It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work audiobook

Fried and DHH are once again offering a clarion call from The Future; ignore it at your peril. This is essential reading if you've ever thought that the millenial badge of honor, being busy beyond belief, may actually be a foolish road to ruin. If you're wise enough to know that your best work is not output at hour 12, 10, or even 8. If you're fed up that the potential of your brilliant teammates is being squandered.It's easy to critique norms and far harder to illuminate other paths, and the emphasis of this book is on the latter. As always, I appreciated their succinct, clear writing style. I really appreciated that they admit how many failed ideas they tried before finding what worked for them. Unlike a lot of get-rich-quick companies who stumble into a madly profitable sector and then conclude that it was their unique secret sauce that got them there (Amazon, Google, etc), Basecamp clearly lives and breathes a spirit of kaizen.And although I can already hear the skeptics saying, "That's great for them but it won't work here...", I suggest you read this and apply just one of its practices to yourself or your team. I think you'll be happier.

I'm migrating all my reviews to my blog. If you want to read the full review with my raw notes, check it here: https://pothix.com/crazyatworkWhat a great book! The best part of this book is that there's nothing so out of this world there, they are just talking about what we should be doing.Hey, it's true, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. We can still do our best and deliver an amazing product without making ourselves miserable working like crazy to meet some made-up numbers used as "goals". We can still be ambitious and make something our users love without driving the whole team crazy. We can have a productive environment to let people do their work in the best way possible.Having a calm and productive environment is a choice.There are many great tips in this book and I already saw a situation where the solution proposed would apply.

Alternative title: 'Come work at Basecamp!'There's something weird about modern work culture, things our grandfathers have fought and died for, like the 40 hour work-week, are being unrolled, not directly by your mean bosses, but by neoliberalism/late stage capitalism's magic trick that implanted a tiny voice within yourself, telling you that if you don't give 200%, you'll be left behind. (For more discussion on this weird development, see Byung-Chul Han's Psychopolitik, or Fromm's Sane Society).One famous example is Elon Musk, who seems to flip-flop between being publicly.... weird, and telling people that you need to work more than 80 hours per week, like him. I guess there's a strong link between both. A lot of the modern Internet startup culture is like this - work yourself to the bone in hope of eventual riches (spoiler: someone else is getting rich). As a scientist there's a similar streak in our work culture, except that nobody is getting rich - and I've seen similar things in the medical profession.Jason Fried and David Hanemeier Hansson (DHH) both co-founded Basecamp (formerly 37signals?), an Internet company that posits itself as a 'calm company', a place where everybody works 40 hours at the most, a company which doesn't try to grow at all costs. That's what this manifesto is about, essentially a 'modern work culture is BS', followed by 'this is how we are doing this' points, all in short chapters.Some stuff you want to print out and glue to people's heads:Time-management hacks, life hacks, sleep hacks, work hacks. These all reflect an obsession with trying to squeeze more time out of the day, but rearranging your daily patterns to find more time for work isn’t the problem. Too much shit to do is the problem. The only way to get more done is to have less to do. Saying no is the only way to claw back time. Don’t shuffle 12 things so that you can do them in a different order, don’t set timers to move on from this or that. Eliminate 7 of the 12 things, and you’ll have time left for the 5. It’s not time management, it’s obligation elimination. Everything else is snake oil.a lot of the other stuff feels more like advertising for working at Basecamp. Yes, I know this worked for you very well and it took a lot of pressure from your employees, but it's one of many possible solutions. Without numbers or research I cannot tell whether this particular solution is 'better' (for example, yes, 40 hours makes for happier employees, and working longer than that is likely to be detrimental to the work itself - but how much detrimental is it, is it even detrimental, and what about 50, 60, 70 hours, where does it get worse? I don't think there are numbers out there for this?)But anyway, I'm hoping that this and similar books will cause a re-thinking as to how people treat their work, and their workplace, and their employees. This is one of those books that you should buy a few copies of, then leave them around for someone to serendipitously find. Not just in the business world, but also in scientific research.

I wish I can act on this effective immediately. Maybe I should give it to my boss ://

Mi-a plăcut tare mult, deși pe alocuri mi s-a părut a fi o carte despre cât de cool de Basecamp ca mediu de lucru și business. Da, sunt lucruri de bun-simț, nimic care să se fi simțit ca o revelație, însă aveam atât de mare nevoie de carte asta și a venit la fix.

Excellent book on how to build sane business.

This is the second time I've read this book (the first time I listened to the audio book) and admittedly, while I love 85% of the sentiments throughout the book, I found a few things problematic.Before we get to the problematic areas, I wanted to note a few things I did enjoy.Basecamp's outlook on company benefits and how they should aim to get the employees *out* of the office and not keep them in (like free lunches and dinners do) is spot on. And paying for employees' vacations yearly almost forces them to relax, which in this day and age we need.I also enjoyed how they employ a no-negotiation policy and how they pay their employees the top 10% market value of the employees' roles based out of San Francisco, even though their employees can live wherever they so choose. I enjoyed the "absorb before responding" workflow. It allows presentation recipients to truly think through a proposal instead of making a snap judgement.That being said, I also had some issues with the book.First, the authors, who founded Basecamp, talk a LOT about the benefits their policies have for employees. They preach it time and time again, yet we fail to actually hear about these benefits from the employees themselves. I would have liked to see some quotes from current and past employees testifying to these benefits instead of hearing about them second hand.Next, the authors seemed to contradict themselves, likely due to a lack of providing details. Each chapter is extremely short, which makes it easy to digest, but it sacrificed clarity that I personally missed.For example, they harp on the idea of "meeting free work time" and meetings as a last resort, but then later in the book describe how their chat services should be minimally used and you should never make decisions or have long chat threads. How can you possibly maintain solid collaboration, across time zones and with remote employees, if you're encouraged to NOT have meetings and NOT use chats? It seemed a bit contradictory due to a lack of explanation.This wasn't the only contradictory information I found either. Early in the book they talk about how employees don't have to let the team know where they are or if they're working. They're responsible for getting their work done but don't have to be transparent about when or where that is. However, later in the book they discuss their flexible PTO and flexible workdays and say that if an employee needs to leave early to pick up a child from school they can simply let their team know. So which is it?There was no mention of mentorship, which I would like to have seen.And lastly they discussed how consensus is NEVER feasible and you shouldn't aim for consensual decision making. But this is a very American-based mindset. In other parts of the world, they make decisions solely through consensus. America is a very top-down decision-making culture, but not every culture sees it this way. So it would be great if they could have recognized this.I feel like each chapter reads wonderfully as a standalone, however when put together into a larger narrative, a lack of oversight was apparent. I still enjoyed the book and believe every company can gain something from it, but there were a few things I took issue with that knocked it down a star for me.

Nice. It’s good to read business advice from successful business people that is so calm and takes a different line from almost any other I’ve read. Assuming working for Basecamp really is as good as the picture the authors paint then anyone working there is pretty lucky.A few stylistic quibbles aside this is a great enjoyable read. The only bit which jars for Europeans is flagging 3 weeks paid leave as something special - everyone I know gets at least 5 (excluding public holidays which are on top). But this is one detail in a book full showing a really pleasant attitude to work and business.If you happen to work for an awful employer I’m not sure if this book will irritate or inspire though!

Bam! Bam! Bam! This book shoots advice from the third gen of the way of working in software development. Will everything from this book be there in the future? No. Will everything here work for you? No. Are some things only possible if you are already highly profitable and don't have external capital? Yes.And then still there is a TON of valid points, suggestions and directions everyone should at least consider, and implement some. Or your competitors will.

Basecamp founders Jason Fried and DHH have the uncanny ability to provide a clearheaded account of their process, decisions and the outcomes that result from them in a way that inspires, drives and motivates others.Their concise writing style is a reflection of the way they intertwine utility with perspective-altering insights that challenge the status quo and cut through the BS to focus on what really matters.This is a book meant to be read and re-read regularly, a book that challenges conventional wisdom, a book that proves that you can build a business differently, according to your own rules, shaping its culture in a way that's rewarding and fair to everyone involved.I highly recommend it to anyone who's tired of business as usual and its fluff, BS and stress. There are ways to do things differently and this book gave me even more courage to do it.

The praise of calm, commited, well-formulated, thought-through work environment. An antithesis to war metaphors in business literature and the talk about the need to grow endlessly (like The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers) or the urgent need to be "happy" or "family".EDIT: There actually is one topic I actually miss in this book - the perspective of the remotely working employee of Basecamp. Just to have a glimps whether and how are those down-to-earth principles turned into practice by a "regular" team member.

I really like how committed the authors are to their ethical code. It's really awesome to see.That being said, this feels really hype-based. I'd love to see more from their employees, especially ones who have left the company.I also don't agree with all their standpoints, in fact their low-level of communication would leave me feeling isolated and unhappy most likely as an extrovert.I love how they feature their values and care so much about their employees, but I wish the book went deeper into who their company doesn't work for, because I imagine that's a lot of people.

Multe idei de luat si multe altele de combatut. Cate un exemplu pentru fiecare:De luat: principiul ‘lucrul in open space ca in biblioteca’.De combatut: lipsa oricaror obiective pe o perioada mai lunga de 6 saptamani; gandirea project-based.Una peste alta, o carte faina, care incearca sa ucida niste mituri corporatiste. Buna daca o adaptezi la situatia concreta in care te afli.

It's a great book not as a book per se, but as a proof that things can be different then we are made to believe. It's like a fairy tale that takes you in a different time and place. It shows you some things can work in the real world if you think about others as people, not as a way to achieve billions.

Great insight into surviving (and thriving) in the 9-5 work life. A bit repetitive at times.