The team, the years

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48 of the best people I know work at Basecamp. The Basecamp team as of March 23, 2016 We’ve been working at Basecamp for 5, 6, 5, 1, 5, 4, 2, 3, 15, 1, 2, 1, 5, 2, 3, 8, 17, 7, 5, 1, 8, 9, 4, 5, 6, 5, 1, 5, 4, 1, 5, 7,… keep reading

Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

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Forgoing sleep is like borrowing from a loan shark. Sure you get those extra hours right now to cover for your overly-optimistic estimation, but at what price? The shark will be back, and if you can’t pay, he’ll break your creativity, morale, and good-mannered nature as virtue twigs. Now we all borrow occasionally, and that’s… keep reading

Simple just isn’t that important

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Declaring your love of simplicity has long been a prerequisite pledge for anyone working on products. It’s the perfect placeholder word for everyone to load up with their own personal aspirations, all the while nodding in agreement with someone holding diametrically opposed ideas. Even the most obtusely designed products will have a parent ready to… keep reading

No Reply Addresses

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Go check your inbox right now. I guarantee you’ve got a few emails from a “[email protected]”. A quick search through mine yielded 28 different no-reply emails from 28 different companies. It’s not limited to only big companies either. Tiny startups use them to send out their newsletters, invites, notifications, etc. When I get an email… keep reading

The tool we built to keep everyone in the loop at Basecamp

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From teams to individuals, we aimed for a straightforward, consistent system to communicate the occasional, the week-to-week, and the day-to-day to everyone across our company. No matter the company, once you reach a certain size — and it’s not very big — you begin to have communication challenges. There are dozens of challenges, but for this article I’d like to… keep reading

Announcing the next “The Basecamp Way To Work” workshop

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Our headquarters in Chicago. March 31, 2016 in Chicago For years people have asked us how we work at Basecamp. We’ve shared our business and development philosophies in Getting Real, REWORK, and REMOTE, but we’ve never lifted the veil on our unusual work methods. And unusual they are! Whenever we give this workshop, and show people behind… keep reading

Rainbow Connection

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Illustration by Nate Otto How an ice cream cone has nourished a Chicago family for three generations and 90 years of business. Opening an ice cream store in Chicago is not for the faint of heart. Factor in a mostly deserted neighborhood and the Great Depression, and the idea of selling ice cream under these circumstances… keep reading

The curse of the last word

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Every six weeks we start working on a new set of improvements and enhancements for Basecamp 3. A new 6-week cycle just began last week so our designers and developers have been collaborating closely. The early days of any initiative are an exciting time. There are lots of concepts, designs, and code being tried out,… keep reading