I work for Pivotal Labs, so my daily style of working is all about colocation and pair programming. I am accustomed to being able to turn to any of my peers, especially product managers and designers, to ask a question. Previously I worked entirely remotely as a freelancer.

I've also interacted quite a bit with the Spring team, either in the office or through Slack. They are a fully distributed team, some of whom choose to work in various Pivotal offices because of the amenities.

Both approaches work, they just work differently. The cats-and-dogs arguments people have about local/remote is, in my experience, largely about personal preference.