remote. An office is not required. Why people don't work at work Jason Fried office is not required

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Jason Fried, David Hensson
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 and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

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

* * *

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.

Jason Fried

From the authors

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

However, in February 2013, this goodness was suddenly broken by a loud statement from Yahoo! about curtailing the remote work program. We were just finishing the book. The topic immediately emerged from the academic shadow and became the subject of close 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 for her book to come out. Nevertheless, her decision provides a unique opportunity to test all our arguments. As it turned out, during a brainstorming session at Yahoo! all those excuses that we listed in the chapter "How to deal with excuses" were voiced.

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

Introduction

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

William Gibson

Millions of workers and thousands of companies are already enjoying the benefits of remote work. The volume of tasks performed remotely is steadily growing year by year, and this is true for businesses of any size and in almost all industries. Although the transition to remote work is far from being as massive as at one time to facsimile. And it's not as easy as it might seem.

Thanks to advances in technology, it has never been easier to be connected and collaborate on projects with anyone, anytime. This leaves one fundamental problem with humans: their 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 the most talented performers, the elimination of exhausting commutes to and from work, and increased productivity compared to the traditional office. And we will analyze all the usual excuses of opponents of this idea. In particular, such as: “the engine of innovation is personal communication”, “employees cannot be trusted to work from home, their efficiency will inevitably decrease” and “corporate culture will be under threat.”

Among other things, the book will make you a specialist 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 can make you fail (everything has a downside).

We will talk about practical things - we will not limit ourselves to theory, since we have drawn our knowledge from the real practice of remote work. It was with her help that over the past ten years we have grown a successful Internet company 37signals from scratch. 3
The programs created by this company are used by more than three million people around the world. Among them are Basecamp - a project management system, Backpack - a knowledge management system, Highrise - a CRM system and Campfire messenger. Note. ed.

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 all countries of the world.

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

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

Chapter 1
It's time to work remotely

Why are they not working 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 it is impossible to fully work in the office. Office in work time is the last place you want to be if you need to do some work.

This is because the office has become a "break zone". A crowded office is like a food processor - staying here just likewise cuts your day into many small pieces. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there, twenty here, five there ... And each such segment is filled with teleconferences, meetings, meetings and other standard, but optional interruptions from the point of view of work.

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

Meaningful, creative, complex and important work requires long periods of concentration, when nothing distracts and you can immerse yourself in what you are doing. In today's office, the luxury of not being distracted by anything is unimaginable. On the contrary, they are constantly distracted.

In fact, the ability to be alone with your thoughts is one of the main advantages of working remotely. Working independently, away from the buzzing office swarm, you remain in the zone of your maximum efficiency. And you really achieve the result - the very one that you vainly expected from yourself at work!

Of course, working outside the office has its challenges. And, perhaps, you will 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 point is, these distractions are within your control. They are passive. They don't bind you hand and foot. You can always find a quiet spot or even put on your headphones, but don't worry about a stalking colleague slapping you on the back once you finally focus. Or that you will be called to the next meeting that no one needs. It's yours workplace, your zone - and only yours.

Don't believe? Ask around people. Or ask yourself: where do you work, when really want to get a result? It is unlikely that the answer will be "in the office during business hours."

Stop wasting your life on the road

Let's be honest: no one likes traveling to and from work. The alarm clock rings earlier, and you return home later. You waste time, you become irritable, you don't eat anything but convenience foods in plastic packaging. You stop going to the gym, you hardly see your children, you don’t find the strength to talk to your loved one… This list is endless.

And yes, weekends are kind of boring. By Saturday, a huge list of household chores accumulates, which were forced to be postponed “for later” during the week after a grueling struggle with traffic jams. And you throw out the garbage, go to the dry cleaners and shops, deal with the bills ... lo and behold, half of the weekend is over.

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

The white-coated nerds are actively studying the effects of regular commuting—supposedly essential parts of our lives—and their verdict is disappointing: regular long commuting makes us fat, nervous, and unhappy. What about short ones? And they reduce the level of happiness.

Studies show that as a result of regular commuting to and from work, stress increases, 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.

Okay, let's assume we're oblivious to the overwhelming evidence of the harm that commuting to and from the office is doing to our health. Let's turn to mathematics. Let's say that every morning you get to the office for half an hour, taking into account traffic jams, let's put another fifteen minutes to get to the car and from the car to the office. This means 1.5 hours per day, 7.5 hours per week - that is, approximately 300-400 hours per year, adjusted for holidays and vacations. four hundred hours- that's how much time we spent on programming when creating Basecamp, our most popular product. Just imagine how much you could get done with an extra 400 hours a year. Traveling to and from work is not only harmful to health, relationships with loved ones and environment- they hurt your business. But you don't have to live like this.

It's all about the technology, fool

If remote work is so good, why haven't the most progressive companies used it before? It's simple: they couldn't. The required technology was not there. Try to organize joint work of many people in different cities (not to mention countries) using fax and express mail!

It is thanks to new technologies growing like mushrooms after the rain that working remotely has become so easy. The main laurels belong to the Internet. Web conferencing with WebEx, coordinating to-do lists in Basecamp, real-time discussion of projects via instant messaging systems, uploading large files to Dropbox - all this has been possible thanks to the innovations of the last fifteen years. It is not surprising that we still do not know all our possibilities.

It used to be traditionally believed that work is when you sit at your desk in an office in one of the tall buildings scattered around the city from nine in the morning until five in the evening. Why be surprised that most of those who work in this way have never thought about other options and resist even the thought that everything could be different. Maybe!

The future belongs to those who will live in it. Do you think today's teenagers, who grew up on Facebook and text messages, will regret the mandatory meetings on Monday mornings? Ha!

Do you know what is the most attractive thing about new technologies and remote work? Everything depends on you. And this is not nuclear physics - it won't take much time to learn new tools. But exactly it will take the will to, freed from the fetters of the past, to begin new life. Can you?

Get rid of the "9 to 17" mode

The use of distributed workforce is inexorably changing the world: synchronous collaboration is being replaced by asynchronous collaboration. To do one thing, we no longer have to not only be in the same place, but also work at the same time.

This state of affairs was a consequence of the need - after all, we are talking about the cooperation of people located in different time zones - however, it is beneficial everyone even residents of the same city. If you can already work together with a colleague whose time is seven hours ahead of yours, all the other team members living in the neighborhood can also work from home whenever they want. Though from 11 am to 7 pm, even from 7 pm to 3 am.

The beauty of flexible working hours is that it suits everyone from early risers to night owls, as well as those who have to pick up their children from school in the middle of the day. At 37signals, we try to maintain a roughly 40-hour workweek, but we don't care how employees distribute those hours within the day and across the days of the week.

Companies that have successfully built remote work do not need a rigid work schedule. This is especially important in the case of solving creative problems. If you do not have inspiration, it is unlikely that it can be forced. The best thing in such cases - unless, of course, you are obliged to spend this particular time communicating with colleagues - is to take a break from work for a while and return to it when your brain is working to its fullest again.

The Internet marketing agency IT Collective has its office in Colorado, but some of the employees live in New York and Sydney. While working on videos, the editorial team switches to night mode from time to time. Simply because that is how they can best do their job. The next day, they communicate with the rest of the team just long enough to see how far they have progressed, and to determine the scope of tasks for the next night. Well, who cares if they slept all day if the project is on schedule?

Of course, not every job allows you to completely abandon the restrictions associated with a tough schedule. We at 37signals provide customer support during business hours in the US, during which time the person responsible must be available. But even with this limitation, some employees can work flexible hours. The main thing is that someone can always communicate with the client.

Get rid of the "9 to 17" psychology. Setting up asynchronous work for your team members can take a while, but you'll soon see that it's the work itself that matters, not the hours.

End of city monopoly

Initially, the city was a place of concentration of talents. The typical train of thought of the early machinists of capitalism was: "Let's gather a lot of people in one place, where they will have to live in cramped houses on top of each other, and then we will have enough human material to work in our factories." Simply wonderful, Mr. Moneybags!

Fortunately, the high population density, beneficial to the factory owners, also proved to be beneficial for many other things. We have libraries, stadiums, theaters, restaurants and all the other wonders modern culture and civilization. And cramped offices, tiny apartments, and packed buses to take us back and forth. We gave up living outside the city, exchanging freedom, fresh air and the beauty of nature for comfort and a frantic pace of life.

Luckily for us, technological progress has made it possible not only to work remotely, but also to live a culturally rich life away from the city. Imagine the reaction of a 1960s city dweller who was told that in the future everyone would have access to every movie ever made, books ever written, albums ever recorded, and practically every sports game (more than high quality and with better colors than before). He would make you laugh. Hell, he would have laughed even in the 1980s! And we live in just such a world.

However, there is a difference between perceived reality and the results of logical reasoning. Why do we, having unlimited access to cultural heritage and entertainment from anywhere on the planet, still agree to play by outdated rules? Are overpriced apartments, congested vehicles and cramped offices worth it? We bet that everything more people answer "no".

So here's a prediction for you: the luxury and privilege of the next twenty years will be the opportunity to leave the city. And live not on a short leash, in the suburbs, but wherever you want.

New luxury

A chic corner office on the top floor of a skyscraper, a suede-trimmed office Lexus, a personal secretary… It's easy to laugh at old-fashioned notions of corporate luxury. However, current ideas about beautiful life not too different: fancy chef, free lunches, dry cleaning, massages, unlimited arcade games. An old song in a new way.

We get all this in exchange for endless hours spent in the office. Away from family, friends and hobbies. Perhaps with these lures, you will be able to hold out for many years, dreaming about how much you will do when you are retired.

But why wait? If you really love skiing, why wait to move to Colorado when you're old and your bones can't take the fall anymore? If you love surfing, why lock yourself up in a concrete jungle instead of living near the beach? If all your loved ones live in a small town in Oregon, why are you still stuck on the other side of the country?

The essence of new luxury is the ability to throw off the shackles of a postponed life and surrender to your passion now while still working. What's the point of wasting time daydreaming about how great it will be when you finally retire?

There is no longer a need to divide your life into artificial stages of "work" and " personal life". You are able to mix them, having received both pleasure and benefit at the same time - to create a new style of your life in which work brings joy, because it ceases to be the only menu item. Get rid of the golden handcuffs that prevent you from living the life you really want.

This is much more realistic than wanting to win the lottery, whether literally or figuratively. Here's an example of the latter: you're climbing the corporate ladder or looking for an option in the hope that your number will come up before it all makes sense to you.

You don't have to be extremely lucky or incredibly hardworking to balance work and hobbies as long as you have the freedom to choose where and when to work.

This does not mean that a skier needs to drop everything tomorrow and move to Colorado. Someone really does this, but there is a lot between the two extremes. various options. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. You can, for example, start by going there for three weeks.

The new luxury is the luxury of being free and managing your time. Once you get a taste of this life, no corner office or trendy chef can make you give it up.

Talents are not tied to major cities

Speak to Silicon Valley internet entrepreneurs, Hollywood filmmakers, or New York advertisers, and they'll all convince you of some "place magic" that's unique to their city. But what else can be expected from the adherents of the idea? Big city– the focus of talents? Don't be stupid, don't believe them.

“It happened historically,” they will say, and they will remind you that following traditions brings glorious results. Yes, yes, of course, just let's remember what they write small print in investment prospectuses. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

So here's another set of simple predictions: in the next twenty years, Silicon Valley's share of new technology will decline, there will be fewer Hollywood blockbusters among the best films, and fewer people will buy goods influenced by ads created in New York. .

Talent is everywhere, and not everyone is ready to move to San Francisco (or New York, or Hollywood - where is your office located there?). Our 37signals is a successful software company created by - what are you saying? Yes, in the Midwest, and we are proud to have amazingly talented employees from places like Caldwell, Idaho and Fenwick, Ontario.

We do not have a single person from San Francisco - that very "center of civilization" where, it seems, without exception, IT companies are fighting each other for the title of "stars" and "ninjas" of programming. Not that it was our conscious choice, but given the headhunting typical of metropolitan areas, where people change jobs as often as they change music on their iPhone, we certainly didn't lose.

When there are dozens, if not hundreds, of competitors within walking distance of your office, don't be surprised when your employees cross the street one day and land a job at the next fashion startup.

We have noticed that talented professionals who live far from the epicenter of events in their industry spend much less time worrying about the fact that the grass is greener next door, and in general, enjoy their work much more.

David Heinemeier Hansson

OFFICE NOT REQUIRED

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

* * *

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.

Jason Fried

From the authors

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

Yahoo! Marissa Mayer, wait six months for her book to come out. Those

...

Here is an excerpt from 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 Hensson

Remote: office not required

David Heinemeier Hansson

OFFICE NOT REQUIRED

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

* * *

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.

By 2013, when we started writing this book, the popularity of remote work—or remote work as it is sometimes called—had been slowly but surely growing for many years. From 2005 to 2011, the number of people working remotely in the US increased by 73 percent to 3 million people.

Of course, we would be grateful to the CEO of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer, wait six months for her book to come out. Nevertheless, her decision provides a unique opportunity to test all our arguments. As it turned out, during a brainstorming session at Yahoo! all those excuses that we listed in the chapter "How to deal with excuses" were voiced.

Introduction

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

William Gibson

We will talk about practical things - we will not limit ourselves to theory, since we have drawn our knowledge from the real practice of remote work. It was 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.

Based on our rich experience, we will show that remote work opens a new era of freedom and luxury. To replace the era with faith in His Majesty the Office, a new era is coming. 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 job.

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

It's time to work remotely

Why are they not working at work?

It turns out that it is impossible to fully work in the office. The office during working hours is the last place you want to be if you have some work to do.

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

Of course, working outside the office has its challenges. And, perhaps, you will 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 point is, these distractions are within your control. They are passive. They don't bind you hand and foot. You can always find a quiet spot, or even put on your headphones, but don't worry about a stalking colleague slapping you on the back once you finally focus. Or that you will be called to the next meeting that no one needs. This is your workplace, your zone - and only yours.

Don't believe? Ask around people. Or ask yourself: where do you work, when really want to get a result? It is unlikely that the answer will be "in the office during business hours."

Stop wasting your life on the road

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.

Introduction

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

William Gibson

The purpose of our book is to provide such an upgrade. We'll show you the many benefits of working remotely, including access to the most talented performers, the elimination of exhausting commutes to and from work, and increased productivity compared to the traditional office. And we will analyze all the usual excuses of opponents of this idea. In particular, such: "the engine of innovation is personal communication", "employees cannot be trusted to work from home, their efficiency will inevitably decrease" and "corporate culture will be under threat."

We will talk about practical things - we will not limit ourselves to theory, since we have drawn our knowledge from the real practice of remote work. It was 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 all countries of the world.