I've worked remote for quite awhile now at a pretty broad range of companies. For the jobs that have had remote teams and local offices I do agree that I'm able

I've worked remote for quite awhile now at a pretty broad range of companies. For the jobs that have had remote teams and local offices I do agree that I'm able to get a lot of communication done quickly when I visit the office. However I find that the amount of "heads down" work I get done is greatly diminished when I'm in an office. And, much worse, there's a lot of noise in that added communication of being in the office. Remote teams, in my experience, have dramatically less "office politics". Office space is great for communicating "big ideas" but these aren't anywhere near the bulk of communications being had. For most of the communications needs of software remote works fine (in my experience better). I work on a quite a few "big idea" projects and I've found the best solution is to visit the office quarterly, get all the big idea brainstorming done, then scurry off to my remote office where I'm not distracted by office politics and can just get things done. A little face time goes a long way, and annual, or semi-annual all hands meetups can do wonders at filling in the gaps created on remote teams.