I'm going to ditto Paul Conrad's response. I do not have any horror stories, because my in-office co-workers are as helpful as can be. My company is located in New York. I worked there for 2 years but wanted to move to Kansas for personal reasons. (I know, I know. "Who moves to Kansas willingly?") When my boss realized that the move was really going to happen, he was very generous in offering me a telecommuting position. Since then, I have been thrown into the middle of a couple of projects. When that happens, I typically end up spending as much as 3 hours on the phone (spread throughout the day) with my in-office co-worker who is the acting project manager. After the initial hand-off, additional emails, IMs, or phone calls ensue as more questions arise. Never are there complains or attitude from my co-workers. It probably helps that I had 2 years to build up my working relationships with them before I moved. But the point is that the communication is always wide open. I am also conferenced in to weekly, department-wide status meetings, so I am always aware of the projects other developers are working on, even if I am not involved with the project. Finally, I am also conferenced into our monthly, company-wide meetings. It's hard to hear some people in the room, but the main presenters are the ones closest to the speaker phone, so I get the general idea of where things are at company-wide. Minus the lack of the face-to-face interaction I used to have, I barely feel like I've left the office. Right now I'm looking at different web conferencing packages that will enable my co-workers and I to interactively share diagrams and things like we used to do as whiteboards. One of my in-office co-workers and I will be making a proposal to my boss sometime down the line when we're confident we've found the right package. If you don't have a lot of communication, demmand it. You may be a telecommuter, but you're still part of the organization.
