Just curious, what specific value do you derive from these events that makes them "essential"? While I understand that a lot of people who may not have a lot going on at home may find them enjoyable, I really don't think it can be characterized as essential for accomplishing the job tasks.

If face-to-face communication is "pretty much essential", what's the argument for continuing to run the company as a remote/distributed enterprise? Isn't the whole concept of telecommuting predicated on the fact that face time is not essential to performing the job function?

Leaving aside the personal interruption represented by such events, I don't understand the philosophical underpinnings. To me, it seems like someone said "There's not enough chance for politics and cliques to emerge over IRC [which is incorrect btw], let's make sure we all get together physically at least once every 3 months so we can find new things to take petty offense at."

Again, I think that well-run open-source projects provide some really good examples of the right way to do a distributed company. They usually have one big pow-wow per year, and it's a convention with planned talks, networking events, etc., and of course, attendance is voluntary and the meetings are transcribed and broadcast. Debate and consideration occurs online where everyone can participate.

If a massive project like the Linux kernel can get by without having such events every 3 months, why can't $Random_Startup?

I've been a full-time remote worker at the same company for the last few years. I'm the only remote worker on my team and one of a small handful dispersed throughout the company. I've been back to the head office once. It's absolutely true that there are negatives and downsides to being remote, but nothing that jeopardizes my ability to perform my duties.

Beyond that, I did several years fully remote as a full-time contractor. Some clients were local and I would meet with them face-to-face up to a couple of hours a week, but the majority were non-local. I only met a few of these people in person and I don't feel that impacted my ability to do my job.

Like so much else in contemporary tech culture, my opinion is that it traces back to putting single 24-year-olds at the helm and making everything subservient to their whims. They think it's cool to rent out a vacation home on a beach in Belize and fly 10 people out to set up camp in there for 2 weeks. Grown-ups with spouses and kids or other significant non-work obligations are likely to be less enthusiastic.

Some people like me dislike working fully remote just as much as they do full-time in-office... a hybrid approach is only thing that can work for me. "Constant consistent variety" is what keeps me ticking and productive. Also, just as you want to take time off from work, don't you also feel the need to take some time off from family too ? ;)

I value variety as well. I mostly work from home when I'm not traveling but I like to go into the office at least one day a week even when I don't really need to. I'm similar with traveling. There are times when it really wears me down but then I'm doing the routine day-to-day in the office/home for three weeks and I'm ready for a change.

>If face-to-face communication is "pretty much essential", what's the argument for continuing to run the company as a remote/distributed enterprise? Isn't the whole concept of telecommuting predicated on the fact that face time is not essential to performing the job function?

I think it's predicated on face time being not necessary on a day to day basis given the tradeoffs associated with requiring it.

A lot obviously depends on the task and individual preferences. I probably shouldn't have used the word "essential." However, I've found some level of F2F very useful and I'd probably encourage teams that weren't too distributed to get together physically on a semi-regular basis (as most want to do anyway).

It's funny that you mention the Linux kernel. I've heard GKH on a panel at a LinuxCon explicitly say that he thought one of the reasons that Linux development was so robust was because there was enough money in the ecosystem to get people to events like he was attending.

Could we quantify this a bit more? A largely remote team for me is a 3-7 person teams, all but project lead are remote. The regular get together are 4-8 hours every month plus some annual dinners. The remote distance is just 20km - 500km

I think our face time is abit excessive but it's ok, even nice, but that's because it fits into my workday and family life, and it's always paid travel time.

It probably depends a lot on the nature of the work and working styles but having a F2F sync every month or two seems pretty reasonable for a not too geographically distributed team.