I’m a big fan of Jason and pretty much everything 37signals did and Basecamp continues to do. There are some great answers in this AMA.
AMA: Jason Fried, CEO and Co-Founder of Basecamp (formerly 37signals) – Designer News
Tag: business
Being skillful and exercising your mastery is what you’re here to do. Doing anything less undermines the whole point of being alive.
There’s no such thing as a niche that’s too small if the people care enough.
“Let’s go around the room”
If you say that in a meeting, you’ve failed. You’ve abdicated responsibility and just multiplied the time wasted by the number of people in the room.
brb…Deleting SoundCloud.
The laws that are governing online music share sites were written at a time when our online and real-life landscapes were totally different. Our marching orders are coming from a place that’s completely out of touch and irrelevant. They have these legal legs to stand on that empower them to make life kind of a pain-in-the-ass for people like me. And for many of you. Countless artists have launched their careers though mash ups, bootlegs, remixes and music sharing. These laws and page take-downs are cutting us down at the knees.
And yo, musicians definitely need knees.
Zappos has apparently decided it is no longer good enough to be a qualified hire who is interested in the job. An interested applicant must also spend unremunerated time pretending to engage in virtual social relationships with existing employees. The American economy has become so warped that it now appears reasonable to a subsidiary of a leading public company to require people who may never be hired to spent large amounts of time pretending to be friends with people with whom they may never work.
This represents the convergence of at least three disturbing trends in the current American economy: the long-term unemployment of large numbers of people and the consequent power given to any company which is hiring; the technology industry’s revival of old prejudices under catchy new names; and the way that technology increasingly erodes any sense that our work selves are merely a component of our lives, rather than the entirety of our existence.
Friends without Benefits | Blog | The Baffler (via buzz)
That’s some creepy, fucked up shit right there.
PERSONALITY IS API FOR LOYALTY
Advice, like fruit, is best when it’s fresh. But advice quickly decays, and 15 year-old advice is bound to be radioactive. Sharing a life experience is one thing (grandparents are great at this – listen to them!), but advice is another thing. Don’t give advice about things you used to know. Just because you did something a long time ago doesn’t mean you’re qualified to talk about it today.
One day my manager showed me a horrible graph. It was pretty simple: the graph was steady, then it dropped straight down, then after a short period, the line shot straight back up and stayed level again: Artist’s rendering of why you probably don’t like RealPlayer much
“That’s what happens when we do the right thing”, he said while pointing at the drop, “and that’s how much money we lose. We tried it just to see how bad it was for our bottom line. And this is what the data tells us.”