37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady • Hacker News Board

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#161

Post by anamax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:27 AM UTC

larrys wrote: post #144

saraid216 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's something a bit... I don't know quite how to put it. Let's just say that I bet she'd willingly trade places with him, cash out, and go enjoy herself instead of cleaning up after other people day in and day out. See, the typical problem with claims like Fried made is that they're idealizing lives they don't know much about. But Fried didn't walk into that trap. He doesn't remark on her home life. He doesn't…

"All he says is that her business model is a good business model, and he's inspired by it." He says: "She’s been doing it some twenty-odd years, and that’s just an incredible success story. To me that’s far more interesting" I have absolutely no idea why he feels that someone who has cleaned homes for 20 years is an incredible success story. It's almost as patronizing as it is naive. What would be at least somewhat i…

> I have absolutely no idea why he feels that someone who has cleaned homes for 20 years is an incredible success story. It's almost as patronizing as it is naive.

Project much?

> What would be at least somewhat interesting is if she figured out a way to get paid 2x the hourly rate and/or get houses cleaned in 1/2 the time.

How do you know that she hasn't?

He says that she's happy. He doesn't know much about how it makes happy or how it has developed. You think that you do and you think that she's doing it wrong....

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#162

Post by anamax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:32 AM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #148

yummyfajitas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market generally does not have the power to correct for overreaching management. Can you explain this claim? Specifically, why "overreaching management" is bad for consumers, and why the market can't correct for it?

I don't personally believe that overreaching management is necessarily bad for consumers. I was just trying to preempt what seemed to be a logical reply given philwelch's previous comments. As to why the market won't necessarily correct for it, is because many times overreaching management is effective (at least in the short term). Degrade working conditions to cut costs and the consumer benefits. The information abo…

> That signal simply doesn't reach all interested parties,

Sure it does. I, the customer, see both the price and the service. If I'm willing to pay more for more service, I can do so.

And, this signal also reaches the employees as well. If you don't like it, go elsewhere. If you're right about how valuable your service is, customers will make the same choice. If you're wrong....

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#163

Post by anamax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:36 AM UTC

kenko wrote: post #70

kevin_morrill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got to see Jack Welch give a talk and he basically said the same, but about American labor unions. He said if you want job security, the answer is "customers". There is no other shortcut in business.

??? Customers won't give you, hapless employee, job security if your employers can easily replace you with someone cheaper because you have a flimsy (or no!) contract, nor will customers help you with disputes with management, or wrongful termination, or promotion from within, or even the too-little-emphasized increased potential for synergy between the ranks that unions afford, or any of the many other things that u…

> But a company that's flourishing customerwise can still have rapacious or simply bad management.

If true, so what?

You're assuming that this undefined "good management" has value that isn't reflected in the customer experience. That's simply not true. Even if the bad management only directly affects employees, they affect customers. (Good employees leave unless shackled by seniority rules, which is the only rational way to run a union.)

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#164

Post by anamax » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:41 AM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #115

philwelch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's two supermarkets in town and one is unionized, the other one will probably be better for the customer in some way, usually because they'll have lower prices. Customers either don't care about unions or slightly favor them, but the end results of a union do drive customers away. I don't think it's at all arguable that unions--at least American unions--are detrimental to the health of the businesses their em…

Unions are simply a balancing force to that of the management whose sole purpose is to extract as much profit from the enterprise. Yes, a lot of bad things can happen when unions gain too much power. But that doesn't mean unions are necessarily evil. On the contrary, they are a necessary evil, as a balancing force of the evil of the profit incentive. The free market generally does not have the power to correct for ov…

> Unions are simply a balancing force to that of the management whose sole purpose is to extract as much profit from the enterprise.

You say "profit" like it's a bad thing. It's not, it's what funds new good things. And, reducing costs is a good thing. It produces "more".

BTW - Management's goal is to extract as much profit for managers, not for the enterprise.

One big problem with the corporate model is that no one has a long term interest. No one at GM ever got fired for agreeing to the contracts that broke the company. Instead, folks did get fired for not giving in.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#165

Post by jmathai » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:42 AM UTC

quesera wrote: post #140

18pfsmt wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be pedantic, and I don't want to take this thread off topic, but IPO is a noun, not a verb. It stands for initial public offering, and I'd prefer if people claiming to be in the know could use it properly. Please don't misuse simple terminology, as it promotes misuse by the younger people who would like to create companies.

IPO has been verbed for at least 15 years in Silicon Valley. Probably longer. Your statement is both pedantic and incorrect.

Similar to Google which is commonly used as a verb.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#166

Post by jakejake » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:56 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #130

whalesalad wrote: post #18

"I won’t name names. I used to name names. But I think all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a wh…

The reason the press writes about funding rather than revenues is not some kind of conspiracy to focus on the wrong things, but simply because reporters know about funding rounds and not about revenues. It's clear that the press would write about revenues if they could, because they write a lot about the revenues of public companies. They're able to do that because public companies have to disclose their revenues. Pr…

It certainly is true that reporters can't write about numbers that they don't have. But I also think that a startup going for broke is more exciting to read about - both when they succeed as well as when they crash. A race car is more exciting to watch than a tractor.

It's surprising that 37 signals isn't labeled a "lifestyle" company, which is practically like leprosy when it comes to funding and media attention.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#167

Post by npguy » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:19 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #152

dlss wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unusually straw-mannish of you pg. From the article: "What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well?" All of those questions can be answered without needing access to a companies ledger. Jason answers those questions himself in the article. I think his point was that stories about those questions don't get as muc…

Anyone who proposes that the discussion should focus on profitability rather than funding rounds is presumably not proposing that we simply talk about it as one bit of information: profitable or not. That would make pretty short articles. It also wouldn't be very interesting; there are hundreds of plumbers and barbers and cafes within a few miles of me who are profitable. And plenty of these plumbers and barbers and…

DHH and Jason have both been making big statements on profiability and how it is good to charge your customers etc - in fact when FB was valued at 33 billion DHH wrote something that basically said it was nonsense.

Although one part of me says that the message is good, the other part says - why dont they publish their size? Like you rightly said, the value that many people would attribute to their words would vary based on size.

And the other thing is, many of these concepts that they tout might only work for a particular size. that is another reason we need to know how big they are.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#168

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:19 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #128

briandear wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't need a contract if you're adding value to the organization. If you can get replaced by someone cheaper, then you weren't worth what you were getting. Why the heck should a business pay more for the same outputs? If you're adding more value than you cost, your job is always safe. The union mentality is exactly the reason American manufacturing has left for cheaper pastures. Union employees aren't about a…

> If you can get replaced by someone cheaper, then you weren't worth what you were getting. Spoken as someone with specialist skills that are in sufficient demand and business critical enough. > I will never hire union labor ever. I would close down a business before I submitted to the extortion of unions. So in other words, clearly people need contracts - and some will need unions -, since you're making it very clea…

Unions were formed because people realized their negotiating positions were excessively weak compared to the employer-side who held all the cards. E.g. getting to the 8 hour working day, for example, took American unions many decades of struggle to achieve (and the rest of the world commemorated that struggle by making May 1st the international day for workers demonstrations in direct response to the Haymarket massacre)

Unions (and companies, countries, etc.) can't ride the wave of their past successes forever. Saying that unions were a good thing 100 years ago is not an argument that they still are.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#169

Post by apetkov » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:26 AM UTC

So nice there are more and more companies which understand that keeping their employees in comfort is so essential for the long-term success. Giving more freedom and spare time, makes people more productive during work time. No stress, no pressure = more job done. I also admire companies, that have understood that a 6-hour working day, would be more productive than the 8-hour, since time for distraction is reduced to significantly.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#170

Post by salemh » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:29 AM UTC

mikepmalai wrote: post #127

davidw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cute story, but I'd put money on people doing cleaning work, statistically, being happier doing their hobby rather than cleaning. Not all cleaning people work for investment managers that cut them in on sweet deals. Truth be told, I would guess that those are probably a minority.

I'd put money on most cleaners not having hobbies =) (Sorry couldn't help myself...I come from a family of very blue collar folks and it's a running joke that your hobby is sleep) My main point is it's hard to break years of routine/habit. If someone has done the same thing for 20 years, I don't expect them to suddenly change. Even when change would bring greater happiness over the long-term, I'm not betting against…

You are probably on to something with the lack of "retirement" (US, business and academia). Also, the change may lead to less happiness, from breaking such a long-term "routine" (I would say "life").