In the last couple of months, I read It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work and Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love. They both cover how two successful tech companies operate their activities in a very proud way. Reading these books can be inspirational for your company but at the same time, it does require a grain of salt.
In It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, David Heinemeier Hansson / Jason Fried share how they keep Basecamp processes and team calm. I liked how they covered time management, culture and so many other topics in a compact book but at the same time, the book
“No is easier to do, yes is easier to say.
No is no to one thing.
Yes is no to a thousand things.
No is a precision instrument, a surgeon’s scalpel, a laser beam focused on one point.
Yes is a blunt object, a club, a fisherman’s net that catches everything indiscriminately.
No is specific.
Yes is general.
When you say no to one thing, it’s a choice that breeds choices. Tomorrow you can be as open to new opportunities as you were today.”
In Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love, Richard Sheridan brings lots of elements and process from Agile to readers. It sounds like an Agile 101 but with real-world examples, what can give people the courage of trying new processes. At the same time, I saw some parts with a huge scepticism like when he mentioned that employee referrals are a terrible HR tactic or people wearing headphones are not a good fit to his noisy restaurant company.
At the end of the day, people can see both books are marketing pieces exposing two tech companies. They sound different in several points but they both agree that too many meetings are bad, too many benefits are traps and work/life balance is important to individuals and for many, this is the message that needs to be remembered.
