[pixelmonkey]

Yes, this is a problem and indicates that the managers at these companies don't "get it", in my opinion. I refer to this as "out of band communication" (described well here: http://www.sandywalsh.com/2012/03/out-of-band-communications...) and if your "distributed" team practices it, your collaboration environment is doomed.

37 Signals described how they worked around this problem by forcing employees at the parent office to work from home more often, see http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2360-equality-and-remote-team...