40 Hours, No Meetings, No Politics: Building a Company That Actually Works with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)
episode
“HR Heretics” | How CPOs, CHROs, Founders, and Boards Build High Performing Companies
33 min
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 15 days ago
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Who is David Heinemeier Hansson and what is his background in Ruby on Rails and 37signals?
For today's Essential Heretics 101 feature, we talk to David Heinemeier Hansen, aka DHH. He critiques DEI implementation and workplace wokeness, advocates political neutrality at work, and outlines his organizational philosophy emphasizing minimal management, creative constraints, and HR as leadership firewall. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the HR Heretics Podcast. Today, our episode is with David Heinemeier Hansen, also better known as DHH. Nolan, you had prior commitments for this episode. So Colleen, once again, our friend and best friend on the show, helped me interview David. It was very, very, very insightful, as we expected. So DHH was the creator of Ruby on Rails language, also the co-founder of 37signals, which includes Basecamp.
David, thank you for joining us. So great to have you on the show today. And of course, Colleen co-hosting with me today in Nolan's absence. You are one of the more spicy speakers I've listened to and read, and we love that here. So we'd love to kick it off with just your history on Rubies on Rails. I just love to hear how that happened, how you decided to create that and what that was like.
Yeah, no, it's a great story. I mean, I started developing for the web back in 95, which was all HTML. I didn't really know how to program properly. I tried to learn how to program a few times, and I find it awfully hard to figure it out. And I spent a few years doing programming as a tool. And then Jason Fried and I started working on Basecamp together with the two other people we had at 37signals at the time in 2003. And it was the first project, major project, in quite a while where I did not have a client. I did not have anyone saying, you have to use PHP, you have to use this, you have to use that. We had free range. And I took it upon myself to mean that I had free range. And I was just going to tell Jason what we were going to use.
I wasn't going to ask him. And at the time, I'd been reading Martin Fowler and Dave Thomas and some of these other programmers who were writing at the time about Ruby in this kind of abstract way. Hey, I'm going to explain a programming concept to you. I'm going to use Ruby because it almost looks like pseudocode. You'll be able to follow along even if you've never written a line of Ruby code. And I thought, this really looks like an interesting programming language. Here are these titans of the industry. They really seem to enjoy it. I should give it a try. So I gave it a try for the development of Basecamp. I said to myself, you know what? Let me give it two weeks. And I think it barely even took a week before I was head over heels in love with Ruby.
It wasn't like, oh yeah, I can use it. It was, OMG, my mind is blown. What even is this? Where has it been my whole life? I want to do this. So Ruby to me was really the inflection point of my career.
Why does DHH say “I want my code to sing” and how does he view programming as poetry?
It was basically learning that and going, oh, I want to be a programmer. This is what I want to do. I don't just want programs. I want to be a programmer.
David, I heard you say on the podcast, you want your code to sing, like that level of passion. What does that mean? I
don't think all programmers think about programming in that way. I like the, I want to make it sing. And I really take that though, from like a literal thing of, I am a software writer, not a software engineer. I have rejected the engineering label for the longest time. I know that's the industry standard and people talk about hiring engineers. I don't hire engineers. I hire software writers. And I say that not because I don't like engineering. I mean, every now and then I do engineering. I sit down and very methodically measure things. But most of the time what I do is writing, which is far more akin to someone writing prose, someone writing nonfiction, even fiction, even poetry. That's how far I'm willing to push it.
That the best code that I've personally written, it feels like it's poetic in its expression, with its dance, with its song, with the computer. It's not just about making the computer do a thing. It's about making the computer do a thing in like a graceful way that we're having this soft, eloquent conversation with like this little chip made of sand and we can make it do amazing
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is David Heinemeier Hansson and what is his background in Ruby on Rails and 37signals?
0:13–3:13
2
Why does DHH say “I want my code to sing” and how does he view programming as poetry?
3:13–7:04
3
How did 37signals build a company that runs itself with minimal management and no stand‑up meetings?
7:04–10:51
4
What is the 40‑hour work week model that Silicon Valley hates and how does Basecamp enforce it?
10:51–14:24
5
Why does DHH think both sides of the remote‑work debate are wrong and what’s his ideal balance?
14:24–17:24
6
How did the “no politics at work” policy emerge and what two weeks changed everything for 37signals?
17:24–22:06
7
What’s the DEI deception according to DHH and why does he argue equity isn’t equality?
22:06–29:05
8
Why does DHH believe HR should be a leadership firewall and what are his final thoughts on work‑life balance?
29:05–33:55
Speakers
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