BOOKS
This indispensable reading list takes you behind the scenes at some of the most successful remote-friendly companies on the IT market today. The authors provide detailed firsthand accounts of how to grow, manage and inspire remote teams.
Remote: Office Not Required by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, the founders of the web app company Basecamp (formerly 37signals). Published in 2013, this book was an eye-opener for many as it outlines powerful arguments in support of remote work in chapters like “Talent isn’t bound by the hubs,” “Stop managing the chairs” and “The virtual water cooler.”
Influencing Virtual Teams: 17 Tactics That Get Things Done with Your Remote Employees by Hassan Osman offers step-by-step tactics and psychological secrets to improve your remote team's engagement and commitment to their work. You'll learn how to increase productivity and reliability as well as establish trust with your digital employees.
The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and The Future Of Work by Scott Berkun chronicles the unique work culture of the company behind WordPress.com, the backbone technology of some 50 million websites on the Internet. The 120 employees at Automattic, Inc., work from wherever they want in the world, rarely use email and still achieve some of the industry’s most impressive results. Berkun explains how.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport is a great guide for how to be more productive while on the job, regardless if you are a remote worker or your own office cubicle. Newport shares ways of how to achieve distraction-free productivity at work.
E-BOOKS
Not all e-books are full of superficial marketing content. An increasing number of companies are using e-book publishing as a more cost-effective way to share information, and this niche is brimming with real gems if you know where to look. We’ve compiled a few of our must-reads below.
Zapier’s Ultimate Guide to Remote Work began as a series of posts on the company’s blog. Written by Zapier CEO Wade Foster, the guide provides a lot of practical tips in areas like communication, company culture, hiring remote teams and avoiding burnout. At 183 pages, the e-book outlines the company’s successes and failures in running a remote team.
DRiVE is a compilation of interviews Remote Work Hub did with the founders and employees of 30 remote-friendly organizations from around the world to gain insight into how and why they work. You’ll get an inside peek of companies like GitHub, Jobvibe and Doist.
How to Embrace Remote Work is the ultimate guide of tried-and-tested strategies from the world’s leading remote-work companies. The e-book, assembled by Trello, is nicely design and easy to read.
The Art of Staying Productive Even Across Distance: Simple Technologies to Master Remote Collaboration shares simple techniques you can use to master remote collaboration around the world. Published by Wrike, this guide outlines what kind of tools are best for streamlining the work and productivity of remote teams as well as how to avoid pitfalls associated with running a digital office.
BLOGS
The tech sphere has its share of influencers, who (surprise, surprise) have a lot to say about the industry’s nomadic lifestyle. Here’s just a small sample of the blogs we follow, from Ryan Carson’s “Not Silicon Valley” series to popular platforms like Stack Overflow, Upwork and Nodesk.
Ryan Carson, founder of Treehouse, writes periodically on different management issues. You can check out, for example, “Not Silicon Valley Talent Pipeline,” a relatively recent article from his “Not Silicon Valley” series.
Buffer shares a lot of useful insights on its Buffer Open blog. In addition to this, its founder, Joel Gascoigne, runs a great personal blog where he talks about his nomadic lifestyle. We love his “5 varieties of remote working in companies” post.
Find many useful management tips about remote work (and other topics) on Inside Atlassian.
Stack Overflow shares advice on how to manage remote teams as well as useful tips for remote workers and publishes a digest of available remote jobs.
You can also find a lot of interesting stuff on Upwork blog, Remote.co, Nodesk and Freelancer.com.
TOOLS
If you need tips about useful tools, check out some of these lists:
- 30+ productivity tools curated by Zapier
- 18 Essential Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams by Upwork
- Tools for Remote Teams by Product Hunt
- Buffer’s favorite 17 Tools for Remote Workers and Digital Nomads
And here are the five most favorite tools used by our panelist Han Yuan, SVP Engineering at Upwork:
- Google Docs
- Slack
- Upwork
- RightInbox
- Grammarly
3 TIPS FROM STRV
Good management practices, processes and tools are essential, but don’t forget about small human touches:
