Remote: Office Not Required - David Heinemeier Hansson & Jason Fried

Remote: Office Not Required by David Heinemeier Hansson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was told about "Remote: Office Not Required" when I had first started mentioning the lifestyle that I was planning to experiment with. A friend's friend mentioned this book in the passing, stating that the founding members of 37signals were the authors of the book. If anyone really knew about remote working, it was these guys. Though remote working was not really what I had in mind, the more I read about the book, the more interesting it seemed and I decided to give it a shot. I recently acquired a kindle and thought I would add this one to my digital library.

Throughout my professional career thus far, which I admit has not been very long, I have been involved with startups in India of varying sizes. One thing that I can say with an immense amount of surety is that the country does not believe in remote work. There might be a few exceptions to the rule but I am talking about a generality that exists in the over enthusiastic startup frenzy that the country is seeing. The problem exists because of both : the employers as well as the employees. The employers have trust issues and the employees give them no reason to think otherwise. It is perhaps this personal experience with working in such environments that made this book especially interesting to me. Of course it is not a treasure chest of knowledge where you will find the recipe to get remote working right. It is just a handbook of the 'why', and a pretty good one at that. The 'how' is for you to figure out, for it will differ from one institution to another.

The book talks about what remote working is and why it is the way forward. It lists out the reason why people need to be enabled and even encouraged to work remotely - in the interest of time, efficiency and personal life. It covers many angles and challenges that remote working involves, some very obvious and some that might not have crossed your mind unless you have actually been there and done that. It also talks about the common apprehensions against remote work and the common pitfalls that might lead to those apprehensions. The book mentions some impressive businesses who are already riding the "remote wave" and successfully so.

I personally found the book rather interesting. It affirmed quite a lot of things that I already believed and added quite a few new perspectives. Apart from remote working, I believe that it is a good handbook for general attitude pertaining to work and maintaining a healthy balance between personal and professional lives. But I am not a big fan of such "self-help" books, although I can now see why people are so charmed by it. They tend to affirm your suspicions. Who doesn't like that! No more such books for me but that's a matter of taste.

View all my reviews

Buy from Amazon