
The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals - phatboyslim
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/the-way-i-work-jason-fried-of-37signals.html
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grinich

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Ouch. Here's a printer-friendly version with the full text.

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/the-way-i-work-jason-
fr...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/the-way-i-work-jason-fried-
of-37signals_Printer_Friendly.html)

~~~
yan
How high-traffic web sites still not obfuscate these errors, or even allow
them to happen in the first place, is far beyond me.

~~~
jrockway
What difference does it make? People are used to weird errors, so it doesn't
scare away "normal people" anymore than a fail whale would. People trying to
break the code are not aided much by one filename and line number, either.

It's annoying to look at, and _I_ wouldn't do it... but it doesn't really
matter.

~~~
yan
It's just a show of a lack of professionalism. I view exposing low-level
errors as akin to spelling mistakes, typos, poor photo work, and other
symptoms that show the content producers just didn't take the extra step to
differentiate from amateurs.

I hate to beat the cliche, but just one of the reasons I feel happy when using
most of Apple's products: they just scream that even the details were very
much thought about.

~~~
wensing
Except the time my iPhone went into Chinese-language panic mode and started
warning me that something completely arcane was happening and would only shut
down after I took out the SIM.

PS: No, the phone has never been jailbroken.

~~~
TrevorJ
I wasn't aware that you could even take out the SIM without some serious
physical hackery to get the case open.

~~~
philwelch
There's a removable SIM caddy at the top that can be popped open with a
paperclip or a key included in the iPhone 3G packaging. It's the battery that
can't be easily removed.

~~~
TrevorJ
Oh, interesting, I did not know that. Thanks.

------
tptacek
_I enjoy cooking, but I'm single, and I don't like to cook for myself. I go
out often, but I don't like fancy dining experiences. I find people putting a
napkin on my lap uncomfortable, and don't like worrying about using the wrong
fork._

That's too bad, because very few fine dining places are about that stuffy
service, use-the-right-fork nonsense anymore, and Chicago is an epicenter for
creative new food. He should check out Moto, Schwa, or even Alinea; nobody is
going to touch his lap.

~~~
jasonfried
Yup, I've enjoyed some of the great new-wave fine dining places in Chicago and
other cities, but I almost always prefer a hole in the wall with great food.
I'd rather eat at Club Lago or Club Lucky than a fancy Italian place. I love
food so I'll check out any restaurant, but I just feel more comfortable in
places like Lago.

~~~
tptacek
You want to go to the LTH list of "Great Neighboorhood Restaurants":

<http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=215187#p215187>

Start at the top, work your way down the list.

Two notes:

* This is a PHPBB --- that's it, just a PHPBB --- that gives awards that are so authoritative in Chicago that very trendy restaurants (Kuma's, for instance) _hang them in the window_.

* As far as I can tell, no other city has anything like LTH, even NYC. The "LTH of San Francisco", for instance, is the CHOW message boards. No trendy restaurant has ever hung a printed-out CHOW message board comment in their window.

~~~
mrkurt
I want you to know, you've just ensured that I spend way more money on food in
the next year than I otherwise would have. Even lowly Naperville has a great
deal of good looking places listed on that forum.

~~~
tptacek
I have never --- not once --- had a bad meal at a GnR.

------
dschobel
_I don't read fiction. I find it a waste of time. There are so many amazing
things that are real; I don't need to spend any time on a made-up story._

Pretty strange comment to come from a creative type, no?

~~~
jasonfried
I don't think it's strange that I don't read fiction. I've met plenty of other
"creative" people who don't read fiction either. Nothing against other people
reading fiction, I'm just not interested in it.

I watch movies and I'll watch TV shows, but if I'm going to spend dozens and
dozens of hours reading, I'd rather read about something that's real. There's
plenty of creativity in the real world. More than I'd ever be able to discover
in 100 lifetimes.

~~~
caffeine
_I watch movies and I'll watch TV shows_ ... _There's plenty of creativity in
the real world_

You realize that movies and TV shows most certainly do not constitute the
"real world"?

Nobody says you have to read fiction. But it's really a shame to take the
weaker forms of escapism the world has to offer you rather than the deeper,
ecstatic ones, _just_ because the latter are in book form.

~~~
run4yourlives
I don't think he's taking "weaker" forms of escapism as he's taking shorter
ones.

I still find his stance different as a lover of fiction, but I can't argue
that a good book isn't also very time consuming, and if you allow that your
time is precious, there are probably better uses for it.

~~~
caffeine
I think TV shows and movies are weaker. Movies can't do what books can do
because you don't create them in your mind as you consume them (or at least
not in the same way).

But I can see why for some people, the basic realism of film might take them
even further than a book and their own imagination. My original post sounded a
bit more judgmental than intended.

------
edw519
_I have no idea how many hours my employees work -- I just know they get the
work done._

I wish someone would just tattoo this on the forehead of every PHB (backwards,
of course).

~~~
jrockway
Most people's jobs aren't to do work, it's to keep their chair warm. That
requires 8 hours a day of work.

~~~
staunch
_The basic idea behind office hours is that if you can't make people work, you
can at least prevent them from having fun. If employees have to be in the
building a certain number of hours a day, and are forbidden to do non-work
things while there, then they must be working. In theory. In practice they
spend a lot of their time in a no-man's land, where they're neither working
nor having fun._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html> "Workplaces"

------
fjabre
Sounds like someone I could chill with. Gyokuro tea is good but it's a bitch
to make. Try Silver Needle tea instead. =)

Wonderfully honest and as always I love the stab at the ridiculous hype
surrounding gigantic user bases that lose money on 'every meal' served.

An excellent read.

~~~
jasonfried
Big fan of Silver Needle too. And thanks for the kind words.

------
tokenadult
"If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every
diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if
you have more users than everyone else, you're successful. No, you're not."

That seems like an important business principle that is often forgotten in
reporting on Internet-based companies. Keeping revenue in mind can have some
powerful effects on a company's future. Especially, the example is good
because it focuses on making revenue by pleasing customers who could take
their business elsewhere.

~~~
9oliYQjP
An interesting thing is that Jeff Bezos is the only investor in 37 Signals
according to that article. Amazon.com was the poster boy for "Don't worry
about spending money now, we'll be profitable one day" mentality. That said,
most other dot com companies slightly misinterpreted this strategy. One thing
that Amazon.com did differently than its counterparts which were also losing
money was it pursued moderate and steady growth rather than exponential curve
growth. I think we see a similar situation these days in startups. It's all
about scaling up as fast as possible to millions of users. But here we have a
company liked 37 Signals saying "don't worry about scalability, we'll get
their one day, just throw more hardware at the problem". Scale eventually, has
sort of been a 37 Signals tenet hasn't it? For all the companies pursuing
functional this, and threaded-that, jumping onboard the latest greatest
languages and platforms for scalability, 37 Signals and Rails is chugging
along quite nicely. In fact, I bet they'd reply "What scalability problem?" if
anyone were to ask, as they likely don't have one right now.

~~~
tedunangst
The other thing amazon did differently is actually have a revenue stream.

------
Nekojoe
I did enjoy reading that interview. It's always interesting to get insight
into other people's way of working.

What struck me most about that interview was how it was written. How simple
the wording is. It's clear to read, the language he uses is straight to the
point and it's concise. I assume the interview as over e-mail. The sentences
he uses are short and unambiguous. Plus they're easy to parse. I wonder how
long it took to write that interview? If it just comes naturally or if he had
to edit and tweak it a lot.

------
dtran
Really interesting question - how much do you need to interact with your
coworkers to be effective? Can a company operate with all of its employees
working remotely? For those of you that went to Startup School or have heard
Tony Hsieh's talk from it, what do you think about the way 37signals employees
work vs. Zappos where Hsieh encouraged managers to spend a lot of time outside
of work with their team?

~~~
jorleif
I thought about exactly the same thing. What is also worth considering, is if
there is a lot of individual variation in the need to interact. In my
experience many people are not the "self-driven" kind that are often
considered ideal. What should one do with them? Even self-driven people are
usually driven only to do some particular things, and these might not be the
things that the whole company benefits most from.

~~~
dtran
I definitely agree that it probably varies for different people - that seems
like the biggest challenge of being a manager. Which people do you have to
micromanage vs. which people will create amazing things if you just completely
leave them alone. What about with co-founders for a startup - do you believe
that they should always work together since it's so important that they mold
the vision/initial product together, or is there any room to work separately
if both people are driven enough?

------
hop
Jason, With all of 37signals beautifully clean and minimalist design and
function, I always wondered why your homepage <http://37signals.com> is so
busy - a bunch of text with little whitespace, icons with cartoon word
balloons, contrasting colored boxes on a white bg...

Seems like way more noise than signal. Did some A/B testing prove it superior?

------
dolinsky
The way I work: Always turn error notification off on live and have a process
scanning the error logs so I'm notified of it. This might also be my biggest
hangup with using PHP.

~~~
wvenable
I have PHP put up a nice error page for every error. With (very minor)
trickery, you can even put up nice pages for fatal errors. Unless it's a
database connection error, I have the site automatically email me a full stack
trace and all other relevant details. You don't even have to turn off error
notification in the PHP.INI file, you can control that from your script.

~~~
dolinsky
I believe your trickery involves capturing the output buffer and grep'ing for
a fatal error, yes? We thought of doing that, but our site commands too much
traffic for that to be a feasible option. If it's something less intrusive,
I'm all ears.

~~~
wvenable
You can't capture the output buffer on a fatal error; the script just aborts.
You do have to wait till the end of your script to write your output otherwise
this doesn't work very well but here is some (simplified) code:

    
    
      $errorTemplate = file_get_contents("errortemplate.html");
      $templates = explode('%error%', $text, 2);
      ini_set('error_prepend_string', $templates[0]);
      ini_set('error_append_string', $templates[1]);
      ini_set('html_errors', '0');	
    

The _errortemplate.html_ file is a static HTML file that can contain anything
you want. Ours is themed up just like any other page on our website. When a
fatal error is triggered, the text %error% will be replaced with the fatal
error text. We place that into a form using a hidden textarea so our users can
submit it to us.

    
    
      <textarea style="display: none;">%error%</textarea>
    

The server log will contain the fatal error, so you don't care about users
submitting it you can just wrap it in a comment.

    
    
      <!-- %error% -->
    

And that's all there is to it.

------
ojbyrne
"I don't read fiction. I find it a waste of time. There are so many amazing
things that are real; I don't need to spend any time on a made-up story"

a little later:

"I just wind down by reading or watching TV. I relate to Larry David on Curb
Your Enthusiasm. I also watch House, M.D"

I find that a little weird. I personally think reading fiction is an
indication that you have an imagination.

~~~
dannyr
I think this just proves it's hard to stereotype or generalize anybody - even
the creative ones.

~~~
ojbyrne
I think it's even hard to generalize about yourself. 5 or 10 years from now
Jason may have given up on TV, and be cultivating a love of fiction.

------
ptn
_Plus, they chop your day into small bits, so you have only 20 minutes of free
time here or 45 minutes there. Creative people need unstructured time to get
in the zone. You can't do that in 20 minutes._

That bit reminded me of pg, because it's something he said too and because of
the writing style.

------
mhartl
Given the history ([http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1088-how-not-to-apply-for-
a-j...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1088-how-not-to-apply-for-a-job), and
the ensuing discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=219085>), it's
lamentable yet somehow sadly appropriate that this article misspells
"37signals" both in the title and throughout the rest of the article. (N.B.
I'm with Jason on this one.)

------
JMiao
+1 for relating with Larry David. I often joke with my cofounder, Sam, that
PG/tlb/Paul Buchheit are the Larry Davids of the software world.

------
agbell
This was great. Jason Fried, ordinary dude.

I am considering subscribing to Inc. They have some great stuff (like the
street smarts column <http://www.inc.com/magazine/columns/streetsmarts/>)

------
pistoriusp
I've read 18 books this year, 14 of those were fictional.

I'm pretty sure that I gained/ learned more from the fictional books. But I
guess that's a matter of perception.

P.S. Also a bit annoyed and shocked that people "don't read fiction."

------
kapitti
Any chance that those remote hobby farms actually have high speed internet
available in those rural areas?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Mine does.

------
dabeeeenster
_I live about two miles from my office. I drive there most of the time. I
should bike more, but I saw someone on a bike get hit two years ago, and it
really freaked me out. I figure I'm better off driving._

So not only is he needlessly adding to global CO2, but also to the number of
cars on the road. A shame. 2 miles from the office is less than 10 minutes by
bike...

~~~
dabeeeenster
Why am I getting modded down for this? DRIVING TWO MILES TO WORK! That's
insane...

~~~
axod
Because you're not adding to the conversation, and taking a radical political
viewpoint that is really offtopic anyway.

~~~
dabeeeenster
Asking someone not to drive 2 miles to work everyday is a "radical political
viewpoint"? Are you serious? Where do you live? Saudi Arabia?

~~~
dannyr
Jason gave his reason why he doesn't bike to work in the article. It's not
like "I prefer driving because I want to contribute to global warming and
increase our dependence on foreign oil."

Have you taken into account what kind of traffic he probably would get into
when riding a bike? I live in San Francisco and I would like to bike
everywhere I go. I actually hate driving or riding the bus. But there are too
many cars in the city that I'm afraid I'm gonna get hit.

I used to bike to work when I was living in San Diego but it's because the
roads I took didn't have many cars in them.

~~~
davidw
There's some sad game theory (?) at work here that leads people to 1) drive
cars because cyclists get maimed by car drivers 2) then bigger cars because
smaller cars get wrecked and 3) finally humvees. Ultimately, it's probably a
bit of a loss for everyone.

------
goodkarma
All I'm seeing is:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: query() in
/content/public_web_sites/www.inc.com/reflex/lib/dbi.class.php on line 152

~~~
goodkarma
Okay they fixed the problem. I'd delete my comment if I could but I can't. No
need to take away any more of my karma!

Thanks.

------
hotshothenry
Inc magazine database fail

