Not necessarily, given modern day collaboration tools that allow individuals on a team to interact over distance.
The fact is, with nearly 20 years in IT and Management/Business I consistently see better collaboration here on FreeRepublic than I have in probably 90% of team situations where presence was compulsory.
To the point of when talking to people about the potential of remote collaboration I like to cite the night I lurked out here in Fall 2004 and saw Freepers deconstruct the whole Bush ANG Memo story. Which not only ensured that the hit didn’t impede Bushes reelection, it also brought down Dan Rather.
In that case, as others, there was no value in being present. It would have been a detriment actually, because it was only through remote collaboration that the knowlege necessary to expose the memo as fraudulent would have come together.
As a lab techie (with a room full of automated equipment in Arizona), I have a number of customers at our branch in Beijing. If I had to work with them face-to-face it would be a heck of a commute. The fact is, they work remotely, I work remotely and everything gets done on or ahead of schedule. There is no other way to collaborate over these distances. Time of day is more of a problem than getting things done. It’s 3:30AM there now, at the middle of my workday.
Remote working is a fact of life that gives me the flexibility to keep the balls in the air 24/7, and my company would be shooting themselves in the foot if they every tried to stop it. This Yahoo chick is a yahoo, and this bright idea of hers will fail. Unless, as another poster mentioned, she’s just trying to cause attrition, in which case it will be seen as a spectacular success.