I work on a team that has members distributed across two locations. We use the policy described above, but there is a flip side to this problem. Most of our developers are one location with a 1/6 minority in another. The larger group of developers loses the advantages of face-to-face communication for meetings in favor of equal footing for everyone. Is that a net improvement on quality of communication? I don't know, but I'd rather meet with my colleagues in adjacent cubes face-to-face rather than over the phone the way we do now.