Jason Fried - Remote: Office Not Required

What youll find inRemoteis profound advice from guys whove succeeded in the virtual workforce arena. This is a manifesto for discarding stifling location- and time-based organizational habits in favor of best work practices for our brave new virtual and global world. If your organization entrusts you with the responsibility to get things done, this is a must-read.

David Allen, internationally bestselling author of
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Remote is the way I work and live. Now I know why. If you work in an office, you need to read this remarkable book, and change your life.

Richard Florida, author of the national bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

In the near future, everyone will work remotely, including those sitting across from you. Youll need this farsighted book to prepare for this inversion.

Kevin Kelly, senior maverick for Wired magazine and
author of What Technology Wants

Leave your office at the office. Lose the soul-sapping commutes. Jettison the workplace veal chambers and banish cookie-cutter corporate culture. Smart, convincing, and prescriptive, Remoteoffers a radically more productive and satisfying office-less future, better for all (well, except commercial landlords).

Adam L. Penenberg, author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Todays Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves

Shows how remote working sets people freefree from drudgery and free to unleash unprecedented creativity and productivity. The first gift copy I buy will be for my boss!

James McQuivey, PhD, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, and author of Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation

Just like we couldnt imagine a cell phone smaller than a toaster in the 1970s, some companies still believe that they cant get great performance from their employees unless they show up at an office. Virtual work is the wave of the future, and Jason and David do a brilliant job of teaching best practices for both employees and employers.

Pamela Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur

Jason and David convincingly argue the merits of remote work, both from the perspective of manager and of worker Remote work gives you the power to craft your own life, and this book is a road map to get that.

Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success

The decentralization of the workplace is no longer fodder for futurists, its an everyday reality. Remoteis an insight-packed playbook for thriving in the coming decade and beyond.

Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moments Notice

Remoteshows you how to remove the final barrier to doing the work you were meant to do, with the people you were meant to do it with, in the most rewarding and profitable way possiblethis book is your ticket to real freedom!

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing: The Worlds Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide

Remoteis not just a powerful toolbox Its full of fascinating insights into collaboration, innovation, and the human mind.

Leo Babauta, author of Zen Habits: Handbook for Life

When we started writing this book in 2013, the practice of working remotelyor telecommuting, as its often referred tohad been silently on the rise for years. (From 2005 to 2011 remote work soared 73 percent in the United Statesto 3 million workers total.)

The silence was loudly broken at the end of February 2013, though, when Yahoo! announced that they were dismantling their remote-work program, just as we were finishing this book. All of a sudden, remote work moved from academic obscurity to a heated global conversation. Hundreds, if not thousands, of news articles were written, and controversy was in the air.

Of course, we would have appreciated Yahoo!s CEO Marissa Mayer waiting another six months for our publication date. That said, her move provided a unique backdrop against which to test all of Remotes arguments. As it turned out, every single excuse youll find in the essay titled Dealing with excuses got airtime during the Yahoo! firestorm.

Needless to say, we dont think Yahoo! made the right choice, but we thank them for the spotlight theyve shined on remote work. Its our aim in this book to look at the phenomenon in a much more considered way. Beyond the sound bites, beyond all the grandstanding, what weve provided here is an in-the-trenches analysis of the pros and consa guide to the brave new world of remote work. Enjoy!

The future is already hereits just not
evenly distributed.

WILLIAM GIBSON

Millions of workers and thousands of companies have already discovered the joys and benefits of working remotely. In companies of all sizes, representing virtually every industry, remote work has seen steady growth year after year. Yet unlike, say, the rush to embrace the fax machine, adoption of remote work has not been nearly as universal or commonsensical as many would have thought.

The technology is here; its never been easier to communicate and collaborate with people anywhere, any time. But that still leaves a fundamental people problem. The missing upgrade is for the human mind.

This book aims to provide that upgrade. Well illuminate the many benefits of remote work, including access to the best talent, freedom from soul-crushing commutes, and increased productivity outside the traditional office. And well tackle all the excuses floating aroundfor example, that innovation only happens face-to-face, that people cant be trusted to be productive at home, that company culture would wither away.

Above all, this book will teach you how to become an expert in remote work. It will provide an overview of the tools and techniques that will help you get the most out of it, as well as the pitfalls and constraints that can bring you down. (Nothing is without trade-offs.)

Our discussion will be practical, because our knowledge comes from actually practicing remote worknot just theorizing about it. Over the past decade, weve grown a successful software company, 37signals, from the seeds of remote work. We got started with one partner in Copenhagen and the other in Chicago. Since then weve expanded to thirty-six people spread out all over the globe, serving millions of users in just about every country in the world.

Well draw on this rich experience to show how remote work has opened the door to a new era of freedom and luxury. A brave new world beyond the industrial-age belief in The Office. A world where we leave behind the dusty old notion of outsourcing as a way to increase work output at the lowest cost and replace it with a new idealone in which remote work increases both quality of work and job satisfaction.

Office not required isnt just the futureits the present. Now is your chance to catch up.