Remote: Office Not Required

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson have come up with another cool book after writing ReWork in 2010: Remote: Office Not Required. You can check my post about ReWork here. Where ReWork took a more broader view on the traditional, conservative way businesses are still being run nowadays, Remote focusses on working remotely.

Actually, this book is from the beginning till the end a plea for more remote work. The authors use a lot of short topics and stories which makes this an easy read. They discuss a lot of arguments in favor of working remote, reply to the myths and excuses not to work remotely and give a bunch of tips on how to do this remote work as a team, organization, manager and employee.

I think they are right. The biggest problem though is that managers still try to ‘manage’ knowledge workers like they run a production crew working on a 1910 factory assembly line. They still want to ‘see’ them work, sitting on that chair in front of a monitor, instead of evaluating them on their pure output. Of course this kind of real meaningful evaluation requires some more advanced (technical) skills for these managers, so they actually have a clue what their team is doing.

Working in an office can be really fun, but also offers too much natural distractions. Low priority questions, a lot of unnecessary meetings that seem to never end, an inferior computer setup, bad coffee and so on. And don’t forget of course all that time wasted in our daily commutes.

At Amazon you can read the first chapters for free. Check it here.

Remote: Office Not Required – Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – ISBN: 978-0091954673