Remote by David H. Hansson & Jason Fried

The technology to work remotely and to avoid the daily grind of commuting and meetings has finally come of age, and bestselling authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the masters of making it work at tech company 37signals. Remote working is the future – and it is rushing towards us. Remote: Office Not Required combines eye-opening ideas with entertaining narrative. It will convince you that working remotely increases productivity and innovation, and it will also teach you how to get it right – whether you are a manager, working solo or one of a team.

Notes from, “Heinemeier Hansson, David; Fried, Jason. Remote. Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.”

THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR REMOTE WORK

Let’s face it: nobody likes commuting. The alarm rings earlier, you arrive home that much later… Smart people in white coats have extensively studied commuting—this supposedly necessary part of our days—and the verdict is in: long commutes make you fat, stressed, and miserable. Even short commutes stab at your happiness. According to the research, commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress-related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce. (pp. 16-17).

Traditionally, those who ran the engines of capitalism thought: “Let’s gather a large number of people in a small geographical area where they must live on top of each other in tight quarters, and we’ll be able to find plenty of able bodies to man our factories.” Most splendid, Sir Moneybags! (p. 25).

We got libraries, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, and all the other wonders of modern culture and civilization. But we also got cubicles, tiny apartments, and sardine boxes to take us from here to there. We traded the freedom and splendor of country land and fresh air for convenience and excitement. (p. 25).

So here’s a prediction: The luxury privilege of the next twenty years will be to leave the city. Not as its leashed servant in a suburb, but to wherever one wants. (p. 27).

Your life no longer needs to be divided into arbitrary phases of work and retirement. You can blend the two for fun and profit—design a better lifestyle that makes work enjoyable because it’s not the only thing on the menu. (pp. 28-29).

Letting people work remotely is about promoting quality of life, about getting access to the best people wherever they are, and all the other benefits we’ll enumerate. That it may also end up reducing costs spent on offices and result in fewer-but-more-productive workers is the gravy, not the turkey. (p. 34).

When trying to convince said bean counters, there’s no logic like big company logic—so here’s some from IBM, the bluest of blue chips: Through its telework strategy, since 1995, IBM has reduced office space by a total of 78 million square feet. Of that, 58 million square feet was sold at a gain of $1.9B. And sublease income for leased space not needed exceeded $1B. In the U.S., continuing annual savings amounts to $100M, and at least that much in Europe. (p. 37).

Cutting back on commuting also means huge savings for the environment. That same IBM study showed how remote work saved the company five million gallons of fuel in 2007, preventing more than 450,000 tons of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere in the United States alone. Helping the company’s bottom line, adding to your pocketbook, and saving the planet: check, check, check. (p. 39).

For other companies where the trappings of success are an important part of the image—for example, advertising agencies or law firms or C-level recruiting outfits—having a showy office may make sense. Acknowledging that the office is there to impress clients sets an owner or manager free to make it the best theater experience it can be—and employees can remain free to work from home when they’re not needed as extras for the scene. (p. 42).

DEALING WITH EXCUSES

Most fears that have to do with people working remotely stem from a lack of trust… We’ll let you in on a secret: If people really want to play video games or surf the web all day, they’re perfectly capable of doing so from their desks at the office. (p. 54).

For example, at clothing retailer J.C. Penney’s headquarters, 4,800 workers spend 30 percent of the company’s Internet bandwidth watching YouTube videos. (p. 54).

That’s just it—if you can’t let your employees work from home out of fear they’ll slack off without your supervision, you’re a babysitter, not a manager… The bottom line is that you shouldn’t hire people you don’t trust, or work for bosses who don’t trust you. (p. 55).

Okay, we’re all human and we all occasionally fall prey to temptation. We may as well admit that, yes, the home may contain more distractions and temptations than the average office cubicle… Keep in mind, the number one counter to distractions is interesting, fulfilling work. (p. 58).

Most people want to work, as long as it’s stimulating and fulfilling. And if you’re stuck in a dead-end job that has no prospects of being either, then you don’t just need a remote position—you need a new job. (p. 59).

Security is a big and serious deal, but it’s also largely a solved problem. That’s why the average person is quite willing to do their banking online and why nobody is afraid of entering their credit card number on Amazon. (p. 61).

The best way to defuse the “everyone must be bound by the same policy” line of argument is to remind your boss, yourself, and any other concerned party that you’re all on the same team. You’re all in the game to find the best way to work: the most productive and happiness-inducing setup wins. Hearing that pitch, only the most closed-minded are likely to continue digging in their heels. (pp. 71-73).

This is a key reason so many people get so little done in traditional office setups—too many interruptions. (p. 77).

Once you’re ASAP-free, however, you’ll be amazed at how your former self was able to get anything done in the face of constant in-person interruptions. (p. 79).

It’s rarely spelled out directly, but a lot of the arguments against working remotely are based on the fear of losing control… So if you’re fighting against someone’s fear of losing control, you have to start small and show that the world doesn’t fall apart if you start working from home on Wednesdays. (pp. 80-81).

We paid a lot of money for this office… If someone has run a business well enough to be able to afford a fancy office, you’d think they’d be familiar with the idea of “sunk cost.” (p. 84).

Sunk cost means that the money spent on the office is already spent. Whoever paid for it is not getting it back whether it’s being used or not. So, rationally, the only thing that matters regarding where to work is whether the office is a more productive place or not. That’s it. (p. 84).

HOW TO COLLABORATE REMOTELY

We’ve all sat on a conference call and spent minutes describing something that would take seconds to show. It’s no bueno. Fortunately, it’s an easy problem to fix… 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. Before you know it, you’ll be so used to sharing a screen that starting a call without one will feel pointless. (p. 94).

Once you go remote, you’re in for a wild goose chase, though, if the workflow and structure haven’t been set up right. Here’s the key: you need everything available to everyone at all times… In fact, this very problem is why we originally created Basecamp, our first product. Basecamp gave us a single, centralized place in the sky to put all the relevant files, discussions, to-do lists, and calendars that keep the workflow ticking. (p. 97).

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. (p. 99).

To instill a sense of company cohesion and to share forward motion, everyone needs to feel that they’re in the loop. At 37signals we’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. (p. 103).

When you can’t see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away… The great thing about this is the clarity it introduces. When it’s all about the work, it’s clear who in the company is pulling their weight and who isn’t. (p. 106).

But here’s the thing: if you’re going to give it a shot, give it a real shot. Try it for at least three months. There’s going to be an adjustment period, so let everyone settle into their new rhythm. You can even start with two days remote, three days in the office. Then, if all goes well, flip it—two days in the office, three days remote. Work up to a full week out of the office. (pp. 108-109).

Being in the routine of remote work helps you deal with these annoyances with less hassle. Whatever the world throws at it, be it a blizzard or the requirement to be home for the exterminator, a distributed workforce is one that can keep working regardless. (p. 113).

BEWARE THE DRAGONS

That’s the great irony of letting passionate people work from home. A manager’s natural instinct is to worry about his workers not getting enough work done, but the real threat is that too much will likely get done. (p. 122).

One way to help set a healthy boundary is to encourage employees to think of a “good day’s work.” Look at your progress toward the end of the day and ask yourself: “Have I done a good day’s work?” (p. 123).

That means getting a proper desk (height adjustable?), a proper chair (Humanscale Liberty?), and a proper screen (27 inches in high resolution!). All that stuff can seem expensive, but it’s a great bargain if it means not ruining your back, your eyesight, or any other part of your anatomy. (p. 125).

If you’re not making a conscious effort to the contrary, working from home will likely afford even less opportunity to hit your recommended 10,000 steps per day. (p. 128).

At 37signals, we try our best to encourage our remote workers to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Everyone gets a $100 monthly stipend for a health club membership, and we cover the cost of weekly fresh fruit and vegetable deliveries from local farmers. (p. 129).

“Is working remotely even legal?” is a common question. The answer is “yes”—but you have to be careful with the implementation. Labor laws can be a tangled web, and exposing yourself to undue liability is never a good idea. (p. 138).

It’s slightly more complicated when you have an employee working in another country. This is where things can get a bit hairy, but the problem is by no means insurmountable. Fundamentally, there are two ways to hire people internationally: establish a local office or hire people as contractors. (p. 138).

HIRING AND KEEPING THE BEST

Thinking internationally when it comes to worker recruitment doesn’t just drastically increase the size of the talent pool; it also makes you better fit for tackling global markets.(pp. 143-144).

The old adage still applies: No assholes allowed. But for remote work, you need to extend it to no asshole-y behavior allowed, no drama allowed, no bad vibes allowed. (p. 153).

The way to turn out the best work is not to assemble a cadre of ninja robots who can work from dawn till dusk and think of nothing else. Smart solutions, friendly service, and edgy design all happen at the intersection of professional skill and life experience. (p. 154).

At 37signals we actively sponsor such endeavors. The last two years, our holiday gift has been a selection of curated traveling experiences, such as a trip to a cooking school in Paris or an outing for the whole family to Disneyland (pp. 154-155).

Asking to see work product is pretty easy for positions with natural portfolios, such as designer, programmer, or writer. For positions that don’t lend themselves to portfolio accumulation, you can simply pose real-world problems and have the person answer them as part of the application. (p. 158).

You need this kind of real-world, real-work filter when you’re sorting through a hundred résumés from a hundred different cities. Booking flights for in-person interviews with everyone who has an appealing-looking CV just doesn’t scale. (p. 159).

If your entire workforce is located in a hot hub and you pay market salaries, you’ll be under constant attack from poachers. People are naturally more inclined to change jobs when it’s a level playing field and the poacher’s pay is higher. (p. 161).

So don’t look at remote work as a way to skimp on salaries; you’ll save on lots of other things. Your star designer out in the sticks is just as valuable (maybe more so) to the team as those working from the big-city home office. Make sure she feels that way. (p. 163).

The first filter that really matters is the cover letter explaining exactly why there’s a fit between applicant and company. There’s simply no getting around it: in hiring for remote-working positions, managers should be ruthless in filtering out poor writers. (p. 167).

The best way we’ve found to accurately judge work is to hire the person to do a little work before we take the plunge and hire them to do a lot of work. Call it “pre-hiring.” Pre-hiring takes the form of a one- or two-week mini-project. We usually pay around $1,500 for the mini-project. We never ask people to work for free. (p. 170).

MANAGING REMOTE WORKERS

In general, it’s best if you start as early as possible. Cultures grow over time, and it’ll be a lot easier if your culture grows up with remote workers. (p. 179).

The fact is, it’s just easier to work remotely with people you’ve met in so-called “real life”—folks you’ve shared laughs and meals with. Meetups are especially important as a way to introduce new people to the rest of the team. (p. 185).

Feeling like a second-class worker doesn’t take much. Case in point: a roomful of local people and a shitty intercom system that makes it hard for the remote worker to hear what’s going on and even harder to participate. There’s also the annoyance of having every debate end with “John and I talked about this in the office yesterday and decided that your idea isn’t going to work.” Fuck that. (p. 192).

The mechanics of leveling the playing field are pretty simple: Get great intercom systems, use shared desktop apps like WebEx 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. (p. 194).

We call these regular check-ins “one-on-ones,” but other companies simply call them “check-ins” or “regulars.” The key is to make them casual and conversational. This is a “what’s up, how are things?” call more than a specific critique of a specific project or a response to a piece of work. (p. 195).

At 37signals, we fight this natural tendency toward overwork in a variety of ways. For example, from May to October, we give everyone an additional weekday off—more time to spend outside while the weather is nice and a good way to decompress from a hard-work winter. (p. 204).

LIFE AS A REMOTE WORKER

Simply looking presentable is usually enough. One of our employees, Noah, likes to demarcate using his slippers: he has both a work set and a home set!… Another hack is to divide the day into chunks like Catch-up, Collaboration, and Serious Work. (p. 210).

Finally, you can use the layout of your house as a switch. Make sure that real work only happens when you’re in your dedicated home office. (p. 211).

A more plausible, human strategy is to separate the two completely by using different devices: simply reserve one computer for work and another for fun… You can back this up by confining the work computer to the home office. (p. 215).

A similar effect is achieved by separating work and home accounts for email and chat. This is a bit harder to do, but the payoff is equally sweet. If your work email is available 24/7 on your tablet and phone, you probably won’t be able to resist the temptation. (p. 217).

Of course, your hangout doesn’t have to be a coffee shop. Try the library or a park or a co-working facility. (p. 218).

Most people suffering from a lack of motivation will blame themselves first… The truth, more often than not, is that you are not the problem; it’s the world you’re working in. (p. 222).

The nomadic lifestyle can be cheaper than you think too. If you don’t burden yourself with a mortgage, car payment, cable TV, and other supposed necessities of modern living, there’s usually more than enough left over for travel and accommodation. (p. 226).

Routine has a tendency to numb creativity… Changes of scenery, however, can lead to all sorts of new ideas. Mig, one of our designers at 37signals, uses his freedom to full advantage. (p. 228).

There are two fundamental ways not to be ignored at work. One is to make noise. The other is to make progress, to do exceptional work. Fortunately for remote workers, “the work” is the measure that matters. (p. 238).