yet there are also significantly more small companies than large companies in terms of employment. Looking at the last stackoverflow survey, half of all developers report to work companies with fewer than 100 employees, whereas only ~10-15% work at very large firms. The same is true for publicly traded business of course, it's a small minority of the market.
So I wouldn't disregard basecamps attitude as atypical because they are small. Small is normal.
New Relic (the company discussed in this article) is a publicly-traded company. I wasn’t dismissing Basecamp for being small, I was pointing our that what works for Basecamp’s 57 employees isn’t necessarily going to work for New Relic’s 2000 employees.
Also how many small companies are “lifestyle companies” and not small companies trying to grow fast and get acquired?
Furthermore, it’s important to realize that Basecamp’s company culture evangelization is partially a PR push for the company. I have no problems believing that Basecamp’s employees enjoy the work environment, but their constant insistence that their way is the only way to run a company and that all other company cultures are fatally flawed is some dishonest rhetoric. I loved it when I was a junior IC straight out of college and thought every DHH Tweet was a new revelation about how my employer was dumb, but the more time I spend on the operations side, the more I realize that Basecamp’s PR push is more about sowing discord to sell books and products than about actionable advice.