Why Long Hours and an Obsession With Efficiency Might Be Hurting Your Business What if working long hours, living on Slack, and growing as fast as possible isn't the best way to run a business? The founders of Basecamp are pretty sure they have the answer.

On March 7 at 4:30 a.m. Greenwich mean time, a tech company's worst nightmare began. For eight and a half hours, a catastrophic network failure disabled Basecamp's popular project management software. Instead of boosting productivity for its three million accounts around the world, Basecamp stopped people from getting their work done. "We're incredibly sorry…especially for our European customers," wrote cofounder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson on the company blog. He explained that the problem originated with their cloud provider, took full responsibility, and promised they would work diligently to make sure it never happened again.

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But it did -- just six days later. This time, Heinemeier Hansson couldn't apologize enough. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry (and ashamed)," he told customers. "It's also been a mighty fall…From riches of reliance to rags of shambles. To say this is humbling is an epic understatement."