I don't have any experience building a team like that, but i recently moved from a full time work-at-home freelancer to a part time work-at-home freelancer when i took on a full time job.
I can honestly confirm that my productivity has decreased by more than 50%. One part of it is because of the wasted time in getting to the office and back. Another bigger part is because programmers work in an open space plan. Some other parts would be office politics and so on...
Working in a home office was so much better than i often ended up working 16 hours a day prior to a project deadline and not mind(i used to enjoy what i do).
We used to communicate all the time via IM, via email, and via skype. And of course make full use of collaboration tools. Also, me being in a different time zone helped the process a lot.
So yeah, some people will take advantage of this situation. But then again, bad people will try to take advantage of any situation. It is up to you to recognize those people and stay away from them.
I can honestly confirm that my productivity has decreased by more than 50%. One part of it is because of the wasted time in getting to the office and back. Another bigger part is because programmers work in an open space plan. Some other parts would be office politics and so on...
Working in a home office was so much better than i often ended up working 16 hours a day prior to a project deadline and not mind(i used to enjoy what i do).
We used to communicate all the time via IM, via email, and via skype. And of course make full use of collaboration tools. Also, me being in a different time zone helped the process a lot.
So yeah, some people will take advantage of this situation. But then again, bad people will try to take advantage of any situation. It is up to you to recognize those people and stay away from them.