Remote office is not required for the full version. "Remote

(formerly 37signals) has a cult following among developers and young entrepreneurs. Everything seems to always turn out great for them. One of the most popular frameworks for creating web applications, Ruby on Rails, is their brainchild, but most people know this American company for the online project management service Basecamp, during the development of which Ruby on Rails was created.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hensson have been committed to sharing their experiences with the world from the very beginning. Their blog Signal vs. Noise has been around for almost 15 years. Two best-selling books emerged from the depths of Basecamp, and a third came out late last year. It all started in 2006 with Getting Real. The founders successful company talk about how they managed to create an effective team that produces software with a million clients, without using corporate norms and established practices. Many of the ideas voiced in Getting Real seemed (and still seem to many) too harsh to be true, too bold to be taken literally. Do less, don’t attract outside funding, find an enemy, ignore details at first, say “no” more often, don’t have meetings... Exhausted by ten layers of management, bureaucracy and corporate events, programmers from all over the world read the book like gospel. “Am I really not the only one,” they thought and dreamed of a company like 37signals.

In his paean to remote work, Sir Richard Branson wrote: “To work successfully with other people, you must trust each other. A lot of this means trusting your employees to do their job, wherever they are, without supervision."

I was interested in reading Getting Real not because it voiced some completely new and innovative ideas. No, most of the book is obvious thoughts and rational reasoning. What first attracted me was not the thoughts themselves, but the fact of their existence, the fact of their adequate discussion and generation logical conclusions. Yes, I suspected that a two-hour meeting in the middle of a work process did not provide anything truly useful to me or the company. Yes, I have thought more than once that by planning a thousand features in a new project, we will not make a great product. Yes, my colleagues and I regularly complained about the quality of the code that results from this approach to business. And yes, I often felt like I was in an absurd fairy tale, and not in a rational reality. After reading Getting Real, I just became convinced that my thoughts are not meaningless, that familiar and established principles can be erroneous, and that the mass of people simply do not notice changing conditions because they live and work by inertia. “Stop and realize what you already know” is how I would describe the experience of reading this wonderful book.

The next book came out in 2010, it was called Rework. Partially repeating the theses of the previous book, the authors of Rework question the usual mechanism of the workflow. Urgent tasks and time pressure are poison, the authors say. Planning is fortune telling, they continue to the silent smiles of hundreds of thousands of programmers. And again that feeling of “yes, I know that! Will everyone around me really understand this now too?!”

And so, last year, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson finally released their third book, Remote: No Office Required. She talks about the obvious advantages of remote work, and like previous books, in a prophetic, almost biblical style, she talks about the imminent transition to a remote work model for an increasing number of companies.

The typical line of thought of the early capitalists was: "Let's gather a lot of people in one place where they will have to live in cramped houses on each other's heads, and then we will have enough human material to work in our factories." Just wonderful, Mr. Moneybags.

First and main idea: “obvious doesn’t mean bad.” This is a completely adequate statement, but, unfortunately, many people believe in its obligatory falsity. Simple and obvious for such people are signs of something wrong. I think you have come across this opinion, that what is right is necessarily difficult and not obvious.

Armed with the idea “obvious does not mean bad,” the authors consider the obvious advantages of remote work: high efficiency, saving time and money, greater opportunities for finding personnel (instead of searching for people in a specific city, you can search for them all over the world). Next, the authors describe the status quo and surprise with the fact that a large number of companies (and maybe even your company) have been using remote work for a long time. Moreover, many government and public organizations do it. The turning point has already arrived, remote work has already won, we just don’t always notice it.

By introducing remote work practices, IBM has reduced its office space use by 7 million square meters since 1995. m. Of these, about 5 million sq. m were sold, bringing in $1.9 billion.

The authors devote part of the book to classic excuses that company executives come up with to avoid switching to remote work. You’ve probably all heard them: “how will I keep track of the employees?”, “how will I get them if an urgent matter arises?”, “why did we buy this new luxurious office?”... For every excuse, the authors offer , again, an obvious and rational explanation.

In the end, the authors assume that you have understood everything and are now asking the question: “how to organize all this?” Remote work, while flexible, requires significant changes in the mechanics of the team and in the mental model of its members. Several chapters are devoted to solving the main problems associated with partial and complete transition to remote mode.

Despite the fact that Remote is a book about work, a lot of attention is paid to leisure and life in general. When working from home, it is very easy to go into “work 24 hours” mode, and this is a real danger of not only becoming disillusioned with the idea of remote work, but also ruining your health, relationships and career. That’s why “Remote” describes techniques for separating your professional and personal life.

Remote is as easy to read as Getting Real and Rework; it seems like a logical continuation of them. But if the first book was written for web developers and team leaders, and the second for entrepreneurs, then Remote is designed for a wide range of readers.

To be honest, for a long time I could not understand who it was really for. Programmers and computer scientists? We already know and love (most often) remote work. This idea has gained popularity among us. Entrepreneurs? Perhaps, but young entrepreneurs already prefer remote mode as much as possible: this approach saves time and money. And old-school entrepreneurs (and especially a separate popular class - soviet managers), in my opinion, will not change their opinion thanks to one book. It feels like Remote was written to convince people, but those who are already convinced read it first. IN English There is such an expression - “preaching to the choir” - “to preach to the church choir.” That is, to convince those people who already believe.

But in the end I realized: yes, this book is being read by a church choir. But it is given to us as a tool, or as a guide to action. It takes more than just one book to convince people who believe in the 9 to 5 job, in tracking employees, in dress codes, and in time tracking. It's our job to use the reasoning and conclusions of Remote and other books, articles, blogs, and speeches to convince people that working like a 1920 factory is bad in most cases. You need to understand that this will benefit primarily the managers and owners of the companies themselves. And we can help them.

The book, which says that employees can work effectively from anywhere in the world and, in fact, they do not need an office at all, was published approximately six months after Marissa Mayer announced the closure of remote employment programs at Yahoo! and urged employees to return to offices. As everyone remembers, Mayer’s actions were criticized by many, including the head and founder of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson. And the book "Remote. Office not required" - from the bestselling authors"Rework. Business without prejudices"- continues to sell successfully and interest businessmen, managers and ordinary employees around the world.

In the age of the Internet and high technology, remote work has become as natural and familiar as, for example, mobile communications. The authors of “Remote. An Office is Not Required,” Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, have a lot of arguments, which they successfully contrast with the point of view of Mayer and some other top managers (since most of the “problems” of remote employment are solely in their heads, and they are not yet going to fight their prejudices). Fried and Hanemeier Hensson tell us how to “upgrade” the brain in this sense.

The main material for the book was the experience of the authors’ company 37signals, but Fried and Hanemeier Hensson also talk about the experience of other companies - fully or partially “remote”. In particular, 82% of employees at Intel regularly work remotely, at Deloitte - 86%, and at NASA - 57%. “A world without an office”: 37signals has been operating in this format almost since its founding. This doesn't stop her from developing successful products for millions of users (and making millions of dollars from them). And not only does it not interfere - on the contrary, it helps a lot. It seems that all the strengths and weaknesses of this organization of work are obvious. But Fried and Hanemeier Hensson go into detail about issues that can only be learned by “practicing” telecommuting. In addition, the book contains a lot useful information about new organizational opportunities and tools - there are so many of them and their “composition” is updated so often that hardly anyone knows everything about everyone.

In “Remote,” the authors talk about remote interaction with clients, recruiting, motivating and retaining remote employees, maintaining a positive atmosphere in a team scattered across the country (or even the world), creating a company without an office from scratch, and integrating remote workers into the corporate structure already existing company, creating equal conditions for those who are in the office and outside it.

The authors of the book fully agree with Richard Branson (who, in his own words, has never worked a day in an office in the traditional sense of the word) that very soon remote work will not only become ubiquitous - it will be very difficult to imagine a world in which we need a good old “traditional office”.

David Heinemeier Hansson

OFFICE NOT REQUIRED

All rights reserved. No part electronic version This book may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by law firm"Vegas-Lex"

* * *

Jamie and Colt Heinemeier Hensson: Working remotely allows the whole family to spend more time together more places on the planet. Thank you for the love and inspiration.

David Heinemeier Hansson

For those who are on the road now.

Jason Fried

From the authors

By 2013, when we began writing this book, the popularity of remote—or telecommuting, as it is sometimes called—work had been slowly but surely growing for many years. From 2005 to 2011, the number of remote workers in the United States grew by 73 percent, to 3 million people. 1
URL: http://www.globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics.

However, in February 2013, this goodness was suddenly disrupted by a loud announcement from Yahoo! about winding down the remote work program. We were just finishing the book. The topic immediately emerged from the academic shadows and became the subject of intense international attention. Hundreds, if not thousands, of articles appeared, the authors of which defended opposing points of view.

Of course, we would be grateful to the CEO 2
Chief Executive Officer - General Director. Note ed.

Yahoo! Marissa Mayer, wait six months until the book comes out. Those

...

Here is an introductory fragment of the book.
Only part of the text is open for free reading (restriction of the copyright holder). If you liked the book, full text can be obtained from our partner's website.

Jason Fried, David Hansson

Remote: office not required

David Heinemeier Hansson

OFFICE NOT REQUIRED

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

* * *

To Jamie and Colt Heinemeier Hensson, working remotely allows the entire family to spend more time together in more places on the planet. Thank you for the love and inspiration.

David Heinemeier Hansson

For those who are on the road now.

Of course, we would be grateful to the CEO of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer, wait six months until the book comes out. Nevertheless, its solution provides a unique opportunity to test all our arguments. As it turned out, during brainstorming at Yahoo! all the excuses that we listed in the chapter “How to deal with excuses” were heard.

From our point of view, Yahoo! made the wrong choice. But we are grateful to the company for the attention it has brought to the topic of remote work. In the new book, we wanted to analyze this phenomenon in a much more balanced way. No general phrases, no dust in the eyes - you will find in it only a balanced analysis of all the pros and cons of remote work and a real guide to this brave new world. Happy reading!

Introduction

The future has already arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed.

William Gibson

Millions of workers and thousands of companies are already enjoying the benefits of remote work. The volume of tasks performed remotely is growing steadily year after year, and this is true for businesses of all sizes and in almost all industries. Although they are not switching to remote work as en masse as they once switched to fax communications. And it's not as simple as it might seem.

Thanks to technological advancements, it has never been easier to stay connected and collaborate on projects with anyone, anytime. At the same time, one fundamental problem associated with man remains: his brain needs an upgrade.

The purpose of our book is to provide such an upgrade. We'll show you the many benefits of working remotely, including access to top talent, eliminating the hassle of commuting, and increased productivity compared to a traditional office. And let’s look at all the usual excuses from opponents of this idea. In particular, the following: “the engine of innovation is personal communication,” “employees cannot be trusted to work from home, their effectiveness will inevitably decrease,” and “corporate culture will be at risk.”

Among other things, the book will make you an expert in remote work. You'll find an overview of the tools and techniques to help you get the most out of it, as well as the pitfalls and limitations that could set you up for failure (there's a downside to everything).

We will talk about practical things - we will not limit ourselves to theory, since we gained our knowledge from the real practice of remote work. It is with her help that over the past ten years we have grown a successful Internet company, 37signals, from scratch. When we started, one of us lived in Copenhagen, the other in Chicago. Since then, the team has grown to thirty-six people scattered throughout to the globe and serving millions of users from almost all countries of the world.

Drawing on our wealth of experience, we will show how remote work usheres in a new era of freedom and luxury. A new era is coming to replace the era with faith in His Majesty Ophis. A world that will leave behind the dusty concept of “outsourcing” as a way to increase efficiency and reduce costs, replacing it with a new ideal: remote work, allowing you to work more efficiently and get more satisfaction from your work.

“A world without an office” is not the future, it’s present. And you have the opportunity to live just like that.

It's time to work remotely

Why don't they work at work?

To the question “where do you work well?” few people will answer “in the office.” And if he answers, he will definitely clarify: “very early in the morning, while no one is there” or “on the weekend.”

It turns out that you cannot work fully in the office. Office in working hours is the last place you want to be if you need to get some work done.

This is because the office has become an “interruption zone.” A crowded office is like a food processor - being here chops your day into many small pieces in the same way. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty here, five there... And each such segment is filled with teleconferences, meetings, conferences and other standard, but unnecessary interruptions from a work point of view.

And when the working day is roughly chopped into working minutes, it is incredibly difficult to do anything meaningful.

Meaningful, creative, challenging and important work requires long periods of concentration where there are no distractions and you can immerse yourself in what you are doing. In today's office, one cannot dream of such luxury as the ability to not be distracted by anything. On the contrary, they are constantly distracted.

In fact, the opportunity to be alone with your thoughts is one of the main advantages of remote work. Working independently, away from the buzzing office swarm, you remain in the zone of your maximum efficiency. And you actually achieve results – the very ones that you vainly expected from yourself at work!

Of course, working outside the office has its challenges. And you may have to be distracted for other reasons. There are many of them. There is a TV at home. In a cafe, someone is talking loudly at the next table. But the thing is, you can control these distractions. They are passive. They don't bind you hand and foot. You can always find a quiet place or even put on headphones, but you don't have to worry about a loitering colleague tapping you on the shoulder as soon as you finally concentrate. Or that you will be called to yet another unnecessary meeting. It's yours workplace, your zone – and only yours.

Don't believe me? Ask around. Or ask yourself: where do you work, when? really want to get results? It is unlikely that the answer will be “in the office during working hours.”

Stop wasting your life on the road

Let's be honest: no one likes commuting to and from work. The alarm clock rings earlier and earlier, and you return home later and later. You waste time, become irritable, eat nothing but processed foods in plastic packaging. You stop going to the gym, you hardly see your children, you don’t find the strength to talk to a loved one... This list can be continued endlessly.

And the weekends become somehow incomplete. By Saturday, a huge list of household chores accumulates, forcedly postponed “for later” during the week after an exhausting struggle with traffic jams. And you throw out the trash, go to the dry cleaners and shops, sort out the bills... lo and behold, half of the weekend is already over.

What about the road itself? No matter how wonderful the car is, standing in traffic jams is still annoying, and after transferring to the subway or bus, you get even more tired. Each breath is filled with the smell of someone else's sweat and general exhaustion, each exhalation takes away health and sanity.

Smart people in white coats are actively studying the consequences of regular commuting - supposedly an indispensable part of our lives - and their verdict is disappointing: regular long commutes make us fat, nervous and unhappy. What about short ones? And they reduce the level of happiness.

Research shows that regular commuting to and from work increases stress, and with it the risk of obesity, insomnia, back and neck pain, hypertension, and even heart attacks and depression. In addition, the likelihood of divorce increases.

Jason Fried

David Heinemeier Hansson

office is not required

Jamie and Colt Heinemeier Hansson:

Remote work allows the whole family to spend more time together in more places on the planet.

Thank you for the love and inspiration.

David Heinemeier Hansson

For those who are on the road now.

Of course, we would be grateful to the CEO of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer, wait six months until the book comes out. Nevertheless, its solution provides a unique opportunity to test all our arguments. As it turned out, during a brainstorming session at Yahoo! all the excuses that we listed in the chapter “How to deal with excuses” were heard.

Introduction

The future has already arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed.

William Gibson

We will talk about practical things - we will not limit ourselves to theory, since we gained our knowledge from the real practice of remote work. It is with her help that over the past ten years we have grown a successful Internet company, 37signals, from scratch. When we started, one of us lived in Copenhagen, the other in Chicago. Since then, the team has grown to thirty-six people, scattered around the globe and serving millions of users from almost every country in the world.