I think you might be falling into the trap of overt generalization.
I agree that remote removes critical bandwidth for cross team communications.
On the other hand, lots of programming projects are parallizable to n crafty individuals who need colocate only once in a while to " totally sync their mindstate" and can communicate effectively enough in the mean time using other ways without loss of critical bandwidth if the need for that bandwidth is not needed.
Not all teams need the same kind of cross individual bandwidth. Of course loss of colocation leads to loss of serendiptuous talks to create novel insights but if the insividuals working together were located far apart in the first place then they might not be working together at all if not remote.
Personal anecdote to give a practical example:
I recently moved to another team within the same organization working on the same product but on a different level. The team from where I moved developed the stuff that got CI:d to customer builds and it would have been really difficult for me to imagine working remotely there as the work required often going around the floor asking about stuff (lots of undocumented legacy).
My new team focuses on tech and middleware and creates libraries for downstream to consume. Programmers work on their own libraries and I can go on for days without requiring input from anyone. On this team I could easily work remotely.
Based on my experience I would claim it depends on the designed team duties wether remote works or not. And I think this means that team organization must be tightly coupled with the software architecture design. I have no idea which should drive which but I'm pretty sure any changes in one should also be consciously reflected in another.
I agree that remote removes critical bandwidth for cross team communications.
On the other hand, lots of programming projects are parallizable to n crafty individuals who need colocate only once in a while to " totally sync their mindstate" and can communicate effectively enough in the mean time using other ways without loss of critical bandwidth if the need for that bandwidth is not needed.
Not all teams need the same kind of cross individual bandwidth. Of course loss of colocation leads to loss of serendiptuous talks to create novel insights but if the insividuals working together were located far apart in the first place then they might not be working together at all if not remote.
Personal anecdote to give a practical example:
I recently moved to another team within the same organization working on the same product but on a different level. The team from where I moved developed the stuff that got CI:d to customer builds and it would have been really difficult for me to imagine working remotely there as the work required often going around the floor asking about stuff (lots of undocumented legacy).
My new team focuses on tech and middleware and creates libraries for downstream to consume. Programmers work on their own libraries and I can go on for days without requiring input from anyone. On this team I could easily work remotely.
Based on my experience I would claim it depends on the designed team duties wether remote works or not. And I think this means that team organization must be tightly coupled with the software architecture design. I have no idea which should drive which but I'm pretty sure any changes in one should also be consciously reflected in another.