Issue #12: The Gumroad less traveled
This past week, this tweet caught my attention:
Sahil Lavingia is the founder at Gumroad, a successful online service where creators can buy and sell digital goods such as design templates, online courses and more. I've done plenty of hiring, and the thought of bringing someone into your company without ever actually talking to them seemed crazy. So I was interested to learn more about how they accomplished this, and more importantly what the underlying ethos of the company was that prompted this approach.
Fortunately, Sahil wrote a blog post outlining the philosophy of work at Gumroad. Here are a few interesting take-aways.
#1 It's a different kind of company
Sahil acknowledges up front: what works for Gumroad won't work for every organization. Their approach is one of "Minimum Viable Culture" where the emphasis is on doing high-impact work on your own schedule so you can enjoy the rest of your life. Says Sahil:
"Because I was burned out and didn’t want to think about working any more than I needed to, I instituted a no-meeting, no-deadline culture.
For me, it was no longer about growth at all costs, but 'freedom at all costs.'"
But, that doesn't mean that there aren't pieces of the way they work that could be valuable for other organizations.
#2 Defining Success
There are no quarterly goals, no OKRs. Just a single north star: maximizing how much money creators on their platform earn. (It's worth noting that Gumroad's own revenue is a % of creators' income, so this goal doubly serves their customers and the business).
With this single goal in mind, it's easier for individuals to prioritize the tasks they grab for themselves. They do have one large 'tent-pole' release per year, but otherwise release iteratively as work is completed. Says Sahil:
"We don’t prioritize ruthlessly. People can work on what’s fun or rely on their intuition, because as long as we remain profitable and keep shipping, we tend to get to the important stuff eventually. Our public roadmap helps Gumroad's creators hold us accountable"
#3 The logistics
Day to day communications is basically entirely asynchronous:
"Instead of having meetings, people “talk” to each other via GitHub, Notion, and (occasionally) Slack, expecting responses within 24 hours. Because there are no standups or “syncs” and some projects can involve expensive feedback loops to collaborate, working this way requires clear and thoughtful communication.
Everyone writes well, and writes a lot."
Work is organized in a Notion queue, and the various team members grab tasks as they see fit. All Gumroad employees are part-time by design, and are paid per hour. This gives each of them flexibility to not only choose when they work, but also how much they work any given week. So, any new employee would do the same thing. Sahil:
"When someone new joins the company, they do what everyone else does: go into our Notion queue, pick a task, and get to work, asking for clarification when needed."
So that brings us back to:
#4 The Hiring
The process for hiring isn't a standard interview process. This is where you could get tripped up, if you tried to just shove a standard interview (ask a bunch of questions) into an async process. Instead, the whole process is adapted for their organization. Sahil out lines the high level steps:
Apply via a form.
An unpaid, few-hour challenge, that resembles the high-level work we do at Gumroad. This may include breaking down a large shipment (like Gumroad Memberships) into its atomic parts, planning the schema associated with a new feature, or writing up a Help Center article.
A paid, few-week trial period, that resembles the day-to-day work we do at Gumroad. This may include fixing bugs, shipping a feature, or answering support tickets.
Overall Takeaway
I think this clearly answers my question of how do you hire someone without even a phone call: the interview matches the company and culture. Why do a phone screen when you'll never be on the phone with them again? If clear writing is important to every role, then having an async writing-centric process lets you judge that most clearly. Having them do a trial-run to see if they fit into the work style and culture is also a no-brainer.
Beyond that, Gumroad's overall approach is just a super cool model for how to run a company and live your life. For those wondering how the employees feel about this whole setup, it should be noted that Sahil did offer full-time employment to his staff last year:
"Recently, I pitched the whole company about going full-time, because it felt wrong to grow any larger without full-time staff.
Nobody accepted.
I realized then that I was trying to copy the status quo–to try and fix something that wasn’t broken–so that I could feel better about doing things the “normal” way.
But the deal we already had in place was better for what our people prioritize: freedom over growth, sustainability over speed, life over work."
To read the full post for yourself, check it out here.
In the News & Around the Web
This is an interesting and important piece: Why many Black employees don't want to return to the office. It further touches on a theme we discussed a couple weeks back about how Slack-first communication had changed the dynamics for women and others in the workplace.
Did you hear Facebook changed its name to Meta? Of course you did. For a dive into whether Facebook's VR Workrooms are the future of work, check out Issue #2: Into the Metaverse.
This past summer, Microsoft came out with a study on remote work highlighting the risk of silos between departments. This past week the Harvard Business Review came out with some ways to combat that: Don’t Let Organizational Silos Creep Into Hybrid Work
Tips & Recommendations
Searching for a job? LinkedIn's new job filters make it easier to find remote work.
Or check out these 10 well-known companies offering fully remote or hybrid work arrangements.
...and one more thing
When you gotta work through Halloween
