[astrange]

> It's a good question. There's just something about being in the same country. It's hard to explain why though.

Simply speaking, it's better to expand vertically because it's a lot easier to work with people in the same time zone. That's one reason tech is on the west coast.

[injb]

This maybe be true, but it doesn't come close to explaining the situation. Going back to one my my examples: we are based in the US and the agency staff I mentioned are based mostly in South America. I'm not sure what their local tz is but they generally keep to US Eastern hours. In contrast the US staff are spread across all US timezones. Still the US based staff are somehow more integral.