a few others, including planning) and no, there
really isn't much depth you can get into with devs without becoming a dev.
Most devs (not all) largely disregard customer support and feedback anyway,
since support doesn't 'see the big picture' (a less charitable person would
say 'because support works with existing products, and we've already covered
that now-boring ground' - after all, how many laments do we hear of devs that
have to work on 'maintenance' rather than new prod development :).

The key point is that even if you're interacting directly with the devs,
you're still not really being proactive or learning concrete skills. The job
is still pretty much reactive. If you're driven or feel the need to develop,
there really isn't much to strive for. You're not the one that gets to figure
out code, or create marketing campaigns. There's not really any ongoing
feeling of " _I_ made this!". And if you move into design/planning, that's not
really support anymore.

I don't mean to rag on support - they are the ditch-diggers of the IT world -
but if you're driven, then it's got nothing to offer you after a fairly short
while.

------
imbriaco
I was one of those experiments, as the Operations Manager, and I like to think
it went pretty well. As many people here have rightly pointed out, though,
being hands-on is the key. I continued to do a lot of the day-to-day technical
work.

The main difference between what I did, and what the rest of my team did, was
that I had the added responsibility for dealing with partners and vendors,
negotiating contracts, scheduling hardware installations, and the like. The
rest of the team was able to remain completely focused on the system
administration issues that we cared about while I split my time.

For our team, it made good sense. For the other development/design teams, the
way they're run makes sense. It all depends on context.

------
stevenj
There's a saying in team sports along the lines of, "Players play the game;
Coaches coach."

Employees play the game (ie do the work), but I think a good manager/leader
can make a big difference.

Sure, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player who had good teammates, but
Phil Jackson must be doing something right in order to extract the talent out
of his players in just the right way to win year in and year out. And that is
hard.

Perhaps there's just not very many good coaches or managers, which is why
there's such distaste for "management."

But every good team, organization, or company has a great "manager" or
"managers".

In the case of 37signals, it seems that person is Jason Fried (he is the CEO).

------
sili
I like the idea of keeping people closer to what they are good at. However I'm
afraid this strategy will backfire on your employees if they are forced to
leave to another company for whatever reason. In an environment where every
company does not have this flat hierarchy it is strange to see a person who
has spent 10 years in one place and has not advanced to some managerial
position. New employer will think that he is unfit in some way (even though
the opposite is the case) and will probably not even give the person a chance
to explain themselves.

~~~
dhh
We're optimizing for having the best work environment today. Prioritizing what
some employer somewhere else might think a decade from now over improving
working conditions today seems like a bad trade.

~~~
rosenjon
I don't understand why this has to be a binary choice. The real issue at hand
appears to be that people get promoted to positions for which they are not
well-suited, and then stay there, because they do a lousy job (agree that this
sometimes happens... although _eventually_ they probably get fired).

What if "promotion" doesn't necessarily mean domain over other people, which
seems to be the other issue. There can only be one SVP of Technology, for
example, in most organizations.

What if, like in school, you get "degrees" for achieving things within the
organization? If you launch a major new product successfully, you achieve a
"master programmer" honor, and the associated pay benefits. This doesn't
necessarily give you any right to control others in the organization, but it
rewards employees for stellar performance. They can then put that on their
resume if they go to another company.

I would argue it is a little short-sighted to say that the company can exist
in a vacuum, when every other company in the world, for the most part,
operates with a title. That doesn't mean you have to play that game within the
company, but you should at least accommodate employees' concerns that they
work for you for 10 years, and then can never get a comparable job because it
looks like they never advanced. If they stay in your good graces, it probably
isn't an issue, since I'm sure you will give them a good recommendation. But
if not, they could be in big trouble when they go to find a new job.

~~~
dhh
If anyone ever faces this thought-experiment problem when they leave
37signals, I'll be happy to bestow them a non-managerial fancy title of their
choice. If someone leaving 37signals thinks they need to have a "Master
Programmer" title, they'll get that. Problem solved.

~~~
rosenjon
I realize that particular suggestion regarding degrees is a little Mickey
Mouse. My point was simply that it is quite risky for them to have to rely on
your good graces when they leave the organization. What if you're not around
to bestow that promised title 10 years from now? What if after a string of
successes, that employee makes a mistake and tanks a product, and gets fired
on bad terms? This system works fine internally, especially for management. It
adds a lot of risk for employees, and that risk escalates the longer they are
with the company. I'm not telling you I have the right answer, but I think
it's worth considering.

~~~
jzimdars
What's the risk? That I don't take a job sometime in the future from a short-
sighted HR drone who can only judge me based on my resumé? If the lack of an
archetypal career path on my resumé is a barrier, it's probably not a job
worth having.

~~~
rosenjon
There are a whole host of intangibles that will probably break down by
individual employee. An employee may have to move to a different location for
personal reasons where the only option is a job that hires via HR drone.

A large part of management structure in the first place is to try to insulate
the organization against changes at any level. Want to replace the entire C
suite and the board? No problem... business goes on as usual. With this
structure, the company becomes highly dependent on the people at the very top.
Any changes there might have the effect of blowing up the whole organization,
because there are only a few people who are unquestionably in charge. I think
there are lots of benefits from trying to reshape the corporate org chart, as
I mentioned in another post, but it is also dangerous to be overly idealistic
in terms of how your employees regard this structure and the risk they place
on working under it. If most of them feel its appropriate, then I suppose
there is no problem. However, I wouldn't automatically assume that's the case,
just because they have chosen to work without a title. Also, a large part of
their continued work at the firm may have to do with their relationship with
you personally, which may put the long term viability of the business at risk.

------
terryjsmith
There seems to be a rift here between what people are good at/what they want
to do now and what they want to do later. I consider myself a good programmer,
but it's not where I want to be forever. I have always wanted to branch out
and learn multiple facets (management, service, sales, etc.) and this seems
like it would be limiting in that regard. I guess I just wouldn't be the
target of 37signals?

Without wanting to sound snide, do you look for people who want to stay in the
same role forever? It surprises me that people's ambitions to branch out and
take on more responsibility haven't caused this to come up before. A salary
bump, more benefits, and more vacation time wouldn't help me placate my desire
to learn about other skill sets.

~~~
dhh
People branch out all the time. Part of being flat is that there's very little
division. If you are a programmer who has a good idea for a new workflow
process (i.e. management design), you propose it, and we usually try it. If
you're a designer who want to learn more programming, we encourage it.

You can easily have a big impact on all the other domains of the business even
if you're just a programmer.

Hell, we just had Craig Davey switch from being a programmer to being a
designer recently!

------
adaml_623
I think it's a good thing that a potential employee of Jason's can read his
blog and be warned or at least aware of what kind of company he's running and
potential future careers there. Personally as a developer I'm looking forward
to gaining more managerial experience as I can see how you can make bigger
more exciting things as you have more people contributing. Incidentally I work
for a company twice as big as 37 signals although growing quite fast in
comparison and I can see that the people in the nontechnical roles quite enjoy
the possibilities (and realities) of progressing to different and managerial
roles. It makes me happy that they can stick around and don't have to leave
when they might otherwise stagnate.

------
orev
This is a lot of BS, spoken by a Founder with no understanding of employee
needs. Employees do not have their eyes set on always staying where they are.
They are not reaping the monetary rewards the way a Founder is. To an
employee, EVERY job is a stepping stone to the next one, eventually. This
Founder is completely self-absorbed.

Job titles are free and it helps the employee along on their career. No, they
shouldn't be inflated, but they shouldn't be held back either. Eventually the
employee needs to put that job on their resume and if it looks like they were
an entry level person because the Founder was a jerk about titles, it's better
if the employees leave now instead of later.

------
Murkin
Appears there are two types of people,

The 37Signal employees: * Like their field and want to be 'hands-on' * Don't
mind staying in the same company for 10X years.

The supposed norm: * Prefer to advance to other positions vertically * Like
moving between companies (for challenge/change).

Makes me wonder what is the difference between the two types of personalities
and how those affect the organization.

For example, is there more or less innovation in 37Signals ? Are people more
ready to step up and fix/report problems outside their immediate
responsibilities ?

~~~
kenjackson
I don't think there's really a difference in employees. Everyone reacts to
incentives, and it sounds like 37signals has removed titles with pay. Which
honestly, I'd much prefer. In many ways titles are a substitute for flat pay.

I'd rather have a flat org (and no titles) with wildly different pay (and
extreme bonuses, profit sharing, equity grants) -- rather than relatively flat
pay and lots of titles (which tends to be the norm in industry).

~~~
Murkin
What they removed is not just meaningless titles but rather all management
positions. I, for one, don't want to code my whole life. Something 37signals
can't offer me.

But there are people who are content to code forever, and I wonder how they
differ from people like me.

~~~
jzimdars
" I, for one, don't want to code my whole life. Something 37signals can't
offer me."

I'd say it's just the opposite. The lack of organizational hierarchy and title
means that people can work outside their normal expertise more easily. Nobody
is stuck in a box.

Designers pick up programming skills as their interests allow. Programmers
with UI ideas can try them out. Both contribute with writing, with workflow
ideas, and on customer support. We've even had people completely shift roles
from programming to design.

------
trailrunner
This "flat" system sounds very nice, and I really like this rotation of
responsibilities and "managerial positions" to all members. I wonder though,
if the same principle is applied to the CEO and Business Owners positions as
well (both in respect of decisions and profits). If not it doesn't seem that
flat to me.

So preaching "flat" while being a business owner sounds a little suspicious,
because you are preaching everybody about flat while standing above them.

I hope 37signals is truly different (I cannot judge since I don't know crucial
details), because if at some point after ten years the business is sold to a
big corp, and everyone finds himself trapped below ten levels of management,
without a career path, 4 day workweeks during the summers of youth will sound
like a bad joke.

------
skrebbel
Why don't you just split into two little 37signalses when the time comes?

In all the proposals / solutions mentioned here for dealing with growth while
maintaining a flat culture, this is one approach I haven't seen yet. It worked
well for a Dutch consultancy firm called BSO, which reached over 6000 people
in the 90's, all organised into near-independent little companies of 50-ish
people each, all targeting a different market, but each with the same culture
and values. The firm itself was a flat company of these little companies
(called "cells"), so effectively there were just 2 to 3 layers of management.

(<http://www.extent.nl/articles/entry/origins-original/> if you care about the
details)

------
shn21
In many companies the managerial titles are invented incentives, not
necessarily they "manage" people. They exist as part of the incentive package,
and certain companies attract certain personalities who would be happy with
titles. Management position gives one probably a different satisfaction,
"doing better than the other guy", and assumed better pay above the managed is
all that is needed. It's a kind of a distraction. It is not bad unless it
kills nurturing leadership environment. The best case is that laders become
chosen managers by their peers. The worst case is that those who can not
manage become assigned leaders (managers) by "the management".

------
nikcub
"Besides being small, 37signals has always been a flat organization."

..

"We've experimented with promoting a few people to manager-level roles."

So they are flat, with no chief anything, but they have 'manager-level roles'?
Am I missing something or is there a contradiction in his description?

Edit: Got it, 'experimented' meaning that they tried, didn't work, and they
went back to flat. Thanks for the responses.

Besides that I find that even with no job titles or formal roles, people
within a company tend to self-organize and take on de facto roles. The only
difference is that it isn't formalized, and people who end up managing aren't
being paid manager salaries or getting manager options.

~~~
geoffw8
Key word: Experimented?

Past tense, too.

~~~
rsinger9
My cocktail title at 37signals is "Product Manager," so whatever experiments
are going on with management aren't completely past tense. I do UI design,
work with the programmers, help design and dev work together and contribute
strategy ideas to the partners.

Despite the cocktail title, there still isn't a clear "path of authority" or
anything like that. The buck stops at the partners, and the rest of us
function like a meritocracy. The ones with a track record or expertise on a
given topic have a respected voice, and there is always opportunity for
expertise to shift or widen over time. It's that fuzzy-edged quality to the
role that makes it feel experimental for me.

------
MrMan
The only way to solve management issues with a high degreee of confidence is
to stay small enough to avoid management. The NASA analogies are problematic,
however, because large organizations do indeed manage to manage themselves
while completing critical projects. Which is more interesting? Large-scale
management, or head-in-the-sand? I could personally never work in a large-
scale organization, but how can we all avoid these issues and still create a
highly functioning economy, which produces both critical and lifestyle goods
and services?

------
rishi
"And because we don't have a marketing department, we don't have a chief
marketing officer."

37 signals is amazing at marketing. Their blogs. Their books. Video Lectures.
Mission statements. Guest posts.

~~~
jasonfried
To clarify, we think everything we do is marketing.

From how the error messages are written, to customer service, to copywriting
in our emails, to the cancellation process, to clarity of message, to how
every single thing in each product works, it's all marketing. Marketing is
everyone's responsibility. It's the sum total of everything we do.

~~~
MrMan
37Signals is ubiquitous in a certain way on the internet - we are smiling! We
are about our products! No look over here we are about education! Come to our
conference and learn how to run a small business! It is like Martin Fowler and
Joel Spoelsky had a child and it was nurtured by Saatchi and Saatchi.

------
slee029
While I completely agree that flat vs a vertical hierarchy should be assessed
from organization to organization, I tend to prefer flat structures mainly
because they allow for the culture to mold perception of progression over an
existing structure itself. What I mean by this is that if you have a
structured way for internal progression (usually vertical) people mold their
perceptions around that ladder no matter how much you try convincing them
otherwise.

You can clearly see this being played out within the big 4 accounting firms (I
recruited for them and from them). Within the firms its extremely vertical in
that progression is dictated largely by how long you stayed until you hit
partnership where its strictly vacancy. Thus, you're basically looking at
steady yearly promotions until you reach being a senior manager after 6-8
years within the firm.

This is where I was able to take the most senior people usually in a seasonal
manner pretty easily. This is because after being a senior manager you really
have only two trajectories within the firm, associate partner or partner. The
AP is basically a position they created to please senior managers who sounded
too old and weren't good enough to be partners. So what you generally see is
3-4 hotshot senior managers all vying for the 1 partnership position that will
be available that season/year. Inevitably I'll have 3/4 partner potential
senior managers leaving because they know they're better off leaving the firm
and going to an industry position or worse a competitive firm. They already
know the stigma of being an AP.

Thus, you don't simply see attrition at the top level, but the attrition of
the very best at the top level and the rest being APs. What's worse is those
guys who are the best usually have a loyal following within the firm. Well
guess who gives me a call after placing that senior manager as a hiring
manager where they're building a team? Now you see an attrition of even better
people who you were probably underpaying at junior positions leaving the firm
for better pay and better hours. The only guiding light there is you're hoping
that senior manager becomes their client in the future.

Thus, you see a system where the highly vertical nature of the structure led
to a culture where attrition was the norm. While it might be naive to think
so, I think being a flat structure might give a better chance for the culture
to shape that perception of the promotion and have them "feel" it rather than
perceive it.

------
daemin
Since you run a fairly flat organisation, do you ever promote the exceptional
people that have worked with you for many years into the 'partnership' area of
your company?

I read somewhere that David was originally a contractor and then became a
partner, but has this occurred for any other significant contributors to the
company. I'm thinking 10+ years, has a solid and respected reputation within
the company, etc.

------
hpux
But what if a young startup company want to use this approach. consider a
programming team which its developers are not in the same level of expertise
and ability. Is it possible for this team that the manager rotate among team
members? Doesn't it lower the performance of the members and the self-
management of total team?

------
clarebear
Sarah Hatter, who is the employee described in this story, left an insightful
comment that unfortunately showed up as a child of aless insightful comment
and is therefore buried. Check it out here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2417278>

------
mcdowall
I find it outstanding that they have 5m users and only 5 support staff!. I
would love to know how they manage that.

~~~
jasonfried
Simple products mean less support requirements. Although, we're going to be
growing the support team so we can reduce the ticket load per person and
create more time for other support-related writing/design projects.

------
Uchikoma
My view on managers: Turn your org chart 180°. All managers are supporting
those "above" them, this is their primary goal. Usually companies have this
the other way round. This also means there is no problem with "useless" middle
management (Scrum calls this manager type ScrumMaster).

------
mayutana
How does such a model work for tasks where you need to perform long term
planning? Similar to national elections, such a model could result in policies
being changed every time a new manager is in place.

------
raheemm
That idea about rotating leadership within the customer service team is
brilliant! I wonder if changing it every week is too frequent though - what
about doing it biweekly?

------
ck2
Way to reward the one critical person who actually has to do the hard work of
interacting with your customers AFTER they've been sold and paid you money.

That's the hard part because it's only dealing with problems and never "great
to have to call you".

I guess customer service these days is disposable and easily replaceable.

~~~
sarahhatter
I actually feel like I got quite a reward for my time at 37signals - Yes,
that's me Jason's talking about :)

Since this topic is sort of centered around a small part of my experience, I'd
love to shed some light on a couple points:

True! I started my own business! For about 7 hours of my life I didn't know
what I was going to do if I couldn't bloom at 37signals, and then I told David
and Jason I was starting my own company, CoSupport.us.

True: I left 37signals because I really wanted to do more support-wise, and
the needs of the company didn't mesh with my ideas. They need people full-time
on support, they don't need someone who's not there responding to tickets.
After 4 years of answering 100+ emails a day, I wanted to do other things.
Needing me on tickets interacting with customers is what Jason means when he
says they can't have people working on a team not doing the work _of_ the
team.

True: David and Jason may sometimes come off a bit stiff, perhaps even cold,
when it comes to how they manage their business, but that's the unfortunate
aspect of print, edits, etc. In truth, working for them was the most
challenging, educational, inspirational time of my career so far. They are the
opposite of cold when it comes to their employee's ambition, ideas, talent and
goals.

True: My experience leaving was equivalent to a professional football player
saying to his coach, "Hey I think I want to try being a referee!" The player
isn't on the team to be a referee. If he wants to be a referee, he needs to go
to referee school and become a referee, not say, "I'm going to stay on the
football team and be a referee, too." That's not how it works in football, or
at 37signals.

False: I was not at all "rewarded" for my ambition by being shut down, put
down, held down, or in _any_ way shuttered by David or Jason. I was rewarded
by them telling me I had too much ambition to be contained there, and by them
supporting my new company as best they can.

False: I actually did my first job for 37signals in 2005, and started full-
time in March 2007. So a little more than "just about 3 years."

The only bad thing I have to say about 37signals or their management or my
leaving is that they stole my frog, which you can ask Jason Fried about.

~~~
ck2
As a woman who has also been a CSR and has almost exclusively worked around
men in the computer tech industry I think you are making the best of the
situation and I applaud your noble efforts to move upwards. I think there are
many subtle details most others around here will never understand (or even try
to).

But I still think you got a raw deal no matter how they spin it and I firmly
believe in the back of their minds you were always flagged as "disposable"
(replaceable) if necessary. I've seen it over and over again over the years.

------
fletchowns
Four day work week in the summer? Holy cow that sounds awesome.

