A week or two back, when that whole Four Things meme was going around, Matt Linderman at 37signals posted an entry on their weblog, Signal vs. Noise, in which he "passed" on answering any of the questions (but wrote them all out) and then said he hoped the meme would end. Immediately afterward, Matt posted another entry entitled "A meme worth spreading: If you could give the commencement address at a graduation ceremony, what would you say?"
There's something really offensive to me about this. I can't quite place it, but most of it has to do with the pomposity of 37signals over the last few months. I understand not wanting to participate in the meme, but posting an entry about not participating is just stupid. And then, to think that your meme is "worth spreading" and to actually write that in the title, well, I just can't let that go. Apparently, I'm not the only one.
Here's my problem: I like 37signals. Or, at least, I like a few of their products and I like their simplistic design style, and I love Ruby on Rails. So I'm attached to them in that way. When they talk (especially about RoR), I feel somewhat connected, a tiny, tiny bit responsible for what they say. There have been a few times in the past when David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of RoR, hereby referred to as DHH) has said some extremely boastful things that made me cringe (see an example at the RoR weblog, ironically titled "Don't be so arrogant") and 37signals as a whole has been getting more and more arrogant as time goes on.
I understand that success makes you feel powerful. And 37signals has been very successful in the past few years. But it's starting to affect the way they behave. Nearly every post on the SVN weblog is about "getting real" or "smaller is better" or some sort of "listen, we are awesome, listen to us, Ta-Da!, because we're smaller, smarter and better looking than you and, Writeboard, we've built some crazy stuff that will make you shit your pants and you'll ask us how and we're going to tell you now, but not, you know, Campfire, just straight out, but with some attitude like you should be happy we're telling you and you should feel stupid for not knowing this already, Basecamp, even though we're just making it up now, but it doesn't matter, think about how great it is so eat it." That's a hyperbole, but not a large one. They're laying it on too thick.
Kevin Leitch created a mock-up for a new product that I think is spot-on: Selfimportance, by 37signals. They've linked to it over at SVN, but I hope they're listening. Because it's a problem. A serious one. And I don't think 37signals gets it, because Matt, the guy who posted the first two offensive entries, replied in the comments of one and wrote:
But I also understand there's a bigger thing going on here too. The overall tone of 37s and our content seems to rub people the wrong way. Some people think we're pompous, arrogant, know-it-alls. We know that. We made a decision a while back to go ahead and be provocative even if it angers or upsets some. We think it's better to present ideas in bold strokes then to be wishy-washy about it. If that comes off as cocky or arrogant, so be it. We'd rather be provocative than water everything down with "it depends..." or some other qualifier. We think our readers are smart enough to figure out what's going on.
Being a jerk isn't being provocative, it's just being a jerk, and this reply proves the point more than anything else. Hopefully, Matt is speaking more for himself than he claims.