According to an article by Michael Odell in The Times, Basecamp is a US software/ tech company that supposedly runs without the scourge of 80 hour weeks, unrealistic deadlines, weekend emails and meetings
Two American guys, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, run Basecamp – they’re also authors of a new book called It Doesn’t have to be Crazy at Work covering their creation of a ‘calm office’ where everyone is happy and well paid, and stress doesn’t exist
The two brim over with iconoclastic views about work, including:
- Meetings should be a last resort – pull your eight most talented people into a one-hour meeting and that’s eight hours of quality work lost
- Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honour, it’s a mark of stupidity
- No-no’s re staff attendance:
- Are they working? – Dunno
- Are they taking a break? – Dunno
- Are they at lunch? – Dunno
- Are they picking up the kids from school? – Dunno – Don’t care
- Adopt traditional workplace titles reluctantly – there’s often a lot of bullshit around them
- 40 hours a week is enough for anybody – workaholics who slave all hours out of loyalty to the mission are advised to “f*** the mission”
- Staff benefits should include:
- Pay the best rates in the US tech industry
- Take proper holidays, not ‘fakecations’
- While on holiday – “log out, delete the company app, go dark” and “here’s $5,000 towards your trip”
- Only work four days a week in the summer
- Have a paid sabbatical every three years
- A free monthly massage at a spa
- A free monthly fruit and veg delivery, to their homes
- Our goal? – We have no goals:
- No customer count goals
- No sales goals
- No retention goals
- No revenue goals
- No profitability goals (other than to be profitable)
- People who say ‘doing nothing is not an option’ are dumb – nothing should always be on the table
- If you’re the multi-billionaire gorilla in the room, why not pay good rates to your staff?
- We make good money so why try to avoid taxes – why not set an example instead – it really rubs us up the wrong way when people don’t pay enough tax
Many of these views were prompted by a survey they conducted of 600 people, asking “who managed three to four hours effective work in a day?” – only 30 put their hands up
Such a result will come as no surprise to regular readers of our posts
And when, in 2016, Basecamp showed signs of booming sales and growth, they took action to slow things down, stopped hiring and tripled selling prices – it worked – they continue to exist but stopped growing
They say they don’t want to be the next Jeff Bezos and Amazon:
- “I don’t want to meet the Canadian Prime Minister for lunch”
- “Colonising space is not on my to-do list”
So what do they want?
“We don’t want a bigger company – and if that means leaving some money on the table, so be it”
“We love work, but we want a life too”