Siu Lun

Saw a facebook update today from Belle Liu of Beansbox that mentioned about “Rework” book from 37Signals.

I don’t usually read, what I do read is usually the PHP.net manual, AS3 language reference, API documentations etc… I did read some entrepreneurial books before I started my own company though.

The classical “The E Myth Revisited”.

But anyway, I read the excerpt at the Rework website, I’m interested since it’s from a fairly successful web-services company in the US. I wanted to know what they’ve been through.

Having a look at the excerpt, there are certainly things that I agree with, and have strengthened my believe in, such as the “Workaholic” section about how workaholics are no good because they make other feel inadequate, it reminded me of a former-colleague, where she excels in is she stays for long hours and works hard, but she complains about people who leaves on-time to their face and makes them feel inadequate. Very true.

Other points in the excerpt however I found to be mostly obvious, probably only because I’ve been through the same, there is one thing however that I don’t agree with.

“Underdo your competition”. Unfortunately, I found basecamp’s features to be lacking a little to be of ‘real’ benefits. The only reason why that would work is that you have a simpler interface that is easier to grasp, which appears more user-friendly, at the beginning.

“leaving the complex stuff to your competition” is not a good idea. I mean, let’s switch a bit on the industry, if this applied to Intel, AMD would’ve ruled the world today. CPUs are complex.

Let’s switch it more closely related to the web. Apple. If Apple’s iPhone 4 lagged behind in features, functionality, speed, lost that all important technological advancement. They would be losing market share.

However I recognise that, that is a business characteristics 37Signal approaches, and since they’re not doing badly, it must’ve been a good point; not necessarily.

Anyway, thanks to Belle . I’m actually interested in reading the rest of that book, but I don’t think from what I’ve seen so far, it’s worth paying for it.

Later.