[bregma]

I spend several years managing an all-remote team that ranged from Perth WA to Seattle WA. We worked 90% pure asynchronously and 10% using video chat (or physical get-togethers from time to time). It was highly productive, and because it was all open source development any lack of productivity would have been obvious.

I now commute to an office where we all work asynchronously but are expected to appear to work synchronously, as is traditionally expected. It is less enjoyable, frequently subject to context switches (you need to synchronize with the dominant worker) and certainly no more productive -- although that's hard to tell since everything is secret and need-to-know.

I would say working asynchronously is better for intellectual workers. Most intellectual work places that claim to working syncronously are either working under an illusion or under a bad manager with a "my synchrony" attitude.