I think remote works best when everyone on a team is remote. At my current employer, we have 6 people on our tech team. All except 2 of us are in different places. This forces us to figure out how to work effectively using chat, wiki, project management tools, etc.
When only a few people on a team are remote I've found that it just doesn't work as well. I imagine it could work but it would take very strong discipline from the people in the office.
I've been telecommuting for 10 years. When I'm the only remote employee, and there isn't a culture of remoteness, I believe it's my job to have the discipline and do the extra work to stay connected, not the rest of the team's. It's a challenging dynamic, but it's not impossible, and I just don't think it's reasonable to expect the entire team to adapt to the exceptional case, instead of the other way around.
+1 to that. I have been working 100% remotely, full time for a client based in Europe for 4 years now - I've never met the people on my team in person & we only have a 3 hour overlap in terms of working hours. I expect myself to be at least as productive as when I was in the office and then some - to eliminate any doubts people might have. Its very easy for my boss to tell how I'm doing....just take a look at my git log.
Not sure I could ever commute 5 days to work & sit in a cubicle or open plan office (those places remind me of a Chinese factory floor)....they would have to pay me a LOT of money to endure that again.
yeah, when I was at yahoo, the one guy who worked from home (well, we all did on occasion, but the one guy who always worked from home) was really, really good; My feeling was that he was good enough that he was able to say "let me work from home or I walk" - I don't know if he would have been more effective if he was in the office all the time or not, but he was probably the most effective person on the team as it was.
+1 to this as well -- I've been telecommuting for ten years now, and it's always been my view that I have to find the communication mechanism that suits the situation, not the other way around. I think because of this viewpoint, I don't get "left out" nearly as much because I don't give people the chance to forget about me.
That's not to say that I don't miss out on "watercooler chat" topics as they happen, but I still make a point of chatting with coworkers to make up for it. A simple "hey, you feeling better now" IM goes a long way.
As a second example to corroborate your point: my team has one remote worker who is unquestionably one of the lowest performers on the team. Not because he's less skilled, but because he hasn't dealt well with the difficulties presented by being remote (such as needing to be very intentional in spending time assimilating and documenting communal knowledge and in building relationships within the team and with extended teams).
Since he's the only one, he's constantly getting overlooked by the local folks (people forgetting to set up a concall bridge for meetings or set up webex for presentations, impromptu meetings to sync up on some issue that he gets left behind on, etc.)
When only a few people on a team are remote I've found that it just doesn't work as well. I imagine it could work but it would take very strong discipline from the people in the office.