Summary

This book is a very quick read - it is essentially a collection of short essays (1-3 pages) on the topic of corporate culture and agile working. As a european, it reads dystopian in places, and the achievements of basecamp seem somewhat backward. This mainly concerns the topics of working hours, vacation and working conditions.

Particularly noteworthy is the reflection on agile software development and the perceived pressure or pace of projects. Meanwhile, their process model “shape up” has its own book. I would really like to try it in practice. Longer, more focused development times, less talk. This should go down pretty well with most developers I know.

But what really stuck with me was that asynchronous and quiet communication is king. Longer, written communication is better than meetings or chat. Everyone hates meetings anyway - skip them as much as possible.

My book is still making the rounds among colleagues - I guess what makes this book remarkable is that everyone finds pieces of good advice for certain topics but everyone will find different topics of interest.