SEASON 2 - EPISODE 116 - JULY 3, 2024

Listener Questions: HR Edition

In this episode, Andrea LaRowe, Head of People Operations at 37signals, joins host Kimberly Rhodes to answer questions about the company’s HR practices. They discuss the company’s management structure and performance evaluations and what the company looks for when hiring. Andrea also shares what’s involved in the All Hands meeting and tips for planning a company meet-up.

Watch the full video episode on YouTube

Key Takeaways

00:42 - Meet Andrea
02:19 - 37signals’ managerial structure and one-on-one process
06:15 - 360 evaluations and annual employee reviews
09:38 - What job applicants can do to stand out
12:45 - All-hands meetings
17:21 - Company meetups
21:57 - Hiring employees using the ‘manager of one’ concept

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. Well, at the end of every podcast episode, I ask for listeners to submit questions for Jason or David. This week I’m bringing in a special guest to answer some questions that we got related to the Human Resources operations at 37signals. So to answer those questions, I have our Head of People Ops, Andrea LaRowe. Andrea, before we dive into these questions, tell our listeners a little bit about you and what you do at 37signals.

Andrea (00:33): Sure. Hey Kimberly, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kimberly (00:37): So glad to have you.

Andrea (00:39): Yeah, it’s good to see you as always. So my name’s Andrea LaRowe. I am the head of People Ops at 37signals. I live in Chicago. People Ops at 37signals is HR. So me and my teammate Bethany, it’s just a team of two. We handle everything under the HR umbrella, so that’s everything from employee relations, employee engagement, performance management, benefits and compensation policy, legal, all of those things. So it’s between the two of us, we get it done.

Kimberly (01:10): And how long have you been with the company?

Andrea (01:12): I’ve been with 37signals since 2011. Oh my goodness. So 13 years.

Kimberly (01:17): And as the internet might say, you are not married to Jason Fried?

Andrea (01:22): No, no, I’m not. However, I have explored whether or not that article gives me some sort of legal claim to the business or the property. Yeah, so far it doesn’t.

Kimberly (01:33): That came up at one of his speeches or one of his talks that he did. Someone said, Andrea, your wife, and he clarified Andrea is not my wife.

Andrea (01:42): That would be someone else. Yes.

Kimberly (01:45): Well, let’s dig right in to these questions. The first one is an email that we got from Luca. It’s kind of a long one. Let me read it to you and then we’ll break it apart. Luca writes, I’m curious to learn about how you approach people management. Does everyone have a formal manager? Do they have weekly one-on-one meetings? Since you often say to not have full-time managers, how does a part-time manager balance the management work, like doing one-on-ones or performance reviews with the other priorities of the function? So let’s maybe start at the top. Does everyone have a formal manager here at 37signals?

Andrea (02:18): Yes, everyone has a manager. However, I will caveat that with that everyone has a manager, but the involvement of that manager depends very much on the team and very much on the seniority of the person being managed. So we have a tiered system for any role at 37signals, all the way from level one junior employee up through level five principal employee. So you might have a junior customer support rep or a senior programmer or a principal designer. So kind of the farther up you are on the ladder, the less formal management you have, the less oversight you have, and of course the more junior you are or if you’re newer to the company, the more typical manager relationship you’re going to have.

Kimberly (03:03): And then tell me about the one-on-one meeting processes, how different managers and employees work together.

Andrea (03:11): Again, it totally depends on the team. We strongly encourage everyone to have recurring one-on-ones with their reports. However, the cadence of that is very much up to the individuals planning the one-on-ones, usually it’s twice monthly. Once monthly, definitely at least once per cycle, which is every six weeks. But whatever works for the people on the team works for me.

Kimberly (03:34): Okay, perfect. And then the third part of Lucas’s question is about full-time managers versus part-time managers.

Andrea (03:40): Right

Kimberly (03:41): Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Andrea (03:43): Yeah. Most of our managers, if not all of our managers pull double duty. So we don’t have any people on staff who are solely people managers. They’re always doing some other sort of contributor role, individual contributor role. So the way that we make that work, I mean it’s taken a lot of trial and error, a lot of experimentation, but something we’re finding working really well, particularly on our programming team, is pairing our more senior staff with our more junior staff. So it’s a one-to-one manager report relationship or a one to two where our more senior staff are responsible for overseeing the work of the more juniors. So there’s not an engineering manager overseeing the entire programming team, but it’s more of almost peer to peer, like a mentor mentee relationship than a true manager direct report relationship. That being said, there’s management duties that go along with that role. So our senior staff are overseeing the work. They’re doing code reviews, they are helping their mentees kick off major cycle projects, verifying their approach to how they’re going to tackle those. They are doing the admin of management like one-to-ones and performance reviews. So the idea is giving them fewer people to do that work with means that they’re spending less time doing it and have the time that they need to focus on their cycle work, which is their primary job.

Kimberly (05:16): Has that changed over time? Do we ever have people who are just managers and not actually individual contributors as well?

Andrea (05:23): Yes. Yeah, definitely. We’ve had engineering managers, we have people in director capacities where a larger part of their job is managing people. But we find that having the, I dunno, the technical knowledge and technical skills and the job that you’re really doing day to day, having that common ground, it makes for a more productive relationship for the people on the team.

Kimberly (05:48): Okay, excellent. Okay, our next question came as a text message from Joshua. Joshua said, I love Rework podcast and the Rework book. Thank you for all great content each week. I do have a question related to people management side of the house. I’ve heard Jason mention in a previous podcast episode that you used to do 360 reviews at 37signals, but don’t anymore. Why the change? Are you doing something else in its place? So Andrea, just for people who might not know, what is a 360 review just to get that first off the table?

Andrea (06:19): Yeah, so a 360 review is a type of performance review where you’re pulling feedback from people all around you. So your manager is giving you feedback, your peers, you’re getting feedback from your peers and you’re providing yourself with feedback or reflection I guess. So it’s meant to give a 360 degree picture of your performance. And we did use to do them. We stopped doing them a few years ago basically because they were a lot of effort. That’s a lot of people that you’re talking to and pulling in and we weren’t getting the right return on that effort. Your manager is the closest to your work, the most invested in the work that you’re doing and your progression and how you’re doing as well as yourself. You’re invested in the work that you’re doing and your progression. Your peers might have bits and pieces of what you’re doing and some investment in that, but not to the degree that you and your manager do.

(07:17): So we kind of just got rid of the peer section of that. And now we just do annual manager reviews, annual. So your manager is scoring you on your job performance and kind of indicating where they’d like to see you perform in the future, where you’re doing well, where you could do better. And then the self-reflection is the same format, just asking about yourself, what your goals are, where you think you performed well in the past year, what you would like to focus on going forward. And so part of that is narrative. You’re writing out your goals, you’re writing out what you did well, where you’d like to improve. And then there’s also a matrix where we indicate any performance review, did not meet expectations, met expectations, exceeded expectations in the areas that we’ve identified for each role, what our expectations are per level.

Kimberly (08:09): So this isn’t one of the questions, but I know it ties in. I’ve heard Jason and David both talk about the one year review and how that’s so important to us. Kind of talk us through that a little bit.

Andrea (08:21): So our employees have an annual review cadence, but our new employees have reviews, like the reviews I just talked about at the three month mark and at the six month mark and then again at the 12 month mark just so that we’re sure they’re on the right trajectory for that first year, which is super important. And the first year is very important here. So that’s the time that we kind of sit back, reassess, reevaluate if we are as happy with the decision that we made to hire at the year mark as we were on your first day, we invite the employee to do the same, right? Are you happy you joined the team? Is everything going well? Is this what you thought it would be? And if we both are happy about it and we’re both hell yeah, is what David likes to say, if we both say, hell yeah, we’re happy, then we can kind of move forward. And that’s when people transition into the once a year cadence for reviews.

Kimberly (09:16): Okay, perfect. Next question is a text message from Jake who wrote, I assume that you get hundreds if not thousands of applications for open positions. The first round of culling goes through the human resources department, he’s assuming. If that’s the case, what helps a candidate stand out to get through the first round? Are you using AI or other tools to screen applications?

Andrea (09:40): First, no AI. We use nothing. Every application that hits our inbox gets read in full by a human being either me or Bethany, who is my counterpart on the people ops team. And we do see hundreds if not thousands of applications per role. We just closed a programmer position and I think we saw 1500 for one open role. So it’s time consuming, but the benefits we get from actually having a human read them, it’s worth it. As far as standing out, I think the best thing you can do to stand out is just present a well-written, well-crafted application. We’ve seen people design web pages when they’re applying for a programmer or design role, which is eye catching, but it’s not necessarily going to be an automatic pass through if you do something like that. Something that does another thing that’s helpful, I wouldn’t say it’s going get you through automatically, but is code. So if you have open source code that you can share with the team, people do look at that and it’s like a helpful little supplement to your application. But really it’s just if you can write a good cover letter that’s clear, concise, not like eight pages and talks about your background and talks about what you would bring to the company and your skills and your experience match up with what we’re looking for, that’ll get you through. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy or gimmicky.

Kimberly (11:14): And I’ve also heard David say that even though we’re saying might be a thousand applications, probably half of those aren’t even just following the rules of this is what we need for you to apply. Half of them can just be thrown in the trash because they’re not following instructions.

Andrea (11:29): Totally. And the cover letter is important. We’ve gotten a little bit away from that being, I give equal weight to cover letters and resumes now, maybe in the past we’ve kind of weighed the cover letters a little bit more, but they’re still important. You have to be a good writer if you want to work here. Most of our communication’s in written form, and that’s something that we expect of anybody no matter the role, even if you’re a technical role, we expect you to be a good writer. So the cover letter that needs to be there, it doesn’t need to be the most amazing beautiful cover letter in the history of cover letters, but we are going to read it and we want to see, want to see what makes you stand out from the other 1,499 people.

Kimberly (12:14): I mean, that’s just crazy to be honest. I don’t know how you guys do it when you’re looking at every single application. It’s a lot. Okay, next question comes from Nick. This was actually a comment on YouTube and this one is actually very timely since we just had an All Hands meeting today. Nick said, love these episodes. Thanks. Content request. I’d love to know how 37signals does All Hands meetings, if you do them. We do do them. We just did one today.

Andrea (12:38): We do. We just had one like an hour ago.

Kimberly (12:40): I know. Andrea, tell us how they work. I know you’re the one who organizes them, but tell us about All Hands meetings at 37signals.

Andrea (12:48): We don’t do 'em often. I think other companies do 'em a lot more frequently than we do. We have them once a cycle during the cooldown period. So after everyone’s ostensibly done with their cycle work and they’re about an hour, they’re remote, they’re on Zoom, and they’re typically the same basic structure. So Elaine hosts them, our COO Elaine Richards hosts the call and they’re about an hour long and she kicks 'em off with updates, big updates about the company or the people. Today she welcomed Bruno, one of our new programmers who started a couple weeks ago. We had a handful of employees with either new babies or babies on the way.

Kimberly (13:31): Baby announcements

Andrea (13:32): I know baby fever. So we kind of gave our props to our coworkers who are having kids. And then it kind of moves to updates, team updates. So sometimes Jason will give a product update.

(13:46): Today, JZ, one of our principal designers gave an update on a new product that’s launching. JZ gave an update on that and a tour, a demo of that, what Haas and Merissa gave an update on Community our Basecamp community. And Jay gave an update on stuff the mobile teams, some dev tools that the mobile team’s working on. So we try to mix it up so that different teams kind of get the spotlight a little bit and we get to hear directly from them what they’re working on, what they’re excited about, what their plans are. And then we do peer appreciation, which is usually a big hit. We didn’t have any today. I think everyone’s been kind of crazy busy, but we invite people to give a little talk about some people that they’ve worked with that they want to kind of give some kudos and a shout out to for the work that they’ve done. So like I said, it’s an hour. It moves at a pretty good clip. And so that’s the remote ones. And then we also do All Hands at the meetup, which are longer and a little more involved. So we do what the mornings usually like Monday or Tuesday morning of the meetup, and David and Jason and Elaine will sit for those. And so those are more long-term thinking, what’s going on, long-term products that are coming down the pipeline, ideas that they have. It’s a little more, it’s a little bigger than the…

Kimberly (15:08): And a little more formal I feel like

Andrea (15:09): Yeah, a lot more formal presentation. There’s slide decks and it’s a lot more to it and a lot more q and a. I feel like that’s when people really raise their hands and because they have the opportunity to talk in person directly with the founders and the executive suite. So yeah, those are a little different.

Kimberly (15:28): So we do have a question about Meetup, but before I get to that, tell me a little bit about timing of All Hands meetings, knowing we’re a global company and there’s people in all different time zones, is there a standard for how we organize those and timing of those meetings?

Andrea (15:43): We did it at 10 o’clock US Central Time today, and that’s about the time that we set them. We want to capture as many people as we can. So we’re thinking of our West Coast, US people. We’re thinking of our EU people. I mean, we can’t really get APAC in there, our Australia, Asia people, but we do record it. So every time we do record the Zoom and post it immediately after. So if people do miss it or if it’s a bad time for them, they can watch it later.

Kimberly (16:15): And I also know that Jason has said before in a previous podcast that these all hands meeting, it’s not like they’re required. Everyone typically comes if they can, but it’s not like anyone’s taking attendance or noting if you’re not there, it’s just here’s another meeting. If you can go to it, go to it. Is that kind of the feeling at your level as well?

Andrea (16:35): Definitely, yeah. I would never notice if someone wasn’t there. I would notice if half the company wasn’t there and it’d be something to kind of look into. But I mean, I think people come because they want to. It’s like an opportunity to see everybody’s faces and take a step back and listen to what some other teams have been working on.

Kimberly (16:55): Excellent. And that brings us to our last question, which is about Meetup. An email from Jessica. She said, I saw in one of the 37signals videos on YouTube that the HR team plans your company meetup. I’m about to start working on our first ever company meetup, and I’m curious if there are things that typically go over very well or things that should absolutely be avoided. Love the podcast and all that you guys do. Thanks so much. Andrea you’ve been the planner of these for as many years as you’ve been there, I assume. I’m sure you’ve learned a lot.

Andrea (17:26): But your first one, that’s hard.

Kimberly (17:32): No pressure, Jessica.

Andrea (17:33): Yeah, Jessica. Gosh, that’s tough. No, of course. Learned a lot. I love meetups. First of all, we do 'em twice a year and it’s super energizing to be in the same space as everyone. When you’re used to working from behind a screen, it’s just a different energy. So they’re super worth it, in my opinion. It’s a lot of work on our end on the planning end. It’s a lot of work on people. They’re leaving their families and their homes, but it’s worth it. And it’s twice a year, so it’s not a huge ask. So I think your first meetup, if you’re planning your first meetup, that’s a different animal.

(18:15): I think you kind of overdo the planning when you’re getting together in person for, I’m assuming they’re all remote. So if you’re getting together in person for the first time, you kind of got to over-engineer some opportunities for togetherness and getting people to talk.

Kimberly (18:30): Forced fun as we like to call it.

Andrea (18:31): A little bit of forced fun, a little bit of kind of, I don’t know, behind the scenes management. So something that we did last time, we went to Atlanta in what April. And something that was really useful was getting with the teams ahead of time, long before four to six weeks before the meetup. I sat with all the teams and said, okay, you guys as a team need to sit down and you need to figure out what you want to accomplish while we’re in Atlanta. Because if you get there, it’s easy to kind of fall into what your normal day-to-day work is, right?

(19:08): You just kind of do your work in a different location, but it’s about maximizing your time together and taking the opportunity to get some work done that you might not necessarily get done as well in a remote setting. And that went really well. People came out of the meetup saying like, wow, I feel like I got a lot done and I feel very, I don’t know, accomplished after that one. So I think being clear about what you want to accomplish. For us Meetup is about togetherness, fellowship, socializing. It’s also about productivity in a way that you’re not getting from your normal remote daily work and part of the fellowship and part of that part of it is socializing. So also allowing free time, allowing time, encouraging teams to get out of the meeting space, out of the hotel and I dunno, do an escape room, grab a coffee, do something that’s about building team cohesion, not just the work.

(20:10): So that goes over really well. I know another kind of social thing is the small dinners are really…

Kimberly (20:15): It’s like one of my favorite things actually.

Andrea (20:18): Same. So Bethany and I set up, I don’t know, 10 reservations on Tuesday night and 10 reservations on Wednesday night with six spots each for each restaurant. And then people just sign up for the restaurant that they’re interested in. And the idea is that you’re signing up with people that you don’t know very well. So someone I don’t work with, well, I work with everybody, but say somebody on Ops doesn’t really necessarily work with somebody on Support super often, so maybe they join a dinner together. So that’s something that we’ve done for a long time that we’re still doing even after a lot of meetups that is still going strong.

Kimberly (20:56): Is there anything that you’ve done that you’re like, oh, I’ll never do that again?

Andrea (21:00): Oh, I mean probably a lot I’ve blocked out.

(21:09): I’ll say just over from a planning perspective, and Kimberly, you know this too, it’s like over plan a little bit, get a little too involved in people’s lives and be like, okay, so what are you guys going to be working on? And then what’s the All Hands agenda going to be and what’s the timing going to be like and what are the tables going to? I mean, the logistics stuff is pretty important, but also knowing how the time is going to be spent, why you’re spending the time that way and inserting yourself in as seamless way as possible to help people accomplish what they want to accomplish. And especially leadership. What is leadership doing there? Why are they there? What do they want to do? And then how can you help them achieve that?

Kimberly (21:52): That’s great. Those are all the listener submitted questions, but Andrea, is there anything that you think we do at 37signals that’s unique that we should be sharing that maybe someone didn’t ask about?

Andrea (22:02): Well, I neglected to mention our Managers of One value, and I think that that’s important. If we’re going back to our management structure and performance management, we have these managers or these part-time managers or moonlighting managers, whatever you want to say because, and the reason we’re able to do that, and the reason it works for us is because we hire people who are able to be managers of one. And that’s a value going back from before my time since the inception of the company, we’ve hired people who are able to independently see the work that needs to be done in their purview, conceptualize the steps needed to do the work and then execute the work. And so managers are there to clear the way as a sounding board, like, Hey, this is what I’m thinking. This is my approach. What do you think? How should I tweak? What can I do? And so I think the reason our really lightweight management structure works the way it does is because of the people that we hire. We hire people who are able to embody that value and someone who needs a lot of detailed direction, somebody who needs a lot of daily oversight just wouldn’t succeed here. So I think when you’re considering your management structure or performance management in general, you’ve got to go all the way back to the people that you’re hiring.

Kimberly (23:27): That’s great. Well, we are not currently hiring right now, but if you are interested in getting on the email list to know when there are job openings, that’s at 37signals.com/jobs. I know that’s how I found my position here was just being on that email list. Andrea, thank you for being with us. This has been great. Rework is a production of 37signals, so you can find show notes and transcripts on our website at 37 signals.com/podcast. Full video episodes are on YouTube and Twitter. And if you have a question for Jason or David or Andrea about a better way to work and run your business, leave us a voicemail at 7 0 8 6 2 8 7 8 5 0. You can also text that number or send us an email to rework@37signals.com.