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37signals Employee Handbook
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36Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
6.7KGitHub stars
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What it is
37signals Employee Handbook
GitHub
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There are more than a few stories of things like this happening (or my favorite, outsourcing the actual dev work to China or india) but why would you when it's a lawsuit…
ShakataGaNai used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year36 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-05-02 14:46:05 UTC to 2024-01-19 18:32:11 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 15 | 4 | 11 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Read on basecamp.com
37signals Employee Handbook
In this handbook, you’ll find everything you need to know about 37signals policies and benefits. Hopefully it also offers a small peek at our culture.
If you’re new to the company, welcome! It’s important that you review everything in this handbook, so you know what’s expected of you and what you can expect from us. Please note that this handbook may be updated at any time, and it’s up to you to keep abreast of those updates – though we’ll do our best to notify all staff of major changes. GitHub repo is a great way to follow along with changes.
Please reach out to the People Ops team or to your manager if you have any questions about the information contained in this handbook.
Sections
Getting Started
Benefits & Perks
How We Work
Making a Career
Our Rituals
Managing Work Devices
Our Internal Systems
A Note About Moonlighting
State Leave Provisions
Severance Packages
Titles for Designers
Titles for Ops
Titles for Programmers
Titles for QA
Titles for Support
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
36 sourcesWhere is this git repo you speak of?
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Ah, I found it. https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/commit/620b0637452bda02...
In The 37signals Employee HandbookAs of the writing of my comment, 2 days ago:
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/commits/master/
In The 37signals Employee HandbookTwo days ago: https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/commits/master/
In The 37signals Employee HandbookSounds like it's meant as a living document (they reference github, and it's available here: https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/README.md ), so doubtful. You could always clone the repo and "print" them to PDF though, and there's a bunch of results for a quick search of "markdown to PDF" if you want a batch/automatic tool. Actually, it'd be kinda cool to have a PDF version that gets automatically "compiled" every time the repo updates...
In The 37signals Employee HandbookThat's definitely true at the organizational level, and it's an argument with some merits.
In practice though, I've seen this backfire. You end up with the frontend team blocked because the API they need isn't available yet, and then the backend team gets blocked because they shipped the API but they can't use it to deliver value because the frontend team don't have the capacity to build the interface for it!
My preference is to work on mixed-skll teams that can ship a feature independently of any other team. I really like the way Basecamp describe this in their handbook: https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/how-we-work... - "In self-sufficient, independent teams".
In SPAs Were a MistakeBasecamp Updates Code of Conduct
2 points · Open discussionA lot of people discussing this appear to be unfamiliar with the values and history of Basecamp, and might benefit from reading their company handbook for background
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook
In “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”The c-suite is DHH and Fried. Three of the people who left are department heads, who report directly to them.
https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/orgchart.md
In “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”Had it been a purely internal communication, it would have quickly leaked to the press. The press would then distort and misconstrue the info to make Basecamp look as controversial as possible. Better to get in front of that by having a polished public communication.
Also Basecamp is a rather open company. Their employee handbook is on Github: https://github.com/basecamp/handbook
In An open letter to Jason and DavidThe Basecamp Employee Handbook
5 points · Open discussionAt Basecamp, everyone in the company does a workday in support every month or two. It's a fascinating experience to take part in: https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/our-rituals...
In Everyone should read support emailsShowing the 15 most recent of 36 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.