Awesome Remote Work

A curated list of the best resources about remote work and hybrid team management for business leaders, operations directors, and managers running distributed teams.

Inspired by awesome lists. Maintained by Rework.

Remote and hybrid work stopped being experimental around 2020 and became the default operating model for a large portion of the global workforce. But most organizations are still improvising. This list covers the resources that help leaders build intentional remote cultures - not just replicate office habits on video calls.

Contents

Articles

Books

  • Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson - The foundational case for remote work, from the founders of Basecamp. Still essential reading.
  • Work Together Anywhere by Lisette Sutherland & K. Janene-Nelson - A comprehensive handbook covering everything from home office setup to managing remote team culture.
  • The Year Without Pants by Scott Berkun - An inside account of working at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, and what fully distributed work actually looks like day-to-day.
  • The Long-Distance Leader by Kevin Eikenberry & Wayne Turmel - Practical leadership principles for managing people you don't see in person every day.
  • Leading from Anywhere by David Burkus - A research-backed guide for managers running distributed teams across time zones and cultures.

Videos & Talks

Tools & Software

  • Slack - The de facto async messaging platform for distributed teams, with powerful integrations and workflow automation.
  • Notion - Team wiki and documentation platform for building a remote team knowledge base and onboarding hub.
  • Loom - Async video messaging tool that replaces many meetings with short, watchable video updates.
  • Miro - Visual collaboration whiteboard for remote brainstorming, workshops, and team retrospectives.
  • Zoom - The dominant video conferencing platform for synchronous meetings and virtual all-hands sessions.
  • Gather - Virtual office environment that recreates the spontaneous interaction of an office for fully remote teams.
  • Range - Daily check-in and team coordination tool designed to replace synchronous standups for remote teams.
  • Linear - Issue tracking and project management built for async software teams, fast and keyboard-first.

Templates & Frameworks

Case Studies & Real-World Examples

  • GitLab - Built the world's largest fully remote company with 2,000+ team members across 65 countries and zero physical offices. GitLab publishes its entire operating handbook publicly, including how it runs async standups, conducts performance reviews remotely, and onboards employees who never visit an office. The handbook has become a reference document for remote-first organizations globally. Source

  • Airbnb - Announced a "live and work from anywhere" policy in 2022, allowing employees to work from any country where Airbnb has an entity for up to 90 days per year with no change in compensation. The announcement resulted in a reported spike in job applications and became a highly visible case study in using remote flexibility as a talent acquisition and retention lever. Source

  • Automattic - The company behind WordPress.com and Tumblr has operated with no central office since its founding. With 2,000+ employees across 97 countries, Automattic uses a "Grand Meetup" once a year for the full company and small team retreats quarterly - treating in-person time as an investment in relationships rather than a daily default. Source

  • Amazon - Mandated a return to five days per week in office starting January 2025, reversing its hybrid policy and citing the need for in-person collaboration and spontaneous idea exchange. The decision prompted notable attrition and public criticism from employees, and became one of the most-analyzed corporate RTO cases in the debate over flexible work. Source

  • Nicholas Bloom / Stanford Research - Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom's large-scale hybrid work study (50 randomized employees at a Chinese call center, later extended to US firms) found that hybrid schedules - two to three days in office - produced equal or better productivity than full-time office while cutting attrition by roughly 35%. The research is widely cited as the most rigorous empirical evidence for hybrid arrangements. Source

  • Zapier - Has operated as a 100% remote company since 2011 with employees across 30+ countries. Zapier credits its async-first communication norms - including a "no-reply-expected" email culture and detailed written decision logs - for allowing it to scale past $140M ARR without a single physical office. Source

Communities & Newsletters

  • Remote-how Academy - Training programs and a community specifically for HR leaders and managers building remote-first organizations.
  • We Work Remotely - One of the largest remote job boards, with a community forum for practitioners building remote teams.
  • Distribute Podcast - Conversations with leaders from fully distributed companies about what works, what fails, and what they'd do differently.

Rework Resources

Contributing

Know a great resource that belongs on this list? Let us know.

This list is maintained by the Rework team. Resources are marked where relevant for fully remote, hybrid, or distributed team contexts.