[klardotsh]

Yep, 2-4x onsites together a year to develop human relationships, and otherwise 100% remote, is by far the most effective team arrangement IME. It is especially the most accessible format for people who do not necessarily perform their best work within the typical office hours (9-5, +/-1), who do not want to live in your metro area, or who are distracted by disturbances in their surroundings - or just aren’t hardcore extroverts.

Or simply put: if you truly want the best, most focused, highly performing team, an office requirement shrinks your talent pool tremendously for extremely little gain. Do quarterly meetups somewhere and move on, IMO.

[leetrout]

Quarterly is a lot, depending on travel distance and whether weekends are needed for travel, for folks with families.

[SilverElfin]

Agree, 4x is doable only if you have no kids. Otherwise you not only create a lot of stress for the other parent but you also lose valuable time with your family, which you won’t recover as kids grow up. I feel like 2x is reasonable.

[klardotsh]

I don't have kids and I'm still more on team 2x/yr than 4x/yr by a large margin, but I'll still take 4x/yr for ~3 days each over in-office daily (or even twice a week). Mentioned it mostly as a compromise option I could accept (and IIRC that compromise is what 37signals did and documented in the Remote book which I haven't read in quite some time).