Remote: Freedom of remote work
Technology in the 21st century has evolved a lot and there are only a few things we can do without the technology. We all have heard about remote work and yes most of you guys know what remote work actually is but do we know advantages of it? Have you stopped and give a thought to remote work, does it have stepbacks, can remote work be a failure or you only saw the positive part of it? Well, all these questions and more are discussed in Remote: Office Not Required, a book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson.

I started reading this book just by curiosity and it’s fascinating how remote work is discussed and how they advise big and small companies to let their employees work remotely. Their thoughts about this trend of working aren’t bosh, because their tips and ideas as I could understand are from their experience. They do have a company and know what is it like to follow this path. So the discussion is practical because they do practice remote work.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson are the cofounders of 37signals which is a software company.
I really got the impression that this book is very well thought and written. In Remote: Office Not Required, the authors' arguments how remote gives you the power to craft your own life, I think authors address managers and bosses as well, to raise awareness for remote work. Their way of explaining every detail, discussing every pitfall, every constraint is so thorough so understandable so that every person, no matter what he or she does for a living can comprehend the meaning. The goal is to promote remote work for any person who feels strangled by the office and influencing companies to let their workers work remotely.
According to the book, remote work isn’t just for people who work in another town or another country or another continent, their definition of remote is that you just aren’t in the office from 9 am to 5 pm.

Authors while writing the book have also taken into account the reasoning of many companies that this type of working doesn’t work for their industry.
In this book, the authors have tried to prove the opposite by giving precise examples of which companies take advantage of remote work. As stated by the authors: Consulting, Accounting, Advertising, Finance, Government, Hardware, Insurance, Marketing, Recruiting, Software and many more.
What is actually the culture of a company?
You wouldn't think the importance of a culture for a company but the authors know what’s best so according to them, the culture is the spoken and unspoken values and actions of an organization. It’s a very big deal for a company for example communication, risk-taking, workloads all are elements that define culture. In the book, it is explained more thoroughly how the culture of a company is created but it assures us that it doesn't need every employer of the company to be physically there to create a strong culture. Having people working remotely as specified in the book only helps to abandon the idea that the company culture is just about in-person social activity.

Are only offices secure?
It doesn’t mean that the offices are a secure place. The authors give great importance to security. Because for them and their company security is one of the key points from which a company operates. At 37signals the security is based on a simple but very detailed security checklist. So all the employees must follow these requirements:
1. Turning on encryption for all sites which employees visit.
2. All computers must use hard drive encryption.
3. Making sure that all smartphones and tablets use lock codes and can be wiped remotely.
4. Using a unique generated, long-form password for each site an employee visits.
5. Disable automatic login.
I am very pleased that the authors has given so much importance to security since it is very valuable at this time in which we are living.
Even a comparison of the security of your devices with the seat belt
is a very good explanation of expressing the importance of security.
Related articles
There are some other points from the book which are discussed in more detail in the articles below:
Remote: Find a space that fits your workstyle
Remote: Managers aren’t babysitters
I personally thought that splitting it into pieces would give the proper importance to a valuable book as Remote: Office Not Required.
