
37signals Works Remotely [video] - wlll
https://37signals.com/svn/posts/3657-37signals-works-remotely
======
millerm
I'm jealous. I have yearned for this type of work for years and I haven't been
able to find it. I loathe the commute to an office. I don't want to pay the
price of living in a "tech city". I'm even tired of wasting money on clothes
for an office as I am a 41 year old jeans and t-shirt kind of guy. Some people
just don't have the discipline of not being constantly supervised and have
that "must be at the office to be productive" thought pattern. I am not a 9 to
5 person (and most companies have changed it to "you must be a 8 to 5
person"). There is just too much time and money wasted by going to someone's
office if you don't need to. I was the only iOS developer at my previous
employer. I barely had to collaborate with the business as much as you might
think. Most of our communication was done via email, wikis and bug tracking
tools. I couldn't understand why I had to be there. It was basically just an
obstacle I had to overcome very damn day. I'm currently searching for new work
and so many positions are downtown (Atlanta, in my case). I just won't deal
with 1 hour commutes. Gridlock is just a horrible place to waste one's life.

~~~
wil421
I work in Atlanta for a multinational company with 20,000+ employees, almost
daily I connect with people from the Midwest, West coast, India, and UK. We
allow remote workers, have flex time (although 8-5 is considered the "norm").
Our dress code is relaxed (I prefer jeans + polo daily). I know that we are
hiring because I am meeting new hires daily (along with new contractors). I
just got hired in July.

Let me know if you would like to know more I saw you were in Atlanta (we are
not downtown).

~~~
millerm
I live north of the city (Roswell). How does one communicate on hacker news?
Is it poor form to throw out my email address?

~~~
lrm242
Put an email address in your profile description.

~~~
millerm
Cool, already there. Thanks!

~~~
thedufer
The email field in your account is not public information. You have to
actually put it in the 'about' section. Your email is not there as of a few
seconds ago.

------
corry
The merits of remote work aside, you have to hand it to 37signals for
masterful marketing.

They have a set of beliefs that they tell powerful stories about, in various
mediums, to people who already believe or want to believe these same beliefs.

And in this context they also offer products that make things like remote work
collaboration easier. But you're not even bothered by that, because they are
clearly experts at doing this well (they wrote a book about it and are doing
it themselves) so it all just _fits_ together.

It's thought-leadership in a very practical way. A lot of good lessons to be
learnt.

~~~
loceng
If the book goes into useful and functioning ways to come to such a . However,
there could be some caveats to take into account relating to the type of
people who'd be attracted to work on the products that 37signals follows. I'm
curious if having a distributed / de-centralized team is possible. I can
understand the values and would love to see if it's possible within my own
scope of plans - though it's a lot of directed effort and wasteful if it ends
up not working.

------
chollida1
In my experience remote work, works best when everyone is remote. That way all
the remote worker issues have to be sorted out, or atleast thought of by day
one.

When remote work starts to fall apart is when there is a dedicated office
where 75% of the team works.

In these cases the remote workers miss the critical "Let's grab a room
meetings" where decisions are made. I think the reason is that its much easier
to make decisions with people when you can see them face to face rather than
in group chat.

------
joekrill
I would love to hear more about how various companies handle this
logistically. Like how they allow access to company data and resources. I'm
assuming simply using VPNs is the standard? Where I work they make it so
unbelievably painful and difficult to work remotely. You have to jump through
a million hoops. It's a financial company, and generally "compliance" gets the
blame for this. But I wonder how much of it is just plain paranoia. Do a lot
of companies worry about things like leaking source code? Or client/customer
data? Or do most companies put much more trust in their employees?

~~~
jkaljundi
Don't most companies already anyway use web-based SaaS solutions, so no VPN's
needed except for legacy systems?

~~~
bdavisx
Many large companies will not trust their data to an outside company under any
circumstances. They will put the SaaS solution on their intranet only
accessible locally or thru a VPN. If the SaaS company isn't willing to do
this, then they won't sell to these companies. This can be a valid choice for
the SaaS company as long as they can find enough other customers to make them
profitable.

~~~
pit
Or, the data is hosted externally, but you can only access it through your
company's VPN.

------
cs702
When it comes to finding the best way to organize a business, there is no one-
size-fits-all solution. My own experience is that working remotely is a viable
and even desirable option for many _but not all_ businesses -- it depends on
the nature of the work, and on the kinds of interactions people must have with
others inside and outside the company for the business to be successful.

For example, individuals engaged in highly creative _multi-disciplinary_
endeavors -- like the writers, artists, and technicians who together make a
Pixar film -- seem to produce great results when they are regularly
interacting with each other face-to-face. Steve Jobs, in fact, forced a
redesign of Pixar's headquarters to promote face-to-face encounters and
unplanned collaborations.[1]

\--

[1] [http://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-
and...](http://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-and-the-
legacy-of-steve-jobs/)

~~~
enraged_camel
>>My own experience is that working remotely is a viable and even desirable
option for many but not all businesses -- it depends on the nature of the
work, and on the kinds of interactions people must have with others inside and
outside the company for the business to be successful.

Of course. The problem is that many (most?) companies will not even consider
the possibility that remote work would be suitable for their employees because
they have a fundamental lack of trust for those employees. Furthermore, they
are managed by baby boomers who still believe in outdated mantras like "show
up early and leave late to show your dedication."

I'd say that 20 years from now remote work will have become the norm, at least
in software.

------
agentultra
I'm a remote worker at the moment. I love it.

I can take a break when I need to and be in my comfortable space. I don't have
a commute. I can open my door and see my daughter when I go downstairs for a
coffee. I can take a walk to the local coffee shop and sit down with the other
freelancers and remote workers and catch up on local happenings. If I need a
break or I'm done for the day I'm not just watching the clock and waiting for
a few other people to leave first.

I contribute regularly to open source projects and so I know what it takes to
collaborate remotely. We're experimenting with sqwiggle, screenhero, and use
github and pivotal. We email each other constantly keeping the teams up to
date. We have a VPN and use our ssh-keys for as much as we can. It works
really well and I think the tools have come a long way.

It's good to see that the world we were promised in the 60's is finally coming
to fruition.

~~~
ericbieller
I love it too! I think you hit on a really important point. Working from home
drastically improves quality of life since you're able to interact more with
people you care about. It also helps you develop more of a passion for your
work when you're not being micromanaged. Helps you to feel more free and in
control.

Great that you're trying out Sqwiggle. I'm actually one of the co-founders so
please let me know if there's anything we can do to improve your experience.
Also any feedback you have is super helpful!

~~~
agentultra
I've already sent in a few suggestions! Sqwiggle is great. :)

------
dsleno
Thanks to Yahoo's crackdown, I think working at home has gotten a bum rap
lately. I work at home, and so do my 4 employees. It can let you build a great
a lifestyle, and help small businesses hire talent where ever they can find
it.

In my case, I traded the city for a modest home on a beautiful lake in rural
Minnesota. It also lets me be near my autistic son who attends online public
school (school at home is another digression, but off topic).

Yes, there are challenges, like deciding if today is a shave day or not.

All kidding aside, working at home is tool that great companies with great
employees can wield effectively to obtain excellent results and acquire talent
they can't find locally. Companies, like Yahoo, that don't understand this are
not great companies and probably never will be.

Long live working at home!

~~~
laureny
It comes with downsides as well in the sense that it's a very rare privilege.
If your company decides one day to let you go , cancel work-at-home privileges
or simply goes under, your life is going to suddenly become much, much harder,
especially in the case of people who, like you, took this opportunity to move
to a very isolated area.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
I live in an area with pretty much 0 worthwhile tech jobs. I've been working
remote for a while now and done so with 3 very different organizations doing
very different types of work (plain old software dev to machine learning
research), and I've personally found this not to be a "very rare privilege" at
all. Currently about 9% of the jobs on Stack overflow careers are remote, and
if you look carefully you can find a very wide range of work.

I find the remote space is rapidly advancing and expanding. The tools are
getting much better, and the diversity of companies offering remote work is as
well. It's definitely sustainable to choose to work only remotely, and even if
I were to move to a city with better tech jobs I would have a hard time going
back to full-time working in an office.

------
varelse
In my experience, remote working is incredibly fulfilling and successful if
you know and trust your co-workers. I ran a small software company for 8 years
this way. We synced once a week, and performed seamless code merges because we
respected API boundaries.

Once I entered Silicon Valley, I learned that the above is the exception
rather than the rule. And I think that's where all the horror stories arise.
For I no longer get to choose my co-workers, and there's all sorts of pointy-
haired edicts that come down the pipe from various Peter Principals(tm)
inflicting their view of reality upon the collective they oversee. Just forget
trying to run a remote team this way - it's incurably broken - and from this
perspective, I agree with Marissa Mayer's tough choice to eliminate
telecommuting as an option. Sadly, this movement is wreaking havoc on the
daily commutes of everyone here.

My own solution however has been to seek work where I'm an IC and I have
someone immediately above me covering my back. That's hard to find, and you're
going to be perceived as a job hopper during the hunt, but it's worth the
temporary downside IMO.

Or even better, just start your own shop with people you trust...

~~~
jaggederest
> Or even better, just start your own shop with people you trust...

I really, really wish I could do this. I feel like there needs to be some sort
of guild structure for programming that would enable this.

------
wiradikusuma
Hi guys, just wondering if anyone with remote work experience (either as
employee or employer) can shed some light on these issues:

* How about same-time communication? E.g. I need to discuss things with my designer, oh wait, he's gardening at the moment, or he works at night.

* How do you know when to start/stop your day? E.g. In "normal" office, it's usually 9 to 5.

* How do you schedule projects? Fixed time simplifies scheduling ("This project is 5 man-days").

* Who pays for supporting equipments (desk, LCD, internet, nice coffee) if I work from home?

* Specific to 37signals: How did they make the video? Did the video guy traveled to each and every employee in the video to tape them?

~~~
jon-wood
I've been working (semi-)remotely for the last couple of years. My current
schedule has me at home most of the week, and in the office with the rest of
the team two days, however that varies depending on other factors.

> How about same-time communication? E.g. I need to discuss things with my
> designer, oh wait, he's gardening at the moment, or he works at night.

On the whole you avoid it. So much of what people think needs an immediate
response really doesn't, and can be dealt with much more effectively with a
well written email. If you really do need to speak to someone real time then
you schedule a time which is convenient, rather than disrupting the other
party by dropping by their desk.

> How do you know when to start/stop your day? E.g. In "normal" office, it's
> usually 9 to 5.

This was the hardest thing for me when I stopped working in an office, but
eventually you get into a rhythm, much as you would in a "normal" job.
Sometimes it might vary a bit, but in the end we're creatures of habit.

> How do you schedule projects? Fixed time simplifies scheduling ("This
> project is 5 man-days").

You still have an idea of how many productive hours you'll get in a typical
day, you're just working in a different place. Knowing how much you _actually_
work is a big win for estimation, since you're not playing the game of
pretending everyone gets 8 hours a day every day.

> Who pays for supporting equipments (desk, LCD, internet, nice coffee) if I
> work from home?

In my case, I had it all set up from when I was contracting anyway, so the kit
is mine, but it depends on the company. Any company worth their salt would
pick up the tab for equipment you need for your job (although you may have to
pay for your own coffee).

------
Gravityloss
I find people doing remote work constantly missing big parts of information
that is passed around verbally and doing extra work / being less efficient
because of this.

We already use chat rooms, individual chats, tickets, video conferencing,
email, dashboards, whatever.

But sometimes the bandwidth of just sitting with someone and looking at a
problem together is so much higher that you can solve big issues in a very
short time.

I think some psychologists could study this, it's right up their alley - what
is lacking in remote co-operation devices. I personally think it's partly that
you need to see what the other person is looking at and also you must be able
to observe their body language. A way to do "Look here, this is important in
about 0.1 seconds." But I have no evidence.

~~~
wlk
I can address first of the issues you have mentioned: I have worked both in
situations when whole company is working remotely or only one/two people of
out dozen were.

In the second case, those people were very often left out of the most
communication that was happening in the office, and for them it must have been
not very good situation to be in. There was no general plan for handling this
situation and trying to include them in meetings and decision making process.

But when whole company is working remotely, the situation is completely
different, everyone is at the same level, and you really can make it work.

------
bchjam
I've worked entirely remotely for multiple years in 2 separate cases. I prefer
loosely coupled teams and remote structure works well for this.

My main problem is when I need to interact with office culture. People in
large conference rooms with a shitty speaker in the middle of it. When more
than one person talks at once, it all becomes totally inaudible. Accents also
become much harder to discern under the fuzzy sound quality that this kind of
environment produces. I never have these problems with predominantly remote
teams.

How to bridge that culture gap? Does the office world just need better speaker
phones?

~~~
ubercore
We're a team that's partially remote, and partially in an office. One tactic
that's worked well is instead of forcing the co-located members of a team
around a conference phone, we have everyone join a google hangout from their
individual computers. It puts everyone on the same footing, and helps deal
with sound quality. You just have to sometimes ask people to upgrade their
mics so they don't pick up too much room noise and cause echoes.

------
dangero
I'm kind of interested in the meta story around this remote campaign. Assuming
37 signals is doing this book at least partially for money, they're making a
play relating to a trend using themselves as the model of what works.

Is the target audience employees who work remote or want to, or is the target
market managers who need to understand remote employees?

~~~
bjacobso
I suspect they have a yet to be announced product which is targeted to teams
working remotely. They are slowly building authority for why and how working
remotely works.

~~~
dangero
This is a very interesting take. If true, the book is not the product. They
don't care how well the book sells. They care that you and I know they wrote a
book on the topic and so therefore, they are the authority.

------
krakensden
I was impressed by the breadth of lovingly photographed coffee preparation
methods. Chemex, standard pourovers, moka pots, espresso, the all-American
drip machine.

------
triaged
I went from working in an office, to working remotely for the same company.

While there were certainly benefits, I experienced a few downsides that also
drove me crazy.

As a product manager, I was in the sticky situation of needing to coordinate
with a bunch of different people, and hit certain deadlines that the rest of
the company may or may not have aligned with. I felt like I lost much my day-
to-day ability to get-shit-done, especially as I was competing for time &
resources with other projects.

I also found it easier to stop caring as much, since the emotions & passion
weren't as readily communicated remotely.

Definitely some personal shortcoming in there as well, but, there's definitely
issues to watch for if working remotely.

------
tslathrow
37signals is a black swan for a lot of things.

To be noted, but not as the basis for a new world order.

Anecdotal evidence of my own:

\- Stop thinking about labor in a capital-intensive business

\- I can't do a damn thing with collaboration without a real whiteboard

\- I don't work well with too much technology.

\- Time zones make things tricky: half of "our" team is in Europe, but deals
with a different group of companies. FTSE vs NYSE trading hours make things
difficult.

\- The one work-from-home person on "our" team was let go due to inconsistent
quality of output

\- Living in a city is a part of work/life balance for pretty much anyone
under age 30

\--tslathrow

------
adrianhoward
Here's a link to a previous HN discussion
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145358](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145358)
where I mentioned some of the research on the different efficiencies between
co-located and distributed teams.

If anybody has links to research (rather than anecdote) around the topic I'd
love to have additions Especially any that show distributed teams performing
to the same levels (or better) than co-located ones. Thanks ;-)

------
speg
I think working from home at will would be the best of both worlds. Come in
when you want to collaborate in person, stay at home when you need to work
undisturbed.

~~~
andyjohnson0
For the last ten years I've been working from home two days a week and
commuting to the office for the other three. Works well for me.

------
funkattack
What I don't understand about the working remote discussion ist, that it only
goes half way. It seems to be a discussion like: Lets work remote but keep
everything else the same. Lets keep the company, lets keep bosses, lets
collegues, lets keep meetings lets keep the chat at the coffee machine.

Working remotely, as I understand it, means, that you have to transform the
company employer relationship in a way that it works using rather abstract or
technical infrastructure or interface. The company has to know or to learn,
and define, what kind of services or deliverable it can expect from its
employees. Also the employee has to learn how to present his service or
deliverables in a way that they get noticed and impress someone very far away.

It is sort of an bidirectional API that both have to serve and use.

My question now is, what is the reason for a company to have employees if the
service they need is so well defined and could be offered by anyone capeable
of serving that API? Why have employes if you can have contractors? The same
question holds for the employees, if capable of offering that service in such
a well defined way, why not turn into a company themselves and offer that
service to anyone willing to pay?

------
matthewmacleod
The effectiveness of remote working is directly connected to the office
environment, company culture, and processes.

The initial transition to remote working is especially hard - you require
infrastructural and organisational changes to accommodate remote workers, and
there's an up-front cost (not just financial) to that that dissuades getting
started.

I previously worked in an environment that had a culture of face-to-face
meetings, informal chats and the like, and it really would have required a
total change in culture to implement frequent remote working. By contrast,
about 25% of my current engineering colleagues frequently work from home -
we've got Google Hangouts and the appropriate equipment and infrastructure to
pull it off.

There are real upsides and downsides though - obviously a remote worker saves
on a commute, but they do tend to miss out on the more social aspects of an
office. Like, "Let's go get lunch," or "It's Matt's birthday, let's all have
some cake." Those are definitely some of the perks of working with pleasant
colleagues.

------
dkural
I used to 100% believe in this, but came to appreciate people interacting
face-to-face. There is a reason that great artists, philosophical circles,
mathematicians etc. come in clusters of excellence. People feed off of each
other. This can benefit start-ups as well. Facebook, drop-box, etc. and many
other startups worked & lived in the same house in early days. I'm not saying
this is a balanced lifestyle - won't be able to do drip coffee bike ride
gardening and whatever other hipster stuff 37signals does as much perhaps.

I do a genomics start-up, with two offices, one in Europe, one on the East
Coast. #1 wishlist item is only if there was a way the two offices could be
physically together.

Remote works as well as a long-distance relationship. It may work in a mature
environment, 5-10 years into your relationship. Not Day #1. Start-ups battle
many odds, remote is not one you want to tackle from the get go.

------
bwilliams
As someone who has worked remotely for most of their career (which isn't very
long since I am young) I can definitely say that working from home has a lot
of negatives as well.

I've ended up thinking that remote working is for people who are traveling a
lot or people with a family they would like to stay at home and spend time
with.

~~~
bnycum
Not really. I'm glad I get to see my daughter grow up while working at home,
but it's so much more than that. I don't have to deal with office politics or
anything like that. Last office I worked at had a somewhat dress code, I'm
glad I can now wear shorts. There is no impromptu meetings, and no annoying
coworker stopping by my office at horrible times. I set my own schedule around
when I'm most productive. I've worked at home for 4 years now and wouldn't go
back to an office job without at least a $20k raise.

~~~
csomar
* Not really. I'm glad I get to see my daughter grow up while working at home *

Have you tried working with home without a family? I'm getting good gigs but
they are all remote. It's has been a rough time since I socialize really
little.

~~~
dgabriel
Are there any co-working spaces near you?

~~~
enjo
Co-working is an absolute godsend for remote work. It's like an office, but
better! You can pop-in and out without the pressure that your actual coworkers
put on you to be visible during "office hours". Even if you only spend an hour
or two a day at your co-working desk, being able to get out and interact with
humans (on your terms) is an amazing thing.

------
orware
I have a full-time day job but took an offer working part-time remotely for a
Joomla Extensions Developer named Joomlatools late last year and did that for
a few months in my spare time.

The only bummer for me was that I was a contracted employee so basically I was
paid for the hours I worked (my full-time job is salaried so it's nice to know
I'm going to expect X dollars each month) and since I was doing it in my free
time it started to get difficult to balance the extra work time with family
time since I ended up no longer having much free time.

If a company offered a $90,000+/yr salary + health and retirement benefits to
work remotely then I think a lot more people might be interested, but in some
cases (when you're working simply as a remote contractor) that's definitely
not nearly as good.

------
henrik_w
An overwhelming majority of the people in this thread seem to favor working
from home. Does anybody miss face-to-face time? I work in an office, and not a
day goes by without face-to-face discussions with my co-workers. I find these
discussions really helpful, and often we end up drawing on a white-board.

I've worked with remote developers (via video) before, and it didn't come
close to the interactions I have in-person with people at the office. Would be
interesting to hear some comments from remote developers. Related (from a blog
post of mine): [http://henrikwarne.com/2013/04/02/programmer-productivity-
in...](http://henrikwarne.com/2013/04/02/programmer-productivity-
interruptions-meetings-and-working-remotely/)

~~~
beat
The correct amount of face time - both out of necessity and out of comfort -
is a difficult problem. I worked for a while in a "Facebook style" office,
where we were pair programming. No walls, no privacy, all of our desks faced
forward except the lead, who faced us, like a schoolteacher. I found it
extremely uncomfortable. And I'm a people person!

On the other hand, zero face time is problematic in other ways. Even 37signals
has an all-employee get-together a couple of times a year (read back through
svn, they describe this).

~~~
henrik_w
I've seen this about all-employee get-together too. But when only a couple of
times a year it seems purely social, not for getting actual work done. For me,
the in-person collaboration takes place pretty much every day.

------
keiferski
This is a bit of a meta comment, but: I find it interesting how DHH's Danish
accent has faded significantly. I remember watching the "rails video" years
ago wherein he's got a pretty pronounced accent. He could almost pass for
American in this remote working video.

------
taude
I've never been able to find remote work. A lot of it might have to do with my
various roles in engineering. But I think a lot of it is east-coast business
culture.

But also, from talking to a lot of Silicon Valley friends, they don't have
much work from home either....unless you're a sales rep, sales engineer, or a
consultant who likely has to spend most of the time on-sight (away from corp
office)...

One thing I'm hoping to accomplish at my new company is a culture of work-
hard/play-hard remote workers. Those who want to live in say mountain towns,
but who want a real career as they get older...I'd not even have a problem
with the idea of a "Powder Day" and they don't login until noon. WIth the
right happy workers...

------
avenger123
I love that 37signals is doing this.

The big question is how much does this scale? I hope this is addressed in the
new book.

Having less than 50 employees allows the flexibility of doing many things
differently. I would argue that this is one of them.

I don't know what the magical number is for size of a company where working
remotely becomes a negative investment.

The bias with 37signals is very strong. They actively seek talent and find
people that are not only able to work remotely but enjoy doing so. It also
works well to have staff that can work 24 hours across time zones.

How relevant is this to a company with 1000 employees that is not technology
related? I can't really answer that definitely but to say that based on my
experience, not too much.

~~~
rimantas
MySQL AB worked this way with and it worked quite well (very well, imho). 70%
of the staff worked remotely. IRC and company meetings helped a lot. I met my
boss after 5 months in the company and that was not the record :) Mårten
Mickos' interview about this:
[http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1826212/](http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/1826212/)

BTW, if anoyone is looking for remote iOS/RoR developer drop me a line ;)

------
babarock
I might start working remotely full-time in a few months, so I would like to
hear about some of its downsides. Can you share stories of remote working that
didn't go as wonderfully as described in this (promotional) video?

~~~
famousactress
I don't have any bad stories, but in retrospect (after three years remote) I
do have some advice:

\- Give yourself a dedicated space (very preferably behind a door that closes
if you don't live alone)

\- Give it a few weeks. It takes getting used to, so avoid entertaining "This
just isn't working out" feelings for a while. Took me a bit to get used to the
quiet for one thing!

\- Be social! Visit the office when you can, don't be afraid to talk about
not-work in chat rooms, etc. Office chit-chat and lunches together have value,
they enrich your relationship with colleagues and keep humanity levels high in
work debates. I find I can find myself with shorter patience if I haven't been
"hanging out" with coworkers for a while.

\- Work for a remote team. Being the one-remote-guy on a team is a challenge.
Remote working works best when the team is committed to working
asynchronously, when the chat-room _is_ the office, etc.

The last bit is key. Most of the stories I've heard about it not working out
had a lot more to do with the team not actually being committed to remote
working than some fundamental flaw in remoteness.

~~~
owenmarshall
>Give yourself a dedicated space (very preferably behind a door that closes if
you don't live alone)

IMO, this is one of the _best_ pieces of advice you can give. This is also one
of the things that I got very wrong for a while.

Don't work where you decompress. Don't decompress where you work. Otherwise
the two start blending together and both suffer.

If your living situation isn't suited for a dedicated workspace, don't fall in
the trap of working from your couch or kitchen table every day. I've had days
where I worked from a coffee shop in the morning, drove to a park and sat
under a tree when I could work completely offline, and finished the evening at
a pub typing over a pint or two. And I still accomplished more than the days
I'd sit on my couch and "work" while marathoning Star Trek.

------
tomkin
I'm not sure I will play the absolute devil's advocate card here, but I _do_
think that there is a downside to this idea. I live in a mid-sized, industry-
legacy Canadian city, where tech has become part of the new economy. And these
new tech companies hire locally - and eat locally, and invest their time into
building a local tech scene. If remote working were to become a common theme
in tech, would this not fly in the face of _community building_ in its
simplest terms? Would the Bay Area have the same community today if this brand
of telecommuting were available in the 80s, 90s?

------
lgomezma
In my case it's also about location. I am a Spaniard working in the
Netherlands for a few years now, paying high rents and being far from family
and friends. I could live in Greece (where my wife is from and where we have a
fully paid house) but unfortunately there are almost no tech-related jobs
there. As a web developer almost 100% of what I do on a daily basis could be
done remotely. I wonder if remote work could be the solution for thousands of
people like me who have to leave their countries just to find a job.

------
vowelless
How do you on-board new employees?

------
tommoor
If you work remotely we're building a real-time communication app just for you
in Sqwiggle ([https://www.sqwiggle.com](https://www.sqwiggle.com)). Would love
for anyone to try it and offer honest feedback, we'll listen to it all day
long :)

If you're a developer and want to work remotely, we're backed by great
investors and hiring! We also use the latest tech like WebRTC for our video
conferencing.

------
alecsmart1
I honestly don't know how this works. I mean it's really very difficult to get
someone to work remotely with the same dedication and passion. I find
collaboration extremely difficult. I mean if there are 5 rockstars working on
a project, then sure, remote working will do fine. But if we talk about a
decent workforce, there is a lot of handholding required. I don't know how
it's possible remotely.

~~~
fredoliveira
Dedication and passion are most definitely not tied to where you are. If
you're unhappy with your job, you won't be passionate; you won't be dedicated.
You'll be miserable, looking at the clock, regardless of where the clock is.

If you need handholding, you're hiring and working with B-players. Not
everyone is going to be able to hold its own initially, but after a few weeks
on a team, you should be independent enough that people don't need to look
over your shoulder.

~~~
allsystemsgo
I disagree. Most new employees need some sort of on boarding. When you join a
new project, you'll need some sort of on boarding. Usually there's one or
maybe two tech leads, and then a handful of junior devs. It's part of the
companies responsibility to train them up. This isn't to say they're not
dedicated or passionate, but when you're putting in 60 hour weeks bug fixing
or implementing small features here and there, you run out of time to go read
some books about your development language of choice. New employees ask lots
of questions their first 6 months or so. It's just the way it is.

~~~
fredoliveira
I believe you need to re-read my comment.

And man, if your new employees need 6 months of hand-holding, you're hiring
the wrong employees.

------
5vforest
Some people enjoy working remotely, others enjoy going into a specific
workplace. Not sure why this is such a contentious argument every time.

~~~
loteck
Here's one reason we recently experienced:

Many people in our company like the flexibility of choosing to work remotely
or in the office. However, when we on-boarded a new hire recently, he
struggled with this level of flexibility. He took advantage of it in
unprofessional ways. When confronted, he indicated that he might do better if
he was always working in the office with the rest of the team.

Management suddenly made it a requirement for everyone to come into the
office. This had severe and immediate impacts on morale and on employees'
focus on the mission.

Some people _need_ to work in an office. Some people _need_ to work remotely.
Some people can be flexible. The reason it's so contentious is because it is
hard to accommodate all 3 of those types. So far, the solution is to alienate
at least 1 of those 3 types. Hopefully the contention will result in progress.

------
stumm
They seem to flip back and forth about remote working. Less than 3 years ago:
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-
everyone...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-everyone-to-
chicago)

~~~
ndonnellan
Perhaps note the date and extreme sarcasm?

"Change is never easy. But we’re willing to do whatever it takes to be the
most efficient company we can be. Now please excuse us, we’re off to get more
productive. And secure. And dressed the same."

------
misiti3780
I work remotely most days a week (and sometimes for a week at a time). I love
it. I agree with everything in that video - the only problem I deal with these
days is the constant fear of it coming to and end at some point :)

------
JaretManuel
37Signals nailed it. I have been working remote for FormAssembly for almost a
year and it is amazing in many respects.

We're hiring strong PHP dev's. www.veerwest.com/jobs <\-- The Makers of
FormAssembly.

------
kreek
One thing I was surprised by, I like pair programming better when it's remote.
You get the code right in front of you and you talk to the voice in your head
(phones).

------
GoldfishCRM
Even when my fellow coworkers sitt next to me I skype with them instead of
talking. Makes it much easier to not be interupted by talk all the time.

------
resca79
Work remotely it's good when also the big percentage of company people works
remotely. Anyway, I buy the book

~~~
grdvnl
Agreed. Having a big percentage of company working remotely sets up a workflow
among all team members that is conducive to remote work. Whereas, when some
parts of a team are working remotely, including where teams get
created/dismantled for short projects every couple of months coming up with a
workflow becomes difficult. That said, I work remotely and I have been
productive as ever.

------
AtTheLast
I like how 37signals promotes a solid work life balance. They also do a really
good job of telling stories.

------
31reasons
Can we build a list of Companies that have more than 50% of their workforce
working remotely ?

------
nakovet
Kobo link to pre-order is giving 404. =(

------
droope
look at you make me hate my job so much! :@

