Ask HN: Good Remote Work Literature?

[anacleto]

I've been working remotely for the last 4 years of my life. In my latest company, I just realized how little literature has been written on the topic of remote working. I've been seeing some forms of reports on the status of remote working [0], but I couldn't find any in-depth materials (whether blogs, essays, papers or even books) with some qualitative thinking on remote work and the future of work. We have been flooded with solutions and tools without a deep understand of our working flow and caveats.

Ie: why are things happening in a certain way? What are the school of thoughts? What are the best practices (synchronous vs. asynchronous, remote vs distributed)? What is the Keynes vs. Hayek of the subject? What are the implications of remote working on organizational structures (eg. functional vs. divisional)? What can and cannot work? What's the tool stack one should adapt depending on the org configuration?(Slack + Zoom for sync, etc) How does this should adapt as the org changes over time?

Do you have specific resources you could recommend me to read on the topic?

This write-up I just published on the blog is the closest example to what I'm looking for: https://sametab.com/blog/future-remote-working/

[0] https://buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2019

[langitbiru]

GitLab is one of the most successful remote companies. Their handbook is free to read. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

But what you are looking for is this one: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/

[cwarrior]

They pay salaries based on the location of the employees, which kinda sucks.

[alohaandmahalo]

Thanks very much! We're building out the all-remote section with new pages on a regular basis. Just added dedicated sections for people, jobs, meetings, compensation, hiring, etc.

[hoodwink]

Echoing the recommendation for Remote elsewhere in this thread. I also recommend Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.

Cubed does not address remote work per se, but it does help explain the history of the office and how that became the de facto workplace for cognitive labor. It also discusses the history of the theory of management, which is a relatively young scientific subject, maybe 130 years old, which is predicated on one assumption: everyone is in the same building!

As a proponent of remote work, I believe what is happening right now is practice is outstripping science. It’ll take several years before science catches up to study what entrepreneurs and companies have already figured out through trial and error.

[kitd]

I've not read Cubed. It sounds interesting. But the topics you mention brought to mind similar themes in Peopleware by DiMarco and Lister. I'd add that to the list, though not related to remote working.

[raamdev]

Distributed.blog is a new podcast series by Matt Mullenweg (co-creator of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, a fully-distributed company of nearly a thousand folks). The podcast explores distributed work, the future of business, and what it means for the global economy. https://distributed.blog/

[buboard]

Great resource, thanks

[dashpeak]

The team at Doist (creators of Todoist, Twist) just released long-form guides on remote work (e.g. asynchronous communication, taxes, product design, management, hiring, project management, etc.)

https://twist.com/remote-work-guides/

[mikkelam]

I'm also interested in how to RUN a remote company as i've found myself in that position without previous experience. I've found most material online to be related to how to work remotely as a person but not how to actually run the comapny.

[mvip]

Shameless self-plug, but I wrote about my decade long experience of remote work here[0], and included some further reading material that I've personally found useful. There are some books dedicated to this. I am actually toying with the idea of writing a book on this and would love to get your thoughts. Ping me at @vpetersson if you wanna chat.

[0] https://blog.viktorpetersson.com/remote-work/2019/05/18/a-de...

[vinrob92]

I wrote two free books specifically on productized services.

The first book discuss how to productize your services and hire and manage remote workers (and it covers the tools and techniques to work remotely). The second book is mostly about value proposition and marketing.

1) http://www.productizebook.co 2) http://www.productizemarketing.co

[ed_balls]

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

[supr_strudl]

Table of Contents > Humor > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4

[fovc]

Related question: how do you manage payroll in all the different countries? I noticed Gitlab hires as contractors but curious if anyone is using international PEO or other solutions

Edit: Looks like Gitlab uses CXC and Safeguard Global as employers of record

[jobvandervoort]

We're working on something at Remote. While working at GitLab, I saw the issues they were having, so we're building an alternative to CXC and Safeguard.

Launching a little launch page later today, but feel free to email me if you're in need of some help: job at remote dot com.

[ohadron]

Not easy... our company is based in the US and we had to open a subsidiary in Israel in order to grant option plans. There are some companies that can serve as an intermediary but they are limited in aspects such as this one.

https://papayaglobal.com/ is one option for example.

[wolco]

Easiest way is to pay them as contractors. It's simply an expense then.

[SMFloris]

You should read: The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

Its a real treat.

[bap]

Seconding this!

[buboard]

Edit: I have not seen anything coming from the economic literature about remote work. Sadly economists are focused on bigCorps and VCs who are not remote-friendly.

Some of the best articles from remote workers i saw recently:

https://a.wholelottanothing.org/2019/08/09/tips-from-16-year...

https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/08/a-year-of-wo...

More links like this here: https://reworkin.com/

[jasonwen]

The ones who come to mind are Zapier and Basecamp, which has been mentioned earlier.

https://zapier.com/learn/remote-work/

[mmikeff]

https://leanpub.com/geographicallydistributedagileteams

[evjan]

I read this years ago and remember nothing about it, but it's a start: Remote by Jason Fried and DHH - https://basecamp.com/books/remote

[chrisweekly]

+1 for REMOTE for having at least some perceived authority (authored by successful / well-known business owners who practice what they preach), and for explicitly addressing each of several audiences. It's not particularly deep, but it might be useful.

[techno_modus]

I also found this book quite useful:

"REMOTE shows both employers and employees how they can work together, remotely, from any desk, in any space, in any place, anytime, anywhere."

[mattsy123]

There is a lot of academic work on this subject among researchers on teams/virtual teams, see e.g. the work of Pam Hines and Melissa Valentine at Stanford, Mark Mortensen at Insead. There is also a whole literature in 'Computer Supported Collaborative Work' in CS depts.

[krzrak]

I recommend the book "Work Together Anywhere" by Lisette Sutherland and her other contributions (i.e. talks). She talks on many aspects of remote work: starting from benefits and how to convince your boss, through team dynamics, to what tools to use.

[whsheet]

In this context: Does anyone have experiences with Tandem, especially this feature where you can see what your peers are doing (showing the app name of your focused window, I think)?

[OJFord]

No experience with it, but I struggle to imagine it being useful where the viewed person is a programmer. A day is split between, what, a browser and a terminal emulator? And an IDE if used?

[grengale]

Read my book - The Remote Project Manager - on Amazon. It covers the challenges of managing teams remotely as well as how to best use the available Technology. Gren Gale

[donnie3000]

I've been collecting remote work material (books, articles, discussions, talks) here — https://www.notion.so/scenery/Remote-Work-2c76a8c189f248c2b9... whilst working on my own remote tool — https://www.scenery.app

[nealdt]

I found the book 'Work together anywhere' by Lisette Sutherland extremely helpful. You can skip past the first five chapters if you already are in this situation.

It's really helped me work with a remote team. The book has tons of good recommendations as well, so it's practical as well as helpful.