In the end, judgment comes first. And that means hiring is a gut decision. As much science as people want to try to pour into the hiring process, art always floats to the top. This is especially true when hiring at the executive level. The people who make the final calls — the ones who are judged on outcome, not effort — are ultimately hired based on experience and judgement. Two traits that are qualities, not quantities. They are tasked with setting direction, evaluating situations, and making decisions with limited information. All day long they are making judgment calls. That's what you hire them to do, and that's how you decide who to hire. Presented with a few finalists, you decide who you *think* will do a better job when they have to *think* about what to do in uncertain situations. This is where their experience and judgment come in. It's the only thing they have that separates them from someone else. Embrace the situation. You don't know, they don't know, everyone's guessing, some guess better than others. You can't measure how well someone's going to guess next time, you can only make assumptions based on other assumptions. Certainty is a mirage. In the art of people, everything is subjective. In the end, it's not about qualifications — it's about who you trust to make the right call when it matters most. Ultimately, the only thing that was objective was your decision. The reasons were not. -Jason

I'm republishing this for a friend who doesn't have a reliable place to publish this online. It's a letter she wrote and sent to a number of newspapers. Her family was a victim of the recent Franklin wildfire, and unlike other recent fires, the Franklin fire wasn't included in the Governor's emergency declaration for disaster relief. This has devastating downstream implications on those who lost everything, and their neighbors and neighborhoods. Here is her piece, in its entirety. Governor Newsom can change this with the stroke of a pen, and it's my understanding he's been presented with an opportunity to sign this into being, but has, as of now, refused. If you know anyone who can reach Governor Newsom and help make this happen for all the folks who suffered dearly in Franklin, please do. Thank you. —— Malibu's Forgotten Fire: Why the Franklin Fire Must Be Included in Disaster Relief On December 9th, my home burned in the Franklin Fire in Malibu. Just 19 days after it was contained, the Palisades Fire ignited and raged all the way to my neighborhood. The fire was only stopped because there was simply nothing left to burn. Despite this undeniable connection, Franklin Fire victims are not included in disaster relief efforts, leaving me and my neighbors in a dire situation with no support. During this time, I was unable to return to my property. Homes on my street still lack drinkable water and essential utilities. The communication poles burned down, making recovery even more challenging. The already difficult job of dealing with the Franklin Fire has been compounded by the Palisades Fire, yet we have been left out of relief efforts. The housing market is overrun, and price gouging has made anything available unaffordable. I don’t qualify for help because my fire “doesn’t count.” I don’t qualify for free toxin testing or free debris removal from the Army Corps of Engineers. I don’t qualify for streamlined tax relief or financial benefits. I am still waiting for any assistance to cover my family’s initial six-week stay in a hotel with our pets. What was initially expected to be a few months of hardship has now turned into an estimated two-year ordeal—because I am at the bottom of every priority list. The most devastating realization is that I am woefully underinsured for this disaster. If I were allowed to combine my insurance policy, I would have the funds needed to rebuild. But because the Franklin Fire is not included in the broader emergency declaration, I am prohibited from accessing this option. If the Franklin Fire were bundled with the officially recognized wildfires, I could qualify for the necessary coverage to repair my home. It is heartbreaking to see that just 19 days after the Franklin Fire, victims of the Palisades Fire have been granted sweeping benefits and streamlined permits. They will be able to rebuild their homes “like for like” plus an additional ten percent without the need for permits—not even for homes or septic systems. Meanwhile, I don’t qualify for this exemption. I don’t qualify for state-backed relief efforts. My neighborhood, which was undeniably part of this disaster, is being ignored. Instead, I am left with nothing but bureaucratic red tape and empty reassurances. Why is my neighborhood excluded from these crucial relief efforts? The answer is simple: Governor Gavin Newsom has not signed off on it. Other fires across Los Angeles—including those caused by arsonists—have been bundled into the broader wildfire relief programs. Fires that never even touched the Palisades are included. So why not the Franklin Fire? Malibu is not just a playground for the rich and famous. It is home to multi-generational families like mine. I was born and raised in Malibu. My grandparents’ home on Pacific Coast Highway, which they purchased in the 1940s, was lost in the Palisades Fire. My parents’ home—my childhood home—was lost in the Palisades Fire. My own home, where I lived with my husband and child, burned in the Franklin Fire just 19 days before. The Franklin Fire was still smoldering when the Palisades Fire ignited. We were still in a hotel, not yet having found a place to rent. We are part of this disaster, yet we have been erased from its response. It is time for the Franklin Fire to be included in the state of emergency declaration. We need access to relief, insurance flexibility, and the same streamlined rebuilding process granted to our neighbors. We are victims of this disaster, and we deserve to be recognized as such.

Be curious about what's new, sure. That's expected. But it's more interesting to be curious about what's old. 
What stood the test of time? What worked before and still works now? What survived through all the jabs that you assumed would knock it out, but didn't? That's worth attention. That's worth being curious about. Those are the things that are particularly interesting. There are the lessons. New will always be new. There will always be another new after the previous new. But what made it, what sticks around, what outlasts? What's durable? What's the reason that rare thing is still here? Longevity isn't a fluke. It's an opportunity to get on board when you missed it before. Curiosity about things still here isn’t just nostalgia — it’s a strategic way to filter the noise and find what truly matters, what truly works, and what's truly worth investing in. -Jason

Not too long ago, we dedicated a 6-week cycle to improving Basecamp's onboarding flows. The aim was to increase conversion from trial to paid by smoothing out the initial experience of getting going, doing a better job of quick-teaching the basics, and making a few things a little bit easier each step of the way. At a high level, these were the projects in that 6-week period: Adding a sample Getting Started project with steps and basic education. Streamlined project creation (reducing it to one step from the previous multi-step process) and exposed all the tools upfront. We also removed the wizard option. Revamped and simplified the blank slates that introduce unused tools. Refreshed the sample project for creating a podcast (great cross-functional example people could relate to). Sped up creating a new account (people used to have to wait a few seconds while the sample projects were generated). Added an email reminder that the trial was ending soon. Dropped the other sample project so we didn't overwhelm with examples. Rewrote the Hey! menu onboarding messages/tips so they were easier to follow. The result? A huge 30% increase in conversion. 30%! As anyone who works in this field knows, conversion improvements (without tricking people) are usually a grind. You're typically thrilled to see any results, and often have to parlay small single digit improvements into more single digit improvements, hoping to eventually hit double digits. Yet somehow, this time, we managed to find our way to a 30% increase. And we have no idea how. And we don't care to find out. What was it exactly? Was it just one of the things that really mattered? All of the improvements together? A handful of small improvements that tipped into something bigger? Don't know, don't care. We spent six weeks on the work, we did our best, and something worked out really, really well. We're thrilled with the outcome, and that's enough for us. That was the point in the end, wasn't it? You could make the argument that we should have tried each thing separately, measured each impact, and then decided where to go next (or known when to stop). You could make the argument that changing so many things at once makes it impossible to know which variables actually mattered. You could have argued we should have been more rigorous in our evaluation so we could learn something fundamental we could apply to a future project. You could argue all those things. While you were debating those points, spending months teasing out answers, or testing each change in high-traffic succession for statistical significance, we were already basking in the results and moving our product teams to the next project. In six weeks all the work was done, we did our best, and it worked. The point wasn't to know, it was to do. And it was done.

Precision. Certainty. Specificity. Everyone wants to know exactly what and exactly when, and they want a statistic attached to corroborate it. But numbers are rarely answers — just as projects are rarely math problems. Where are we in this process exactly? How far along in this project are we exactly? Where does everything stand absolutely? There are no equal signs after those statements. There are all sorts of things in life that you want but can’t have. Exactly is one of them. Creative work thrives on subjective interpretation. You can establish an end date that’s fixed, but where you are is really up to you. Yes, in some specific businesses with ultra-specific standardized widget-making processes, it’s possible to expect and require perfectly precise forecasts. But that’s almost certainly not yours. The quest for knowing exactly has preoccupied entire industries with impossible answers, and pushed entire categories of tools towards the wrong trends. You can find out where things stand. But the answer is a human one, not a digital one. It’s fuzzy, it’s a bit abstract, and it’s more a feeling than a figure. It’s taking stock of all the things that can’t be measured, and speaking or writing the actual answer, not pointing to an abstract number. “63” means nothing. “We think next Tuesday” means something. As long as humans are making things, it’s best to ride along with human nature. To follow that seam, rather than to cross it. This is what we’ve been doing as of late in Basecamp. We’ve been adding imprecise, humanizing features to project management. If you want false precision, you have plenty of other choices. If you want a system that represents what’s really going on, here we are. For example, take Basecamp’s Hill Charts and Move The Needle features. They are visual representations of where individual scopes of work, or entire projects stand, based on the flexibility and subjectivity of someone’s mind and hand, not a computer’s representation of rigidity. Both tools use graphical markers — either a dot or a needle — that people physically move around and place on a subjective scale based on an understanding of where something stands. It’s not precise, it’s approximate. “About here.” “Feels like we’re this far along”. That imprecise wiggle room is also known as the truth. You can see how both features work here... Hill Charts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKJD-l3W6E Move The Needle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0urtIQrFyQ Subjectivity is a good thing — a human thing. It’s with the grain. Subjectivity and productivity are partners, not adversaries. Over time we’ll be adding more imprecision like this to Basecamp. The more we can reflect reality, not a false premise, the better off teams will be. We know that, we believe that, and we’ll continue to promote that. -Jason