This is a summary review of Remote containing key details about the book.

What is Remote About?

“Remote” by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson provides practical advice on how to manage remote teams and create a successful remote work culture. (Full Summary…)

Remote Summary Review

In “Remote: Office Not Required,” Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founders of Basecamp, present a compelling case for embracing the virtual workspace, challenging the conventional wisdom surrounding the necessity of a physical office. The book, published in 2013, has garnered attention for its profound insights into remote work, offering a mix of philosophical considerations, practical advice, and real-world examples.

The authors assert that the traditional model of the workplace, where all employees gather under one roof, is becoming obsolete in the face of rapidly advancing technology that enables virtual collaboration. The central theme revolves around a shift from the outdated “move workers to the workplace” paradigm to the modern “move work to the workers” approach. This transition, the authors argue, not only benefits companies by expanding their talent pool, reducing turnover, and cutting real estate costs but also provides workers with the freedom to choose the best job regardless of geographical constraints.

One of the book’s strengths lies in its holistic exploration of remote work. It delves into the challenges and advantages, addressing concerns from both managerial and employee perspectives. Fried and Heinemeier Hansson go beyond a mere endorsement of remote work, presenting a comprehensive overview that touches on productivity, talent acquisition, and work-life balance.

The book is not a step-by-step guide but rather a thoughtful exploration of the philosophical underpinnings of remote work. By sharing their experiences as entrepreneurs leading a remote-first company, the authors lend credibility to their arguments. They assert that the focus should be on the quality and outcomes of work rather than the physical location where it takes place, advocating for a more flexible and results-oriented approach to work.

The inclusion of excerpts from customer reviews provides additional perspective. One reviewer highlights the positive impact of embracing remote work on their business, emphasizing the cost savings and increased access to global talent. Another review applauds the book’s philosophical stance, praising it as a visionary work that anticipates the evolving nature of work in the digital age.

The relevance of “Remote” has only grown over time, especially in the context of the global shift towards remote work accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While some may view the book as a historical artifact, its core message remains pertinent. The authors anticipate the changing dynamics of work, foreseeing a future where the luxury of freedom and time takes precedence over traditional office-based structures.

Essentially, “Remote: Office Not Required” stands as a thought-provoking manifesto on the future of work. Fried and Heinemeier Hansson challenge the status quo with compelling arguments, making a convincing case for the widespread adoption of remote work. Whether you are a manager grappling with the idea of a remote workforce or an individual seeking a lifestyle upgrade, this book serves as an indispensable guide to navigating the evolving landscape of work in the digital age.

Who is the author of Remote?

Jason Fried is the founder of 37signals, a privately held web-based software development company and the co-author of the international bestseller Rework. His motto is, ‘It’s simple until you make it complicated’.

David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer, and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the web-based software development firm Basecamp.

How long is Remote?

• Print length: 258 Pages

What genre is Remote?

Business, Nonfiction, Management

What are good quotes from Remote?

“When someone wants to demonstrate a new feature they’re working on at 37signals, often the easiest way is to record a screencast and narrate the experience. A screencast is basically just a recording of your screen that others can play back later as a movie. It can be used in several ways, including for presenting the latest sales figures or elaborating on a new marketing strategy.”

“Even short commutes stab at your happiness. According to the research,* commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress-related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce. But let’s say we ignore the overwhelming evidence that commuting doesn’t do a body good. Pretend it isn’t bad for the environment either.”

“Security is a big and serious deal, but it’s also largely a solved problem. That’s why the average person is quite willing to do their banking online and why nobody is afraid of entering their credit card number on Amazon. At 37signals, we’ve devised a simple security checklist all employees must follow: 1. All computers must use hard drive encryption, like the built-in FileVault feature in Apple’s OS X operating system. This ensures that a lost laptop is merely an inconvenience and an insurance claim, not a company-wide emergency and a scramble to change passwords and worry about what documents might be leaked. 2. Disable automatic login, require a password when waking from sleep, and set the computer to automatically lock after ten inactive minutes. 3. Turn on encryption for all sites you visit, especially critical services like Gmail. These days all sites use something called HTTPS or SSL. Look for the little lock icon in front of the Internet address. (We forced all 37signals products onto SSL a few years back to help with this.) 4. Make sure all smartphones and tablets use lock codes and can be wiped remotely. On the iPhone, you can do this through the “Find iPhone” application. This rule is easily forgotten as we tend to think of these tools as something for the home, but inevitably you’ll check your work email or log into Basecamp using your tablet. A smartphone or tablet needs to be treated with as much respect as your laptop. 5. Use a unique, generated, long-form password for each site you visit, kept by password-managing software, such as 1Password.§ We’re sorry to say, “secretmonkey” is not going to fool anyone. And even if you manage to remember UM6vDjwidQE9C28Z, it’s no good if it’s used on every site and one of them is hacked. (It happens all the time!) 6. Turn on two-factor authentication when using Gmail, so you can’t log in without having access to your cell phone for a login code (this means that someone who gets hold of your login and password also needs to get hold of your phone to login). And keep in mind: if your email security fails, all other online services will fail too, since an intruder can use the “password reset” from any other site to have a new password sent to the email account they now have access to. Creating security protocols and algorithms is the computer equivalent of rocket science, but taking advantage of them isn’t. Take the time to learn the basics and they’ll cease being scary voodoo that you can’t trust. These days, security for your devices is just simple good sense, like putting on your seat belt.”

“you can’t let your employees work from home out of fear they’ll slack off without your supervision, you’re a babysitter, not a manager. Remote work is very likely the least of your problems.”

“That’s the great irony of letting passionate people work from home. A manager’s natural instinct is to worry about his workers not getting enough work done, but the real threat is that too much will likely get done. And because the manager isn’t sitting across from his worker anymore, he can’t look in the person’s eyes and see burnout.”

“you’d be amazed how much quality collective thought can be captured using two simple tools: a voice connection and a shared screen.”

“Say you spend thirty minutes driving in rush hour every morning and another fifteen getting to your car and into the office. That’s 1.5 hours a day, 7.5 hours per week, or somewhere between 300 and 400 hours per year, give or take holidays and vacation. Four hundred hours is exactly the amount of programmer time we spent building Basecamp, our most popular product. Imagine what you could do with 400 extra hours a year. Commuting isn’t just bad for you, your relationships, and the environment—it’s bad for business.”

“Forcing everyone into the office every day is an organizational SPoF (Single Point of Failure). If the office loses power or Internet or air conditioning, it’s no longer functional as a place to do work. If a company doesn’t have any training or infrastructure to work around that, it means it’s going to be unavailable to its customers.”

“long commutes make you fat, stressed, and miserable. Even short commutes stab at your happiness.”

“It won’t be as easy, but lots of things that are worth doing aren’t easy. It just takes commitment, discipline, and, most important, faith that it’s all going to work out.”

“Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work—this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office such long stretches just can’t be found. Instead, it’s just one interruption after another.”

“soon you’ll see that it’s the work—not the clock—that matters.”