Remote Work, Day One: Trust

Lots of big changes happened in my life recently, one of them is my workplace. Lucky enough, now I got a chance to embrace the modern style of work, that is working remotely.

I suppose you know more or less about remote. 37signals has published their new book, REMOTE: Office Not Required, where all the benefits you can get from remote is described. I’m half way done of that book, and probably will write another post once I finished it and compared it to my real experience. So here I’m gonna talk about only one thing, a key thing, trust.

I’m a true believer of remote work. As in the book says,

The bottom line is that you shouldn’t hire people you don’t trust, or work for bosses who don’t trust you. If you’re not trusted to work remotely, why are you trusted to do anything at all?

I totally agree with that. But in reality is, well at least the environment around me is even every single manager or boss is good and kind, we still fall into the traditional working style, 9:00 - 18:00+ in the office, that’s the norm, so dominant, I didn’t even try to convince anyone to change that.

Fortunately I got a very unique opportunity to do remote work. After the first day, I should say the biggest and most important “get” is not about the productivity, freedom or flexibility, although they’re truly there, it’s about the trust I’ve never experienced at work.

“I trust you. So no matter what, when and where you do the work, I don’t care, as long as we’re moving forward.” That was pretty much the key conversation I had. It was a really warm feeling. I don’t know how to explain it in words exactly, to be honest I did see that remote work coming before I joined. But when it really happened, I was flattered! I’ve never got this kind of tremendous trust, it means a lot to me as a person. I’m sure I’m not gonna waste it.

Trust is the first step to remote work. It’s personal and fundamental. If you trust your teammate, with proper tools and communications I really think remote work will work!