[boken]

I agree with you. My experience with remote work has been touch-and-go, but it always helps when team members are mutually willing to communicate over the phone. Effective back-and-forth over email seems to be a rare skill. No matter how much time you put into refining a message, it is only ever one piece of a conversation. If there is more to say than just "Do this," or "I have done that"—if you need a back-and-forth—all email does is stretch the dialogue out. Answers come more slowly, and often as incompletely. And, as you say, tone is very hard to get right over email. I'm sure I've read at least a couple articles on HN about the tendency to read aggressiveness into concise emails.

[frandroid]

Email is simply not a conversation medium, and rarely even a discussion medium. It's a medium mostly useful to propagate information and meeting requests (where discussion happens).