Having spent 5 years working with a remote team of 30 developers (mostly west coast based, but almost never in the office), there is definitely a different side

Having spent 5 years working with a remote team of 30 developers (mostly west coast based, but almost never in the office), there is definitely a different side to the story. The situation you are describing arises when you try to introduce telecommuting into an organization, without making it part of the culture. When it is an exception and not the norm. As with any exceptions, it has to be properly managed, and results in extra effort being required form both sides of the fence in order to make it work. However, making it the exception is the main reason telecommuting doesn't work out for organizations. At the company where I worked, the norm was that all member of the development staff were telecommuting. Most other departments were on-site, with the exception of about 50% of sales. Pretty much everyone that came into the office did so by choice. I did about 50/50, as my job included a lot of meetings with executives. The main aspects that made this successful, were the same as in the office - there was a very specific expectation of behavior: - When the day starts (at you preferred/agreed upon time), you send an email stating you are working to the dev distro list. - When you are working, you are expected to be on IM (statuses are meaningful, if you are set to "do not disturb", you are not disturbed, unless an emergency arises). - When you leave, take a long break, etc, you let the team know by email. - A daily "stand-up" call was held at specific time. - Everyone had a published contact list. Especially, leads, managers and PMs were expected to answer the calls from devs. Essentially, when someone would IM you, it would be like dropping by someone's cube to talk. White-boarding sessions were done over gotomeetings or webex. For people not used to this, it might sound like a chatty, annoying type of environment, but in reality, being aware of the need to communicate, it made for a much more hospitable place to work. When you needed to concentrate, you could shut everything out. When you needed to collaborate, people were an IM or phone call away.