企业家成功的故事通常是这样的：你致力于一个巨大而且不断增长的市场，你筹集资金，你扩大规模，打出一记漂亮的本垒打，然后你退出，作为一个新生的百万富翁在日落的白色沙滩上漫步，享受永无止境的美景和美酒。 这个故事引人入胜，但有一个问题：它从未真正发生过。​在开办企业之初，你就会被鼓动被期待着制定退出计划。但是企业被收购的可能性非常小，万分之一，也许千分之一？把注意力放在退出上是一场愚蠢的赌博。你创业的动机应该比渴望致富更深一层。​此外，对兑现财富的过分关注很可能造成自我破坏。Jason和David看到，策划退出和全力以赴追求成功不可能兼得。你需要执着于保持船舶航行，而不是想着随时跳船。​用他们的话说，你需要的不是退出策略，而是持久策略。​——Basecamp

"What is it about this bike shed ?" Some of you have asked me. It's a long story, or rather it's an old story, but it is quite short actually. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960'ies, called "Parkinson's Law", which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of management. You can find it on Amazon, and maybe also in your dads book-shelf, it is well worth its price and the time to read it either way, if you like Dilbert, you'll like Parkinson. Somebody recently told me that he had read it and found that only about 50% of it applied these days. That is pretty darn good I would say, many of the modern management books have hit-rates a lot lower than that, and this one is 35+ years old. In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the age of the book. Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions. Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books. A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is *here*. In Denmark we call it "setting your fingerprint". It is about personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point somewhere and say "There! *I* did that." It is a strong trait in politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just think about footsteps in wet cement. I bow my head in respect to the original proposer because he stuck to his guns through this carpet blanking from the peanut gallery, and the change is in our tree today. I would have turned my back and walked away after less than a handful of messages in that thread.

But let me suggest a few pop-up windows I would like to see mail-programs implement whenever people send or reply to email to the lists they want me to subscribe to: +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Your email is about to be sent to several hundred thousand | | people, who will have to spend at least 10 seconds reading | | it before they can decide if it is interesting. At least | | two man-weeks will be spent reading your email. Many of | | the recipients will have to pay to download your email. | | | | Are you absolutely sure that your email is of sufficient | | importance to bother all these people ? | | | | [YES] [REVISE] [CANCEL] | +------------------------------------------------------------+ +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Warning: You have not read all emails in this thread yet. | | Somebody else may already have said what you are about to | | say in your reply. Please read the entire thread before | | replying to any email in it. | | | | [CANCEL] | +------------------------------------------------------------+ +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Warning: Your mail program have not even shown you the | | entire message yet. Logically it follows that you cannot | | possibly have read it all and understood it. | | | | It is not polite to reply to an email until you have | | read it all and thought about it. | | | | A cool off timer for this thread will prevent you from | | replying to any email in this thread for the next one hour | | | | [Cancel] | +------------------------------------------------------------+ +------------------------------------------------------------+ | You composed this email at a rate of more than N.NN cps | | It is generally not possible to think and type at a rate | | faster than A.AA cps, and therefore you reply is likely to | | incoherent, badly thought out and/or emotional. | | | | A cool off timer will prevent you from sending any email | | for the next one hour. | | | | [Cancel] | +------------------------------------------------------------+

Who's responsible for these changes? David and I are. Who made the changes? David and I did.

People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can't happen where the work happens anymore.

Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target.

“Being under constant surveillance in the workplace is psychological abuse,” Heinemeier Hansson added. “Having to worry about looking busy for the stats is the last thing we need to inflict on anyone right now.”