The Power of “In Person” – Why Distributed Teams are Less Effective

As for the article itself, summary -> "As many of your employees as possible should be collocated. I have weird preferences on which specific employees (with specific titles!) can and can't be co located and will fund only companies which meet those criteria."

Useful nonetheless. Potential founders get fair warning on which VCs to run from.

"The best companies are built on common beliefs and culture – a common sense of purpose. Those cultural normals are established through human connections: the night we all stayed late to get that release out the door, the day we celebrated our funding round or the day we landed our first big account. The culture is forged through office parties, poker, paintball or film nights. And slowly, over the years, those crazy stories about Danny passed out in the company bathroom after the Summer party get replaced by weddings, births and family picnics. We become more than dispassionate colleagues – we’ve been in the trenches together and survived."

You've got to be kidding me. "Conventional wisdom" says that you need to co-locate everybody from the CEO to the mailroom staff in a big cube farm.

One thing I'll concede -- distributed teams need to work a hell of a lot harder at communication than co-located teams. You have to explicitly make a point of saying a lot of the things that practically get conveyed "for free" when you're in the same physical space.

I completely agree that companies -- teams -- need a shared culture and sense of purpose to gel. If you're undergoing the startup experience and communicating with others like they're humans (which you need to do to make telecommuting work) you'll quickly find you have close friends instead of coworkers, regardless of the distance between you.

While I may quibble with a few details, I believe the author is generally correct. Over last 20+ years, I have worked with a variety of teams: co-located, remote and mixed. From what I've seen, when co-located teams mesh well, they tend to perform the best. I'm not saying remote or mixed teams can't work well -- they often do. I'm just saying that co-located teams have the potential to work better and over a longer period of time (because of the whole culture thing).

Thats the argument in the article - central locations are good for communication and faster work. Hence you should only invest in centrally located teams.

But good startups can come from distributed work environments too. WordPress comes to mind.

When all is said and done, it shouldn't be about what makes the boss most comfortable or what "feels" right to management. It should be about getting things done.

That coupled with the gas (and pollution) necessary to get the workforce from point A to point B, means there is a heavy tax on our resources and time on having everybody work in a particular spot.

Collaborative technology is getting better. Many times email (or the next iteration of communication technology) is better than meetings.

I also personally find I get more done from home than from the office because it is a more relaxed atmosphere. I can focus and easily pace around (which helps me think) without bothering anybody. At work, I'm often distracted and am not as happy (that has got to count for something).

Anyways, I cannot wait to have the freedom to work from a location of my choice.