Office Not Required
by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Table of Contents
- Authors' Note
- Introduction
- 1. The Time is Right for Remote Work
- 2. Dealing with Excuses
- 3. How to Collaborate Remotely
- 4. Beware the Dragons
- 5. Hiring and Keeping the Best
- 6. Managing Remote Workers
- 7. Life as a Remote Worker
- Conclusion
- The Remote Toolbox
- Acknowledgments
- remote work has been on the rise since 2005, though it wasn't recently put in the spotlight when Marissa Meyer removed Yahoo's remote-work program
- interestingly, every excuse in Dealing with Excuses got airtime during this
- remote work is seeing increased adoption & the tech to collaborate remotely is here now
- this book aims to be the missing piece: upgrade the human mind so workers embrace freedom & productivity benefits and companies increased their access to talent (and everyone learns how to overcome the downsides)
- freedom in location is the new luxury
- modern offices have become interruption factories
- meaningful work requires stretches of uninterrupted time to get in the zone
- which is hard when your day is chopped up by meetings / unnecessary interruptions
- yes, working remotely brings new interruptions, but they're passive & under your control
- commuting increases your risk of obesity, nick pain, and stress
- imagine what you could accomplish if you reclaim all of that commuting time?
- for example, they built Basecamp's MVP in 400 dev hours ~= the amount of time you might spend commuting in a year
- past generations have been conditioned to think work happens from 9-5 in an office
- the tech to do realtime chat, file sharing, and collaboration have caught up, but we have to embrace it
- synchronous --> asynchronous collaboration
- being spread across more time zones allows everyone to flex when they work
- with creative work, maybe you don't even need to have a set schedule... if you can't get in the zone, just take time away and come back later
- when working on a new film, film editors at IT Collective go nocturnal overlapping with others just enough to review progress and get direction for the next night
- work > clocked hours
- population-dense cities created talent hubs, but we gave up freedom and fresh air for convenience
- advances that made remote work possible, make remote living more desirable
- entertainment is accessible digitally, improving remote culture
- do you still need to be bound by the small apartment in the city?
- "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."
- old-money luxury (company Lexus, secretary) and new-money luxury (free meals, laundry, massages) come at the opportunity cost of losing time for family & extracurriculars
- "The new luxury is freedom & time": shed the shackles of deferred living to pursue your passions now, while you're still working today
- blend work & "retirements" to design a better lifestyle overall today, not down the road
- also reminds me of Tim Ferriss' mini retirements
- location changes don't have to be binary: visit another city for just a few weeks
- talent hub nationalists insist magic happens only on their turf
- prediction: the % of great tech made outside of the valley will rise
- great talent is global & not everyone wants to move to SF
- they've observed that employees working outside of industry echo chambers are happier in their work [could be that they compare their work to others less, or that the sample is biased by the personality types 37s attracts]
- remote promotes quality of life & gives access to talent in any geography
- intellectual pursuits are the best fit for remote: writing, design, programming, etc.
- the company can also save $
- ex. IBM is 40% remote & had reduced office expenses by billions
- remote work is about setting your team free to live where they want
- the 37s office in Chicago regularly has 10 of their 36 employees, but they consider it a luxury, not a necessity
- sometimes it's better to talk with your manager or having big brainstorming sessions in person
- losing imposed structure requires a higher level of personal commitment to stick with it
- setting boundaries can be hard: kids, spouse, procrastination -- just focus on the benefits while mitigating drawbacks
- you already have remote workers: legal, accounting, payroll, ...
- so many companies trust outsiders to work remotely efficiently, but not insiders... that's pretty irrational
- we already do a lot of asynchronous communication with coworkers -- is it really worth coming to the office?
- notice how much work already happens with minimal face-to-face interaction
- 37s meets three times a year in the Chicago office
- it can feel that way when you're all together brainstorming The Next Big Thing... but most work is iterating on something that already exists
- also, enthusiasm is often mistaken for priority
- rationing in-person meetings makes them feel special and valuable
- if people wanted to play games from their desk in the office, they could (more common in corporate)
- if you keep low expectations, employees will live down to them
- if you view employees as capable, self-motivated adults, they'll delight you
- you're a manager, not a babysitter
- there's some creepy software called InterGuard that some companies use to monitor all remote employee screens (bad culture smell) --> trust the people you work with, or find new people to work with
- responsible adults get their job done
- all humans are occasionally susceptible to temptations, but... "the number one counter to distractions is interesting, fulfilling work"
- distractions can be a purposeful signal: is your work well defined? are your tasks important? is this whole project pointless? --> if you feel this way, state your opinion!
- sometimes we set ourselves up for failure, especially sitting in a space shared for other purposes -- a dedicated office helps you focus best
- or try: coffee shop, library
- we want stimulating, fulfilling work -- if your job doesn't provide that, going remote won't help --> find a new job
- using modern security is a solved problem
- 37s' required checklist:
- encrypt hard drives (FileVault in OS X)
- auto sleep after 10 min & always require a password at login
- turn on HTTPS/SSL for every site that offers it
- all phones/tablets use pass codes and have remote wipe enabled
- use unique, generated, secure passwords
- use two-factor auth in Gmail
- Jellyvision asks customers not to schedule meetings before 10 am to fit remote workers across time zones
- an occasional call at odd hours isn't the end of the world
- use multiple people to cover customer support hours (or if you're small, keep the customer support employees on standard business hours... but that doesn't mean it makes sense for other employees!)
- "Working remotely isn't without complication or occasional sacrifice. It's about making things better for more people more of the time."
- most big businesses are plagued with inefficiency and bureaucracy... don't look to them for productivity advice or innovation
- you need confidence to adopt a smarter way of working even if the rest of your industry clings to convention... why wait until this remote is common practice to start?
- does your business value keeping people sitting in chairs for fixed amounts of time, or people getting real work done?
- evaluate work completed, not where it happens
- not all jobs can be remote (e.g., inventory fulfillment)
- defuse the "everyone must be bound by the same policy" argument by reminding your boss that you're all on the same team seeking productivity and happiness-inducing ways to work
- "Culture is the spoken and unspoken values and actions of the organization."
- "Culture isn't a foosball table."
- for example: how do we talk to customers? how much do we value quality vs. good enough? what workload do we expect? do we value slow growth or high-risk pivots?
- culture is the combination of where your company falls on the spectrum of questions like that
- stronger culture needs less supervision -- ideally managers-of-one can roam freely (yay!) with the understanding that they'll do a good job
- "The best cultures derive from actions people actually take, not the ones they write about in a mission statement."
- when you all sit in the same office, it's easy to bug anyone anytime
- recognize that most questions don't need an immediate answer (thank you, Slack)
- if you need an answer...
- in hours --> email
- in minutes --> instant message
- immediately --> phone
- temper your expectations to help break the addiction to asap
- "It's almost zen-like to let go of the frenzy, to let answers flow back to you when the other party is ready to assist. Use that calm to be even more productive."
- this fear is the root of many arguments against remote
- it's emotional, not rational, but can be hard to overcome
- start small, ramp up slowly, and build trust over time
- some companies won't be ready to embrace it --> consider another company
- the office is a sunk cost: money already spent; you don't get it back whether you use the office or not
- really you only care that the office is a productive place
- this is a copout to avoid trying remote (culture smell)
- many industries already take advantage of remote: accounting, consulting, design, finance, legal, recruiting, software, ...
- giant companies
- Fortune 100 Aetna (~50% of 35k employees remote)
- Deloitte (86% remote at least 20% of the time)
- Intel (82% remote regularly)
- government
- USPTO
- NASA
- EPA
- large companies
- Mercedes-Benz
- Teach for America
- U.S. Department of Education
- Virgin Atlantic
- ...
- small - medium companies
- GitHub
- Automattic
- Brightbox
- He:Labs
- ...