Out of Hours: The Podcast

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DHH: Building Basecamp and Ruby on Rails as side projects, with David Heinemeier Hansson

Season 2, Ep. 7

Brought to you by Out of Hours- the community of people with side projects.


If you enjoy this episode, consider buying me a coffee to show your support! ☕️ We currently make a loss on the show and your support means the world!


Today on the podcast is David Heinemeier Hansson: the co-founder and CTO of Basecamp, a NYT best selling author, and creator of Ruby on Rails.


Ruby on rails is a free open source web application framework. and some of the biggest companies in the world were built with it: Airbnb, Shopify, Twitch and Square to name a few. 


He’s also built hugely successful businesses: Basecamp - which started as a side project for him and his cofounder Jason. It has since made him a millionaire, and served millions of users.  


Alongside all of this, he is also an author. He’s written three books, including New York Times Bestseller Rework. He’s also a Le Mans class-winning racing driver.


Even though he started all his biggest projects as side projects, this is not a traditional podcast episode - we talk much more about the other meaning of ‘out of hours’ - the fact we are running out of hours and life should be meaningful. We talk about everything from:

  • open source
  • why intrinsic motivation matters
  • why he was a terrible employee
  • how to build your internal sense of control
  • why he doesn’t set goals
  • how he found out money doesn’t make him happy
  • whether he’ll ever go into politics
  • climate change


P.S. If you enjoy this episode, consider buying me a coffee to show your support! ☕️ We currently make a loss on the show and your support means the world!


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