Rework

Rework is the best-known book by David Heinemeier Hansson, usually called DHH, written with his business partner Jason Fried. They ran 37signals, the small software company behind Basecamp, which stayed deliberately small. Hansson is also the creator of Ruby on Rails, the web framework that was first extracted from their Basecamp product.

What it’s about

The book is a collection of short, opinionated essays, each a page or two long, with the grain of a manifesto. Its core argument is that most conventional business advice, such as raising money, writing long plans, hiring fast, and working long hours, makes small companies worse. The authors favor the opposite: start with something small that works, stay profitable, keep the team lean, and say no to most things.

Typical advice from the book: planning is a form of guessing, so keep plans short. Build a smaller product and do it well instead of a bloated one. Meetings are expensive and usually avoidable. Hire people for how they write and think. Don’t treat exhaustion as a virtue. Whether or not you agree with every claim, the ideas are clear and easy to argue with.

Why it belongs on coldboot

The story of software is also the story of how it gets made and sold, and Rework is the manifesto of a very influential small-company philosophy. It sits well alongside the history of the web framework and the tools people use to build products, and it is a good counterweight to the big-company stories in the 1980s articles.

Keep in mind

It is advice written from the authors’ own experience, with a successful company as the evidence, and it does not claim to be research. Their approach worked for them and fits some businesses better than others. Treat it as a sharp point of view, not as universal rules.

Edition linked: hardcover (Crown Business, 2010).