[mmastrac]

I've been working in a fully distributed team for nearly four years now as part of the chain of startup 'pivots' I've worked on: DotSpots, gri.pe and chee.rs.

It's a mixed bag. You really lose a lot not having physical interaction with your teammates (except the once or twice a year you happen to fly everyone to the same place). It's a lot easier to get on each other's nerves when you're not face-to-face. Management of people becomes a lot more difficult because of the disconnect of discussion over Skype or chat.

On the other hand, you can handle a lot more stress and workload by not having to worry about the commute and office hours. Sleep is easy to catch up on, even in the busy times. It's a lot easier to do things like taking a walk or grabbing a coffee down the street to clear your head - far less social pressure against taking a needed break than you'd see at the office. It's also a lot easier to thread in events in your life.

Ease of hiring is probably the big benefit with fully distributed teams. You have access to talent all across North America, and if you don't mind the timezone differences you can pick up people anywhere worldwide.

[loceng]

I agree with all of these, except the issue is the bigger investment firms want their teams in one location for the core component pieces anyway. Not sure if this is because it makes a company more sellable later on, or to make sure people are actually working, etc.. This is what's taking me the longest time is finding / getting the core team together. Meanwhile I just keep planning and organizing more and more for when I finally have a team - it's all I can do with the only unlimited resource I have - my mind!

[mmastrac]

Yeah, I should have noted that. It's much harder to be "acquirable" if you're all over the place.

[gluejar]

Face-to-face planning and decision-making is crucial for fully distributed teams for exactly this reason. So you need to take the money you save not having an office and put it into travel and regular in-person meetings. Somewhere nice!