It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

What we don’t do are riddles, blackboard problem solving, or fake “come up with the answer on the spot” scenarios.

This is how companies hire the wrong people all the time. They hire someone based on a list of previous qualifications, not on their current abilities.

Nobody Hits the Ground Running

The skills and experience needed to get traction in one place are often totally different somewhere else.

At Basecamp, we’ve designed the organization to be largely manager-free. This means people are generally responsible for setting their own short- to medium-term direction and will only get top-level directives.

That can be an uncomfortable setup when someone is used to having more hands-on, day-to-day dire...

The same is true if they’re the kind of senior person who’s used to getting stuff done mainly by directing others to do it. At Basecamp, we all do the work, so influence is most effectively exerted by leading the work, not by calling for it.

It’s especially tempting to think that if you work in a small company, you could really benefit from someone with the experience from a big company to help you “grow up.” But trying to teach a small company how to act like a big one rarely does anyone any good.

You’re usually better off finding someone who’s familiar with the challenges at your company’s size or thereabouts.

The fact is that unless you hire someone straight out of an identical role at an identical company, they’re highly unlikely to be instantly up ...

The quickest way to disappointment is to set unreasonable expectations.

Ignore the Talent War

Stop thinking of talent as something to be plundered and start thinking of it as something to be grown and nurtured, the seeds for which are readily available all over the globe for companies willing to do the work.

Even if you had the most precious orchid planted in your garden, it would quickly die without the proper care.

We look at people’s actual work, not at their diploma or degree.

We’ve found that nurturing untapped potential is far more exhilarating than finding someone who’s already at their peak.

It takes patience to grow and nurture your own talent. But the work it takes—tending to the calm-culture soil—is the same work that improves the company for everyone.

Don’t Negotiate Salaries

To be paid fairly at most companies, it’s not enough to just be really good at your job. You also have to be an ace negotiator.

Most people aren’t, so they end up getting shortchanged—sometimes making less money than more junior ...

The thing is, most people just don’t enjoy ha...

So why do companies subject everyone to such a lame game year after year?

Everyone in the same role at the same level is paid the same. Equal work, equal pay.

We assess new hires on a scale that goes from junior programmer, to programmer, to senior programmer, to lead programmer, to principal programmer (or designer or customer support or ops or whatever role we’re hiring for). We use the same scale to assess when someone is in line for a promotion.

Once every year we review market rates and issue raises automatically.

Our target is to pay everyone at the company at the top 10 percent of the market regardless of their role.

Our market rates are based on San Francisco numbers despite the fact that we don’t have a single employee there. San Francisco is simply the highest-paying city in the world for our industry. So no matter where you choose to live, we pay the same top-market salaries.

The important part isn’t really whether you can afford to pay salaries based on the top city in your industry or at the top 10 percent of the market, but that you keep salaries equal for equal work and seniority.

We encourage remote work and have many employees who’ve lived all over the world while continuing to work for Basecamp.

We don’t pay traditional bonuses at Basecamp, either, so our salaries are benchmarked against other companies’ salaries plus bonus packages.

(We used to do bonuses many years ago, but we found that they were quickly treated as expected salary, anyway. So if they ever dipped, ...

There are no stock options at Basecamp because we never intend ...

So here’s what we do instead: We’ve vowed to distribute 5 percent of the proceeds to all current employees if we ever sell the company. No stock price to follow, no valuation to worry about. If something happens, we’ll share. If not, no need to spend any time thinking about it.

If total profits grow year over year, we’ll distribute 25 percent of that growth to employees in that year.

But Basecamp isn’t a startup. We’ve been in our current business as a software company since 2004. It’s a stable, sustainable, and profitable enterprise.

No compensation system is perfect, but at least under this model, nobody is forced to hop jobs just to get a raise that matches their market value.

At the time of publication of this book, a notch over 50 percent of our employees have been here for five years or more.

Churning through people because you’re trying to suppress the wages of those who stay just seems like poor business.

There’s a fountain of happiness and productivity in working with a stable crew. It’s absolutely key to how we’re able to do so much with so few at Basecamp. We’re baffled that such a competitive advantage isn’t more diligently sought.

Benefits Who?

Have you heard about those companies whose benefits include game-console rooms, cereal snack bars, top-chef lunches and dinners, nap rooms, laundry service, and free beer on Fridays? It seems so generous, but there’s also a catch: You can’t leave the office.

Consider the free dinner for employees who stay late. How is staying late a benefit?

There’s an uncanny correlation between the companies with these kinds of benefits and the companies that can’t stop talking about the need to push work to the max.

Dinners, lunches, game rooms, late nights—these mainly exist at companies that work 60-plus hours a week, not 40.

We aren’t looking to get the most out of everyone, we’re only looking for what’s reasonable.

That’s why we look at benefits as a way to help people get away from work and lead healthier, more interesting lives.

Benefits that actually benefit them, no...

Here’s a list of relevant “outside the office” benefits we offer all employees, regardless of position,

Fully paid vacations every year for everyone who’s been with the company for more than a year. Not just the time off, but we’ll actually pay for the whole trip—airfare, hotel accommodations—up to $5,000 per person or family.

Three-day weekends all summer. May through September we only work 32-hour weeks. This allows everyone to take Friday off, or Monday off, so they can have a full thre...