Benefits of Remote Work

• "Smart people in white coats have extensively studied commuting—this supposedly necessary part of our days—and the verdict is in: long commutes make you fat, stressed, and miserable...According to the research, commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress-related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce."
• "The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely."
• "Letting people work remotely is about promoting quality of life, about getting access to the best people wherever they are...That it may also end up reducing costs spent on offices and result in fewer-but-more-productive workers is the gravy, not the turkey."
• "One of the secret benefits of hiring remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone's performance. When you can't see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away. Criteria like 'was she here at 9?' or 'did she take too many breaks today?' or 'man, every time I walk by his desk he's got Facebook up' aren't even possible to tally. Talk about a blessing in disguise! What you're left with is 'what did this person actually do today?'"
• "Once you factor in the hurried rush to get ready in the morning, the commute, and the lingering at the office after hours, the part of your day where you actually connect with your family seems frustratingly slim. Working remotely—especially from home and especially on flexible hours—can dramatically change that dynamic. Imagine eating breakfast with the family without the stress, taking half an hour over lunch to play in the yard together, or being there for a sick child without missing a whole day of work."
• "One of the benefits of allowing your team to work remotely is that it gives them an opportunity to change their scenery as often as they like...Routine has a tendency to numb your creativity."

The Transition to Remote Work

• "Embracing remote work doesn't mean that you can't have an office, just that it's not required. It doesn't mean that all your employees can't live in the same city, just that they don't have to. Remote work is about setting your team free to be the best it can be, wherever that might be."
• "If you're an owner or manager, letting local people work remotely is a great first step toward seeing if remote will work for you...But here's the thing: if you're going to give it a shot, give it a real shot. Try it for at least three months. There's going to be an adjustment period, so let everyone settle into their new rhythm.
• "The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. Not only do we not have to be in the same spot to work together, we also don't have to work at the same time to work together."
• "Most of the time when you hear people imagining why remote work won't work, they'll point to two things in particular: One, you can't have face-to-face meetings when people aren't in the office. And two, managers can't tell if people are getting work done if they can't see them working. We'd like to offer a very different perspective on these two points. We believe that these staples of work life—meetings and managers—are actually the greatest causes of work not getting done at the office. That, in fact, the further away you are from meetings and managers, the more work gets done. This is one of the key reasons we're so enthusiastic about remote work!"
• "Instead of thinking I can pay people from Kansas less than people from New York, you should think I can get amazing people from Kansas and make them feel valued and well-compensated if I pay them New York salaries."