Our company is distributed in a pretty similar way: 11 people in five different countries and in eight different cities. For us IRC is our life line, and we re

Our company is distributed in a pretty similar way: 11 people in five different countries and in eight different cities. For us IRC is our life line, and we regularly use skype. We meet twice per year with the whole team, each time at another location. There are hardly any serious communication problems, nothing worst than I experienced in a previous job where all were in the same building. You learn to read between the lines when you are all day hanging out on IRC together, potential problems are probably easier to spot this way than IRL. At least for us it works :)