SEASON 2 - EPISODE 0097 - FEB 21, 2024

Keep Calm and Delete the Tweet

Join host Kimberly in this episode for a candid chat with Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Diving into a recent social media controversy, they discuss the decision-making process and lessons learned. The conversation covers the challenges of public communication, navigating social media, and the importance of thinking before reacting. Gain valuable insights into managing public image, handling controversies, and balancing authenticity with professionalism. The co-founders share personal experiences, encouraging a more thoughtful approach to online interactions and providing behind-the-scenes insights into successful business communication practices.

Watch the full video episode on YouTube

Key Takeaways

00:25 - Discussing recent social media controversy.
05:47 - Importance of debating ideas rather than attacking individuals.
07:47 - The complexity of media representation.
09:22 - Patience and perspective in online discourse.
15:21 - Occasional regrets are part of pushing boundaries.
19:44 - The complexity of tradeoffs.

REWORK is a production of 37signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website. Full video episodes are available on YouTube and X.

If you have a question for Jason or David about a better way to work and run your business, leave us a voicemail at 708-628-7850 or email, and we might answer it on a future episode.

Links & Resources

Transcript

Kimberly (00:00): Welcome to REWORK, a podcast by 37signals about the better way to work and run your business. I’m your host, Kimberly Rhodes, and I’m joined by the co-founders of 37signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. These two are very active on Twitter and it’s not very often that they post something and then pull it down. This happened recently and we thought we would talk about it and lessons that were learned during that process. Jason, do you want to kind of walk us through what happened recently?

Jason (00:25): Yeah, so I feel like a number of weeks ago someone had posted something on LinkedIn about this illustration on the basecamp.com homepage. So there are these two characters and they’re talking to each other. It’s like a scenario that’s playing out. And they don’t have eyes. And someone’s like, that is creepy. And she was great. She wrote this great piece about how she loves Basecamp, but she’s creeped out by the fact that these characters have no eyes. And we talked about this internally, some people were creeped out also, and we decided to roll without the eyes anyway, but I said, you know what? I went in the comments, I’m like, why don’t we just A/B test this for fun? We don’t really A/B test very often, hardly ever, but you know what? I don’t know, maybe the eyes are better. Some people are like, the eyes would be better and I’m not going to use the thing if there’s no eyes. We’re like, okay, why don’t we see what happensn So we did a little A/B test. So Jason Zimdars, who drew those characters, he’s one of our designers, he drew the characters with eyes. So we’ve got eyes versus no eyes. And then someone else chimed in a few days ago, basically who happened to be the CEO of a company. I mean, I dunno, should I say who it was? The company?

Kimberly (01:28): I don’t think we need to.

Jason (01:29): No, I don’t think we need to. Anyway, they’re, they’re an A/B testing software platform and he used the founder of it, and he kind of chimed in somewhere. Someone was like, I didn’t think that the 37signals people ever did A/B tests because we don’t very often. And this guy chimes in, he goes, oh, something like, I know they do, I see their account, I have access to their account or something like that. I forget exactly the words…

Kimberly (01:54): I have their data

Jason (01:55): But it was like, whoa, that’s kind of not cool. Sort of invasion of privacy there. You’re looking at our account. I don’t know what that really means, but I can see their account. I mean, I don’t know what it means, but I kind of got really irritated by it. So I went up on Twitter and I just said, I screenshotted that comment. And I said, the CEO of XYZ company said this. That’s not cool. We’re no longer going to use their products, whatever, whatever. A bunch of people chimed in on Twitter saying, yeah, screw them, what the hell, blah, blah blah, privacy violation, the whole thing. So there’s big pile on in my favor against this guy. And then I felt like, I dunno when it was 20 minutes later or something, maybe half hour.

Kimberly (02:39): It was really fast.

Jason (02:40): Was it? I just felt bad actually. I felt bad about it. I said, you know what? To myself, I’m like, I don’t don’t need to do that. I don’t really know exactly what this guy meant by that. I’ve been on the other side of that where I say something, someone takes it the wrong way and they make a big deal about it, and then it sort of spins out of control. I know I have a large platform, so here I am shining this bright light on this guy’s statement. Why didn’t I reach out to him first? So I pulled the tweet down, I wrote a little apology saying I felt bad that I did that. It wasn’t really an apology so much, it was more like I just took that down. I felt I shouldn’t do that. It wasn’t the right thing to do. It didn’t feel good.

(03:16): I should have instead reached out to him directly on LinkedIn and seen what he meant. Maybe he meant something else. Maybe he was not… my interpretation was not actually what happened. So I did do that by the way. I reached out to him on LinkedIn. We went back and forth a little bit. But what was interesting was a lot of people then saw the new tweet, of course. And it’s interesting because when you do that sort of thing, people often feel really good about it too. They’re like surprised. First of all, it’s so unusual that people would take down a tweet and they start to lavish praise on you for that. Not that that’s why I did it, but it’s very interesting to see that people are so unused to that, that someone would take something down and say, you know what? Actually my better judgment changed my mind here and I shouldn’t have done that.

(04:02): And so I think it’s just a good example of, first of all, it’s really easy, especially on Twitter to grandstand, just to throw your opinion out there. And especially when it’s a negative opinion, it’s so easy to do and to put your first thought down in words and throw it out there in the world and move on. But it’s better to actually find out what someone really meant first, give 'em the benefit of the doubt and see what happens. And hey, even if you would’ve written back, yeah, I totally looked at your account. You guys suck. I’m looking at all your stuff. Maybe I would’ve posted something about that, but I probably even wouldn’t have at that point either. I just would’ve moved on. But anyway, I think this is the kind of thing I want to do more of, frankly, which is just sort of slow down and not give into my initial impulse sometimes to say something about someone else when I certainly don’t know the whole story.

Kimberly (04:50): And I think Jason, why people resonated with your second tweet is because most people, to your point, would’ve just, if they felt bad, deleted the first tweet and just pretended like it never happened.

Jason (04:59): Well, the thing is, yeah, there’s that, or they would’ve kept it up. Or some people go like, that’s big of you and I don’t feel like it should be. It shouldn’t be big of me or big of anyone to have a second thought. And the nice thing about this is that I can delete a tweet and I can say something about it. So it’s good practice, frankly, to do that occasionally. And I don’t really, typically, I’m not negative online to begin with, so I don’t really have a lot of examples of this. But when I do do that, it’s good to feel that impulse. And if you feel bad about it, it’s okay to feel bad about it in public and say something about it. And it’s not like you’re weak or whatever people might think when you do things like that. That whole thing about that, it’s kind of ridiculous. So anyway, that was my little experience and I would encourage others to do the same if they have a second thought.

David (05:47): It’s funny because Jason says, oh, I’m not so negative online usually, I certainly have a history of being very negative online, gratuitously negative online. And I think in part I’d like to believe that after I return to Twitter, after taking some time off, I really try to live what Jason says, that we can be in opposition to ideas. We should absolutely wrestle with ideas, with approaches with. That’s the best to me of the online discourse is when we look at ideas and we debate ideas and we prod 'em and so forth. But as soon as it then takes two steps down the ladder of discourse to becoming about people, about specific individuals and how they suck or they don’t suck, that’s when I think I’ve gotten, I was about to say cured. That’s not true. That would be inhuman. No human is ever cured of the instinct to just be like, this is just the worst and you’re an idiot.

(06:52): But you can, I think, develop a better habit of pausing this, Jason say, for just a second and go, do you know what? Do I need to say this? If I do need to say it, do I need to say it specifically about this person or can I actually zoom out and make a general point that hits to the same discussion but isn’t about a specific individual? And I can remember several times in my tweeting history where I absolutely did not wait. I just jumped the gun. And you know what? I don’t want to say I don’t have a lot of regrets in life, but I do have a specific regret about this whole thing. And it was an episode with a CEO of a company that made suitcases. I’m trying to remember what the name of the company was. This was I think maybe '18, '19.

Jason (07:36): The charging ones, the ones that charge, oh, no, I know what you’re talking about. Yeah.

David (07:40): Do you remember what they’re called? I don’t remember what they’re called. We should find out.

Jason (07:43): It was a single word. Open or something. Was it like Open or something?

Kimberly (07:46): Away?

David (07:47): Away. It was away. So Away got hit by this big scandal, or that’s what it was presented at. There was something about working conditions, and then there was something about CEO had said some things in their chat instance or something that wasn’t okay. And it was written up by some journalists who presented the case in a certain way. And I thought, yeah, this sounds shitty. So I chimed in, I joined the mob on it. Yeah, this is also really bad and the CEO should be better than this, and why are they doing this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it really wasn’t until we went through our shit with that 2021 April blow up where I realized that I had a overly flattering mental model of let’s just say journalists in particular for this case, that like, hey, if someone writes a story and they put it on a reputable, that’s going to be a fair representation of reality.

(08:48): I chuckled because how naive. I don’t think that was ever true. And it certainly has become ever less true in just all the dynamics that’s bearing on journalism and so forth. But after having gone through some of that, and it is pathetic that you have to go through some of that yourself to realize that that’s actually a shitty situation. But you know what? That is how humans actually learn a lot of things. Sometimes you need to personally feel attacked, slapped, whatever to go like, oh, do you know what? Yeah, I participated in some of that. That totally fucking sucks. But now I look back upon that episode and I just fucking cringe. I haven’t deleted the tweet, so you can probably still find them. I should find them because you know what? I want to look at them and go like, do you know what?

(09:32): That was shitty. I wish I had done what Jason did in this case. And gone like, all right, there’s initial instinct here. I’m reacting to a news story or a mob and I’m joining it. And then I think about it for 20 minutes and go like, no, that’s not the right move. We should be somewhere else. We should have more grace. We should have more time to, I don’t know if I want to say let the facts come in, but get a broader understanding of what it is. How many times have you seen a story or a narrative lately where the first take, the first snapshot, it’s like the 180 of what it turns out to be. That level of patience to see how things actually pan out, it is in short supply, and I used to have it in the shortest supply of all, and I’d like to develop more of it.

(10:22): I’d like to cultivate more of it. And this is what I really liked about this episode so much because it just was a reminder that sometimes can you give it five minutes? Can you give it two days? I mean, how many tweets would there be if everyone gave anything just like five minutes or even two days to think about it before they go in full blast? There’s still things where I would like, all right, crack my knuckles. It’s time to make a thread. I had that recently with the whole Apple shebacle, right? You’re like, do you know what, no, I can’t get the apple thing more time and then come to a different conclusion. And I also don’t feel bad about firing up the brimstone for this particular case, but it’s got to be directionally, proportionally correct, if you will. And this Away case where I chimed in and I gave the CEO a hard time about something that was not proportionate or directionally correct, and it turned out, surprise, surprise that the initial reports were overinflated, there weren’t accurate, there were all sorts of things.

(11:23): That doesn’t mean there isn’t something to the story there, here or somewhere, but there’s something to a bunch of stories. And the randomness of main character syndrome on Twitter in particular, like, oh yeah, you’re it. Like this company today, we’re going to make that the center of all our two minutes of hate. It’s the worst part of social media. It really is. And what was so interesting with Jason’s case was it was in our favor in this case, if you will, and I’ve had that at times even recently. I’ve been in some discussions about ideas that then unfortunately take two steps down the ladder and become about specific companies or even specific people. And even when people show up in my favor, that’s actually usually the best mirror for me. I have now developed so much Teflon that, you know what? 10,000 people show up with pickets and pitchforks.

(12:17): And I go like, whatever, I’m going to say, whatever the fuck I’m going to say. Take this. But when people show up in my favor, I start getting suspicious quite quickly. I’m like, wait a minute here. If everyone is on my side, I’ve missed something. There’s something that’s not quite right or I made it too easy. This is also part of it, like the dunks, sometimes the dunks are just so easy that it’s like, you know what? There’s no accomplishment in that. There’s no accomplishment in scoring a goal if you’re literally twice as high as the net and you just dropping the ball into the net, no one, I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see the score count, just go like … there’s no accomplishment in that. I get highly skeptical far more often when people agree with what I have to say in a uniform way than I do if people think I’m the biggest idiot on the internet.

(13:08): Do you know what? Wouldn’t it be nice if that was a more broadly distributed sentiment? And again, I talk here, someone who found sobriety after being on a two decade bender, it’s not always very persuasive in my particular case, but sometimes you can plant a seed. And I think that’s what happened here. A few seeds were planted in my head that now when I see these particular expressions, I go like, do you know what? That could have been me on either side. I could have been the one dunking, or I could be the one dunking on. None of them feel great. We should have a little bit of grace. We should give it five minutes. We should realize that we would’ve liked someone to reach out to us and say like, Hey, do you know about this? And then we can have a fair game discussion. And it doesn’t mean kumbaya. It doesn’t mean no tension. It doesn’t mean that we will all agree about everything if we just talk about it. I also find that to be other bullshit. But you know what? There’s an opportunity that we would. There’s totally an opportunity that you have that conversation. You’re like, oh yeah, I didn’t see that. Yeah, sorry, my bad. Lemme just fix it rather than let’s light Mount Vesuvio on fire.

Kimberly (14:15): So question for you guys as co-founders and business partners, do you guys ever see what the other person has put out social media or otherwise and been like, hey, you maybe shouldn’t have said that. Do you guys have that kind of relationship where it’s like David’s his own person, he can say whatever he wants, Jason can say whatever he wants, or do you feel like you have to monitor each other’s public persona, if you will?

Jason (14:41): I tend to praise David when he uses good manners sometimes, because sometimes you’re like, I’m not sure how this is going to go, but he had good tact. I’m like, that was actually a really nice way to put it. I know how that could have gone, right? There’s some of that, but it’s never like, don’t do that. I mean, very rarely. Maybe there’s a case or two where it’s like, don’t do that. That would be a bad idea. But I think there’s some times when there’s a little bit of pre-discussion on to what degree do we want to take this? Maybe there’s some of that. I dunno, do you think it’s fair to do this or to do that or say this or say that? But still, I think we all just do our own thing.

David (15:18): Yeah, there’s not a… I mean, maybe it’d be better sometimes, I don’t know. But there isn’t a pre-filter, there isn’t like an editor that everything passes through. I mean, I barely have one inside my own head, so we don’t have one that lives outside of that. And I think, you know what? It’s one of those things where the Elon rule about progress, where if you’re not removing or if you’re not putting back 10% of what you’ve removed, you haven’t removed enough. I kind of feel like if I don’t regret, maybe not 10%, but 5% of the shit I put into the world, I didn’t push close enough to the limit, and then I won’t find all the interesting stuff that we then go like, oh yeah, that was really insightful or whatever. It can get very bland very quick. And I totally understand why a lot of people, especially on LinkedIn, by the way, that’s my love to hate platform when it comes to that.

(16:11): They’re so bland and syrupy in a way that just isn’t, it’s overused, but authentic. It feels like everything is just a masquerade ball. And I think if anything, our message, whatever it is, our tone has resonated over decades with people because it doesn’t feel like that. It doesn’t feel like we’re putting on a mask and like, let me perform content management or content marketing for you. It’s not that kind of theater. It does flow out largely unfiltered. And you have to accept that if you want that, if you want the authenticity and the fire and the enthusiasm and all of that stuff, you cannot have it without occasionally also letting something go out where afterwards you go, whoops.

Jason (17:01): I do think we are more cautious about how we speak internally. So we do talk about how is this going to land? Are people going to interpret this correctly? Are we missing something here? Does that feel too harsh? And sometimes we are going to be harsh. Yeah, it does feel too harsh and it should be for X, Y, Z reason. But we do have more deliberation around some internal announcements. Not most, most of them aren’t even in the realm of needing that discussion. But when there’s a serious one, we do have those discussions a lot more than public conversations. Like public stuff is just like, well, let’s go out in the world. That’s how it’s going to go out. And it just feels a lot less critical, frankly, than internal stuff, which I think is quite a bit different than most companies actually. Most companies are way more controlled on their public image. Things can’t go out without seeing a lawyer first or a PR firm or whatever it is. Internally they botch shit all the time probably. But externally, they’re very, very, very careful. I think we’re just the opposite, actually.

David (18:02): I feel I owe strangers a whole heck of a lot less than I owe employees. So I owe employees and coworkers, so much more deliberation. And as Jason says, it just isn’t that common. I mean, the number of times, maybe a couple of times a year, we’ll have that discussion of like, oh, okay, we’re about to announce a change in policy or something else. Let’s get several eyes on it. Let’s sleep on it a few times. If we had put all our public communication through that channel, it probably would’ve been more measured. It probably also would’ve been more boring, and we would produce a 10th or a hundredth, the volume. So that doesn’t seem like the right trade-off, and I think that is worth thinking. Who do you owe and what do you owe him? I don’t owe randos on Twitter much. They can follow. They cannot.

(18:52): I do owe employees at the company a fair bit. They cannot follow or not, so to speak. Yeah, they could quit their job or they could get fired, but that’s pretty life serious stuff. Far more than, yeah, I don’t like this idiot unsubscribe, right? So I think putting your thought process through that deliberation space is good. And as Jason says, when I look at other people’s communication, and of course you only see it from the outside, you see the Away version of it. It does look like more companies would benefit if they put more criticality, higher criticality on their internal communications than on the external one.

Kimberly (19:31): Yeah, I think especially when we’re seeing all these layoffs, the way companies are handling that as well has also become more public. So it’s like anything you handle internally, you just have to expect that it’s going to be shared externally as well.

David (19:44): Yes. And this latest thing, for example, with the layoffs, there was a case, I think it was TikTok thing with CloudFlare, and it was exactly a case where I thought, you know what? The picture that you’re seeing now, the outrage that you’re seeing getting drummed up on this one case with arguably a bad firing. Let me not even take a verdict on whether it was bad or good in terms of how that was processed. This was a salesperson who was let go, I think after four months or something. But I looked at that situation and go, like the internet, this group of strangers have utterly unrealistic expectations for what is possible. How nice can a layoff be? And I think that solution space is often where I find the most illusion, that there’s the expectation that the layoff is going to be okay. It’s going to be fine, and people are going to smile and they’re going to nod, and everyone is going to be cool with it.

(20:40): What planet are you on? There’s not any universe that exists where people go like, oh, I just lost my job, but you said it so nicely that I don’t mind. What? What? You’re going to hate your boss. They could be the nicest person in the world. They could do everything perfect and to a T, and you still want to yell in their face. There’s just conflicting interest here, and you’re not resolving them. They cannot be resolved because there are no solutions. There are only trade-offs in that space of how you lay someone off. Can you do it better? Can you do it worse? Of course you can, but the expectation that is being exhibited by strangers going, those fucking idiots. Why didn’t they just A, B, C, D, E, F, G, first of all, you’re assuming they didn’t consider A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and they did not find other reasons why those things couldn’t happen.

(21:31): How long did you give it? It was a tweet that scrolled by in your fucking timeline, you gave it about 18 seconds. You’re that fucking brilliant that in 18 seconds you can just diagnose the situation. You can survey all the competing concerns, and you go, they should just have done A, man. Why didn’t they just do A? Fucking idiots. And you can see the appeal. Who wouldn’t want to be that smart that they can diagnose the most complicated sticky situations in 18 seconds as they scroll by with whatever furry kittens and whatever else that appears in their feed, and they can just figure it all out. It really just feeds into the megalomania of anyone who sits behind a social feed like this. I’m like, it’s both tickling your outrage. Here’s an idiot. Let’s laugh at the idiot. And it’s tickling your sort of temporarily embarrassed geniusness, I could have done it.

(22:28): You should have put me in charge. And you just go like, fuck Jesus. Shut up. And I mean, again, I’m talking to myself as much as I’m talking to anyone else because I have all those same impulses. We all do, right? But we can get better at deciding when we will share those impulses. Sometimes you can also just watch a Twitter feed or whatever feed and go like, I will say the thing that pops into my head out loud, just that I don’t have to record it for the rest of the fucking world. That would be a service.

Kimberly (23:01): I love it. Well, lots of good lessons from this. Thank you guys for sharing. REWORK is a production of 37signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website at 37signals.com/podcast. Full video episodes are on YouTube and Twitter. And if you have a question for Jason or David about a better way to work and run your business, leave us a voicemail at 708-628-7850. You can also text that number and we just might answer it on an upcoming episode.