I don't really understand the response. I'm not talking from a position of ignorance here; time zones are exactly as big of a problem as I think, because what I think has been informed by my experience working across time zones. There are certainly mitigation strategies, which improve the situation far beyond the naive solution of "let's pretend they're locals who just never come to the office". But no mitigation will make communication with someone you've never met in Shanghai as easy as it is with your buddy in the desk across the hallway.

I've worked across time zones too. Your problem is that you try to fight their existence and want it to be like "your buddy across the hallway". But it's not. If you accept that then you can find effective ways to communicate with them.

I agree on the time zone thing... But I really prefer voice comms when possible. The rest of my team is 10+ hours away, so we do a skype 'standup' at the start of my day, end of theirs.

Bigger issues tend to be around language and culture...