Reddit reviews The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

You wear pants? Amateur. Someone actually wrote a book about the company I work for titled "The Year Without Pants": https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118660633/

There's also https://weworkremotely.com/ from the guys who make basecamp, dedicated to work from home jobs.

With regards to freelancing, don't worry about global competition so much. It's not a race to the bottom. If you can prove yourself to be better than the global guys, whether that be skill, timezone, communication etc. then you can charge higher. You don't want to do QA for the people who aren't willing to pay, but there's going to be people who will pay premium for a job done well. You just need to market yourself well.

If you're going to do it I highly recommend reading The Year Without Pants (http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633), about an ex microsoftie who went to work for Wordpress which is fully remote. Brilliant read whether you want to work remote or not, but particularly relevant in this case.

Here's a non-affiliate link to a book on the topic which you might find interesting. It covers WordPress.com but much of what it talks about is applicable elsewhere.

As for myself, I've worked from home for about 4 years, currently as a web developer for a major university. There are lots of great jobs out there depending on your skill set.

https://www.amazon.com/Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com-Future/dp/1118660633?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-osx-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1118660633

I can recommend Scott Berkuns book about his experience in a distributed team: https://www.amazon.com/Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com-Future/dp/1118660633

We love Asana as well, it's the tool we use the most on a daily basis.

So if you want to be fully distributed, there are various factors you need to comply with - time zone differences, different languages, cultures, religions, styles of work. While some of these could be unified, it's often hard to convince a European to work US business hours every single day. Different holidays also matter - you have to maintain a calendar of all national or religious holidays since location/religion could define these.

We do several things to keep a healthy remote work environment.

1. Our communication happens in Asana - even if there are quick chats live, on Skype or Google Hangouts, the recap should be in Asana. This prevents any blockers or isolated team members and leads to a good level of transparency
   
2. Our planning is built with remote in mind. We don't allow a client to call and ask for urgent changes today since it's often impossible. Our internal management, client communication and legal docs are shaped around that foundation.
   
3. The easiest thing for us is working on weekly sprints - for example, the weekend in Saudi Arabia is Thu-Fri, so if we work with a Saudi contractor, we always deliver a feature (or report) on Monday and don't care what's the definition of "weekend".
   
4. I always try to identify the three most important values for every employee or contractor. If I am able to satisfy these, then all of the daily minor misunderstandings or the emotional remote gap doesn't matter because the priorities are in place. It's hard to plan work- and time-wise for everyone, but that's what keeps the team together.
   
5. I try to be online as much as possible even if I'm not working, just to be able to answer a blocker question or assign some tasks around.
   
   There's much more that I could share, but I'd like to refer to three books that you will probably enjoy:
   
   

• The Year Without Pants: http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633
  
• REMOTE: Office Not Required: https://37signals.com/remote/
  
• Bulding and Managing Virtual Teams: http://chrislema.com/store/building-managing-virtual-teams-five-ways-create-high-performance-culture-remote-workers/
  
  If there's anything in particular you'd like to know, I'll cover it as well.

What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team, NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html

One-On-One Meetings - https://getlighthouse.com/blog/how-to-start-one-on-ones-your-teams/

Growing Great Employees, Erika Andersen - http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Great-Employees-Extraordinary-Performers/dp/1591841909 (though I hate the stupid comparisons with plants)

The Year Without Pants, Scott Berkun - http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633

The E-Myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses/dp/0887307280

Would you ever quit it all and go a year without pants?