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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?

#31

Post by hartjer »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #3

I'm the CTO at Parse.ly, you can visit us at https://parse.ly . We run a fully distributed team. We have commented on our culture around this in these two blog posts-- The How & Why of Parse.ly's Fully Distributed Team: https://blog.parse.ly/post/3203/the-how-and-why-of-parse-lys... Fully Remote, But Here For Each Other: https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/ We actually recommend "Rework" and "Remote" as two readi…

Why Rework? I'm hoping I missed something the first time I read it, it seems like it would had been better as an office calendar than a book.

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

#32

Post by mangoceylon »

balsamiq wrote: post #9

We (Balsamiq) look up to Basecamp quite a bit, and people have compared our culture to theirs. Check out our blog for some of our policies and other stuff. Any questions, I'm here. Peldi

As a user and recommender of your product in the past, that was always the vibe I got from your company. You seemed to espouse many of the same characteristics as basecamp, and I thought of you as very closely related in my mind.

If you were building a super minimal web CMS, what features would be a must have?

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

#33

Post by pixelmonkey »

frankquist wrote: post #30
pixelmonkey wrote: post #3

I'm the CTO at Parse.ly, you can visit us at https://parse.ly . We run a fully distributed team. We have commented on our culture around this in these two blog posts-- The How & Why of Parse.ly's Fully Distributed Team: https://blog.parse.ly/post/3203/the-how-and-why-of-parse-lys... Fully Remote, But Here For Each Other: https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/ We actually recommend "Rework" and "Remote" as two readi…

Slightly offtopic but I went to your homepage to check it out. Immediately loved how it looked, but found it hard to find out what products are actually on offer until I went to the separate product pages. In the first two screens of the homepage, the general gist of your products doesn't become clear to me, only your specific Facebook/AMP product. After the first screen ("Do incredible things with your data") I expe…

Thanks for the feedback. Interestingly, we plan on revamping our homepage and flow a bit in early 2018 to make that sort of thing clearer. Appreciate the comment!

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

#34

Post by dasmoth »

skrebbel wrote: post #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?

Here’s one which isn’t exactly negative (and note that it’s hosted on their blog...) but does have an example of an employee running up against some limits. Found it pretty thought-provoking when originally published:

https://m.signalvnoise.com/to-smile-again-ae0ba9f2198c

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

#35

Post by pixelmonkey »

hartjer wrote: post #31
pixelmonkey wrote: post #3

I'm the CTO at Parse.ly, you can visit us at https://parse.ly . We run a fully distributed team. We have commented on our culture around this in these two blog posts-- The How & Why of Parse.ly's Fully Distributed Team: https://blog.parse.ly/post/3203/the-how-and-why-of-parse-lys... Fully Remote, But Here For Each Other: https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/ We actually recommend "Rework" and "Remote" as two readi…

Why Rework? I'm hoping I missed something the first time I read it, it seems like it would had been better as an office calendar than a book.

I think both Rework and Remote are quick and easy reads that espouse a philosophy toward work that is anti-political, individual contributor focused, and no-BS. That's all I really need for a new hire to feel, so it works for me!

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

#37

Post by dasmoth »

wedaugtwo wrote: post #22

I've seen companies that share some (or most) of Basecamp's culture, but I've yet to see one that truly values "personal time" by having a 4-day work week during the summer. And not that 10 hours for 4 days schedule, but actually 8 hours for 4 days.

Treehouse had a (year-round) 4day/32hour week for a while. But seem to have abandoned it now...

(I’m all for shorter work weeks but the seasonality of the Basecamp version seems to make a few assumptions...)

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

#38

Post by bruncun »

I work remotely for WorkBeast, a staffing company. We're not tech-driven or a startup, but we're bootstrapped and profitable. My workdays are spent on our custom internal CRM (Rails + AngularJS). I respond directly to the CEO, and have a lot of freedom and responsibility when it comes to my job.

Prior I worked for a handful of local startups and digital agencies - this is the closest to Basecamp culture I've found so far.

Some small non-tech companies share more in common with Basecamp than a lot of tech companies do.

(Sorry, we're not hiring.)

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

#40

Post by scrumper »

bruncun wrote: post #38

I work remotely for WorkBeast, a staffing company. We're not tech-driven or a startup, but we're bootstrapped and profitable. My workdays are spent on our custom internal CRM (Rails + AngularJS). I respond directly to the CEO, and have a lot of freedom and responsibility when it comes to my job. Prior I worked for a handful of local startups and digital agencies - this is the closest to Basecamp culture I've found so…

I realize this is off topic. Hope you don’t mind a couple of questions - I’m always interested in companies which choose to invest in custom-built software for seemingly non-core functions.

What was the justification for building an internal CRM vs customizing an API-rich commercial system like Pipedrive. How was the decision made? Did you review SAAS or installed offerings first? Do you consider CRM to be a core part of the business, or does it offer a competitive advantage to the company?

Cheers!

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