You can't take the way you might work in an office environment and directly apply it to remote working. It's different. You have to allow for greater team-member autonomy. You have to document more. You have to create asynchronous work patterns.

For better or worse, some people don't enjoy working remotely or can't make it work. It's a skill. You have to work at it. But if you're able to make it work, it can be a truly rewarding experience.

Hmmm this sounds much more like his personal experiences of "I don't like to work alone" however I agree with the tools are not there yet.

This is an area that I think we're going to start seeing some really interesting collaboration tools appear. Remote-hiring is an increasing trend and something will have to fill the communication gaps that spring up.

This came up recently at our recent company meetup - simulating water cooler moments is key for us; we've tried practically every 'chat' app (we use slack but may also go back to using https://www.sqwiggle.com). We're looking into those Segway/iPad presence bots and I myself am developing some projector-based remote viewing device (which I'm personally calling "magic mirror") which will allow two teams to share a wall in virtual space.