Why Distributed Teams are Less Effective (2010)

This is from 2010. Let me offer one counterpoint to this, from my own experience:

Hiring is way easier when you allow your team to be distributed.

I need a developer -- I go on oDesk.com, and together with one of my developers who will be his future partner, we go through profiles and "hunt" for a good fit. Once you remove the geographic restriction, you will find SO much talent. And for the payroll and staffing issues we literally pay 10% to odesk. Compare that with how much staffing agencies would charge on top of the salary (I know, I've been placed many times as a consultant where the agency would take 50-90% on top of the hourly salary I wound up being paid).

Remote workers can work part time. They don't have to commute 2 hours a day. Remote workers are more OK with having odesk take screenshots of their desktop so I know they are working for the time I paid them. Remote workers often have lower cost of living and a startup can't really afford to pay local developers a competitive salary unless they are well funded.

I think Linux and other open source projects show just how effective distributed development can be. Github and other tools are being used by local teams, blurring the line between local and distributed. And also, I've found that the more asynchronous communication we have, the more disciplined we are. For example, if you have an issue, put it in the project tracker instead of talking about it.

Basically, I think that for something as virtual as software development, being distributed can be a real plus, and people can really be more free. This has also become the case with music production and voiceovers, as a friend of mine who owns a major sound studio recently told me.

Definitely. We've found that the most important thing bar none is getting the best people, dedicated to a common cause. If you can't get a key person because they want to keep the home they bought on some island, you're far worse off than if you have to Skype them or whatever. Also, a few of the best companies I know are distributed. 37signals, GitHub to name a few prominent ones. If they are not great evidence that it's workable and can be widely, I don't know what is.

A classmate I respect and who I think is decently skilled started out on Odesk (not very easy to get out of the low paying jobs here in Uruguay), and he accepted the screenshots as part of doing business.

The people that hired him were happy and eventually dropped Odesk in favor of a more permanent relationship, but I think neither my classmate nor the people doing the work were in the wrong, or "not very good". You have to be willing to jump through more hoops sometimes if you're not from the U.S. or Europe.

A lot of the foundation of Agile is improving communication. Communication works better face to face. Whether there are mitigating factors such as not being able to get really awesome people to participate is another question, but I've no doubt that my #1 problem with developers is how to facilitate their communication.

You can only get so many people to communicate well on a team anyway. 10 at most and you're into the Mythical Man Month. That being the case, you find the 10 best people who have good chemistry together, that's job #1. Job #2 is to colocate them if you can, but let's say it is a less significant digit than Job #1.

BTW, developers also need to be able to concentrate. That's another thing that fights with the communication imperative. I'm all in favor of at least 2 of the 5 week days being work at home days.

The right group of distributed teammates on the right product and project is fucking amazing. Its all about recruiting and constant communication with video. Seeings someone's face makes all the difference.