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Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

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Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#11
post #6

A similar one IMO would be Buffer. Remote, extremely transparent, treating their employees and customer well, etc. One big difference is that Buffer, while initially bootstrapped, did eventually raise VC money, while Basecamp famously never has. You can read more about Buffer at their company blog: https://open.buffer.com/

What does this company actually do? I read through their site and it's just really vague, to me at least.

I think they are similar to Publer [https://superpubler.com], and allow you to automate your social media postings and schedule them in future

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#12
post #6

A similar one IMO would be Buffer. Remote, extremely transparent, treating their employees and customer well, etc. One big difference is that Buffer, while initially bootstrapped, did eventually raise VC money, while Basecamp famously never has. You can read more about Buffer at their company blog: https://open.buffer.com/

What does this company actually do? I read through their site and it's just really vague, to me at least.

They provide a tool set for scheduling marketing content across multiple social media services.

Originally, it was built just to schedule tweets in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#13

Plenty of companies if you don't limit yourself to "startups". For instance, my company (I'm the Director of Technology) is like that (just listened to DHH's interview on Ruby Rogues this morning, so many of these are fresh in my mind): 1) Pay talent fairly 2) Customers are more important than technology 3) Small team 4) Reasonable hours 5) Tight focus 6) Trust your talent 7) Remote friendly (people think this first…

Great advice. Here’s a good list of remote-friendly companies: https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs/blob/master/READ...

Discourse is not hiring right now but we will definitely be hiring a lot more in the year to come. We’re all of the things above, plus a 100% Rails based, open source product.

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#14
Hijacking the thread a bit, but are there any published negative experiences about working at Basecamp? Everything I know about Basecamp's culture comes from their owners - obviously it is in their interest to be very enthousiastic about it, especially since their product supports a company with their culture particularly well.

There must be downsides. Right? Are there any? For real people at Basecamp?

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#15
I like this question. Well I can talk about my company. I'm the CTO of http://prestofood.it a small delivery food company based on Sicily. We started with fews resources and we made around 3.000 orders per month. We started from one city with a small team 2 developers. Here our initial configuration:

* Heroku 7.00 per month

* Rails app

* Android and iOS app developed with Turbolinks plugin.

Now we are in 3 other cities and we made a cms and backoffice to handle the orders workflow and we developed a printer system with raspberry-pi. Currently we are the biggest company of delivery food in the south of Italy. We have no investors

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#16
post #15

I like this question. Well I can talk about my company. I'm the CTO of http://prestofood.it a small delivery food company based on Sicily. We started with fews resources and we made around 3.000 orders per month. We started from one city with a small team 2 developers. Here our initial configuration: * Heroku 7.00 per month * Rails app * Android and iOS app developed with Turbolinks plugin. Now we are in 3 other citi…

Your reply reads like an advertisement for your company, and doesn't mention anything about your corporate culture, which is what OP was asking about.

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#17
post #15

I like this question. Well I can talk about my company. I'm the CTO of http://prestofood.it a small delivery food company based on Sicily. We started with fews resources and we made around 3.000 orders per month. We started from one city with a small team 2 developers. Here our initial configuration: * Heroku 7.00 per month * Rails app * Android and iOS app developed with Turbolinks plugin. Now we are in 3 other citi…

Your reply reads like an advertisement for your company, and doesn't mention anything about your corporate culture, which is what OP was asking about.

I think that people that read this news are not our potential customer :) Our culture is implicit in our It stack, we started really small and growing around of orders number with no following the current startup culture(that basecamp team doesn't like it ) We started small and stay still small.

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#18

Hijacking the thread a bit, but are there any published negative experiences about working at Basecamp? Everything I know about Basecamp's culture comes from their owners - obviously it is in their interest to be very enthousiastic about it, especially since their product supports a company with their culture particularly well. There must be downsides. Right? Are there any? For real people at Basecamp?

I have a friend who's close to DHH. He claims that Basecamp has a very very very selective recruiting process. To the point where finding talent is extremely difficult. I suspect their litmus for excellence is the real reason their seemingly "guardrail-free culture" works as well as it does, not the other way around.

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#19

Hijacking the thread a bit, but are there any published negative experiences about working at Basecamp? Everything I know about Basecamp's culture comes from their owners - obviously it is in their interest to be very enthousiastic about it, especially since their product supports a company with their culture particularly well. There must be downsides. Right? Are there any? For real people at Basecamp?

Given their retention rates, I'm pretty sure they're doing well in "reality." I don't have data handy, but last time I heard about it, they have very low attrition.

Re: Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?

#20
I work for Aha![0]. I'm wary of trying to define the culture of one company in terms of another, so I'll just tell you about where I work, and you can decide.

We are a fully distributed team, and we build a lovable product. We published a book called Lovability[1] to help explain how we do it. We support each other, congratulate each other, and push hard to make it happen; these things require trust and talent in every part of the organization. I am a better person (and engineer) for having worked at this company.

Here are the pillars of our culture[2]:

    * Have purpose: You know what you are working towards. You are aware of what success is and guided back to the purpose if you wind up in the weeds.
    * Value work: You have the opportunity to achieve and to do something important. Doing great work is valued and recognized.
    * Teach hard: Direct feedback is given on a regular basis to help you improve your skills every day.
    * Grows talent: There is a framework for success, people are trained on it and given room to grow. There is trust that people will step into challenging roles as the organization needs them to. Promotions occur from within.
    * Honor reality: Neither time nor money is invested in manipulation. Work is guided by values and purpose.
    * Work it: Work sometimes requires great effort. However, it does not burn you out but instead keeps you going.

Some of my favorite blog posts:

  * https://blog.aha.io/your-success-think-like-a-grandpa/
  * all of these :) - https://blog.aha.io/author/why-i-joined-aha/
  * https://blog.aha.io/your-remote-co-workers-feel-left-out/
  * https://blog.aha.io/hey-boss-stop-telling-me-to-bring-you-solutions/

[0] https://aha.io

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lovability-Build-Business-People-Happ...

[2] https://blog.aha.io/signs-you-love-your-job/

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