This is a list of companies that use distributed teams. Please add your company or companies you know about via pull request or just tweet me the info at @fuzzleonard and I will add it for you.
Two metrics for gauging the efficacy of a remote work environment are:
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Do managers (at least some of them) usually work from home? Having managers who primarily work at home is a good indicator that the remote work environment will be inclusive and that effective communication between leadership and remote workers is transpiring.
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Are managers required to work near a physical office? This is a good indicator of the level of company commitment to distributed teams as well as chances of promotion. A remote job is nice but not being able to advance unless you move across the country really makes it just a job; some people would prefer to have a remote career.
There are plenty of other metrics we could use, but after a decade of working remote I feel everything else can be seen as falling out of these two culture-level metrics. In other words if you have the right culture all the other things are implementation details that can be reasonably expected to change to better serve that culture.
Q: Why managers specifically?
A: My experience has been if the culture supports off-site managers that generally means there is a real remote culture with transparent group communication. If managers mostly work on-site then cliques develop and things happen in face-to-face meetings and after work in bars and such from which remote employees are excluded. It can also be an indicator that upper management is really just tolerating this whole remote employee thing because they have to and given a chance would shut it all down.
Where available please link directly to the company's careers page.