For the last few months I've been part of a distributed team of 4-5 members. First time for me--all my client work has been remote, but It's usually just me and

For the last few months I've been part of a distributed team of 4-5 members. First time for me--all my client work has been remote, but It's usually just me and at most one other person. I haven't had much trouble working with one other person, like the first poster modern communication tech does it fine for me. People complain that physically meeting only scales to as many people as can fit comfortably in a small conference room, but I'd say meeting electronically doesn't really scale past 2 or 3. Even with just a 4-5 member team, all hands meetings are indeed phone calls that drag on (we're getting a bit better at keeping them brief). And "software design debates rapidly turn into a game of telephone"--oh yes. I may be wrong, but I fancy I have an excellent memory for the points and outcomes of such discussions, and it's endlessly frustrating to me to recap over and over when the same thing comes up next week, and the week after, etc.. Actually I don't know if that would be improved by being closer--besides this, the largest software team I've been on was 3 in person, years ago. On the other hand, the other four or so members of the team all are on the west coast and have met--I'm the only one on the east coast. That's a problem for scheduling meetings sometimes, but I don't feel out of the loop or insecure. Part of that, no doubt, is that I'm not a founder--just a contractor. I care about the product as something I've put substantial work into, but it's not my baby and I'm not worried about someone stealing my baby away. There are four of us contractors building the product for the two not-very-technical founders. I guess that's another hot topic.