So you get open space. Then we put on headphones because it's noisy. Then we communicate via IM because it's easier and less disturbing. Then you have a bunch of people sitting next to each other communicating over IM.

In my personal experience, there is no difference between a team of people working remotely vs. a team of people sitting in the same open space.

My boss and I sit in adjacent cubicles and we often use IM for that exact reason.

There are differences between working in an office all together and working remotely, and there are definite benefits to being in person, no matter what anyone says, but I've worked off-site for roughly half my career, and I am able to be very effective doing so.

The only downside I've found is from being off-site is that I miss being around people more, so when I was working off-site, I started doing a lot more volunteer stuff that became a little more of a burden when I started back in the office with the concomitant loss of 1.5-2 hours a day or so in free time.

In general, I prefer to work in an office, but my company is moving to the dreaded "open office" plan in about a month, and it's already caused me a lot of stress because I have a hard enough time blocking out distractions in a cubicle. I'm not looking forward to seeing what it's going to be like, but I fully expect to be exercising whatever options are available for working off-site.

That's also my only nitpick on the article's list. Interpretation of messages from coworkers happens in an emotional context, and if you don't refresh that context every now and then (weekly?), strange things happen. Like, people start arguing because minor nitpicks expressed without any malice are interpreted as "you suck, shame on you for making that mistake" - or vice versa.

You can get around this by hiring level headed people. High maintenance people will cause trouble if you are in an office daily or remote. No difference.

Or have a daily standup over a video medium (hangouts, Skype, etc) with a general BS, err, watercooler, discussion before and after.

A standing video conference room that's always open for impromptu discussions helps as well.

Being in a room full of people is annoying and distracting, and tends to make me shove headphones in my ears. This happens to everyone else in the room, too, which means most of the communication is done via Hipchat or Slack anyway.

I agree that being in a room full of chatting people is annoying; that's just a poor work environment full stop.

In my opinion, communication between a few like-minded people around a whiteboard, large screen or projector is an easier process than orchestrating it in a chat tool or conference tool. Don't get me wrong, both work well and are better than nothing, but it's just 'easier' to do it 'IRL'

I don't think ones better than the other per say. It's just different.

I've been in meetings in a room full of people knowing that absolutely no one wants to be there, and no one really knows what they're doing there.

I've been online talking one to one with someone and completely not understood what they were talking about.

Both have pros and cons and the appropriate medium can be chosen based on the situation that's needed.

I'd argue it's a very rare event that a lot of people really need to be in a room together to communicate; when they do a lot more pre-room preparation needs happen than I normally see. ;)

seems like mix of both home and office work could work well --- work at home at the tasks that are most productive in a home environment and come into the office to collaborate on problems together and do things that can't be done as well at home.

I would like to see more work from home 2-3 days a week and 2-3 days in the office type of arrangement.

I like this idea too.