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I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

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Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#31

Post by plasticchris »

aptwebapps wrote: post #27
ryandrake wrote: post #15

In most companies I've worked, approval process is the scar tissue of years of mistakes. In every case where you need to ask for approval to do something, you can probably trace back in the company's history and find the past mistake that some goofball made that necessitated getting approval to do something like that. Someone got us sued. Someone lost us some money. We need to take some kind of corrective action and…

Basecamp was founded in 1999 so I think they've had time to make plenty of mistakes. While I don't dispute the idea of approval processes as scar tissue, perhaps most companies scar too easily. I mean that both in the sense of being fragile and in the sense of over-reacting.

No one gets fired for adding process, that's why it's so common yet a slow death.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#32

Post by mywacaday »

Joeri wrote: post #13
RUG3Y wrote: post #9

This only works when you have the hiring process dialed in and you're selecting the right candidates to work from you.

Exactly. I once had the conversation about bottom-up vs top-down decision making with my CEO, and his point was essentially that the people we've hired can't be trusted with that level of responsibility. For me this was proof that our hiring process needed to improve, for him it was proof that our supervision process needed to improve. There's a great book about companies run through bottom-up decision making called…

The best advice I received from an old manager when I moved into management was that if I wanted to achieve anything my primary goal was to make myself and my position redundant. Hiring and empowering the right people is the only way to achieve this, its not easy but its definitely worth it. When you can truly trust the people you are responsible for its a different game.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#33

Post by scaryclam »

overgard wrote: post #11
amelius wrote: post #2

I wonder how many programmers secretly work on their pet projects during work time.

I would just view pet projects as practice time. Its like getting mad at a musician for playing when the mics are turned off.

Well, doing it on work time is more like getting mad at the musician because they're supposed to be in the next room recording a track...

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#34

Post by nstart »

d--b wrote: post #8

His boss trusts him enough to let him take his own decisions, good for him! It's definitely not great advice for every employee, or for every company though... I mean, it's great to be able to discuss things with your boss and colleagues and take collegial decisions... I don't understand the idea behind the post...

From the perspective of basecamp/37 signals, they've made it a point to do things which most people say "wouldn't work". And they do it and prove that it is possible.

A lot of objections one might have to their choices are usually deeply rooted in other organizational dysfunctionalities. Other companies for example may choose to hire weaker employees due to the urgency to get people sooner. Sooner is more important than correct and then you have employees you can't trust to be autonomous. Or you put people in managerial positions whose purpose is to delegate, or approve tasks as part of their monitoring duties. This goes against autonomy entirely. Basecamp for example doesn't have any real managers.

While you are right that this won't work for many larger established companies, from the perspective of people starting out (and there are a lot of them), these posts serve a purpose of raising a middle finger to the established norms of running a business. There's a purpose built around tearing down bad decisions that lead to other bad decisions that eventually lead to ineffective teams.

And that's the idea behind this post.... Probably :)

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#35

Post by endlessvoid94 »

d--b wrote: post #8

His boss trusts him enough to let him take his own decisions, good for him! It's definitely not great advice for every employee, or for every company though... I mean, it's great to be able to discuss things with your boss and colleagues and take collegial decisions... I don't understand the idea behind the post...

It's marketing.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#36

Post by d--b »

stupidstupid1 wrote: post #29
d--b wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move fast and break things => Move fast with stable infra

Easy to say when you don't hold the pager.

What's that supposed to mean? I am just agreeing with the previous comment... early stage Facebook had a mentality in the spirit of the original article, and as they grew had to stop it.

That's all. Just agreeing.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#37

Post by frankc »

Joeri wrote: post #13
RUG3Y wrote: post #9

This only works when you have the hiring process dialed in and you're selecting the right candidates to work from you.

Exactly. I once had the conversation about bottom-up vs top-down decision making with my CEO, and his point was essentially that the people we've hired can't be trusted with that level of responsibility. For me this was proof that our hiring process needed to improve, for him it was proof that our supervision process needed to improve. There's a great book about companies run through bottom-up decision making called…

On the other hand, if you can make an organization work with a lower grade of employees, you will scale much more easily and cheaply. Maybe its a pipe dream to accomplish this but I think it's probably somewhere in between. At the scale of a multinational corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees, it surely comes into play more.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#38

Post by headcanon »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

In most companies I've worked, approval process is the scar tissue of years of mistakes. In every case where you need to ask for approval to do something, you can probably trace back in the company's history and find the past mistake that some goofball made that necessitated getting approval to do something like that. Someone got us sued. Someone lost us some money. We need to take some kind of corrective action and…

Basecamp is a small company (~50 employees) that is headed by leaders who put an uncommonly extreme level of thought into how the company should operate. From my vantage point they feel like a "philosophical experiment" in technology company leadership. They also do things that many companies would never think of doing, like cutting most of their products and focusing on only one. Friedman and DHH are great thought leaders in this space, but a lot of what they do wouldn't work as-is in a larger corporation.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#39

Post by dbcurtis »

RUG3Y wrote: post #9

This only works when you have the hiring process dialed in and you're selecting the right candidates to work from you.

Ummm... I beg to differ. Well, I will admit that you need to avoid inept people. But I assert that the key to success is for management to have clear goals for the organization and articulate them clearly. Most people, if they understand the goals clearly, will make good decisions. If everyone knows the goals, and you encourage them to "think above their paygrade" (solve your manager's problems, not yours..) and a lot of good work will happen.

Management in 3 bullet points: 1. Have clear goals. 2. Articulate your goals clearly. 3. Go to 1.

Re: I do whatever I want at work and I haven’t been fired yet

#40

Post by jrm2k6 »

This wouldn't work for 90% of companies. You cannot do whatever you want in a PCI environment, or a HIPAA compliant environment. It also boils down to your managers, product managers etc.. Do they micromanage? Is your focus shifting all the time because new high priorities tasks are coming your way?

If so, I would never feel confident in doing whatever I want, as I know I wouldn't be able to put 100% of my focus on it, and probably forget something important that could screw a lot of things up.

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