The Review of REWORK by Jason Fried of 37Signals
I seem to have been lucky enough to buy several great business books, because I feel like my last reviews have all been “Must have!” However, I think I was wrong when I said that, because I just finished reading REWORK. And now I really mean it when I say “WOW. This is a must read!”
Arrogance – or Genius?
People have told me that the guys at 37Signals were arrogant a-holes, but I’ve never heard of or followed anything they’ve ever done. I knew they were the creators of Basecamp and Ruby on Rails but that was about it. I picked up REWORK because well, the cover and back designs looked awesome. And there were awesome looking hand drawn illustrations inside. Now that’s my idea of a great book by designers.
I don’t think the guys are arrogant or a-holes, I think they just know their stuff and they write about what they actually know. People say their only talk about one way to succeed, but why should they talk about any other way than the way they’ve done it? This actually makes them BS-less. If they talked about succeeding by X, Y, and Z, but have only done X, I would’ve thrown this book out the window. Their combination of humor, snarkiness and serious business sense makes for a great combination and a very non-boring read. This might be the first business book I’ve ever read that didn’t send me drifting off while reading. That’s tough!
The Review
Since I’ve read this book, I’ve subscribed to their blog and their podcasts. I suggest that if you’ve never listened to their podcasts, do it now because they are the perfect combination of humor and business. Be aware – there’s some cussing, but it’s funny cussing. Perhaps these guys could go into business comedy if they get tired of making software 
The book is short, about 275 pages and half of those pages are illustrations and half filled pages. This makes for a quick read, as there’s absolutely NO filler in these pages. It’s all gold. Each chapter is about 1 1/2 pages long (yes you read that right). But you could read one chapter a day and have hours to contemplate the meaning and use to you.
REWORK is more catered to businesses that sell products, but I still found useful advice. It actually seemed like the perfect book to read at the perfect time, since we just started coding up Codesnipp.it and wanted to make sure it was the perfect web app that offered the perfect “Freemium” model. REWORK was great for learning about software business models, although it’s equally great to apply the principals to your freelance business as well.
I loved REWORK because it contains nothing I’ve ever read about before. It talked about making your products they way you want it, not the way your customers want it; keeping your features to a minimum; ignoring your competition; and running your business like a drug dealer. Pure gold.
I normally tend to call B.S when I read books written about a bunch of “experts”. Normally the books rehash the same obvious junk over and over again. This isn’t that kinda book. These guys know their stuff. So if you only have enough money to buy one book, skip “The Smashing Book”, skip “Digging into WordPress” and skip everything by Seth Godin. Buy REWORK. It’s the first business book I’ve given 5 stars to-ever.
Want to buy REWORK?
You can purchase REWORK at Amazon for $12.75 or catch it at Borders or Barnes and Nobles.
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
I finished it about a week ago just, agree totally with the review. The book was fantastic! I had to keep forcing myself to put the book down just so I’d have time to actually think about the ideas instead of just continuing reading when it was so enjoyable!
It was awesome, I was laughing through it with the random cuss words
I think you mean “This is NOT that kinda book.” in the last paragraph.
Great review, I just finished it a few weeks ago. Since you’re doing software you may want to read Getting Real, also by 37Signals. Rework stemmed from that book, which is all about these concepts but in software development.
Yea I fixed it
I’m actually in the middle of Getting Real right now lol.
little typo towards the end – “I loved REWORK because it ‘contain’ nothing I’ve ever read about before.”
Nice review. I actually look up to these guys and I agree with you, they write, and do what they know. I remember they shocked me with a 1 page redesign product and were charging around $500 (or more?!?) for an analysis – and I was blown away by the (for lack of a better word) balls they had.
David, I don’t follow. Are you talking about during 37signals web design days they were charging that?
Amber, I disagree with you on the point that if someone only talks about the way they succeeded then they are “BS-less.” They can be just as full of it as anyone else. People are terrible at recollecting the past and are great at filling in missing details. So, while they may say they got to this point by doing X, they really probably did X, Y and Z. But now, they’re preaching method X to people and having them believe that doing just X will make them successful.
This is a common case of survival bias… For all you know, hundreds of other people could have done X and did not become successful, and therefore did not publish a book so we don’t know about them. This is why nearly every business book is useless.
So no one should ever write any kind of business book because it doesn’t work for everyone? I disagree with this. While there are tons of useless business books out there, there are some truely great ones, which is why I try to review every business, social media and programming book I can get my hands. Yes there are useless books out there, but that doesn’t mean they’re all useless. And no, following in the footsteps of someone elses success most likely won’t work for your business either, these books are good for the fact that you can read about their unique experience, what worked for them and how to mold that to help you decided what you think you should or shouldn’t do for their business. In fact, I don’t think my own business and online repertoire would be as good as it is right now without all those books I’ve read. Which of course, isn’t to say I didn’t work my butt off and find what works for me personally.
Greg I’m going to have to disagree with you as well. I think what 37signals did and did not do is pretty clear. They did not raise money and instead used the fuss they madefrim seaign work to fund themselves. Things like that aren’t misremembered, they either did them or they didn’t. Keeping with their philosophy, it’s quite simple really.
This book has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be picked up for a couple of weeks now. It’s going with me on the plane next week when I travel back east and I plan to have it read in a couple of days.
Thanks for your review, Amber. You basically said what my friend said in a nutshell when he passed it my way: no fluff, just good content.
5 out of 5 for sure. I bought it for everyone in my company from the CEO to the sales guys.
I bought this book on the very first day it became available in India. I have read Rework over 20 times, I guess and I keep reading chapters randomly every now and then. I consider this book to be my Bible. Everything that has been said makes sense and has helped me a lot in improving my attitude towards business and work relationships.