I think a lot of it comes down to the corporate culture. I worked at one company remotely for eighteen months (at the end of which I was laid off). When I start

I think a lot of it comes down to the corporate culture. I worked at one company remotely for eighteen months (at the end of which I was laid off). When I started my team had two people working remotely (and we were among the only remote workers at the company). Eventually the other remote guy quit, and then I got laid off (in large part because I was the only person remaining needing special handling, such as out-of-state health cover). On the other hand, I worked for a company which employed large numbers of remote workers and it wasn't really an issue. One of our clients integrated two of our people into a team which was spread all across north america. That said, I think if you don't capture the water cooler, lunches, etc., you're not getting the full value from the person. Having worked solo/remote for five years, I'm now working in a conventional office setup, going to lunch with colleagues, shooting shit with people at the coffee machine, and so forth -- and the value that these informal encounters have for the project and organization is simply phenomenal. Serendipitous encounters with other smart, passionate people can be amazingly powerful -- I seem to recall an article citing examples such as "Building 20" at MIT where researchers constantly bumped into people working in random different fields, and Pixar's campus where all the bathrooms and snacks are in the central hub. I think that if you're working with the right people on the right project, you want to be together (until the technology for being together -- e.g. electronic "wormholes" -- when you're apart gets a whole lot better). I found the article I was thinking of: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_...