Where do you get that coordination and creativity require in person time?
I would argue that most creative activities are better done alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And I coordinate just fine with tools available online.
I think you might be mistaking the kind of co-ordination that is possible with CI/CD tools to the co-ordination possible with shouting at each other in a room or having coffee or just being part of human interactions
If you are emailing people and co-ordinating that way you are already part of the political in-group.
If so then co-ordination is fine. But who is part of the political in-group, especially for constantly evolving projects and setups is a human activity and those are best done in person, walk bye, conversations that just happen.
Maybe your company culture does everything over email utterly in the open. Maybe the linux mailing list is the right way to do things.
I was not talking about CI/CD tools, but things like slack, tickets, wiki, shared calendars, etc.
I "shout" at my coworkers through slack and I feel like it achieves the same result as if we were in an open office. Better even since they can wait until they reach a stopping point in their current activity to answer me.
I do not believe in the magical "water cooler" conversation. I worked almost 10 years in an office before going full remote 6 years ago and I've never seen or heard this amazing conversation over coffee during which the next Gen product is discussed. Just my empirical experience, but lunch conversations are usually about batching about the clueless PM, or deciding where to get a drink after work, or stuff like that.
I would argue that most creative activities are better done alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And I coordinate just fine with tools available online.