Business judgment from inside 37signals.
REWORK turns 37signals decisions into compact conversations about work, product, hiring, focus, and company durability. Kimberly Rhodes guides Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson through concrete examples, from a fast HEY Calendar feature to why titles and tenure lose to actual work.
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REWORK is a third-person window into how 37signals thinks about work, software, and business judgment. It is not a hype-cycle show. The conversations usually start with something concrete: a listener question, a recent hiring round, a product feature, or a change inside the company. Kimberly Rhodes keeps the discussion moving while Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain the reasoning behind their choices. The result is practical and often contrarian, but rarely abstract for long. A HEY Calendar conversation turns a clever year-view idea into a story about speed, timing, and the value of acting while momentum is still alive. A focus episode treats procrastination less as a flaw than as a signal about desire, attention, and the work someone is avoiding. Hiring episodes push against credentials as the deciding factor. The recurring standard is the work itself. Titles, tenure, career paths, and polished expectations matter less than what a person can actually make. Listener questions broaden the frame. Independent builders ask about LLM tools and one-person teams. Founders ask about succession, co-founders, competition, and whether a company should outlive the people who made it distinct. The answers are candid and occasionally stark. Some businesses may not need replacement founders. Some analytics work may not justify a full-time role. Some competitor features deserve attention only when customers are clearly asking for the underlying value. The show also tracks 37signals' technical culture, including Linux, Omarchy, internal setup scripts, and the move toward a more controlled development environment. Those episodes stay rooted in work habits rather than gadget enthusiasm. REWORK's appeal is its refusal to separate philosophy from daily operations. It talks about focus, health, product velocity, customer needs, and company structure as parts of the same operating system. The pace is conversational, but the editorial shape is sharp: take a real decision, press on the assumptions, and explain why 37signals chose the simpler or stranger path.
Made for: REWORK is for founders, small software teams, independent developers, and operators who prefer concrete tradeoffs over startup theater. It especially suits listeners interested in product focus, hiring evidence, customer judgment, and durable company habits.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by using 37signals' own decisions as the case material: HEY Calendar features, hiring rounds, analytics roles, Linux adoption, and listener questions. Its value comes from specific operating philosophy, not generalized business inspiration.
A podcast by 37signals about the better way to work and run your business. The REWORK podcast features the co-founders of 37signals (the makers of Basecamp and HEY), Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson sharing their unique perspective on business and entrepreneurship along with host Kimberly Rhodes.
This is the show that stress-tests "more features" before AI turns your roadmap into an all-you-can-eat buffet.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A blunt look at where LLMs help solo builders and where bigger questions about teams still matter.
The episode opens with a practical question: can a designer with some development skill lean on LLM tools and cover part of the developer role? The hosts treat it plainly, and the strongest point is simple enough.
A clear case for turning a custom developer setup into a shared company default.
The episode treats a setup choice as a question of control. David Heinemeyer-Hansen moves from Ubuntu to a custom Linux build, then argues that years of Shipyard work should become something the team can use directly instead of staying hidden inside the company.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
SaaS operators on scaling, pricing and AI, metrics included.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Kimberly Rhodes, Jason Fried, and David Heinemeier-Hansson revisit the Rework chapter “Don’t Write It Down” through customer feedback at 37signals and Basecamp.
Rework hosts Kimberly Rhodes, Jason Fried, and David Heinemeier Hansson examine how AI accelerated Basecamp 5 development after Fizzy used little directly generated code.
This episode explores how business leaders develop and trust their intuition, using personal experiences from co-founders to discuss building confidence in decision-making.
Jason Fried explains why he personally emailed Basecamp customers to announce the upcoming release and maintain connection.
The hosts discuss how a new calendar feature was rapidly developed and released, highlighting their approach to quick iteration and team collaboration.
The hosts discuss the post-launch phase of a new product, emphasizing maintaining enthusiasm, handling feedback, and avoiding knee-jerk changes.
The hosts discuss procrastination as a tool for prioritizing tasks and improving focus.
In this listener Q&A episode of REWORK, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals answer questions on building with LLMs, finding co-founders, company succession, and generating product ideas.
The hosts discuss their hiring philosophy at 37signals, emphasizing evaluating candidates based on their work output rather than years of experience or titles.
Kimberly Rhodes and David Heinemeyer-Hansen frame this as a 37signals announcement about Omarchy, the Linux setup David has been building after switching from Apple products to Linux about 18 months ago.
The hosts discuss whether personal health is necessary for running a healthy business, emphasizing balance and focus.
The hosts answer a listener question about ignoring competitors and focusing on customer needs, discussing business strategy and fads.
The co-founders of 37signals discuss their experience with hiring full-time analysts and why they no longer need one, emphasizing that not all data analysis is essential for business decisions.
In this rapid-fire Q&A episode, 37signals co-founders Jason and David share their favorite third-party software tools, with Jason praising Screen Studio for screencasting and David recommending Obsidian for note-taking.
The hosts discuss the practice of dogfooding—using your own product internally—to improve software before public release.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson answer listener questions about which roles 37signals keeps, including the absence of project managers, middle management, salespeople, in-house legal, and business development.
The hosts discuss the decision to reintroduce a free version of Basecamp, exploring the historical context, marketing insights, and strategic rationale behind offering free plans to attract users.
This episode explores the differences between managing and mentoring in a workplace context, featuring a discussion with a longtime programmer at 37signals about their company's approach to leadership without traditional managers.