We’re working on a new book called REMOTE: Office Not Required. Get on the book mailing list and we’ll send you exclusive excerpts from the book before it’s released. There may be a few other bonuses, too.
As an employer, restricting your hiring to a small geographic region means you’re not getting the best people you can. As an employee, restricting your job search to companies within a reasonable commute means you’re not working for the best company you can. REMOTE shows employers and employees how they can work together, remotely, from any desk, in any space, in any place, anytime, anywhere.
Like REWORK before it, it’ll be a collection of short essays. It’s a quick read. Something you can finish in just a few hours. To the point, clear, no jargon, and no filler.
REMOTE will be published by Crown (Random House). Expect to see it on store shelves and eBook form fall 2013.
Brad
on 13 Feb 13Awesome, I look forward to reading this one! I’ve been working remotely since 1994, including managing large projects and teams located in another country, and it has worked out well for me. But I still have a lot to learn, and I’m betting this book will have some useful ideas to make it work even better.
Can
on 13 Feb 13Really pleased to know that a new book from you guys are approaching. Your first one thought me a lot. I really enjoyed it.
Anyway, hope it will SOON be in my hands!
Emil
on 13 Feb 13Sometimes I wonder if getting the best people or being hired by the best company is worth it on a remote basis. I took a bus, metro, another metro and a tram to my office for more than a year to work and hang out with people I love.
And yes we do have Basecamp, Campfire, Skype and all other communication tools available, but it’s not about verbal communication – it’s about being together.
Fromafricawithlove
on 13 Feb 13Wait…from the guys with a brick and mortar office of 37 odd staff?
Jason Fried
on 13 Feb 13Wait…from the guys with a brick and mortar office of 37 odd staff?
The majority of our staff are remote across 20+ different cities. And some of the people who work in Chicago only come into the office a couple times a week.
Mike
on 13 Feb 13Yeee, great idea for book, I’am so happy :) I want to work remotly, and think about this for a long time, so book is in great time :)
Thanks guys! Mike
Brad
on 13 Feb 13@Emil: I hear you; isolation and lack of face-to-face communication is the biggest drawback of working remotely. All of my colleagues and clients are 600 miles away and I only get out to see them once every couple of years or so. On the other hand I have great working relationships with my colleagues and we communicate all day by phone, IM, email, etc.; in many ways it’s not so different from going into an office, sitting down at my desk and working all day. You just don’t see anyone at the water cooler because there is no water cooler, even if there are virtual substitutes for that as well. One option for remote employees who feel isolated is telework centers, where you rent a desk or cubicle along with lots of other people—in some cases the synergies there can be fantastic because you’re working around people in completely different ideas who may have fresh ideas for problems or issues you’re trying to solve.
Josh WC
on 13 Feb 13Seriously? The same story again?
O.k. no problem…
Do it again, but this time tell about the bad side too, (or there’s none?).
Clovis Mazembe
on 13 Feb 13Please, share with us how you would grab your employee by the neck and scream with him remotely.
ploughy
on 13 Feb 13pins and needles, but remotely
Nate Pearson
on 14 Feb 13Can’t wait for this book. We’re just starting to hire at our bootstrapped start up.
Can you guys touch on the different laws/taxes that you have to deal with when hiring remotely? Our impression is that you have to follow the laws/taxes in the country/state where the worker resides.
This has a BIG intimidation factor for our small 3 person start up. We’re all for hiring abroad, but we just aren’t sure how to do it.
Any insight in this area would be awesome. We really want to tap into the world’s talent pool, and not just our small city’s. We are almost at an advantage. Our city is so small that we are forced to hire remote workers.
Jim
on 14 Feb 13Hmm.. An interesting way to sell more Basecamp accounts.
James
on 14 Feb 13Keep in mind that ‘fall 2013’ have different meanings depending where you are. Or when you say ‘anywhere’ you mean ‘anywhere in the north hemisphere’?
Alaksiej Nieścieraŭ
on 14 Feb 13I read the cover as »remote office not required»
Brad
on 14 Feb 13@Alaskiej: I actually first read it as “Remote: (Microsoft) Office not required.” I thought it was going to be a book about alternatives to MS Office.
Vince Cabansag
on 15 Feb 13We’ve become more remote at the Starter League this quarter and it’s been working out well. You might say we’re always remote, even when we’re physically next to one another. We use email, Basecamp, and Campfire extensively, so everything gets documented and people get looped in. But we’re still learning. We’re a brick and mortar school where we need to support our students in person, but I’m looking forward to reading Remote where I’m sure there will be some takeaways for us.
Jonas
on 15 Feb 13It sounds as though you are writing the book using the same approach as your previous book, e.g. based on your own experience. Great, but… How general or universal or applicable are your “findings” then to others? Others that are not 37signal. If you read between the lines of the guy who hated your previous book, I think he is hinting at some real and constructive critism. Of course you shouldn’t write books, that try and satisfy those who disliked your previous work. What I am trying to say is, with Getting Real and REWORK, I get it; it’s the entire process of doing business, and if others “follow” this process or way of doing business, they too have a reasonable chance of becoming a little happier. But with REMOTE, it seems to be, just one piece of the puzzle that you focus on, and that piece itself might be meaning less, unless viewed in context with all the other pieces.
As an example: you write above that allowing a remote workforce enables you to pick and chose the best candidates for the job. And I can see why, based on the experience with 37signals, you would say that. But hey, you guys are 37signals, you receive loads of applicants everytime you make a job posting, form people that have a burning desire to work for/with you. That’s not the case for most small sized Chicago based firms. Heck most of these firms are completly unknown to people outside Chicago. And even if you come across one of their job postings, why would you choose to work for a small company halfway around the world. Why not work for a big company halfway around the world who are willing to pay you more (yes, opening up the global labour market will also open up for wage competition/bidding) My guess is that it’s the entire package that makes it work, and adopting one feature without adopting all the others is not going to cut it.
Ps: I not trying to judge something I have not yet read, I am simply curious/impatient to hear your views on this issue.
FG
on 16 Feb 13Wait… what? You probably mean: a couple times a month, or it isn’t really much of a remote work by my standards. ;)
As much as I enjoyed Rework, I hope this book won’t be like Rework’s ,,1000 general advices and mantras’’, but instead would present some thorough case studies from your company, showing how remote work is done at your firm, if anything changed over time due to organisational growth, what obstacles came along the way and how you dealt with them. That would be an interesting read!
Stephen V. Smith
on 18 Feb 13Our firm has spent countless hours thinking about and discussing this issue. Many interesting dynamics have surfaced (some of which have been mentioned in the comments thus far). Here are some observations:
1) It can work for a small company. In the past 18 months we have learned that not only can it work, but as our company has gained clients in other states, hiring remote workers has made the most sense for us, geographically speaking.
2) A remote work situation can absolutely help small companies attract top talent. Our most recent hire yielded the best crop of resumes I have ever seen. Of the top candidates, none of them would have applied if the job had required them to be on location at our office.
3) For a small company, adding remote workers creates two sets of employees. As hard as you try to build team cohesion, the differences between those who come into the office and those who don’t are obvious. And as the owner you have to deal with the fallout.
4) When a small business starts building a remote workforce, it forces everyone involved to rethink how we work. As an owner, you can expect your office-based employees to start thinking about how their jobs can be handled remotely, too. This is not a bad thing, but it raises questions that will have to be addressed in a way that the business can still function efficiently.
5) There will always be location-specific tasks to running a business, so there will always be a need to have “a place.” Mail has to arrive somewhere, UPS and FedEx need an address for deliveries, certain files and supplies must be centralized, etc.
6) The right tools are absolutely essential to building a remote workforce. Online discussion, project management and collaboration tools are the engine behind this process. Fortunately, the 37signals family of products provides most of what is needed.
7) Having the right tools is only part of the solution. The challenge is to build a system around those tools wherein every employee (no matter where he/she works) is using the tools in the same way to get the job done. Templates, lists and workflow outlines do not stifle creativity — they create an environment that allows creative workers to do their best work, free of the constraints of procedural ambiguity.
This is an overview of our experiences over the past 18 months or so. Has anyone faced similar issues?
Samse
on 19 Feb 13@Nate International taxes are a pain in the ass – especially if you haven’t got an account to help you. There’s no way around this.
We’re a Copenhagen based startup, dealing with Danish, Polish, British, German and Italian-based employees. It’s a lot of extra work. We’ve received 2 decent rounds of funding, so after trying to sort this on our own, we ended up using splashing cash on a decent accountant – best money we ever spent! This isn’t a corner you can cut, it needs to be done right, right?
My advice? Employ an accountant to set your salary system up, show you the ropes, then run it yourself.
We’re able to attract some of Europe’s top design and dev talent to our startup by advertising remote working as an option in our job postings. Our remotees work on a 3 weeks at home, 1 week with us cycle. It works – very well.
@SamseChristian winktheapp.com
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