

Workplace experiments: A month to yourself - ksat
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3186-workplace-experiments-a-month-to-yourself

======
steve8918
I've seen a lot of articles from 37signals.com on HN but I have no idea who
they are or what they do. They certainly seem quite innovative in terms of how
they treat their employees, which is great.

Are they profitable? I'm curious if their generosity to their employees
translates to their bottom line in measurable ways.

~~~
AVTizzle
The other answers aren't wrong, but I think listening to 37Signals Partner DHH
from Startup School would speak best:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY>

Almost more than their products, they're known for their very vocal
broadcasting against the standard startup focus of investments, valuations,
exits, etc...

Their books "Getting Real" and "Rework" represent their bootstrapping,
sustainable-business values - they're not timid in speaking out against the
nonsense of the modern startup conventional wisdom.

Personally, I think it's a very refreshing and empowering voice for
entrepreneurs. It's not without controversy though, so dig in to their content
for yourself to make your own judgement. (FWIW - "Getting Real" is a free PDF
out there somewhere. I recommend it, though others may or may not.)

~~~
mmphosis
<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/>

------
tferris
'This June we’re trying something new'—I don't believe this. 37signals will
always do the same: blogging.

Instead of coming up with new products or groundbreaking tech 37signals still
relies on one past success and heavy Marketing which is mainly about blogging.
Yesterday, somebody on HN wrote a laconic post and marked their articles as
'recycled trash from popular business / personal wealth books.' But people
seem to like this appreciating every little advice with stronger or just
different opinions. And they never forget that 37signals created the
foundation of their income and wealth as a coder—Rails. So, upvoting 37signals
can't be bad.

It's good to be aware that these writings are Marketing activities and
basically indirect lead generation to all of their products. This isn't
something bad and everybody should have a decent Marketing strategy too but if
it's your _only_ strength while missing product development at all I doubt
that's enough to be successful in the long run and you are nothing more than a
typical Clickbank vendor.

This is now really the ironic part, sharing advice how to come to new fresh
ideas and projects (by taking one month off) considering that 37signals didn't
have any new and really successful products for years. And we shall take such
advice seriously? Especially when seeing failed and unsold 37signals projects
on Flippa right now (Sortfolio offered for 480K).

Maybe one month off is not enough, maybe a hard reset would help 37signals
better.

EDIT to downvoters: downvoting != disagreeing, reply if you disagree

~~~
helipad
1) It's not just blogging if there are actions behind it. If they change how a
multi-million dollar business works for a month it's not just a blog post, is
it?

2) "This is now really the ironic part, sharing advice how to come to new
fresh ideas and project...considering that 37signals didn't have any new and
really successful products for years" - well even if this was true, wouldn't
an action like this help create something new and successful? And which part
of the blog post is advice? So far as I can see, saying what they do !=
telling others what to do

------
cnbeuiwx
Everyone knows that the best work comes when you are free to create something
you believe in and that you have a real desire to create.

The problem is combining that desire with capitalism where someone wants to
get rich from your ideas, and with a minimum of costs.

Googles most successful products such as Gmail and the search engine was
created as small, experimental products, born from the brains of people who
were NOT under strict deadlines and pressure to perform. The brain works much
better under those conditions, and so does creativity and thinking outside the
box.

Today we see the influence of managers and bosses in the way Google ignores
privacy. That was probably never part of the vision the product creators had
when they put their products together.

------
nowarninglabel
Kiva has been doing this for a couple years now, we do a full 2-week
innovation iteration where us engineers get to work on whatever we want. More
info: [http://blog.build.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-
eng...](http://blog.build.kiva.org/buildkivablog/2011/02/10/kiva-engineering-
innovation-iteration)

It's pretty awesome, and has some produced some great projects like
<http://kiva.org/live>

------
gouranga
In other news:

"Profitable trendy app vendor shows off about how they can afford to piss a
month up the wall while their clients are paying for it"

~~~
philwelch
I didn't think they had clients anymore. I thought they made their money from
Basecamp.

~~~
gouranga
That's the clients I'm talking about, sorry customers.

------
codeonfire
If someone is capable of putting a product together they should probably quit,
start a company, and enjoy infinity time to themselves. It's frustrating when
companies try to coax innovation out of employees when its pretty much
guaranteed in a company of any significant size that people less, ahem,
"production inclined" will step in and try to own anything that gets the
slightest traction.

~~~
davyjones
Sure. But I think the deal here is that you get paid your salary in the
interim.

------
Smerity
I love this idea. Many tech companies have hackathons that run over a day or a
weekend. Hackathons are a strange mix between R&D (any idea is on the table),
lean startup (prove your assumptions through minimum work) and a work party.
Whilst usually great fun, the projects attacked are limited in scope in order
to fit in the limited time available. Turning this into a longer exercise
means more time can be put into properly proving your assumptions and
investigating concepts that can't be bashed out in two or three days.

The other important fact is that, when you have good employees, allowing them
kind of flexibility can pay dividends both for the company and their own
workplace satisfaction. The fact this flexibility is so widely encouraged in
the start-up scene is really encouraging.

------
ksat
Great idea , but i wonder how this would work for other companies:

a) This works for 37s because they have a somewhat don't care attitude. So if
a customer quickly wants feature-x, they could respond with "We will look into
it but won't guarantee anything". I am not telling that's wrong, but other
companies might not have created the same image for themselves

b) Having 'Everyone' work on some other idea could be distracting. Especially
Support.

c) Last, and i've heard this from a ceo, if the company dosen't accept the
idea to be implemented, by that time employees might be so much interested in
the idea that they might want to quit and startup their own with 'that' idea.

~~~
adam
I think it's a great idea in concept as well but it seems likely based on the
way it's described that Jason's project will move forward (because he's the
CEO) and then the rest of the folks will have to battle it out to get their
project funded ongoing.

In addition to allowing people to go off and do their own thing there also
needs to be some sort of evaluation criteria set up or else you're going to
have a bunch of annoyed people at the end of the process who worked hard then
found out they didn't have a realistic chance to get funded.

------
renegadedev
Obviously 37S has built up enough of a trust level with the employees to even
experiment with something like this. That in itself is commendable. Dan Pink
talks about Atlassian and their "FedEx days" in his talks on intrinsic
motivators. Seems like he should be using 37S instead.

------
sown
I've been thinking of doing this on my own, since my workplace won't honor
this kind of request.

Just take 3 weeks off or so, and go work on something I want to work on.

Anyone tried this? Any tips?

~~~
uptown
I've taken a month off twice in my career. It was truly refreshing. One of
those times I did build a site that I brought to completion. It wasn't
successful (I didn't really have a grasp on the promotion/marketing part of
things) but it was rewarding to do. The other time I took a break for other
reasons.

One benefit/consequence (depending on how you look at it) is that when you
return to work (depending on where you are), you may find that it takes awhile
for work to figure out how to re-integrate you into the workflow since they've
kept rolling without you. In my instance, it made for a gradual re-adjustment
back into the things, but it may not be what you want, and I suppose you also
run the risk of a workplace deciding they can get by without you while you're
gone.

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alainbryden
This reminds me of A/B testing. Sure, you may stumble upon a method that leads
to a more motivated and productive staff, but do your successes have a
reasonable chance to make up for the lost productivity when your social
experiments perform worse than current industry practice?

I don't know, maybe that doesn't even worry them. Maybe their real goal is to
attract the sort of workers that would be interested in this sort of workplace
experimentation. (Edit - I'm noticing a number of comments asking if they're
hiring.)

------
jmagar
Sounds like someone found Dan Pink's lecture:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

