Remote

Office Not Required
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
20131029

About This Book

Jason and David will illuminate the many benefits of remote work, including access to the best talent, freedom from soul-crushing commutes, and increased productivity outside the traditional office. And they will tackle all the excuses floating around – for examples, that innovation only happens face-to-face, that people can’t be trusted to be productive at home, that company culture would wither away.

Above all, this book will teach you how to become an expert in remote work. It will provide an overview of the tools and techniques that will help you get the most out of it, as well as the pitfalls and constraints that can bring you down.

The Time Is Right for Remote Work

Why work doesn’t happen at work
It’s incredibly hard to get meaningful work done when your workday has been shredded into work moments. Creative work, thoughtful work, important work – this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone.

Escaping 9am-5pm
The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. Not only do we not have to be in the same spot to work together, we also don’t have to work at the same time to work together.

End of city monopoly
The advances in technology that made remote working possible have also made remote culture and living much more desirable.

The new luxury
The new luxury is to shed the shackles of deferred living – to pursue your passions now, while you’re still working. The new luxury is the luxury of freedom and time.

It’s not about the money
Letting people work remotely is about promoting quality of life and about getting access to the best people wherever they are. It may also end up reducing costs spent on offices and result in fewer-but-more-productive workers is the gravy, not the turkey.

But saving is always nice
Remote work isn’t primarily about the money – but who doesn’t like saving as a side effect? If you’re trying to convince a manager, make them see dollar signs where you see greater freedom, more time with the family, and no commute.

Not all or nothing
Embracing remote work doesn’t mean you can’t have an office, just that it’s not required. It doesn’t mean that all your employees can’t live in the same city, just that they don’t have to. Remote work is about setting your team free to be the best it can be, wherever that might be.

Still a trade-off
Remote work is not without cost or compromise. In this world very few leaps of progress arrive exclusively as benefits. Everything else is a trade-off, and you’ll be wise to know what you’re getting into.

You’re probably already doing it
Look around inside your company and notice what work already happens on the outside (legal, accounting, payroll, advertising), or with minimal face-to-face interaction(emailing, secluding themselves to get work done).

How to Collaborate Remotely

Thou shalt overlap
Working remotely, if it is to be successful, usually requires some overlap with the hours your coworkers are putting in. At 37signals, they’ve found that they need a good four hours of overlap to avoid collaboration delays and feel like a team.

Seeing is believing
Use a shared screen to collaborate on everything from walking through a presentation, to going over the latest website changes, to sketching together in Photoshop, to just editing a simple text document together.

All out in the open
The point is to avoid locking up important stuff in a single person’s computer or inbox. Put all the important stuff out in the open, and no one will have to chase that wild goose to get their work done.

The virtual water cooler
The idea is to have a single, permanent chat room where everyone hangs out all day to shoot the breeze, post funny pictures, and generally goof around. Yes, it can also be used to answer questions about work, but its primary function is to provide social cohesion.

Forward motion
To instill a sense of company cohesion and to share forward motion, everyone needs to feel that they’re in the loop. At 37signals, they’ve institutionalized this through a weekly discussion thread with the subject “What have you been working on?” Everyone chimes in with a few lines about what they’ve done over the past week and what’s intended for the next week.

The work is what matters
One of the secret benefits of hiring remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone’s performance. When it’s all about the work, it’s clear who in the company is pulling their weight and who isn’t.

Not just for people who are out of town
Remote work isn’t just for people who are out of town, across state lines, or on different continents. You can work remotely from down the street. Remote just means you’re not in the office 9am-5pm, all day long.

Easy on the M&Ms
Meetings and managers are actually the greatest causes of work not getting done at the office. M&Ms continue to have a place in the remote-working world, but you’ll be more conscious about how many you consume when everything has a paper trail online. That’s a good thing.

Managing Remote Workers

When’s the right time to go remote?
In general, it’s best if you start as early as possible. A great place to start is to allow your current employees to begin working remotely. So start early if you can, but if you can’t, start small.

Meetups and sprints
Just because you work remotely most of the time doesn’t mean you have to, or should, work remotely all of the time. Fill up the camel’s back every now and then with some in-person fun.

Level the playing field
Get great intercom systems, use shared desktop apps to ensure everyone is seeing the same thing while collaborating, and hold as many discussions as possible on email and other online messaging platforms. Above all, think frequently about how you’d feel as a remote worker.

One-on-ones
It’s a good idea to check in a bit more frequently with remote workers (do it every month, or at least once every few months). The goal here is really just to keep a consistent, open line of communication.

Remove the roadblocks
Getting stuff done while working remotely depends, first, on being able to make progress at all hours. Start by empowering everyone to make decisions on their own.

Using scarcity to your advantage
When most conversations happen virtually, people actually look forward to these special opportunities for a face-to-face. The scarcity of such face time makes it seem that much more valuable. And as a result, people don’t waste the time. An awareness of scarcity makes them use it wisely.