[gii2]

Well, the communication should be easy part. We are living in digital world, where you talk to your friends online more than you see them face-2-face. The communication between colleagues is pretty much the same.

Europe does not have so many timezones, but if you decided to go farther east, that's different issue.

I don't think everyone in the team should be involved in the architectural decisions of your product. That's why there are different type of seniority and roles in the team. Then you just have to "manage" the execution.

[themartorana]

Most anyone in sales will tell you there is absolutely no substitute for in-person, face-to-face (not face-to-face-on-screen) meetings. It establishes trust. There is more to conversation than words (and our brains are built to pick up on it). Not everyone is an architect, but even sharing knowledge, code review reviews, and so on - all better in person in general.

Remote isn't bad, per-se, but having worked remote, managed remote workers, and now owning a business, it is my anecdotal experience that things generally run smoother, more efficiently, and with deeper levels of trust and involvement between people in the same room.

[gizi]

The less the product matters, the more the salesman does. So, yes, in order to sell something that the other side has no interest in buying, you should go face-to-face. Google, on the other hand, has never sent out even a single salesman to talk people into using their search engine or to bid for ads on it.

Therefore, for me, it works the other way around. If a company has salesmen, their product must be totally unimportant. They are probably competing on cost with China, and busy going under, because anybody who could innovate their way out of that trouble, has left already, or never came over in the first place.

[georgerobinson]

Can someone explain why this comment is being down voted? I think the author makes a valid point.

When I choose my iPhone, my MacBook Air, my Martin acoustic guitar, etc, I didn't need a salesman to explain to me how great these products were. I went into the store and tried them out for myself. No one ever had to convince me to purchase the product. The product did that by itself.

On the other hand, if someone has to convince me to purchase a product I was never looking to purchase, or over a competitors, the product probably wasn't that great in the first place.

[S4M]

I think gizi's point is pretty good (I upvoted it), but he misses the case where a company has to do some heavily customization on its product to satisfy the customer's needs, which is often the case in enterprise sales. In this case, especially if the user is not technical, it's better to have face to face meetings to understand what the customer needs.

[dietrichepp]

Digital communication still has a long way to go. If I'm in a room with two people, I can tell what they're looking at. If I'm in a video conference, I can only tell that they're looking at something on their screen. Humans are one of the few animals with a visible sclera, and I don't think that this is some kind of coincidence.

[ensignavenger]

Use a pointer.

[dietrichepp]

Missing the point... it's not about what they're looking at on screen, it's who they're looking at.

[ensignavenger]

I see, but you used the word 'what' in your post :) I would propose that people can adapt the wa they communicate to overcome these obstacles. Or in the near future when good VR headsets become reasonable, we could meet in VR conference rooms!