Book Review: ReWork by Jason Fried and DHH

Published: 2018-08-06

Reading ReWork, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, felt like reading the beginning of a conversation I had already joined half-way through. Many of the ideas advocated in this book I’ve heard in other places and from other people, but this book neatly defines the counterargument to the startup ethos of “move fast and break things”.

This book is a good, quick read. The authors boast that they cut the length of the book in half for their final draft, which I appreciate from any book trying to tackle a potentially dry subject. Their conversational tone and mild humor keep the book engaging, while the short chapters make it easy to pick up when you have a few minutes to spare.

Unfortunately, at least for me, the pithy writing didn’t stick with me as well as I might have hoped. I found myself forgetting most of their specific suggestions hours after reading them. To be fair, if I was about to start a new business perhaps it would have been easier for me to retain the details of their advice.

While the book provides lots of intriguing strategies for starting and running a business, the advice is unmistakably reactionary to the common tech startup imperative of ‘growth above all else’. The authors caution: be slow to hire, avoid outside investors, beware feature bloat, and be frugal. If you focus on creating a great product then success will follow, they argue. As backing for their assertions they point to their own company, 37signals, a highly successful software company with only a handful of employees.

A pet peeve I have with this book is the confidence in which the authors declare that if you follow the path they have blazed it will inevitably lead you to success. Their success does not prove that their business philosophies will lead others to success. To make that assertion they would need to examine others with similar business practices and compare the outcomes, which the authors have not done. This is a form of survivorship bias, and while common for these sorts of books, it still frustrates me.

In summary, this book is an easy recommendation to anyone working in a tech startup or looking to found a business. For all others there is still some value in reading the book, especially if you have an interest in management or software development. This book has already had an impact on my work, making me reevaluate the scope of a personal project. I wouldn’t say this book has changed my life, but it definitely provided me with some valuable insight and was well worth the read.