# Why 37signals' Code Looks Different: Small Teams, Narrow Scope, and Selective Hiring

DevFeed: [Why 37signals' Code Looks Different: Small Teams, Narrow Scope, and Selective Hiring](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/37signals-isn-t-smarter-than-you-but-they-are-different-40600.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.nateberkopec.com/blog/37signals-is-not-smarter-than-you/>)

Published: 2026-01-27T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Nate Berkopec](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/nate-berkopec.md>)

Topics: [Rails](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rails.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Software as a service](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/saas.md>)

Tags: [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>), [rails](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rails.md>), [saas](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/saas.md>), [team-building](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/team-building.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that 37signals' clean-looking Rails code reflects a distinct engineering strategy rather than inherently superior developers. That strategy emphasizes small teams, aggressively limited product scope, and hiring highly capable engineers.

## Source excerpt

A recent episode of the Rails Business Podcast was about "striving for ideal code". The hosts are both typical "Rails Indie" owner/operators: a small team building a small SaaS. They were discussing a new podcast which is out from 37signals called "Recordables". The discussion was envy for how good and clean 37signals' code was. This is a fair assessment. They've been open-sourcing a lot of real world products lately, including: Campfire, the chat app. Fizzy, the Kanban tool. If you read them, the code looks great. We've only seen glimpses of this Rails style, which David has alluded to or shown small parts of in interviews or conference talks. Until now, we couldn't see what the Rails "house style" is because we never had a real open source application written in that style. Now we do. The discussion on the podcast was mostly a sense of envy of how good the good was, and wondering: "Why doesn't our code look that good?" Covet not thy neighbor's codebase. The reason why your code doesn't look "as good" as 37signals' is because your engineering strategy is not the same as theirs. 37signals, for all of its faults, has a unique engineering strategy, which I would summarize as: Stay small in terms of headcount to revenue ratio. Ruthlessly cut scope. 37signals' products usually do far, far less than their competition. Hire the top 10% of engineers. Most of the businesses I've ever worked for cannot say that any of these three points are honestly part of their strategy. Every time 37signals puts out a codebase or talks about their size in public, I am always shocked at how few LOC they are. Basecamp Next/2 was originally 10,000 LOC. Basecamp 3 was 18,000 LOC when released. Fizzy is 7,500 non-test LOC. Campfire is just 2,500 non-test LOC. That is fucking insane. 37signals employs 25-30 technical employees, meaning that for each individual codebase, they're maintaining under 2,500 lines per person. Most companies manage 10x that per headcount. Most indies ship 100,000+ line