"Years of experience" has been a gold standard hiring requirement since forever.
It's a terrible one.
Someone can do something for years and have nothing to show for it.
Seek people with "Years of evidence" instead.
People with deep examples of work. Piles of stuff they've made. An overflowing collection of output they're proud to share.
If someone's brand new in their formal career, they might have little traditional experience, but if someone's been loving this kind of work for a long time, there's a good chance they already have a collection of hobby projects or other literal examples of their work they can't wait to show off.
Titles, tenure, and paths don’t matter. The work does. Always look at the work. It's the truth.
When you encounter a simpler system, a simpler idea, or a simpler implementation, you have an opportunity.
You can say "it's not enough, it doesn't have, it wouldn't work". That’s the common reflexive response.
Or you can reflect. “What is it about how we work that prevents us from using such a simple, succinct system?” “How did we get so twisted, so tangled, so dependent on so much that we can’t seem to get anywhere otherwise?”
Depending on more can often mean being able to do less.
Whenever I write about our focus on cover letters during the hiring process, I'll inevitably receive the "cover letters are still a thing?" or "people still read cover letters?" response from a cadre of characters.
Yes, cover letters are a thing, and we absolutely still read them. And require them. We put significant weight on them.
Cover letters are the first signal of effort, of care, of clear thinking, of communication ability, and of diligence. The fundamentals.
They're the very first thing we read when people apply. And when they're bad, they're definitely the last thing we read from that applicant. We just stop there. They're green lights or red lights.
A great cover letter tells a story about someone in a way nothing else quite will. A cover video could be another flavor, and I'm happy to see those as well, but we still want to see how someone writes. Most communication at 37signals is written, so being great on camera but poor on paper doesn't cut it.
There's another tell in the cover letter: Are they applying for this job or just any job? It's pretty obvious if it's a general purpose mail merge, or a personal letter written to us about their passion for that position. The latter are the kinds of people we want to hire. The former can try somewhere else.
A great cover letter is not too long, not too short. But them, in words we want to read. The kind of words we want more of.
So that's where we start. From there we look at all sorts of other things, but you have to start somewhere. And for us, it's the sacred cover letter.
I don’t think much about legacy. Yours, mine, anyone’s really.
Do the best you can right now. For now. Not for later. If it’s useful later, great. But that’s only because it starts out useful now.
Legacy isn’t an artist who was ignored all their life until they died. That’s just recognition and fame. Their work was already excellent then.
Legacy? Who’s going to remember anyway?
Do you remember the names of your great, great, great grandparents? What’s their legacy? You. You are the most important thing to you, and they’re essential to your existence. Yet you probably have no idea who they were. That’s just a few generations ago.
You can’t remember your ancestors a few clicks back, and you think anyone’s going to remember your work a few clicks forward?
Maybe, but only if it’s good today.
Later forgets most of it. Eventually, all of it.
What you do today, and how you do it, is what’s worth remembering.
Legacy isn’t a monument, it’s just that moment on repeat.
When we make something new, people often ask "why don't you just add that to Basecamp?"
There are a number of reasons, depending on what it is. But, broadly, making something brand new gives you latitude (and attitude) to explore new tech and design approaches.
It's the opposite of grafting something on to a heavier, larger system that already exists.
The gravity of existing decisions in current systems requires so much energy to reach escape velocity that you tend to conform rather than explore. Essentially you're bent back to where you started, rather than arcing out towards a new horizon.
New can be wrong, but it's always interesting. And that in itself is worth it.
Because in the end, even if the whole new thing doesn't work out, individual elements, explorations, and executions discovered along the way can make their way back into other things you're already doing. Or something else new down the road. These bits would have been undiscovered had you never set out for new territory in the first place.
Ultimately, a big part of making something new is simply thinking something new.
Whenever I talk about working in real-time, making decisions as you go, figuring things out now rather than before, I get a question like this...
"If you don't have a backlog, or deep sets of prioritized, ranked items, how do you decide what to do next?"
My answer: The same way you do when your made your list. You make decisions.
We just make decisions about what to work on next as we go, looking forward, rather than making decisions as we went, looking backwards.
Why work from what /seemed/ like a good idea before? Instead, work from appears to be a good idea now. You have more information now — why not use it?
It's always baffled me how people who pluck work from long lists of past decisions think you can't make those same kinds of decisions now instead. It's all yay/nay decisions. Same process. Before wasn't magical. Before was just now, then. Why not look at now, now? Now is a far more accurate version of next.
The backlog way is based on what you thought then. The non-backlog way is based on what you think now. I'll take now.
One's stale, one's fresh. We'll take fresh.
Then is further, now is closer.
There's nothing special about having made decisions already. They aren't better, they aren't more accurate, they aren't more substantial just because they've been made. What they are, however, is older and often outdated.
If you've got to believe in something, I'd suggest putting more faith in now.
