Three Moments of Software Joy

I like it when software-writers pay attention to the little things.

  1. When changing credit card details in my Basecamp account, the system noticed that I also had a Highrise account and offered to update that at the same time. Thank you, 37signals.
  2. When I installed the new version of OmniFocus, it pre-selected the option to delete the installer files once it was completed. Thank you.
  3. When Miro TV updated itself to a new version, it re-started and continued playing the last video I watched from where we left off.

If I listed “Moments of Software Unjoy”, it’d go for pages…

How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?

[Update 10 March, 1030 AEDT: I’ve written a follow-up article which, while bound to piss off a few people, explains precisely why I’m so concerned about this issue. There’s also my first follow-up, written on the weekend.]

Photograph of Jason Calacanis

“Chalk and cheese” is how I’d describe two approaches to staff management I stumbled across this week. One treats staff as trusted contributors to a shared enterprise, the other as disposable work-droids from which you squeeze every last effort.

Jason Calacanis (pictured) has started various firms, including Mahalo, a “human-powered search engine”. (Don’t worry, I’d never heard of it either.) In How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips) there are some good tips — like outsourcing accounting and worrying more about good chairs than tables. But to paraphrase the bad ones:

  • Hold meetings at lunchtime so people never get a mental break from work.
  • Don’t provide phones so staff have to use their own.
  • If someone shows signs of working hard, buy them a computer for home so they end up working nights and weekends too.
  • Buy a good coffee machine — not because you’d like to give your employees good coffee, but to prevent them “wasting time” getting it from a nearby barista.

But that’s not the worst…

Continue reading “How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?”