> makes communication harder, and more opaque. This is true is obvious situations, but also false in some interesting ways. While physical proximity helps for

> makes communication harder, and more opaque. This is true is obvious situations, but also false in some interesting ways. While physical proximity helps for communication within a team for instance, it also makes it harder to know what happens in other teams, as they also communicate offline. That means for instance that if you want an idea of the status of a team you'd have to physically go there (are they super busy ? is half of the team off for the day? are they under stress or not ?). If the team is in another building there will be enough enough friction that you won't bother except if it's important. In contrast, having more people remote would allow to peek into their room and see their exchanges. You'd also catch some issues or insight on stuff that they wouldn't be discussing with other teams otherwise for instance. Basically, there is a lot of indirect advantages to have people chat by text instead of direct communication. Does it completely offset the other shortcomings ? I don't know, but it's still a pretty nice effect I think.