Jason Fried Interview

One of the Cloud players that I follow is 37 signals, not just because they developed a great web framework (Rails) and have simple yet powerful applications (Basecamp, Highrise, etc.) built on top of it, but also because they are independent thinkers with a different vision on several topics. I’ve read the recent interview that Jason Fried gave to O’Reilly and found the following interesting thoughts:

- “Four-day work week”: This is the second company I heard that has 4 week days (the first was Carsonified). Although I think that a four week day job, I do believe that for most (small) companies to do this they need not just to change their mindset but also apply at the same time other rules (for instance, avoid interruptions to improve productivity, create detailed work plans for each week and stick to them).

- “So we definitely encourage passive meetings and passive collaboration, but we’re really not fans of the traditional meeting scenario”: Even thought I agree that passive meetings and passive collaboration are of great benefit, I’m also believe in traditional meeting scenarios, for instance, for project kick-offs and close downs. These specific meetings at these milestones are useful to get all project team members on the same page.

- “The idea that most offices are set up to ‚for interruption‚ they promote interruption by having”: In the past I’ve found myself working in open spaces with lots of people and the constant noise and interruption had clearly an effect on everyone’s productivity. Companies in the IT should consider building small offices where a small number of people should work or even go for private offices as Fog Creek as done in past.