[rwmj]

I actually work in a completely remote team, in the sense that everyone works remotely (about 50 people). So there is no hierarchy of remote people being second-class team members, as you seem to be describing.

For minute-by-minute chats we use IRC, and that works well. For longer conversations, mailing lists. And we have twice weekly video conferences, and twice yearly physical meet ups.

This works well. I suspect it wouldn't work well if half the people were sitting in a room together and had conversations that were not accessible to the remote workers.

[fsavard2]

Do you think/feel this affects how close-knit a team can be in your company?

From what you say you don't seem to use video much (for one-on-one), so a lot of visual/non-verbal is lost (also there are no non-work regular meetups, e.g. lunches, which I think helps with nurturing a bit of informality).

Also when someone is sitting next to me the threshold for asking a question is rather low, and when working remote I tend to waste more time looking for answers on my own. So my guess is that would affect productivity also.

But still I wonder if there are many of these completely remote largish (> 15, say) companies. It's a very interesting model.

[rwmj]

We're pinging each other on IRC all day, and yes it interrupts your flow just as much as asking someone next to you.

Most open source software development happens this way - IRC, email, git, patch review ... It's a very well-proven model.