Rework

We're introducing a new segment called Last Week with Jason Fried, where Basecamp's CEO talks about a task or concern that recently fell on his plate. In this inaugural episode, Jason talks about how the end of the company's lease on its Chicago office leaves him with a big decision on how to design a space for a mostly remote workforce and whether Basecamp needs an office at all. Meanwhile, all work and no play makes Shaun a dull boy.

Our 2017 episode, "Can You Sell Water? Part 2" - 00:29The Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago - 00:37The study "The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010" was published in the October 2017 issue of Demography - 3:23Microsoft made $16,005 in revenues its first year - 5:31Wikipedia article on ichthys - 9:22"Care.com Puts Onus on Families to Check Caregivers’ Backgrounds—With Sometimes Tragic Outcomes" (Wall Street Journal, March 2019) - 12:42"103 Uber drivers accused of sexual assault or abuse" (CNN, April 2018) - 12:44KENTECH - 12:48

We're introducing a new segment called Check-Ins, where we talk to folks at Basecamp about their answers to recurring questions that get asked of everyone here. Recently, Jeremy Daer on our Security, Infrastructure, and Performance team dealt with an incident where an Internet scammer was fraudulently posing as a Basecamp recruiter to collect personal information from job seekers. We hear from Jeremy about how this scam works and from Shanae Dykes on Basecamp's Support team about how to keep yourself safe while looking for remote job opportunities.

The DHH tweet that started it all - 00:36Wailin's tweet about the Chicago Tribune - 2:23Laura Hazard Owen on Twitter - 2:55NiemanLab - 3:34Consumer Federation of California - 4:21California Senate Bill 313, which former Governor Jerry Brown signed into law in 2017 - 5:40California News Publishers Association - 6:31The New York Times' cancellation screen - 9:36The Wall Street Journal's cancellation policy - 9:43The Washington Post's cancellation policy - 9:57Pete Mortensen on Twitter - 10:12Matter Ventures (which shut down in late 2018) - 10:18Jen Sabella on Twitter - 14:54Block Club Chicago - 14:59"Billionaire Owner Shuts Down DNAinfo, Gothamist Sites A Week After Workers Unionize" (NPR) - 15:09

Read David Heinemeier Hansson's blog post and Jeremy's follow-up post on the mass-login attack.Our episode on the Big Integer outage - 00:41The big Code Red moment starts at 3:06 of this clip but c'mon, just watch the whole thing - 00:48Jim Mackenzie on Twitter - 1:15Background on the data breaches at Marriott, Equifax, and Yahoo - 1:53Jeremy Daer on Twitter - 2:10"It's a Unix system!" - 7:24Have I Been Pwned? - 13:471Password, LastPass, Dashlane - 14:52"Clever girl" - 17:24"I've got the same combination on my luggage!" - 17:29

In 2004, Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson released a framework called Ruby on Rails that has since been used by over 1.2 million web applications including Twitter, Airbnb, Hulu, and, of course, Basecamp. In this bonus episode of Rework, David talks about creativity, finding a passion, and how writing Ruby changed the way he thinks about programming.

Hello, Mallory - 00:20The Baby-Sitters Club - 00:40Aja Hammerly's website - 2:18Aja's post, "There Is No Perfect Interview" - 2:22Aja's tweets on hiring from November 2018 - 7:24A blog post by Basecamp CEO Jason Fried that talks about design challenges - 14:20Aja on Twitter - 23:15For further reading from Basecamp on this topic, Jim Mackenzie on the Support team has written some great Signal v. Noise posts about hiring: "Interview or Interrogation?" and "Under Pressure"

The IceCube website - 00:46What is a neutrino? (Scientific American) - 1:13SNOLAB in Canada is an example of a neutrino observatory located in an old mine - 1:58When neutrinos collide with other particles, a blue light is emitted. This is what IceCube detects. Read more about this blue light and IceCube in this article from the National Science Foundation - 2:13Emsisoft - 2:48Skynet satellite (and the other Skynet) - 4:38Mt. Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost active volcano on the planet - 14:00The Thing (the 1982 version by John Carpenter) - 19:28The IceCube website has an entire section about living at the South Pole - 26:53The defibrillator scene in The Thing (Warning: VERY SCARY! And gross!) - 27:39The blood test scene in The Thing (Warning: ALSO VERY SCARY AND GROSS) - 27:50

"Happy Pacifists," our episode about violent rhetoric (and its opposite) in business - 00:24"Big Integer," our episode about how Basecamp managed a major outage - 00:30"Spark Joy with DHH," our episode about applying Marie Kondo's tidying-up principles to business - 00:38Liz Fosslien's website. Mollie West Duffy's website. Their joint website. - 1:22No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions At Work - 1:28IDEO - 1:54Humu - 2:08Gretchen Rubin - 12:09The Shultz Hour, named after former Secretary of State George Shultz - 19:25Liz and Mollie on Instagram - 35:42The Book Table - 36:00"Independent Women," the episode of our previous podcast about Women & Children First bookstore - 36:03

Signal v. Noise - 1:49Episode 01, "Sell Your By-products" - 2:00"Signal v. Noise moves to Medium" - 2:37Jason Fried and Adam Stoddard - 2:48Medium's changed policy on custom domains - 3:55Medium's membership program - 6:10A Vox article on how Tumblr's ban on adult content negatively affects the broader community - 7:30History of WordPress - 9:55A Quartz article on how WordPress employees work remotely - 10:03Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress - 10:15"Medium has been great for us" - 15:51An Atlantic article about seasonally attired porch geese - 20:00

Marie Kondo’s official website - 00:14Marie Kondo's interpreter is Marie Iida and here's a Quartz interview with her - 00:28Author Courtney Milan's Twitter thread on Marie Kondo's misunderstood advice about books - 00:49Everything Wailin learned about arguing on social media she learned from DHH in the "Pick A Fight" episode of Rework - 1:00The Life Changing-Magic of Tidying Up - 1:12Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck - 6:42The history of the We Work Remotely job board is written up in the last entry of this page of the Basecamp handbook - 9:06Basecamp decided to sunset Highrise in 2018. Read Jason's note on the Highrise website - 9:32

On Thursday, November 8, Basecamp 3 went down for almost five hours. It was the worst outage to hit the company in a decade and a stress test of Basecamp's practices around internal communication, customer support, and calm work. Today's episode goes inside the company on November 8 to see how the outage unfolded.Show NotesJason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson's most recent book, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work - 1:41Basecamp's Support team - 6:03Basecamp's Status page - 6:40DHH's timeline from November 8 and his post-mortem, published on Signal v. Noise - 6:46Our episode on "How to Say You're Sorry" - 15:57

We tried to record an episode, but there were more important things to talk about. See you in 2019 with more episodes of REWORK.

After yet another round of revelations about Facebook's use of customer data, Basecamp has decided to become 100% Facebook-free. We've actually been off Facebook proper for a while, but on Wednesday we decided to remove the company from Instagram and WhatsApp as well. This is a conversation with Basecamp's CTO, David Heinemeier Hansson, about making that decision and why he thinks you should follow in Basecamp's footsteps.

On the last episode of Rework, we talked about the dangers of using violent language in a business context. We've had to grapple with other kinds of problematic language at Basecamp as well. In this mini bonus episode, Shaun talks to programmer Jeremy Daer about shedding harmful terms for database relationships that persist in the industry.

The Brigham Young/Utah "Holy War" game is so famous it gets its own Wikipedia entry - 00:03Steve Jobs' quote about going "thermonuclear" against Android was first revealed in Walter Isaacson's biography - 1:18Joshua Gubler's website - 1:49David Wood's website - 1:57Joshua Gubler and David's research, conducted with Nathan Kalmoe of George Washington University, was published in the Journal of Business Ethics in September 2015 - 3:20Planet Money did a story about The Art of War's popularity in business culture - 9:33If you have anxiety about late-stage capitalism like Wailin does, you should read this article by Alexis Madrigal - 11:08The Center for Nonviolent Communication - 13:07Check out Elizabeth's previous appearance on Rework - 13:25

Books by Basecamp - 00:18Harper Business - 3:52Adam Stoddard, Basecamp's marketing designer and the designer of the new book's cover - 4:01Jason Zimdars, Basecamp designer and book illustrator - 5:26Mike Rohde, the illustrator for Rework and Remote - 5:45Charles Darwin on Daily Routines, a blog that became the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, edited by Mason Currey. The book was an important reference for the illustrations. - 7:05Jason Zimdars' Signal v. Noise post on how he illustrated the new book - 18:20You can watch the entire pilot of Small Wonder on YouTube, or you can be like Shaun and staunchly refuse because you find the entire thing creepy, which is also fair. - 10:20The Economist review of the book (you might hit a paywall) - 13:49Blade Runner 2049 baseline test - 25:55You can read David's write-up of the book launch debacle on Signal v. Noise.

Rachel Ernst, VP of employee success at Reflektive - 00:41Reflektive’s #MyWorstPerformanceReview contest and the winners - 2:12Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson’s classic screed against fundraising and startup culture - 7:00Reflektive’s press release on its $60M Series C - 7:32Watch a real-life design review with Conor and Basecamp CEO Jason Fried - 13:46Hey, did you know we at Basecamp haaaaaaate meetings with the fire of a thousand suns? - 19:24Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 3 (Pastoral), 4th Movement - 26:00

Behold the wonder of raclette - 00:59Looking for a calm company while job searching - 2:33How a business that deals with clients can work more calmly - 4:24The 37signals manifesto - 6:03Applying calm principles in a school setting - 8:40The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say most schools start too early - 10:24Alfie Kohn’s website. DHH recommends Punished by Rewards and The Myth of the Spoiled Child - 11:50How to start a calm company when there’s limited runway - 13:51Listen to our previous episode, “You Need Less Than You Think“ - 16:11How Basecamp recovers from periods of non-calm - 19:05Healthy ways for co-founders or partners to disagree - 22:56J.P. Graziano, the Italian sub shop where Shaun buys lunch almost every day. We also featured the business on this episode of our previous podcast. - 28:19

Our previous episode - 0:11It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson - 0:19Rework by Jason Fried and DHH - 0:37The story of Squatty Potty - 1:13This Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop, the original viral video - 1:28