Management Rules: for those who hate management — On October 3, 2009, I originally posted a piece titled, “And Everybody Had The Next Best Thing”.

It basically said this:

“Developers aren’t in the least bit motivated. So complacent with their job, these developers are, that they’ve nothing better to do with their time, than to keep fiddling with 10 year old technologies. Too frightened of the likes of Google or Yahoo to go out and live on the edge with their grand application schemes.”

It seems now, that there are others out there that might feel the same way I do about the way things should work, or at least be done on the internet with regard to development and the application of that development.

While venturing about on the net this morning, I happened across a piece titled “Chaos Theory”, The New Rules of Business from 37signals ~ Newsweek. It hits the nail on the head with regard to todays modern startup and it’s developers.

Here are a few pieces of the article:

“It’s the kind of outcome most entrepreneurs only dream of. Last September, the financial-planning startup Mint.com was acquired by Intuit for $170 million—earning its founder a reported $20 million. As the kudos poured in, another Web entrepreneur, Jason Fried, assailed Mint in a blog post for selling out to a corporation it could have taken down. “Is that the best [we] can do?” Fried wrote. “Become part of the old generation? How about kicking the shit out of the old guys?” ~ Newsweek

And:

“Don’t waste time on meetings. Stay as small as you possibly can. The 37signals guys scoff at workaholics (masochists who compensate for intellectual laziness with brute force) and traditional ideas about promotion (emulate drug dealers: make your product so addictive that giving a free taste makes customers come back bearing cash). They believe businesses should “under-do” their competitors—do a few things well, rather than many things adequately. Their company is the ultimate hands-off employer: 37signals doesn’t care where its 16 employees live or when they do their work.” ~Newsweek

With regard to management rules, I found an article over on Newsweek this morning that reaffirmed my faith in our business model. And that’s a very good thing.

My advice to anyone who would build for the internet .. keep growing what you’ve got going on .. be extremely good at what you do .. and don’t ever be swayed by, or waver in the shadow of, the big guys .. you’ll never amount to much, or ever become a “big guy” yourself .. if you sell out.