That’s a great summary. There is definitely a stigma, and even in the face of evidence of high performance engineering (sprint efficiency, product releases, low attrition, etc.), executive bias toward “if I can’t see them, they’re not working” can make an engineering leader’s life miserable.

There are many lists of companies that have embraced a remote working culture (e.g. http://workingremote.ly/leaders/distributed-companies/). That list and others demonstrate that, contrary to the opinion of your CFO, it has been a successful model for several startups.

The secret sauce for me has always been:

• identifying and hiring self-motivated engineers
• being transparent about engineering direction and goals
• promoting ownership of the the products we develop and deliver
• rigorous and meaningful adherence to a shim of periodic routines (release planning, sprint planning, and daily video standups)
• encouraging video over voice and multi-channel IM (with fine-grained notification control) over email
• pulling the troops together for high-bandwidth sync and social engagement occasionally
• coaching people on initiating conversations rather than letting feelings of isolation and associated paranoia run loose
• coaching on how to research and solve problems independently, but reaching out to peers when independent avenues are exhausted
• not mixing remote and office-bound models (i.e. no satellite employees around an office-centric dev team)