Those interruptions, on a small volume, are actually pretty important. That's one way that information cross-pollinates on the team. Those accidental conversati

Those interruptions, on a small volume, are actually pretty important. That's one way that information cross-pollinates on the team. Those accidental conversations about the codebase can and do lead to reprioritising changes or coming up with new approaches. With a remote person, you don't get that. Remote workers can't make nearly as big of an impact when it comes to doing the stuff they /aren't/ directed to work on. Also, at some point, somebody has to bring new hires up to speed, and I certainly wouldn't want that process to happen over Skype. Teaching new hires is an important time to get them on the same page on the team's practices and help find the rough spots in bootstrapping someone to the codebase. In general, software development is much more high-bandwidth than people give it credit for. It's often much more beneficial to hash out an unclear specfication with a coworker over coffee than it is to forge ahead and just make stuff that seems like it could work.