The Remote Manifesto
All-remote work promotes:
- Hiring and working from all over the world instead of from a central location.
- Flexible working hours over set working hours.
- Writing down and recording knowledge over verbal explanations.
- Written processes over on-the-job training.
- Public sharing of information over need-to-know access.
- Opening up documents for editing by anyone over top-down control of documents.
- Asynchronous communication over synchronous communication.
- The results of work over the hours put in.
- Formal communication channels over informal communication channels.
The remote vision
Being able to recruit and hire from most countries in the world is a distinct competitive advantage for Novu.
We are hopeful that our hiring advantage will diminish over time. This will signal that all-remote is shifting toward being commonplace, with prospective employees having a broader selection of companies who offer such a structure.
We believe that a world with more all-remote companies will be a more prosperous one, with opportunities more equally distributed.
Why is this possible now?
Here are some of the key factors that make all-remote work possible:
- Faster internet everywhere - 100Mb/s+ cable, 5GHz Wi-Fi, 4G/LTE/5G cellular
- Video call software - Like Google Hangouts, Zoom, etc.
- Mobile technology - Everyone has a computer in their pocket
- Messaging apps - Like Slack, Mattermost, Zulip
- Issue trackers - Like Trello, GitHub issues, Jira
- Suggestions - GitHub Pull Requests
- English proficiency - More people are learning English
- Increasing traffic congestion in cities
- More demand for flexibility from new professionals entering the workforce
What "all-remote" does not mean
For employees, being part of an all-remote company does not mean working independently or being isolated; that is not a substitute for human interaction.
Technology allows us to stay closely in touch with our teams, whether asynchronously in text or in real-time with high-fidelity conversations through video. Teams should collaborate closely, communicate often, build relationships virtually, and feel like valuable members of a larger team.
Working remotely also doesn't mean you're physically constrained to home. You're free to work wherever you want. That could be at home with family, a coffee shop, a co-working space, or your local library while your little one is enjoying storytime. It could mean that you're location independent, traveling around, and working in a new place each week. You can have frequent video chats or virtual pairing sessions with coworkers throughout the day, and you can even meet up with other coworkers to work together in person if you're located near each other.
Careers, not outsourcing or offshoring
It's important to recognize that all-remote is not a synonym for outsourcing or offshoring. Outsourcing typically has a central authority who farms work out to low-cost regions for the primary purpose of saving money. This is not the same as spreading career-building opportunity to underserved regions. All-remote seeks to hire the world's best talent, regardless of location.
