Looks like Sarah has started her own thing: http://cosupport.us/
Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
51–60 of 184 posts
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#5237signals can do this because of their hiring practices. They need to be extremely picky with the type of employee they hire. Their hires need to be able to function within their unconventional structure.
This type of information doesn't translate well to most other companies. I hope 37signals' audience gets that. For software startups, many of their ideas are exceptional and it's fantastic to see real-world examples. For already-established companies and companies that can't be as picky as 37s, testing this type of structure seems unnecessarily risky. I believe 37s has addressed this in the past, and Jason has in his Inc. writings. I just hope people are paying attention.
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that basically the Peter Principle?
The Peter Principle is less cynical, but probably more realistic. It's that you get promoted for doing a good job, but eventually you get promoted into a job you're not good at -- at which point you stop being promoted and you stay in a role that you're not suited for. Note, there's nothing malicious that happens here. No one is trying to promote a bad developer. People are largely doing what they think makes sense -…
The usual money quote for the Peter Principle is, "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" -- but I like your summation so much better.
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#54This really resonated for me because we have almost exactly the same company dynamics at play (we're of roughly the same size).
I'm not sure we have similar answers, but one response to the problem of not being able to afford people who don't do real work is to make sure everyone is doing real work. We're primarily a services firm, and everybody in that org, including Dave, our President, is billable. It's something I tell people in interviews, and that I'm sort of proud to be able to say; everyone's grounded in the actual work that our actual people are actually doing for actual clients.
In that spirit, one way to address this problem might be to have team leads instead of managers.
I feel like Joel wrote about this a few years ago too, and while I'm probably wrong about this, off the top of my head it feels like their answer to this is that when they have too many senior people, they think about new products. Isn't the highest level on their comp ladder (not a fan of that thing) reserved for people who can run products?
Would love to hear more about what people in the 20-40 employee bracket are doing here.
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#55Fog Creek and 37Signals are probably more alike than either of us would care to admit (ha!) and I could see Joel writing a very similar article a few years ago when we had 20some people at the company. But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer. Having managers when there are 10 people are at your company makes no sense. The hierarchy starts out flat, you add a few more people and you're at 20,…
"But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer." Absolutely. I'm simply sharing our experiences with how we run things - that's what my Inc. articles are about. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do what we do because we do it. Find your own comfort zone. There are plenty of ways to do plenty of things.
I really like your approach, especially making everyone manager for a week. I think the only problem I see with it is that if people want to find another job, their 37signals title makes it seem that they essentially "went nowhere". So even if you are paying them a lot more then when they started and they are the best customer service person ever, their resume still says: "Jane Doe - Customer Service Rep 2005-2011" which looks unimpressive elsewhere.
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#56I like that he mentioned in 2 places how he/they supported people in the best way for those people even when it was clear they weren't going to work for 37signals anymore. (In one case they helped someone find another job, in another they helped someone start her own thing.)
It's important to set other people up for success, whether it's success at your firm or at someone else's. They're not "human resources", they're people!
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jason is a designer by trade, and is routinely involved with the design of 37signals' products. In the same vein, DHH is a partner in the company, but still writes code (as I understand it).
To clarify... "President" isn't a title I use, it's a title often ascribed to me as the founder of the company. Whenever anyone asks for my title I tell them we don't have titles. If they require one for whatever they are writing, I say you can say president or founder if that works, but I'd prefer if they didn't say anything other than founder since founder isn't a title as much as it is a fact. Re: design. Yes, I d…
> To clarify... "President" isn't a title I use, it's a title often ascribed to me as the founder of the company.
I apologize if I got things wrong. I was just going with whatever is here: http://37signals.com/about
"Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals."
and
"Jason co-wrote all of 37signals books, and is invited to speak around the world on entrepreneurship, design, management, and software."
with that kind of workload, I assumed you wouldn't have enough time for anything else. I never said whatever you do is useless. Far from it. Non-technical work that is focused at growing a company is more important than any technical work. After all, what can you do with an insanely great product that you can't sell because you didn't prepare for it properly?
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#58Jason seems to imply that managers are useless when he says "We do not have room for people who don't do the actual work". I think this is very naive of him, and a little selfish. He's enjoying the title of "President" which, to me, is a purely managerial position. I doubt if he considers himself useless, but he's happy to label other managers useless. I might be wrong, but it seems that he's either too selfish to se…
He's enjoying the title of "President" which, to me, is a purely managerial position. I doubt that what he does in that position is purely managerial. I think you may have a hard time seeing why they value what they do if you impose your own viewpoints on them.
Perhaps you're right. With a smallish company, it's possible for everybody to jump in and do whatever needs to be done. As a company grows, though, this will become impossible. Many a great company in history have suffered spectacular deaths simply because they couldn't scale correctly with their success.
In my opinion, it will be impossible to have 200 employees with a flat structure.
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#59In many companies the managerial titles are invented incentives, not necessarily they "manage" people. They exist as part of the incentive package, and certain companies attract certain personalities who would be happy with titles. Management position gives one probably a different satisfaction, "doing better than the other guy", and assumed better pay above the managed is all that is needed. It's a kind of a distraction. It is not bad unless it kills nurturing leadership environment. The best case is that laders become chosen managers by their peers. The worst case is that those who can not manage become assigned leaders (managers) by "the management".
Re: Jason Fried: Why I Run a Flat Company
#60There's a saying in team sports along the lines of, "Players play the game; Coaches coach."
Employees play the game (ie do the work), but I think a good manager/leader can make a big difference.
Sure, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player who had good teammates, but Phil Jackson must be doing something right in order to extract the talent out of his players in just the right way to win year in and year out. And that is hard.
Perhaps there's just not very many good coaches or managers, which is why there's such distaste for "management."
But every good team, organization, or company has a great "manager" or "managers".
In the case of 37signals, it seems that person is Jason Fried (he is the CEO).