58 Must-Read Remote Work Resources
Remote work is talked about so much and we’re quickly reaching a tipping point.
It’s going to change the way every type of business operates.
Whether a company is fully distributed (remote), co-located in one office or distributed across multiple offices, the way that work gets done will increasingly look like what we’ve been calling remote work.
Remote work will just be called work in the future.
To help with the transition of remote work to broad adoption, we found as many great resources as we could about remote work.
Here are the best resources we came across after scouring the Internet for countless hours.
Research Reports
Dogs. Cats. 180+ remote work tips. Embarrassing remote work stories. How people really feel about remote work. Remote work challenges. Statistics about remote work meetings. Find all this and more in The Remote Work Report: Why Everyone Loves Remote Work.
Buffer’s fully distributed team conducted a survey of 2,471 remote workers which highlights some of the challenges and feelings people have working remotely.
Upwork did a survey of more than 1,000 hiring managers in the U.S. on how Millennials and Gen Z are defining the future of work.
Google did a survey of over 5,000 employees and also ran focus groups to determine the challenges of working remotely and came up with a set of recommendations they call Distributed Work Playbooks.
TSheets’ survey of remote workers and their employers asked if remote workers are actually working. One thing they learned is that 64% of survey participants say they sometimes take care of personal tasks during the workday.
In the State of the American Workplace report by Gallup they found that 43% of employees work remotely at least some of the time. The full report also contains dozens of other insights about remote/distributed work.
LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trend report found that “Companies that embrace work flexibility have a huge competitive edge”.
Books
The folks who run Basecamp have had a distributed team since 1999 and they’ve written two books about how they work as a remote company. The first one is called It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work and it’s about the Basecamp team’s approach to getting work done without the stress. And they wrote REMOTE: Office Not Required all about their way of working remotely.
Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business is a remote friendly book by Paul Jarvis that will make you think differently about how you run your business.
Scott Berkun worked at Automattic, a 100% distributed company, for a year and lived to write about it. The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work describes his experience of working remotely.
Guides
A couple of remote team members on the Trello team gathered advice from 10 remote teams including Automattic, Atlassian, Buffer, Evernote, InVision, Litmus, Stack Overflow and Zapier. They compiled the advice and also dispelled common remote work myths to create this guide titled, Why Great Teams Embrace Remote Work.
The Zapier team created a guide based on their personal experience growing a remote team. It’s called How to Grow, Manage, and Work with Remote Teams. It’s full of stories and lessons they’ve learned working remotely.
The folks at Hubstaff created a highly tactical guide on managing a remote team titled No Excuses: The Definitive Guide to Managing a Remote Team. It’s based on the company’s personal experiences on topics ranging from hiring remote team members to implementing process and documentation.
If you’re on a remote team using Slack, this guide from Ahoy Team is written specifically to help make your remote company culture thrive.
GitLab has created what they call “The Remote Manifesto” which serves as a brief guide of the company’s eight principles for teams that are working remotely.
Podcasts
Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of Automattic hosts a podcast about remote work called Distributed where he interviews people about the topic. Subscribe to Distributed on iTunes here.
James Beshara and I had a 2-hour long deep dive discussion about remote work on his podcast, Below The Line. Subscribe to Below The Line on iTunes here.
We Work Remotely, a top remote job board has a companion podcast called The Remote Show where they interview people and get insights on remote work. I discussed my personal experiences with startups and remote work on the podcast. Subscribe to The Remote Show on iTunes here.
Yonder is a blog on remote work with a podcast where the host Jeff Robbins interviews remote work leaders about their thoughts and best practices on working remotely. Subscribe to The Yonder Podcast on iTunes here.
The fine folks at Basecamp who have a 100% distributed team have a podcast called Rework where they share unconventional business wisdom and work stories. Subscribe to Rework on iTunes here.
My Startup Chat co-host Steli and I have been both running fully remote teams for over a decade. We discuss the findings from The Remote Work Report in this 11 minute podcast episode. Subscribe to The Startup Chat on iTunes here.
Blogs
Lifehacker has productivity focused articles about remote work dating back to 2010.
Remote teams heavily use Slack to get work done. They have an independent website as their blog which covers distributed/remote work directly and indirectly.
Owl Labs has created a 360° smart video conferencing camera that’s particularly useful for distributed teams. Their blog is called The Remote Blog, so I’m sure you can guess what their content is all about. And they’ve got a whole section on their website that’s dedicated to interviews with remote workers, including me.
Doist, the makers of Todist and Twist are a fully remote team who have been writing in-depth articles about remote work since 2015.
Upwork is all about working remotely and they’ve got a large collection of articles about how to work remotely.
Miro creates a real-time online collaborative whiteboarding tool. Their articles on remote collaboration will help you learn how to work better and more efficiently with your team.
Hubstaff creates software to help teams measure their time and productivity. Their blog is full of articles with best practices for remote/distributed work.
Notable Articles
If you’ve ever wondered about the history of remote work, you’ll get answers in this article from We Work Remotely.
Software teams are already prone to enough challenges and having a remote team doesn’t make it any easier. This article from Clubhouse will help you navigate the common problems and their solutions for managing remote software teams.
Have you wondered if remote work will ever turn mainstream? The Next Web has your answer.
Naval Ravikant thinks that “We’re going to see an era of everyone employing remote tech workers.” Here’s why.
Mental health is important for all of us, and that’s especially true for remote workers. Amir Salihefendic, founder and CEO of Doist breaks down the impact of loneliness and depression on remote teams.
FYI co-founder, Marie Prokopets, broke down the challenges, opportunities and solutions for successfully doing product work remotely on the Product Craft blog.
Working from home can be tricky, especially when you’re new to it. G2’s learning hub has you covered with their simple actionable guide on how to work from home. If you’re an employer of remote workers, they also wrote a useful article on creating a remote work policy.
Kevin Smith, Chief Product Officer of Abstract, describes how creating a distributed workforce helps enable a more diverse culture.
Jason Fried of Basecamp wrote an article about the positives and negatives of group chat, things especially important to understand for remote teams.
Based on the 180 remote work tips we collected, Marie shares 10 practices to overcome the challenges of remote work on the We Work Remotely blog.
In this interview with Wade Foster of Zapier he shares why Zapier went fully distributed and how they manage to get things done as a remote team.
The TimeDoctor team found and compiled research-backed facts to help prove that remote teams are the future of work.
The folks at OwlLabs put together this curated list with 35 of the best Slack communities for remote workers.
Here’s a detailed instructional article on the Paymo blog about how to turn yourself into a remote work pro.
Ryan Hoover, co-founder and CEO of Product Hunt writes about people’s frustrations with remote work.
Payroll and taxes can give managers on remote teams a lot of heartburn. The folks at Groove wrote an informative primer on payroll and taxes for managers of remote workers.
Personal Experiences Working Remotely
Ted Goas dives into the details of working remotely as a product designer at Stack Overflow.
Mike Davidson, a VP at Invision describes his first year of working remotely at the company.
Emilie Schario wrote about her first year at GitLab, including her experience with the practice of “disagree and commit”.
Matt Haughey who has been working remotely for 16 years shares his tips in this detailed write up of his experience.
Caileen Kehayas explains how she discovered that remote work isn’t right for her.
In this brief write up, Basecamp designer, Jason Zimdars shares his take on the benefits of working remotely that are not related to productivity.
Steph Smith describes her personal experience and lessons learned working remotely while sharing her frameworks for thinking through remote work.
Remote work is here to stay.
Today it is still unimaginable to many people that companies can be 100% distributed and be as productive as companies who are 100% co-located in one office.
What’s inevitable is that the 100% co-located companies are going to evolve. Remote work is already happening at these companies, especially with all the online tools that are being used by team members on a daily basis.
No longer do you have to walk over to someone’s desk to discuss a project with them. You can simply send messages in Slack while you’re at your desk sitting in the same office as everyone else working on the project.
The future of work is going to be more and more distributed. What comes next will require workers of all kinds to adapt in ways we’re just barely beginning to understand.
