At my company the new product is being developed by a separate team that subscribes to the agile development concepts. While I wouldn't say they are "religious" about it, I do sense a disdain for email and phone communications. In the extreme, agile developement teams are all close together. Ideally any systems or DBA types supporting such a team are also close.

For someone who works Tuesday-Saturday in database support ( and who would like to telecommute more than just Saturdays ) this becomes tricky, especially in this economy. I think many older boomers like myself would like to get out of long commutes but it doesn't appear most companies are ready to outgrow the "walk around the building and talk" approach. Doesn't matter that half the time the "walkers" don't find the person at their desk.

My co-workers caution me that face-to-face communication is still critical to really know what's going on and that humans are just slow to truly adopt email/messaging etc. I'd say half of the emails I send at work are never responded to.

So soft skills are important even though some of us would happily get by on electronic communications from home. I may have to get serious about looking at full-time telecommuting elsewhere.