Working as a data scientist with a remote boss: communication was much more difficult. No telephony or software solution came close to standing on front of a shared whiteboard. Which sucks, because I really wish it did. Maybe what we need is actual <$5k shared whiteboards.

The biggest win I've seen is with ops teams. I hope I'm not betraying any confidences, but a previous employer had an international ops team so as the americans were going to bed the ukranians came on. It made ops a lot less shitty -- I do not like being tired, it makes me cranky and pissed. The issues may still be annoying but at least you aren't being screwed by bad software at 3am, etc.