I spent three years on the 2nd largest Scala 'team' in the U.S (first as an engineer, then leading a sub team), the problem is that using Scala as a 'better java' doesn't really buy you much productivity wise. A small percentage of sub teams tried using Scala this way and hit a lot of road blocks with the unfamiliar syntax, immature tooling, and other quirks.
The teams that had huge productivity gains were the ones who leaned heavily on the functional features WHILE caring about overall readability. That means yes, we used Scalaz but we discouraged the omission of dots and parentheses (as you mentioned), discouraged operator overloading/symbolic methods, and were very deliberate about when to reach for features such as HKTs or some of the more unfamiliar features of Scalaz.
Overall it lead to a very productive and fun development experience, and at the same time illuminated many ways in which the Scala ecosystem could also be improved.