Remote Not Distant

Welcome to my Remote Not Distant book summary!

One-Sentence-Summary: How to make fully remote work for large corporations with examples from Microsoft (Value: $246T), Volvo ($40B), and Slack ($27B).

booboo real-time book rating: ★★☆☆☆

In lieu of actionable advice, you’ll read this found on page 276, “Trust More – Even If It’s Not Comfortable.” It may just be a bad fit, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I was looking for a book on how to manage my remote team. The title is Remote Not Distant. Maybe I misunderstood the purpose of this book. Maybe the I also misundrestdood the book description to go along with it.

Regardless, I stopped reading around page 100. In this next part, I don’t mean to be a dick, but I also don’t want you wasting your time reading a book that won’t benefit you.

I think the author has found himself in a profession that doesn’t add much value, but that big corporations need for one of their requirements. I’ve worked in a big corporation. I’ve attended these useless workshops. On page 75, the author describes one of his workshops at a company to describe the team’s purpose which culminated in this realization that he calls ‘the most profound shift’: “making the product experience more meaningful.” That’s it. That is the value this team got out of his workshop, a bland, meaningless purpose.

I did get one piece of neat wisdom. The author suggests emphasizing impact (achievements) over input (hours worked). Agreed. Love that. I am going through a transition in my business where I’m trying to learn how to manage, how to create goals, and how to measure impact, but right now it’s easier for me to measure input/hours. To that point, the author quotes a Google VP, ‘as long as the goals are clear and OKRs are clear, you don’t need to monitor activity/input.” (p. 30)

Finally, the author talks about requesting feedback as being more important than giving feedback. Great and unique perspective. I will ask for more feedback. I think that’s sound advice.

You are reading my book review and summary by Gustavo Razzetti. Be sure to check out my digital bookshelf for 100+ book summaries.

As I read the book, you will find my in-progress Remote Not Distant review and book summary notes below.

• Razzetti is going very hard at the traditional in-person workplace. While it may have made send back in 2020 and 2021, we saw the cracks in 2022 and in 2023 may large businesses (Facbeook. Tesla, etc.) have required onsite work.
• “Netflix’s CEO wants people back in the physical workplace, despite not having an office himself.” (p. 38) This is a weak argument. I don’t believe a comparison of the CEO of a Fortune 100 company to staff employees is reasonable.
• Almost 100 pages and still nothing. One can assume one purchased this book to learn more about running a remote business, but the author has taken a stance of providing case study after case study. I’ll continue a bit further and retire this one. Unfortunately, it makes sense why this book didn’t sell well according to Amazon, though it claims to be the best busienss book of 2022.

Did you know I’m an author? I wrote four books on real estate investing, travel, and language learning.

New Words!

• Extol – praise enthusiastically

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Gustavo Razzetti for writing Remote Not Distant!