Companies are increasingly struggling to afford office space and hire and pay talented employees in expensive cities. More and more, employees want flexibility and choice in their work—to be near family, to be rid of time-consuming commutes, to have lower costs of living. These operating costs and hiring pressures—paired with an explosion of in-home broadband access, smart phones, and cloud-based tools—make remote work an intriguing option for a growing number of companies. But anyone who has spent enough time working remotely knows that it is an ongoing and dynamic series of tradeoffs for everyone involved.

Luckily, the people contributing to this guide have been involved in remote work for over a decade. We’ve been at large companies with work-from-home policies, hybrid companies navigating the complex interactions of offices and remote employees, to all-remote startups that don’t have any offices. We’ve seen how remote work can unblock hiring obstacles, save money, and provide employees with more satisfying, meaningful, and healthy careers. We’ve also seen dysfunctions in nearly every domain, from treating remote work as a privilege for a select set of people, to isolated, burnt-out workers left to their own devices. Those trying to build effective remote teams can benefit from these experiences, and avoid costly mistakes.

The lead authors of this guide, Juan Pablo Buriticá and Katie Wilde, lead large distributed engineering teams at fast-growing startups (Splice and Buffer, respectively). Additional contributors include Andreas Klinger (Angel List), Job van der Voort (Remote.com), Hiten Shah (FYI), Brenna Loury (Doist), Laurel Farrer (Distribute Consulting), and many more. We cover practices at companies like GitLab, Trello, Zapier, and many more, with the goals of helping managers design what works best for their company and employees, and helping employees make the most of their remote experience.

We believe remote work is a viable and important element of modern work that stands to reshape significant aspects of how companies, employees, and economies function. With the right foundations and practice, companies and employees can approach this complex, ever-changing landscape with knowledge and confidence.

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