Remote teams are hard. Not impossible hard, but running uphill hard. It’s hard because people are used to interacting face-to-face. Given the opportunity, they’ll interact with those around them rather than those in virtual spaces.
The trick, I think, is to make a better shared space for a remote/local team than the physically shared space they already have. A space that is just as fluid, fun, and useful as a physical space and available anytime, everywhere is more compelling because it affords its occupants (aka team members) more hours in their day (no commuting, flexible hours) and permits all sorts of non-traditional work locations (coffee shops, trains, sofas at home, a summer trip to Europe).
Decoupling work from location and time is a big deal. I hope more companies, in software and outside of it, attempt to solve it.
