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Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

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Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why will we have to see? It's not like this is the first time anyone has worked remotely. People have been working remotely for decades, which is proof that it works for those people. In fact entire companies recently (last 5ish years) have created entirely remote companies.

In at least some companies (e.g. Yahoo), they decided it worked, and then later decided no, it didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of backpedaling on remote work, after six months or so.

Elsewhere on HN I read mention that it works wonderfully until you want a raise.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#192
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the short term it works. We will have to see about the long run.

Why will we have to see? It's not like this is the first time anyone has worked remotely. People have been working remotely for decades, which is proof that it works for those people. In fact entire companies recently (last 5ish years) have created entirely remote companies.

The doubt sits with those who don't want to work remotely but now have to.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#193
post #153

Just use https://forwardemail.net (I'm the creator) We're launching our own Gmail alternative, so if you want beta access just toss me a message or sign up for an account on our site to get notified. We're also a completely open and transparent startup. 100% of the source code is open-source and 100% of our data is open. https://forwardemail.net/open-startup https://github.com/forwardemail

Are you using machine translation? The Danish version that I get by default seems weird, not exactly bad but just weird choices of words and some sentences.

Yes, will have humans fix the machine translated versions soon!

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#194
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a calendar and email as two different applications. But I see the two have been tightly linked for decades. What is the workflow that demands this integration? Some clients will automatically create events from emails. But don't you get many more emails with dates in that you don't need to schedule for compared to the events you'll attend? Or there's the unified alerts when an important event is upcoming and wh…

It's convenient. Example. I recently scheduled 35 podcast episodes with 35 different people. Each one required me to propose various dates and times to folks, and lock in specific times that didn't overlap. This meant opening my calendar and inbox side by side to see what's available while writing an email to someone to propose a few times. Then for locking in a specific time, gmail will intelligently auto-complete t…

Sounds like you could really use something like https://calendly.com/.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#195

Hey.com actually has too many features for my personal taste. Not that I think the Unix philosophy is applicable everywhere, but this goes in the opposite direction entirely. The cumulative learning curve for all these features seems steep.

We've had forty years for people to build features like this on top of IMAP, and nobody has done so. This would seem to be a decent indication that the Unix philosophy is not going to produce much innovation in this market.

Kolab did.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a custom domain with FastMail, and they aren’t reading your mail to target ads at you.

Yes, I am aware, I'm a Fastmail customer. > they aren’t reading your mail to target ads at you Neither does Google ;-)

> Neither does Google ;-)

This is true since 2017 : https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#197

I consider it a significant failing that we (in the US) don't have a public email system like the USPS. It is such a fundamental and important form of communication.

"I consider it a significant failing that we (in the US) don't have a public email system like the USPS.

It is such a fundamental and important form of communication."

Yeah, I can't wait for the government to read all my e-mails AND lose a few extra billions in the process.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#198

"Three months into the pandemic, the argument about the moral and economic superiority of the modern office is over. Remote work works." So, I have worked (mostly) remotely for years, and I don't think I agree with this. It works for some people, in some situations. There are absolutely times when you need to be in the office with other people, and even if my client is in another town I have to drive over there to ta…

I absolutely love a lot of the Basecamp philosophy, I just don’t get the remote work thing. But they’re right about almost everything (or, I agree with them which to a human is the same thing), so they must be right about this too. So what am I missing?

Remote work is lonely, isolating. You don’t have the same connection to a team. We don’t “go remote” with our friends and family as a policy (why bother reopening the pubs?) so what is it about colleagues that makes you think you don’t need to interact face to face with them? Humans are monkeys in suits and this biochemical robot needs proper input please.

Ideation of any kind is garbage over Zoom. Ideation needs whiteboards and tea and hand gestures and walks outside and background noise and serendipity. I need that look you make that says “stupid” so we don’t waste any many time on this. I need to hear you sigh with exasperation.

When things go wrong I don’t want to ask a slack channel wall of text for help, I want my team to pull together and buzz through it, supporting each other with their physical presence. I don’t want fucking emoticons I want real emotions.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#199
post #194
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's convenient. Example. I recently scheduled 35 podcast episodes with 35 different people. Each one required me to propose various dates and times to folks, and lock in specific times that didn't overlap. This meant opening my calendar and inbox side by side to see what's available while writing an email to someone to propose a few times. Then for locking in a specific time, gmail will intelligently auto-complete t…

Sounds like you could really use something like https://calendly.com/ .

That would require mucking around with another external tool. Google's calendar works quite well.

It's one of those things where everything just works with the least amount of set up on my end.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#200

This looks VERY good. Over 30 years, I have used/hosted/paid for all sorts of email systems. For myself and clients POP/IMAP/Exchange/etc. Mutt/Eudora/Outlook/Mail.app/ThunderBird/etc/etc/etc ISP/own servers/managed servers/Fastmail/GMail/etc Currently, I use FastMail for my personal and my own businesses, and Gmail with my Employer. I very much Like FastMail, but very much dislike Gmail. Hey.com really looks like it…

They provide some kind of mbox export. I wonder if that's something that can be hit on a crontab.
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