Remote: Office Not Required

Having read their two previous books as soon as they came out, I finally got around to picking up a copy of Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s latest book: “Remote: Office Not Required“, somewhat a bit late to the party on reading this one.

I decided to pick up a copy for a few reasons; I was looking for a new read and this came to mind, also for the past few months I have begun working much closer with a team based in the U.S.

I figured if anything I could pick up a few tips on working remote, while I technically don’t work remote as I am employed by a Scottish company and do work for a client that is based in the U.S. But I thought I should be able to pick up some good advice as I am close enough to remote working in the way we do our work.

The books is a collection of short essays each one to two pages long. While they don’t tell you how you should remote work they explain things they have found work for themselves as a company with remote employees world wide. Some of the items they discuss are items you may have already read about or think are simple ideas, but all the ideas presented in the book adds up to some great information.

One thing I took form the book, is when they speak of remote working, they are not speaking of people in other countries, they call everyone a remote worker, while some employees have desks in their office they are still remote workers as they don’t have to work from the office 9 till 5. With this methodology treating everyone as remote workers even if they are all in the same city, or some office based and some remote you have to work as if everyone is remote, and employ certain methods of communication and work flows to avoid leaving people not in the office out and to ensure everyone is treated the same.