I am going to go out on a limb here and say no, other may disagree and may have valid concerns but the benefits on both sides far outweigh the drawbacks. Especi

I am going to go out on a limb here and say no, other may disagree and may have valid concerns but the benefits on both sides far outweigh the drawbacks. Especially for a start-up, while in product development, a start-up can significantly reduce capital expenditures by not having payable for facilities. This is a huge burden on a new company and the elimination of it, is by far one of the greatest advantages. Even in established companies it can help them to significantly reduce their footprint. The developer does not incur anymore expenses because they are already paying, housing, electricity, internet, phone, etc. As well one of the other great benefits of having a distributed team is that you already have the process in place to on-board anyone in the world into your company with little expense. No relocation, no facilities set up, no cube build out. The biggest concern with remote developer that managers have is "how do I know their working"? That's a red flag from micromanagement, but that is besides the point. The answer to that question should already exist in their in-house solution, all work should be done through a ticket system, and source control, if it is not then they have a lax process already and they probably have people who are not working right under their nose. The fact that a manager of development would not know how to answer the question of how to know if people are working, should be concerning to a subordinate of that manager, it may reflect that they are incompetent at their job. To me their are no draw backs, I was actually opposed to distributed development a few years ago, I though it would isolate developers and not allow them to form a cohesive bond. It was ignorance on my part because Open Source projects have been proving the opposite for a long time now. I just finished a contract with IBM that was over 20 individuals on the team, all of which where remote. With Skype and other tools it was no different than all of us being in the same office. Those kind of successes changed my mind on the subject.