The document discusses different approaches to work culture at several tech companies. GitHub focuses on employee happiness and minimizing distractions. Twitter offers perks like catered meals and games but also encourages long hours. Dropbox and Mailchimp provide various perks and try to make work fun. 37Signals emphasizes work-life balance with a 4 day work week and remote work options.

1. Creativity is Important
How different web teams work
G itH ub, Tw it te r, Dro pB ox , M a ilC h im p,
37S ig n a ls

2. GitHub ideology
Hours are bullshit; worry about good work
Working 9-5 doesn’t work!
Working long hours isn’t a badge of honor!
Best work from employees when they are happy,
fresh & creative
Minimize distractions
Be asynchronous

3. More ideology...
Alcohol
Creativity means self-direction
Hacks on side projects

4. Hubot - Github bot
http://hubot.github.com/
unlock the door to the office
deploy GitHub
say an arbitrary strings over the office speakers
find an apartment in the area to rent
and more...

5. GitHub Stat
Launched - April, 2008
Around 1.6M people and 2.7M repositories
2 first years without office
Employees - 77
Revenue over 1M+ and no VC

6. GitHub CEO
Chris Wanstrath - GitHub co-founder and CEO
@defunkt

7. Dropbox “cookies”
Free breakfasts, lunches and dinners daily
Whiskey friday :)
Unlimited Dropbox storage
18 payed vacation days
Starcraft dedicated game rooms, DDR etc.

8. Dropbox Stat
Over 50M users
Founded in 2007 (Y Combinator Start up)
Written in - Python
Employees - 78
Total VC - 257M; 96% users pay nothing
Valuation around 4B and Revenue in 2011 240M

9. Dropbox CEO
Drew Houston
@drewhouston

10. Twitter “cookies”
ZipCar discount
Laundry and cleaning services
Catered breakfast and lunch daily
Weekly in-office yoga and pilates classes
...

11. Twitter ideology
Friday evening - talk with executives over drinks
Brainstorm everywhere
Breakfast & lunch are free!
Hard work, long hours
Too many good people. Makes you look bad :)

12. Twitter Stat
Employees 900+
Revenue 140M+ annual
Founded 2006
140M+ active users, 340M+ tweets & 1.6B
searches daily
Acquisitions - 45,2M
Funding - 1,16B

13. Twitter Acquisitions
Hotspots.io - 2012
Posterous (2012)
Dasient
Summify
TweetDeck (2011) - 40M

14. Twitter CEO
Jack Dorsey
@jack
Works 16 hrs daily
CEO of Square as well

15. Mailchimp fun
Color book - “Love what you do”
Pranks on the web site
Easter eggs ritual -> not really this
Embedded Asteroid game typing “boredom” into
search bar

16. Maichimp rules
1. Avoid rules ;) Avoid order. Create a little bit
chaos
2. Give team permission to try, to fail, to make
something crazy
3. Hire weird people. Not someone with tattoo in
the ass :), but from different area
4. Meetings outside meeting rooms

17. Mailchimp stat
Employees 35
Founded 2001
825,000 subscribers & sending 1.75B emails/m
Freemium gives +160% payed customers
20% of users has email lists > 10K subscribers

18. Mailchimp CEO
Ben Chestnut
@benchestnut

19. 37Signals culture
Standing for something isn’t about writing it
down. It’s about believing it and living it.
No treating employees like children, no meetings
4 day week, can work remotely
Pay for: flight lessons, cooking lessons etc.
CC from 37Signals for books, go to conference

20. 37Signals “tech”
Basecamp Mobile - CoffeeScript + Cinco:
Backbone, Zepto, Eco, Stitch
Web on Ruby; they built RoR
Do not support IE6, its rule :)
Journal screen - shows everyones status

21. 37Signals stat
3M customers
16 employees
Founded in 1999
Basecamp, Campfire, Highrise, Ta-Da, Softfolio
Books: Defensive Design, Getting Real, Rework

22. 37Signals CEO
Jason Fried
@jasonfried