The key ideas

Remote: Office Not Required

Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, 2013

Where do you go when you really need to get work done? The founders of 37signals noticed that people rarely answered “the office.” In 2013, long before widespread remote work, they described how their team worked from different cities, without unnecessary meetings and judged by results rather than hours. They also spoke honestly about the dangers of working at home.

Who it is for

For people who work from home or want to try it, and managers deciding whether to let their team leave the office.

Commuting does not just harm your health, relationships with loved ones, and the environment. It harms your work.

What the book is about

The authors begin with a simple question. Where do you go when you really need to get work done? Some people name the kitchen, others a café, and others the early morning while everyone is asleep. The authors observe that the office rarely makes the list. Strange, since offices are built specifically for work.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson ran 37signals, the company behind the project-management service Basecamp. When the book appeared in 2013, the company had 36 people, most living and working in different cities, far from its Chicago office.

An important qualification: this is a 2013 book, written seven years before the pandemic sent millions of people to work from home. It reflects one small company’s experience and its founders’ convictions, not a research study. So whenever what follows sounds like “remote work is better,” it refers to the experience of 37signals. Ahead: the cost of commuting, why an hour-long meeting can last five hours, and the danger awaiting people at home when they love their work.

Idea 1. The interruption factory

Why is it so hard to work in an office? The authors give a blunt answer: they believe offices have become interruption factories. In their metaphor, a busy office resembles a food processor chopping the day into tiny pieces. Fifteen minutes here, ten there, each piece taken up by a call, a meeting, or a colleague’s question.

Serious work, they argue, needs long, quiet stretches of time. They label the two main sources of disruption with the playful abbreviation M&M’s: meetings and managers. They suggest counting this way: there is no such thing as a one-hour meeting. If five people are in the room, it is a five-hour meeting.

An hour before a scheduled call, you already avoid starting a difficult task: you will be interrupted anyway. One meeting can therefore take more time than the calendar shows.

It helps to count a meeting’s cost in the hours of everyone attending. Then you can see that a short meeting may cost the team more than it appears to on the calendar.

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About the author

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the founders and leaders of 37signals, creators of Basecamp, and coauthors of Rework. Hansson is a Danish programmer and the creator of the Ruby on Rails framework.

All books by this author: Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

Terms from the book

  • Burnout
  • Interruption factories: The authors’ image for offices where calls, meetings, and colleagues’ questions break the day into small pieces. A metaphor from the book, not a scientific term.
  • Asynchronous work: A way to work together without being online at the same time: questions, files, and decisions are kept in a shared space, and everyone responds when they can.
  • Virtual water cooler: A shared chat for informal conversations among colleagues, like talking at an office water cooler. An expression from the book.
  • Trial project: A small paid assignment with a deadline that a candidate completes before being hired. The authors’ recommendation, not the only way to hire.

All terms

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