There is the flip side of it too. This networking effect of having developer hanging around the business people and sales is also the added value of those developers.
As one of my manager put it, why would I hire a remote worker in the UK when we can just add more people to our office in Poland. ( Polish dev are just as good, well qualified and hard to find but they are cheaper )
To me "work as if you're not there" is just volunteering to prove your job can be outsourced.
> This networking effect of having developer hanging around the business people and sales is also the added value of those developers.
At my last on-site position (now I'm contracting remotely) the dev team was originally going to be in another city (London) from the rest of the company (minor EU capital), however because of this reason it was decided we should all be together. I rarely saw the advantages of this, or felt value from being around the business folks. Most decisions were made in hallway chats and we were kept out of the loop, except when something 'super urgent' needed to be changed and a PM walked over and grabbed someone. Disadvantages were apparent, as it was a lot harder to find decent Rails developers compared to London.
Flipping the flip side, actually your point is what I found most challenging from working remotely. You really need to probe each day that your work can't be outsourced that easily. I've constantly put myself over the last few years to ensure that I deliver value each day or each week at most. And that has proven incredibly productive for myself.
If you have a hard working person that understands that very simple concept then he or she can work from anywhere as long as he or she stays really focused, only then will hardly be beaten by a local folk or folks working on an office and subject to all sort of distractions.
As one of my manager put it, why would I hire a remote worker in the UK when we can just add more people to our office in Poland. ( Polish dev are just as good, well qualified and hard to find but they are cheaper )
To me "work as if you're not there" is just volunteering to prove your job can be outsourced.