I want to know what the stigma is over remoting. I know 37signals has quite a few remote engineers and they are doing quite well. There are loads of good engineers literally all over the country. But for some reason the Bay area would rather spend twice as much looking for local engineers than just hiring ones that are on the other side of the country. What gives?
Having remote workers requires a very different operation style and a lot of trust in yourself as a manager, trust in your workers, and trust in the technology you're leveraging to communicate. Can you as the manager lead from afar -- its harder than you might think. You can trust workers to actually work, you can just let them go for not doing so. But it's harder to trust your remote workers to engage with the company and their peers digitally. It's not easy. Also, the technology may be a pain to use, and kill any good intentions or habits you may have started.
The similar problem with remote is that the manager and their team must consciously prevent the "silence" the author alluded too. Likely, the silence was not intentional. People get distracted in "realspace" and easily can neglect remote worker. In order to have a remote team be viable, you have to overcome this barrier. That's where the trust/competence of all parties comes into play.
There are other problems with remote workers. You can't have a face-to-face conversation. A remote worker can't go into a coworkers office and help track down a tricky bug. These issues can be alleviated to some extent by email, phones, and video-conferencing, but those things require a fair amount of work to set up and still aren't the same as having the person in the office.
I'm willing to bet on-site engineers (especially those with H1B1s) are more loyal. It cuts both ways though - a freelancer knows they are first to go if they company needs to cut back.
