As someone who is remote about 90%, I contend the watercooler chat magic is overrated and a waste of time. I was previously in office full time. I was one of th

As someone who is remote about 90%, I contend the watercooler chat magic is overrated and a waste of time. I was previously in office full time. I was one of the first tech hires. I am mostly a programmer, with a good deal of overlapping ops and analysis thrown in. I'm part of a very small engineering staff (under 10) in an overall small company (under 30 people). My work output in our open office drops to around 10% of the output when I work from my house. This is code, documentation, and meetings attended. People spend more time at the office because they are constantly interrupted (both by off-topic conversations as well as for work-related things) and need to stay late (past 40 hours) to finish their tasks. From informal notes, conversations that occur via Skype or In Person are poorly documented and tend to be rehashed more often than written communications via Github or Slack. IMO, if the entire team was remote and utilized more written communications, we'd be spend less time rehashing old topics and more time delivering value. As to the spontaneity and ideation of face to face, I've observed this happening over video chat and slack just as often as in the office. If people are excited about their work, they will talk about it, in person or not.