37signals

Since reading and blogging about Getting Real, I've become more interested in what 37Signals has to say. I've started perusing their Signal vs Noise Blog from time to time and have found a couple more gems worth sharing.

The first post that caught my eye was a response to Jason Calacanis' now infamous post on how startups can save money. I had already read what Calacanis has to say and found it to be generally good advice. If you want to get the most out of people, you should indeed set them up for success. But I was irked by the same point that David at 37Signals was, that Calacanis recommended firing non workaholics, and was interested to read the response post Fire the workaholics. Clearly there is a happy medium, but I found that I generally agreed with the 37Signals point of view, that working smarter not longer should be a priority. This is clearly a heated topic near and dear to people's hearts, exemplified by the outrage at the original post. Just read the comment stream to see how sensitive a topic this really is. Clearly there is a need to work hard and put in extra hours from time to time, but some of the studies mentioned in the comments talked of the effect working long hours can have on motivation. It seems that, in the long run, more hours to a point does not equate to increased productivity. It's counter intuitive, but then that's psychology for you.

The second post that I fell in love with was this one about Questioning your work. It lists a series of questions to ask yourself before embarking on a new project or even when starting simpler tasks. If you are really doing the right thing, the answers to these questions will confirm that. But if you are undertaking folly, asking yourself these questions will help you realize it. What are we doing and is it worth it? What else could I do that might be better than this? Is there an easier way to do this? I will surely ask myself these questions and others like them more often in the future.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

I've recently started working with our web team at EQO, which has been quite fun.  Web developers and designers tend to be quite interesting people, usually more trendy and social than your typical engineer type (me).  At EQO, our web team is dually focused on product development and marketing content pages, which has produced some interesting contentions.  No one was hurt, nothing serious!  But I've since become interested in how to optimally produce web services and work with web developers and designers.

A friend recently pointed me in the direction of Getting Real, a free 37Signals ebook on the best ways to build web applications.  I now consider myself a disciple and recommend that anyone and everyone in the tech field, not just web people, read this book.  It's short and simple message is pure gold and is well worth the few hours it might take you to read it.  Seriously, every page either taught me something new, prompted change in my behavior, or affirmed some of the good things that I do.  Their message in short is keep it small, keep it focused, be honest, and make it simple!

Another precious gem that has caught my eye of late is Brook's law, which states "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".  This is contrary to conventional wisdom, but my experience has generally proven this to be true.  I thought this was a great concept to grasp and being mindful of it will surely help me in the future.

Lastly, this Seth Godin post about working with designers was very humbling in a good way.  While professional design is not an art contest, designers do like to do their own thing.  Micromanaging and constraining designers is a surefire recipe for disaster.  The fact that I suck at design is why I'm not the designer; it's all about trust.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist