Everything comes with a badge now: 4.7 top-rated, best place to work, used by millions. A badge can tell you what’s good. It can’t tell you what’s right for you.
Rather is a new way to find that out, and to act on it. Two tools so far: Tuesdays, for where you work, and second draft, for the apps you use.
What we noticed
Nobody asks who has the final word, or what an app should do after a week of silence. So when it goes against you, all you get is a feeling that something’s off.
You decide you’re bad at this. Or that the manager is, or the app. Usually nobody is. It was made for someone else.
A month in a job teaches you more than every review you read. Then you pick the next one from the reviews again.
We make tools that turn “something’s off” into something you can act on.
They help you notice what you’d rather, put it in plain words, and keep it. The fixing is then yours to do: choose what fits, or change what doesn’t.
You don’t need zero compromise. Spend your compromises where they’re cheap.
The name
| Best | Rather | |
|---|---|---|
| Who answers | Everyone, averaged | You |
| How you find out | By reading reviews | By living with it |
| What it’s good at | Ruling out what’s wrong | Choosing among what’s left |
| How long it holds | Until the next ranking | Until your situation changes |
Take one small thing. An app can remind you every morning, or wait until you open it. Reminders turn into noise: by week six you swipe them away unread, including the week it mattered. Waiting costs something too: in a busy week you never open it, and the thing you wanted looked after is the thing that slips.
No rating can settle that, because neither answer is the better one. Say you’d rather it waited. That isn’t a verdict on reminders. It’s the cost you’d take. Nobody can say it for you, and it isn’t fixed: the same person wants a nudge for the cat’s medicine and silence from the reading list.
Products
Until now, when something didn’t fit, you did the adjusting. It can go the other way. Some things won’t bend, so you find one that already fits. Others will, so they change for you.
“You need careful, deliberate decisions.”
“Here, decisions are fast once information exists.”
One real risk. Ask about it before you join.
Someone else gets a different answer about the same team. Tuesdays never rates the place.
Map how you like to work in about three minutes, and look back at past jobs to find out what wore you down and what drew you in. People who worked somewhere describe what actually happens there, by role and level, so you know what to ask before you join. It never rates a workplace, and your profile is never used to screen you.
“Make an app that makes me a bedtime story every night.”
“Instead of a story, tell me some less-known facts about an animal.”
“I don’t want stories anymore. I want to be able to choose topics, like animal facts, plant facts…”
From a real app. Nobody knows they’d rather have facts than stories until the stories arrive.
Say what you need in your own words, try what comes back, and change it whenever you like, the small things too. second draft keeps what was decided so you don’t have to explain yourself again, and your records stay yours when you move to another app.
What we hold to
Some questions have a right answer. Others have several good ones. Telling them apart is most of our work.
Late pay. Lost data. Nobody is better off with these, so there’s nothing to match. They need fixing, and we don’t file them under taste, or under things to get used to.
One person answers, or the team does. Remind me, or wait. Each way gives you something and costs you something else. We never rank one above the other. We show you where you stand.
What you’d rather depends on the situation, so you’re never told what type you are.
No stars, no top tens, no winners. We show how each option fits you, and never rank them against each other.
Fit is for the person choosing. It’s never used to screen anyone out, and what you’ve found out is never sold.