Rework

In 2004, fast food company Quiznos launched a national advertising campaign featuring animated rodent-like creatures screech-singing an ode to the chain's toasted sub sandwiches. The TV commercials were instantly polarizing and lodged themselves in many viewers' brains like a recurring fever dream. In this episode, the people behind the campaign share the story of how the ads got made. Show Notes Jonas Downey on Twitter - 00:08 Quiznos website - 00:21 "We Love the Subs" commercial - 00:46 Joel Veitch's site, Rathergood - 3:04 Tarsier on Wikipedia - 4:29 "We Like the Moon" video - 5:27 Ty Harper's website - 5:45 The Martin Agency website - 5:49 Kerry Feuerman's website - 6:30 Quiznos coupon commercial - 15:57 Quiznos Huns commercial - 16:00 REGO Restaurant Group on LinkedIn - 21:51 "Where's the Shop? Cliff Freeman Slips Into History Books" (AdAge) - 30:22 PIZZA PIZZA - 30:38

This is a lightly edited version of a keynote address Basecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson delivered at RailsConf 2019 about "open source, markets, debts, purpose, and no less than the meaning of life." David also sits down with Shaun to talk briefly about how he approached this keynote differently than past talks.

Even remote companies need actual face time every once in a while. That's why Basecamp holds companywide, weeklong meet-ups in Chicago twice a year. Fellow remote tech company Buffer has 85 employees across the globe that get together once a year for an annual retreat, and they've visited countries from South Africa to Iceland. On this episode, Carolyn Kopprasch of Buffer talks about the kind of work that gets done during this time, helping introverts manage energy during an intense week, and her favorite parts of Retreat. Show Notes Buffer's website - 1:24 Carolyn Kopprasch on Twitter - 1:45 Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne on Twitter - 11:32 Buffer's Open blog - 22:59 "Remote Team Meetups: Here's What Works For Us" - 23:08

In April, Basecamp Support team member James Glazebrook gave a talk at Support Driven Expo Europe about Everyone On Support. It's an all-hands program where Basecamp employees rotate through a day of working in customer service. James noticed the system—while well-intentioned—wasn't working properly, and set out to fix it. And that, as James himself might say, is pretty metal.

Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are back in the studio to answer your questions. This edition of Mailbag includes topics like why big companies don't use Basecamp; how they managed the transition from a web design agency to a product company; and what their business partnership means to them. Kristin Aardsma from Basecamp Support also pops in to answer a question about how her team maintains fast response times while making time for breaks. If you have a question you'd like answered on the next Mailbag, leave us a voicemail at (708) 628-7850!

In our last episode, we talked to Claire Lew, the CEO of Know Your Team. She has her own show called The Heartbeat Podcast, where she talks to founders and leaders about management. This is her interview with Basecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson. To listen to more of The Heartbeat Podcast, visit https://knowyourteam.com/blog/podcast/ or look for the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Claire Lew is the CEO of Know Your Team, a company dedicated to solving the problem of bad bosses. The company has its origins as a product developed within Basecamp and today is not just a software tool, but a deep vein of resources for managers of all experience levels. In this episode, Claire shares her unconventional path to becoming a CEO, how she completely revamped her company's focus and business model, and why so much "thought leadership" around management gets it wrong. Show Notes Claire Lew on Twitter / Know Your Team website — 00:15 The Heartbeat Podcast — 00:34 Know Your Team's "About Us" page — 1:04 "Building Know Your Company" (Signal v. Noise) — 8:04 "How we put together a simple deal to spin off Know Your Company" (Signal v. Noise) — 12:31 "Want to be a better manager? Work as a restaurant hostess" (Know Your Team blog) — 10:55 Daniel Lopes on Twitter — 21:13 The Watercooler — 21:40 "Big news: Know Your Company is now Know Your Team" (Know Your Team blog) — 24:43

We're introducing a new segment called Last Week with Jason Fried, where Basecamp's CEO talks about a task or concern that recently fell on his plate. In this inaugural episode, Jason talks about how the end of the company's lease on its Chicago office leaves him with a big decision on how to design a space for a mostly remote workforce and whether Basecamp needs an office at all. Meanwhile, all work and no play makes Shaun a dull boy.

In 2007, Kenneth Coats started a business helping Chicagoans expunge their arrest records so they could improve their job prospects. After a challenge from the Illinois Attorney General shut down that venture, Kenneth reinvented his business with an assist from a local clinic that provides free legal services to entrepreneurs. In this episode, hear how Kenneth pivoted—and what he did to ensure he couldn't return to his previous career. Show Notes Our 2017 episode, "Can You Sell Water? Part 2" - 00:29 The Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago - 00:37 The study "The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010" was published in the October 2017 issue of Demography - 3:23 Microsoft made $16,005 in revenues its first year - 5:31 Wikipedia article on ichthys - 9:22 "Care.com Puts Onus on Families to Check Caregivers’ Backgrounds—With Sometimes Tragic Outcomes" (Wall Street Journal, March 2019) - 12:42 "103 Uber drivers accused of sexual assault or abuse" (CNN, April 2018) - 12:44 KENTECH - 12:48

We're introducing a new segment called Check-Ins, where we talk to folks at Basecamp about their answers to recurring questions that get asked of everyone here. Recently, Jeremy Daer on our Security, Infrastructure, and Performance team dealt with an incident where an Internet scammer was fraudulently posing as a Basecamp recruiter to collect personal information from job seekers. We hear from Jeremy about how this scam works and from Shanae Dykes on Basecamp's Support team about how to keep yourself safe while looking for remote job opportunities.

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: You sign up for a service or a product online. When you go to cancel, you discover the only way to stop the subscription is to write an email or—even worse, make an actual phone call. In this episode, we try to get to the bottom of why this consumer trap persists, especially in the newspaper industry, and what it says about a company's confidence (or lack thereof) in what it's selling. Show Notes The DHH tweet that started it all - 00:36 Wailin's tweet about the Chicago Tribune - 2:23 Laura Hazard Owen on Twitter - 2:55 NiemanLab - 3:34 Consumer Federation of California - 4:21 California Senate Bill 313, which former Governor Jerry Brown signed into law in 2017 - 5:40 California News Publishers Association - 6:31 The New York Times' cancellation screen - 9:36 The Wall Street Journal's cancellation policy - 9:43 The Washington Post's cancellation policy - 9:57 Pete Mortensen on Twitter - 10:12 Matter Ventures (which shut down in late 2018) - 10:18 Jen Sabella on Twitter - 14:54 Block Club Chicago - 14:59 "Billionaire Owner Shuts Down DNAinfo, Gothamist Sites A Week After Workers Unionize" (NPR) - 15:09

"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 data breaches—tried using those passwords to access Basecamp accounts. Hear how Basecamp addressed the immediate incident and was also forced to reflect on longer-term plans for customer security in an increasingly insecure age. Show Notes Read David Heinemeier Hansson's blog post and Jeremy's follow-up post on the mass-login attack. Our episode on the Big Integer outage - 00:41 The big Code Red moment starts at 3:06 of this clip but c'mon, just watch the whole thing - 00:48 Jim Mackenzie on Twitter - 1:15 Background on the data breaches at Marriott, Equifax, and Yahoo - 1:53 Jeremy Daer on Twitter - 2:10 "It's a Unix system!" - 7:24 Have I Been Pwned? - 13:47 1Password, LastPass, Dashlane - 14:52 "Clever girl" - 17:24 "I've got the same combination on my luggage!" - 17:29

David Heinemeier Hansson talks about creativity, finding a passion, and how writing Ruby changed the way he thinks about programming.

Why 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 improving the process by making it about discovering the candidate's best qualities. Show Notes Hello, Mallory - 00:20 The Baby-Sitters Club - 00:40 Aja Hammerly's website - 2:18 Aja's post, "There Is No Perfect Interview" - 2:22 Aja's tweets on hiring from November 2018 - 7:24 A blog post by Basecamp CEO Jason Fried that talks about design challenges - 14:20 Aja on Twitter - 23:15 For further reading from Basecamp on this topic, Jim Mackenzie on the Support team has written some great Signal v. Noise posts about hiring: "Interview or Interrogation?" and "Under Pressure"

We place a long-distance phone call to Antarctica to chat with Kathrin Mallot, an astrophysicist who works at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the South Pole. In this episode, Kathrin talks about preparing for a work assignment in a super remote part of the world; practicing self-care during the punishing Antarctic winter; getting along with coworkers that you also live with in close quarters; frozen nose hairs, snacks, Internet access, and more! Show Notes The IceCube website - 00:46 What is a neutrino? (Scientific American) - 1:13 SNOLAB in Canada is an example of a neutrino observatory located in an old mine - 1:58 When neutrinos collide with other particles, a blue light is emitted. This is what IceCube detects. Read more about this blue light and IceCube in this article from the National Science Foundation - 2:13 Emsisoft - 2:48 Skynet satellite (and the other Skynet) - 4:38 Mt. Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost active volcano on the planet - 14:00 The Thing (the 1982 version by John Carpenter) - 19:28 The IceCube website has an entire section about living at the South Pole - 26:53 The defibrillator scene in The Thing (Warning: VERY SCARY! And gross!) - 27:39 The blood test scene in The Thing (Warning: ALSO VERY SCARY AND GROSS) - 27:50