Signal v. Noise
signalvnoise.com · Company blog · on HN since 2014
The blog of Basecamp (formerly 37signals), where founders write about running a profitable software company and startup culture.
What HN saysCommenters cite it as consistent criticism of Silicon Valley rhetoric from a profitable company, and link old posts like the Facebook valuation piece.
941HN people shared it
377linked it in comments
1.1Kstories submitted
13Kstory points
4 months agolast shared
2014people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1When I think of Snapchat's new potential $10B valuation, I am reminded of this39 people · 14 points · first shared 2014 · 4 comments on HN
- 2Facebook is not worth $33B (2010)35 people · 136 points · first shared 2014 · 6 comments on HN
- 3Give it five minutes (2012)24 people · 40 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Employee benefits at Basecamp21 people · 180 points · first shared 2016 · 62 comments on HN
- 5Exponential growth devours and corrupts17 people · 219 points · first shared 2017 · 52 comments on HN
- 6Only 15% of the Basecamp operations budget is spent on Ruby14 people · 63 points · first shared 2019 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Is group chat making you sweat?13 people · 329 points · first shared 2016 · 66 comments on HN
- 8Reconsider13 people · 13 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9Reconsider (2015)12 people · 174 points · first shared 2015 · 23 comments on HN
- 10Why We Choose Profit12 people · 154 points · first shared 2017 · 82 comments on HN
- 11The Majestic Monolith Can Become the Citadel – DHH12 people · 15 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 12DHH: Open-Source Beyond the Market11 people · 31 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 13Homepage11 people · first shared 2014
- 14How We Pay People at Basecamp - It's Just Better Business To Pay People Fairly10 people · 12 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 15The Majestic Monolith9 people · 325 points · first shared 2016 · 91 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
pascient · 2016-04-11
> the _only_ one
The folks at Basecamp (formerly 37signals) have been pretty consistent too at criticizing the Silicon Valley rhetoric, and their company is undeniably profitable. They write at https://signalvnoise.com and I also recommend their books.
alberth · 2025-09-07
Interesting to see it’s 100% Ruby based, and no longer uses Erlang or C.
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1728-nuts-bolts-campfire-loves-erlang
m0rphling · 2024-11-19
I get that a lot of people see Slack as a panacea for all communications, but too often it ends up a dumping ground for anything and everything for which searches might not be as effective over time. Also, that data in Slack can and will be a liability risk to you when it comes to data privacy, compliance, and any litigation hold requests. Do understand that larger organizations (especially FAANG) will purge slack conversation data after a certain period of time for these reasons.
Finally, I feel DHH's article on group chat still provides valid criticisms and recommendations to retain your sanity and prevent the feeling of FOMO: https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat/
cocoflunchy · 2024-02-05
Funny article (in retrospect) from 2010-09-23 (https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-09-23): Facebook is not worth $33B https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33000000000
yakshaving_jgt · 2023-09-26
> Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time.
Do you have anything to substantiate this claim?
I'm an employer and I read and respond to dozens of applications when I have an open position.
Usually when I receive an excellent application, the cover letter is roughly a paragraph in length. It isn't some lengthy, typeset file attachment with a mission statement or some other nonsense that would typically appear if you Googled "example cover letter".
My thoughts on ideal job applications closely mirror those described here[0].
[0]: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1748-forget-the-resume-kill-on-the-cove…
basch · 2023-06-03
I do like some things better about https://hckrnews.com/ as a front page.
The left numbers almost act as a bar graph to tell you how popular something is, and it is otherwise chronological.
High text interfaces are also dense compared to modern mobile touch based interfaces trying to render on a desktop. https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1407-why-the-drudge-report-is-one-of-th…
cmg · 2022-11-23
[2007] but also timeless advice, at least while our UIs still follow the same general paradigms.
It's important to note that Aza Raskin is the son of Jef Raskin, who wrote a lot about interfaces (including a book called The Humane Interface), and worked on the original Macintosh at Apple, on the interface.
Aza Raskin has continued that work at Mozilla and elsewhere and I'm glad he has. Though I miss the original Songza interface https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1117-fresh-ui-ideas-from-songza-and-alg…
hbrn · 2022-11-14
> you end up with both the old monolith and new microservices, the monolith never gets fully broken up, and now you need to support two development paradigms forever.
It's not a bad thing, it's actually a quite pragmatic approach. Some folks call it The Citadel:
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-majestic-monolith-can-become-the-citade…
Building monolith is the best way to learn about domain and domain boundaries. Monolith is way more forgiving for your mistakes.
Going all in on microservices is like believing you learned everything there is. Some folks believe that, most of the time they are wrong.
fxtentacle · 2022-11-09
I love this illustration for how venture capital works: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider
You try a lot with potentially catastrophic results, to get that one unicorn (and 10 failures).
jadence · 2022-06-13
This reminds me a lot of Jason Fried (of 37signals, now known as Basecamp)'s complaints about Get Satisfaction back in 2009.
Get Satisfaction, Or Else...
- article: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else
- discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540
Follow-up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..."
- article: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1661-follow-up-on-get-satisfaction-or-e…
- discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543431
mwcampbell · 2022-06-08
I think the best solution to this is to eliminate the division of labor between back-end and front-end, for the majority of applications that don't actually require deep specialization in either. As DHH put it, integrated systems for integrated programmers [1].
[1]: https://m.signalvnoise.com/integrated-systems-for-integrated-programme…
paradite · 2021-12-24
Give it five minutes. My all time favorite advice on exactly how to do that.
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes
Hippocrates · 2021-07-20
This is the same argument DHH makes in a very similar post aptly titled "There's no room for The Idea Guy":
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2188-theres-no-room-for-the-idea-guy
I don't disagree, in fact it was one of my favorite posts due how relatable it is to the many convos I've had with non-technical friends and acquantainces. They mean well, and share their app idea as if it is the next Facebook, and the thing standing between us and some mega yachts is a coder (me) to simply "whip it up".
chris_wot · 2021-05-10
Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina.
Don’t think about how to create a culture, just do the right things for you, your customers, and your team and it’ll happen.
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1022-you-dont-create-a-culture
Keep in mind that you can’t apologize your way out of being an ass. Even the best apology won’t rescue you if you haven’t earned people’s trust. Everything you do before things go wrong matters far more than the actual words you use to apologize.
https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-to-say-youre-sorry/
petercooper · 2021-04-21
Even the smartest and savviest of people read the tealeaves wrong sometimes: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33000000000 .. or.. does this just prove what a bubble it is!? ;-) More on this one at https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1261617044648329216
PascLeRasc · 2021-04-19
I think you'd really like Jason Fried's writing. You can find some short posts [here](https://m.signalvnoise.com/author/jason-fried/), but his book It doesn't have to be crazy at work is really great too.
equality_1138 · 2021-02-04
Love the garden analogy in software, especially when faced with complex systems that can't easily be managed by rigid IT project management styles.
Was reminded of another short piece going way back to 2007: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/591-brainstorm-the-software-garden
AbdHicham · 2021-01-06
I like the following, perhaps you already know them but if you don't, I recommend them:
(1) Lex Fridman: https://lexfridman.com/podcast/ (My favorite)
(2) Fullstack-radio: https://fullstackradio.com/
(3) Company forensics: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/company-forensics-slidebean/id14…
(4) The Undefined Podcast: https://undefined.fm/
(5) Signal vs Noise: https://m.signalvnoise.com/
It's not tech related by I listen to JRE as well quite often.
petedoyle · 2020-05-07
> "We believe that communicating dates produces the wrong incentives. What really matters on a long timescale is 1) priorities and 2) velocity." [1]
I saw this written during the 2017 cryptocurrency craze. Has stuck with me as one of the most insightful things I've ever read. Also a fan of 37 Signals' budgets. [2]
[1] https://medium.com/graphprotocol/introducing-the-graph-4a281b28203e
[2] https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3746-drive-development-with-budgets-not…
finestkludge · 2020-04-28
I'm not aware of a real "consensus," but a popular view (reflected by my experience) is that they're great for a large org with many teams working asynchronously (though they still introduce headaches), but that for most startups, the payoff is reduced greatly while the pain remains consistent.
You've probably around seen this, but DHH has a good piece on this in Signal v. Noise: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-majestic-monolith/
wmf · 2020-03-01
It's worth recalling DHH's report that Ruby code only accounts for 15% of the cost of running Basecamp: https://m.signalvnoise.com/only-15-of-the-basecamp-operations-budget-i…
novok · 2020-01-14
37signals is a broken clock that is right twice a day. It's blog is very effective content marketing for it's SMB basecamp product.
One of my favorite examples: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33000000000
I think the real answer is the VC model works well for some cases, and bootstrapping is OK too! Both have their downside! Many VCs will tell you this directly. No need to get religious about it.
danial · 2019-12-09
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/sections/360001508894-Custom-domains
Other popular publications that use custom domains on Medium:
https://m.signalvnoise.com/
https://medium.economist.com/
https://blog.coinbase.com/
It's now deprecated for new services, though.
jpincheira · 2019-12-05
Love this. For those interested:
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1430-hire-managers-of-one
photonios · 2019-11-08
You might find the way Basecamp works interesting: https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-structure-our-work-and-teams-at-base…
Each project is six weeks. You deliver the best possible version within those six weeks.
jacquesm · 2019-10-20
Market cap is just a representation of what the market thinks a company is worth as applied to a relatively small fraction of the stock.
Compare to a casino: people think that the ball will land on black and are willing to put their money down based on that. That doesn't mean they are right. In this case there is much more of a casino mentality at work that determines Ubers stockprice than that the underlying fundamentals are solid and sound enough to compute a price that is reasonable.
In that sense you can't lump everything on the stockmarket on one pile. 37signals had a funny bit about marketcap: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-valuation-…
everdev · 2019-09-15
Or a classic take from DHH 7 years ago, just test the big things:
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3159-testing-like-the-tsa
mscasts · 2019-09-11
I love his book "Why we sleep" and I think most people today should read it.
People take pride in sleeping less than they should which is pretty fucked up in my opinion.
DHH also have a lot to say about it:
https://m.signalvnoise.com/sleep-deprivation-is-not-a-badge-of-honor/
https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/microsoft-reboots-war-on-sleep-a90da…
klaudius · 2019-03-31
He's comparing the best employment outcome ( cushy working conditions, a six-figure salary, and generous stock options ) with worst entrepreneurism outcome ( failure, small commodity business, too much work ).
There is a BIG difference between what is called "small business" and "startup". Small business doesn't scale, while startup starts small, but it can scale globally and create better moat ( scale, network effects, brand ).
People here are interested in startups, not small business.
Tech entrepreneurism is actually underrated since nowhere else do you have low starting costs, global audience, low marginal costs etc. ( https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3324-commercial-freedom ) .