The good, the bad, and the shady. — Back in September, I started a project to learn more about pricing practices by WordPress plugin companies. At the time of my initial article, When is a discount not really a discount?, …

True wellness comes from employee power, not empty promises. — Burnout and stress are at an all-time high for many workers — including those relatively well-off office employees in tech and “knowledge work.” So it’s no surprise that companies have introduced innovative benefits to signal that they take employee wellness seriously. Many of those changes have been positive — more…

A preview of the exciting future of the world-renowned WordPress theme framework — Rumors of the demise of Understrap, the premiere WordPress custom theme framework used by tens of thousands of developers, were not greatly exaggerated. The project has indeed languished over the past year, and it went up for sale in early May. My team and I use Understrap every day, on…

No offense, Basecamp. — This week, Basecamp’s CEO announced a new policy in his company-news blog post — “No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account.” This was just one of a handful of changes, some of which (like eliminating 360 reviews) I think are unequivocally positive, but it stuck out…

The blueprint for a simple, powerful profit-sharing program. — If there’s one thing owners, employees and contractors agree on, it’s that it is always nice to have some skin in the game, especially when business is thriving. A successful profit-sharing program inspires and motivates your employees. It allows you, as the owner, to give back to your team. …

A simple framework for honest, equitable compensation. — Earlier this year, I transitioned my company to an equal-pay policy. Among our seven software developers, everyone is compensated in an identical way, and those numbers and formulas are public to the whole team. It almost goes without saying that equal pay and financial transparency are good things—they’re critical to…

How to retain great tech talent — There’s a paradox you’ll discover as you’re building your technology team: even though hiring great people benefits everyone, nobody really enjoys the process. Creative agency owners and entrepreneurs struggle to write job descriptions, conduct interviews, and make judgment calls about the best candidates. …

We’re praised for being decisive, ingenious and disruptive. And yet many of us are stuck in a rut that is centuries out of date. — You and I are small business owners — and even though it doesn’t always feel like it, that means we have a lot of power. Collectively, we employ almost half of all workers in the United States. We’re praised for being decisive, ingenious, and disruptive. We pride ourselves on being…

We can’t keep blaming human behavior on the robots — When in doubt, blame the robots. As Facebook has fallen from grace and struggled to reconcile its role in spreading propaganda and stoking political anger, the company has proposed a familiar solution: If the algorithm has failed, let’s just build a better algorithm. It’s a noble goal for the next…