Some places may make it work, but teams not being together is a huge drawback. I think Peopleware covered it and it was one of the top detriments. Something like a 50% penalty in project schedules when teams were remote. That lines up with many projects I've seen first hand, too. Calling it outdated doesn't change anything.

There's also tons of non-engineering stuff that benefits from being together, onsite. Stray comments might lead to huge import improvements. In my pervious company, there were always large things we'd find out when we'd have team leaders meet up. And this was a small 15 person business!

It takes a lot of directed effort to make remote work. The GP post about wanting people together has a lot going for it.

> but teams not being together is a huge drawback

Define together? What does that even mean? Together in the same room? I'd have to completely disagree. Teams working together is extremely important. Teams _being_ together, as in co-located, is just a preference.

> Peopleware covered it and it was one of the top detriments

Peopleware has ideas that have stood the test of time. However their opinions regarding remote work have not. The tools available to teams and engineers today are far superior to those in 2000 (not exactly sure on that date)

> Something like a 50% penalty in project schedules when teams were remote

This has absolutely nothing to do with remote work. This is just pure mismanagement. You cannot half-ass remote work. It's either a company wide culture or nothing at all.

> There's also tons of non-engineering stuff that benefits from being together, onsite

Like what?

> Stray comments might lead to huge import improvements

Just because you're not co-located does not mean you're just in silence throughout the day. There are a slew of chat clients and voice applications that allow remote teams to communicate easily throughout the day.

> In my pervious company, there were always large things we'd find out when we'd have team leaders meet up. And this was a small 15 person business!

Just because you're remote doesn't mean you don't have meetings. It also doesn't mean you never meet with people in person.

> It takes a lot of directed effort to make remote work

It takes a lot of directed effort to make any company culture work. And what exactly does "work" even mean? I've seen companies that are a complete mess and they have everyone strapped to their desks. Doing remote work right takes no more effort that doing co-location right. You just have to recognize the difference.

I've not seen remote meetings or chat clients replicate the kind of talk that goes on casually in person. I've not found them to be smoother at all. Walking around, getting into a different environment, sketching stuff on paper, even the body language and whatnot - it's just not very easy remotely. And while it takes work to make a company go, it takes more work for remote to work, overall.

It's like saying offshoring development is OK because "project management is hard and you have to be on top off things regardless".

But hey, I'm glad it works out for some people. A lot of my work is done remotely. But for core development or engineering on my own project, I'd want to be sure onsite meetings happened with fair regularity.

People work from home from time to time and it's fine. We do have a couple of remote contractors as well. I don't see how free food prevents this.

We don't tell employees what to think about or talk about at lunch. Sometimes it's work related and sometimes it's just shooting the shit. In either case I feel like both employee and company win.