[bsimpson]

Is this substantially different than having a manager in a different office?

I'm in SF, but my manager has been in NY for the last 3 years. Being managed from a different office seems to be common in large companies.

[biztos]

Where I last worked it was common to have your manager be in another country, sometimes with a pretty difficult time zone difference.

I was remote but many offices had a butts-in-seats policy because of unapologetically old-school top management. Fortunately there were quite a few middle managers who were able to creatively route around this inefficiency.