I've been working (semi-)remotely for the last couple of years. My current schedule has me at home most of the week, and in the office with the rest of the team two days, however that varies depending on other factors.

> How about same-time communication? E.g. I need to discuss things with my designer, oh wait, he's gardening at the moment, or he works at night.

On the whole you avoid it. So much of what people think needs an immediate response really doesn't, and can be dealt with much more effectively with a well written email. If you really do need to speak to someone real time then you schedule a time which is convenient, rather than disrupting the other party by dropping by their desk.

> How do you know when to start/stop your day? E.g. In "normal" office, it's usually 9 to 5.

This was the hardest thing for me when I stopped working in an office, but eventually you get into a rhythm, much as you would in a "normal" job. Sometimes it might vary a bit, but in the end we're creatures of habit.

> How do you schedule projects? Fixed time simplifies scheduling ("This project is 5 man-days").

You still have an idea of how many productive hours you'll get in a typical day, you're just working in a different place. Knowing how much you actually work is a big win for estimation, since you're not playing the game of pretending everyone gets 8 hours a day every day.

> Who pays for supporting equipments (desk, LCD, internet, nice coffee) if I work from home?

In my case, I had it all set up from when I was contracting anyway, so the kit is mine, but it depends on the company. Any company worth their salt would pick up the tab for equipment you need for your job (although you may have to pay for your own coffee).

> Specific to 37signals: How did they make the video? Did the video guy traveled to each and every employee in the video to tape them?

He did! It was kind of cool to spend a day with a coworker in my town.

* Everyone has a calendar with blocked-out times (for other meetings, or whatever personal things they do). Pick an open time that all participants can join (I work in MST, my co-workers mostly are on EST).

* The expectation is to be available during business hours for the local time zone, unless something very weird is going on. However, I will generally block a couple hours in the afternoon so I can go work out or help my daughter with her math homework (whatever hours I take off are made up at some point later that evening or later that week)

* Project scheduling doesn't change. The expectation is still to work about 8 hours a day, unless there is vacation is in the mix, but that's no different than people who work in an office.

* My employer provides all the electronics (computer, LCD, etc). It is also company policy to pick up the cost of an IP phone and high-speed internet (50MB/s down/15MB/s up where I'm at). When I was negotiating my salary for the position I took into consideration that I would be paying for my own "perks" (coffee, etc). I have friends who work at companies like Palantir that are paid a stipend for "forward-deployed" engineers that covers the perks that other employees receive in the office (catered lunch, coffee, etc).

> How about same-time communication? E.g. I need to discuss things with my designer, oh wait, he's gardening at the moment, or he works at night.

I've just started working remotely at a new company. I asked my previous employer if I could, and they said no, which is why I am no longer with them. I think this was one of their biggest concerns to having a team working remotely - if you need to discuss something you can't just grab everyone in the team for half an hour to discuss it.

Personally this was one of my biggest gripes of working in an office, if someone wants to discuss something, instead of arranging it, they just disturb everyone else whenever it is convenient for them. Developers always talk about being in the zone, but when it comes to respecting others we don't seem bothered about it.

So in regards to your issue, I don't see it as a problem. If I really need to talk to someone I can pick up the phone and call them, but if it isn't urgent I just send them an IM or email and wait for them to get back to me.

A lot of that, especially points 1-3 depend on if you work with other people synchronously or asynchronously. At my current job we all try to work as much synchronously as possible, so there is no real difference from any other "office job", except everyone is in different location (we all are in roughly the same timezone), and we don't have to commute. We focus on trying to keep sanity, and keep working hours (my experience is that it helps a lot when working remotely)

For shops that allow/ or just work asynchronously, other arrangements need to be made to allow that. Usually more and more stuff is written and stored, so everyone can join and leave any moment.

There is a similar book being worked on by other ruby-remote working company: Arkency, http://blog.arkency.com/2013/09/arkency-survival-guide-to-ef...

Real-time communication - IRC and google hangouts

Start-stop: Whenever you feel like it. I start around 10, work until 4 or so, and usually run a couple hours later in the day (11-2 at night often)

Schedule projects: Stop thinking about hours on the clock, start thinking about iterations on a calendar. Look at past work, consider the difficulty, extrapolate to the future with a hedge factor.

Supporting equipment: I do, it's a tax writeoff and I get to pick what I want. I've worked at companies that paid for everything - that's fine too.

1. For us we're all in the same city, close enough to commute but don't - we just save 2hrs everyday :)

2. We do 9-6, 1hr lunch sometime between 11:30 and 1:30, releases after 6, which isn't too bad you're already home when it's done.

3. No different than regular, work breakdown structure, 6hrs/man of actual work in day (email, skype, etc. doesn't count)

4. I use my home computer, this way I don't have to set up two envs, but software is reimbursed, they would buy computer if I asked though.

same-time communication: you schedule a time to do it. send them an email, say i would like to discuss the following issues, when is good for you. at the very most you'll need to do something else for a few hours till then.

start/stop: if you find time a useful way to plan things, just set yourself a "work time" and stick to it. it might require a bit of self-discipline that office work doesn't, but after a while you'll get used to thinking of that block of time as work. the nice bit is that it can be, e.g. 7-12, siesta, 3-5 if you prefer that to a straight 9-5.

schedule: you can still plan things out in man-days. people are responsible for arranging their time so that they put in that much work; it just doesn't need to be 9-5 every day.

supporting equipment: there are companies that will let you expense some of your equipment and internet bills; others see providing your own equipment as a tradeoff for not having to come in to the office.