Mind you, alignment before said work is important. I had a colleague that started at an assignment the same day I did. We had an onboarding day (lots of stuff to explain), and only a few hours in he was rubbing his hands asking when he could start coding.

But there wasn't anything to code yet, or if there was, that wasn't explained to him yet, so, ????

Morale: don't write code if there's no clear "what to build".

Eating also takes time and breaks up people's days. So should not eat?

Some of the debate I'm seeing here is lacking synthesis of the tradeoffs. First, getting people to communicate is essential (a collective activity). Second, giving individuals time to work productively is essential. Some work is done best solo, some is done best collaboratively. The key is intelligently striking a balance.