Remote: no office required

A cool book that made me look at remote work from a slightly different angle.

Key thoughts

• On average, the trip to the office and back costs 400 hours per year (that's almost 2.5 months of full time!).
• Talented specialists who live far from megacities often have better soft skills compared to their "metropolitan" colleagues.
• Even with virtual communication, employees sometimes lack live interaction with people (our evolutionary feature).
• Synchronous collaboration is being replaced by asynchronous collaboration (with well-organized processes, this works awesome).
• The luxury of the next 20 years will be the opportunity to leave the city.
• Remote work ≠ complete abandonment of the office.
• 82% of employees work remotely at Intel, 57% at NASA.

Tips for managers

• Don't worry about being productive remotely: if someone wants to play games or surf the Internet during working hours, they will do it in an office as well.
• Either learn to trust the people you work with or look for new ones.
• Asynchronous work requires at least 4 hours of work overlap for employees.
• Good home office equipment is the key to good health in the future.
• Great companies go out of their way to encourage employees to lead a healthy lifestyle.
• Cool companies also encourage and develop employee hobbies. This is especially important for remote work.
• It is better not to save on provincial employees, but on the contrary, pay them a capital salary. So they will feel like valuable staff and will definitely not leave at the first opportunity.
• A great remote employee is just a great employee.
• It is better to allow employees to plan their own vacations and kick-offs. A responsible person will not leave a company at an unexpected or difficult moment: they will prepare a springboard in time, document processes, transfer knowledge to a colleague, etc.
• It is important to switch between work and rest modes. You should not work and rest in the same place. This helps our brain to tune in to work in time and relax in time.