Trust is key no matter where they work. With a small company if you can't trust someone to be as productive as you need them to be (regardless of if you're looking over their shoulder or not) you probably shouldn't hire them. The exception to that I guess is people who just don't work well remotely. But the whole comment about monitoring code commits just seems nutty to me. My company is remote, and it works because I trust everyone to do a good job. I wouldn't hire someone I didn't trust.