I've managed remote teams. Distributed teams work really well. One-person-out teams are a surefire recipe to crash-and-burn. With distributed teams, you get

I've managed remote teams. Distributed teams work really well. One-person-out teams are a surefire recipe to crash-and-burn. With distributed teams, you get into a flow where Hangouts are as natural as going for a walk, where everyone has a proper headset, where there is appropriate shared whiteboarding software, where people communicate with tools which leave a digital trail (mailing lists, wikis, github, etc.), and so on. My distributed team worked better than local teams, hands down. With one-man-out, there's one person who wants this stuff to work, and the rest who, well, don't care too much. There will always be the dial-into-a-conference-room where you can't hear someone, the one-douchebag-doesn't-use-a-headset echo, the everyone-but-the-person-out-goes-to-dinner-together, and so on. It. Just. Doesn't. Work.