Equilibria, a company that makes CBD products for women, has a team of dedicated dosage specialists who do one-on-one consultations with customers. During the pandemic, this team has taken on an unprecedented amount of customer support—bearing witness to the heightened stress and anxiety that their...
Running a Calm CompanyUnlimited paid time off is a common perk in the tech industry, but as one company discovered, an open-ended vacation policy led to confusion and even burnout. Dan Jimenez of Chatbooks comes on REWORK to talk about how they shifted from unlimited to mandatory PTO, and how they’re recalibrating...
Running a Calm CompanyBasecamp recently suffered three outages in a week. Programming lead Jeremy Daer and director of operations Troy Toman come on the show to discuss their approach to customer communication around these kinds of incidents. They talk about public accountability, mental health, and why the human side of...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Running a Calm CompanyWe at Basecamp love to preach the virtues of the 8-hour work day, but where did it come from? (Hint: Not from Henry Ford!) Labor historian Emily Twarog explains the origins of the 8-hour work day and why it was so short-lived in the U.S.
Running a Calm CompanySahil Lavingia once believed his startup was headed for unicorn status, but his journey through Silicon Valley—the viral launch on Hacker News, $8 million in venture capital, the glowing press—led to a very different outcome. In this episode, Sahil reflects on life outside the literal and figurative...
Running a Calm CompanyWorkplace cultures in politics and tech share many similarities: Overwork is glorified; long hours are the norm; employees are expected to respond to communication instantly, no matter the day or time; and those that opt out are seen as lacking hustle or ceding ground to competitors. Marty...
Running a Calm CompanyWe’re back from summer break! It’s time to get back to work, but it’s important not to overdo it. In this episode, Ty Fujimura, president of web design firm Cantilever, talks about how he escaped the Cult of Overwork; why it’s important to rethink the relationship between hours “worked” and actual...
Running a Calm CompanyBasecamp is known for hiring infrequently, but it’s in the midst of adding five new employees to its roster—including the company’s first-ever director of marketing. Over 4,000 applications have come in for the open positions. In this episode, we go deep into how we knew it was time to hire, why we...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Running a Calm Company“Passwords just aren’t cutting it online. It’s getting worse. We all feel it.” This is what Jeremy from Basecamp’s Security, Infrastructure, and Performance team wrote in a February blog post after dealing with a mass-login attack. Intruders with huge lists of login credentials—obtained in previous...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Running a Calm CompanyWhy are manhole covers round? How many golf balls can fit in a 747? Why are job interviews so terrible? In this episode, Aja Hammerly, a developer advocate at Google, talks about the drawbacks of common tech interview techniques like whiteboard coding and trivia questions, and shares her tips for...
Running a Calm CompanyLiz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy are the co-authors of No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions At Work. They come on REWORK to talk about how the future of work is emotional; why it’s useful to listen to feelings like envy; and how we can all take small steps toward a healthier...
Running a Calm CompanyOn Thursday, November 8, Basecamp 3 went down for almost five hours. It was the worst outage to hit the company in a decade and a stress test of Basecamp’s practices around internal communication, customer support, and calm work. Today’s episode goes inside the company on November 8 to see how the...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Running a Calm CompanyBusiness rhetoric is rife with the language of war—there’s constant talk of conquering markets and dominating the competition. These tropes indicate a dangerous way of thinking that can have real consequences, intended or not, on human behavior. In this episode, two professors share their research...
Running a Calm CompanyIn October, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson released their new book, It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work. The book featured their writing, as well as cover art and interior illustrations from a couple designers at Basecamp. The launch initially seemed like a great success—but then things...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Running a Calm CompanyThis is the second of a two-part interview with David Heinemeier Hansson about his and Jason Fried’s new book, It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work. In this episode, David talks about taking a calm approach to writing and marketing the book. Also, Wailin gets him to say #blessed (kind of) and has...
DHH and Jason Fried, Running a Calm CompanyJason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson have a new book out called It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, which pushes back against the toxic culture of overwork and unhealthy ambitions that’s driving much of the modern workplace. In this episode, Wailin sits down with David to talk about the book’s...
DHH and Jason Fried, Running a Calm CompanySmell ya later! Shaun and Wailin are taking off the month of August. Before they left, they interviewed three business owners about sabbaticals. In this episode: Adeline Koh of Sabbatical Beauty shares the story of how she ended up starting a business while on leave from a different job; Jason Fried...
Running a Calm Company“You know I try, but I don’t do too well with apologies,” Justin Bieber once sang. You’re not the only one with this problem, Justin! Why is saying sorry so difficult, especially for businesses? In this episode: A veteran tracker of apologies looks at what’s changed (and what hasn’t) in public...
Running a Calm CompanyYou’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll gnash your teeth in recognition as you hear the stories of horrible meetings we collected for this episode. Meetings are one of the worst kinds of workplace interruptions. They’re held too frequently, run too long, and involve more people than necessary. Also in this...
Running a Calm CompanyHey, are you busy? Can you listen to this real quick? It’s an episode about interruptions in the workplace. You’ll hear from academic researchers, Basecamp’s head data wrangler, and the CEO of a remote company about how they’ve tackled not just the disruptions themselves, but also the workplace...
Running a Calm CompanyBeing tired isn’t a badge of honor. There, we said it. We’ve been saying this for a while now, because our culture loves to glorify toiling long hours for its own sake and we think that leads to subpar work and general misery. In this episode, we talk to a veteran of the video game industry and a...
Running a Calm Company