I don't really agree with this. Half of software engineering is communication and the other half is typing in code. If you could split it up so you could spend 2 days a week communicating and 3 days a week typing in code, you wouldn't need to come to work 3 days a week. But the reality is that the communication can't be segmented or front-loaded -- you need to chat with your colleague next to you for a minute every 10 minutes or something like that. If you're both working in different locations, the 30 seconds of overhead becomes an hour meeting and then you either spend 59 minutes figuring out something yourself, or you spend all your time in meetings. Either way, you're not being very productive.
The only way to avoid the communication overhead is to have one person working on each component. But since coordinating the components involves communication, you can only have one component. So sitting alone typing away is fine if you're working on a one person project, but if you want to do something bigger, it pays to have everyone sitting together with a few hours overlapping. (I'm not a big fan of being awake in the morning :)
>Half of software engineering is communication and the other half is typing in code.
Needless to say, I don't really agree with this. First, ‘half communication and half typing code’ leaves no time for individual creative problem solving, which, unless you're stuck writing the nth me-too implementation of the same CRUD form-filler, is essential. Yesterday's ‘open-plan’ discussion <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767414>; is apropos. Half communication? It wouldn't be half if everyone would just STFU long enough to get some work done for a change.
Second, I dispute the idea that relevant technical communication needs to be, or even can be, done primarily face-to-face or verbally. We have writing and mathematical notations for good reason. Feel free to pop over to a site like Vocaroo and comprehensibly present Tarjan's algorithm, say, or the stdio API, or the VPUNPCKHDQ instruction.
The only way to avoid the communication overhead is to have one person working on each component. But since coordinating the components involves communication, you can only have one component. So sitting alone typing away is fine if you're working on a one person project, but if you want to do something bigger, it pays to have everyone sitting together with a few hours overlapping. (I'm not a big fan of being awake in the morning :)