I managed several dozen people scattered across Hong Kong, NYC, London and Bangalore. I couldn't even overhear the team at my location because I was often in meetings. Nearly everything was done async, with weekly video calls. The main cultural challenge was getting people to IM frequently and casually like gamers on discord.

From a CS angle, we know async is more efficient than synchronous code, but requires very careful implementation. Same for people. It works for OSS volunteers, it can certainly work for full-time employees.