meeting with 37signals.com CEO Jason Fried

Last Tuesday (Oct 15), I was attending the seminar by Jason Fried who founded the 37signals.com. The event was sponsored by RI Nexus. I want to share a few things with fellow ActivRainers here.

1, Simple is king.

Jason started a web design firm before he founded 37signals. He mentioned that initially, he used a rather long contract form. Later, he found that he can sign a contract that is only 2 pages and still got the job done. Finally, he reduced the contract to only ONE PAGE and still got the job done and everybody is happy.

Same thing for his company. His company tried to focus on some key features and had them done nicely. He tried to keep the interface simple as well.

His employees work at simple environment. No fancy mansions. Just a quiet place that people can work.

2, Different people can work together from all over the places.

His firm got less than 20 people. They are all over the places. Actually, even employees in the same city work at different places.

They got the job done very efficiently.

3, Everybody only works 4 days a week. How do they got the job done? Go figure.

4, The company pays employees' hobbies.

This is very interesting. The company encourage employees to pursue hobbies and actually for it.

5, No non-competition clause.

I specifically asked this question as most high tech firms require people to sign a non-competition contract. He said it is a stupid clause and it is hard to enforce it and play not use at all.

He said he tries to make every employee happy rather than force them to work there and make it difficult to leave.

I raised this question because I recently left a company that I worked for and they have a non-competition clause which I hate it. Also, I want to know how to keep employees as in the US, people change jobs in 5 years on average.

Anyway, that is all I have now. I will add more if I recall more things.