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Comment by jasonfried | Hacker News Reader

"But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer."

Absolutely. I'm simply sharing our experiences with how we run things - that's what my Inc. articles are about. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do what we do because we do it. Find your own comfort zone. There are plenty of ways to do plenty of things.

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I really like your approach, especially making everyone manager for a week. I think the only problem I see with it is that if people want to find another job, their 37signals title makes it seem that they essentially "went nowhere". So even if you are paying them a lot more then when they started and they are the best customer service person ever, their resume still says: "Jane Doe - Customer Service Rep 2005-2011" which looks unimpressive elsewhere.

Although they will have had the experience of being a manager (albeit for 1/4 of the time), and having been in both the manager and employee role during the same time period, they probably end up learning more about being a good manager than most people who have the title "Manager". With 4-5 people, I think it makes a lot of sense.

How?

My company handles this by giving you whatever title you want. When I started, my boss sent me an email: "Give me your full name and title, as you want it to appear on your business cards."

It looks unimpressive... if you don't know 37s, Honestly I can't imagine that even their CSRs have _that_ hard of a time finding more work.

If they worked in such a high profile company like 37signals and did good work, all they need is ask for a few references and they can easily land a good position (if not making full use of their experience to run their own company).

We solved this in part by using "cocktail titles". So anyone who works here can call themselves senior. So we have "senior designer", "senior programmer". At least that has some ring of fancy.

Sounds like you are following Ricardo Semler philosophy(author of The Maverick). Are you? [http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308]

Yes, huge fan of Semler. Big inspiration.

If you liked Maverick, you should definitely check out Seven Day Weekend by Semler. I found it much more readable and relevant. It's crazy that it's out of print in the era of the Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works/...

I'd imagine that this isn't nearly as much of a problem for an extremely famous/well regarded company that's also very small.

I for one appreciate the insight into how you run things. I especially liked the point you made about encouraging mastery (horizontal) instead of managerial (vertical) promotion. So, thank you for sharing.

I also appreciate the perspective. Next time I'm asked if I've managed people I plan to say 'I manage projects, I collaborate with people.'

How did the employees feel about the various bits of organisational experimentation carried out? Did any balk at the constant change?

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