On the flipside, a significant percentage of people who work in the tech sector seem to be introverted, or sometimes even autistic (although it is hard to draw a clear distinction between the two). Many of them don't really "get" non-verbal communication anyway, even in a face-to-face setting. Even if they do, non-verbal communication tends to be much less efficient for these people. As a result, I doubt that relying exclusively on verbal communication results in such a large loss as the author describes.
> The culture is forged through office parties, poker, paintball or film nights. And slowly, over the years, those crazy stories about Danny passed out in the company bathroom after the Summer party get replaced by weddings, births and family picnics. We become more than dispassionate colleagues – we’ve been in the trenches together and survived.
And this is exactly the kind of office culture that introverted and/or autistic techies tend to hate, or even positively despise. Office parties? Boring. Danny's bathroom episode? Idle chitchat. Paintball? No, I'd rather go home early and play my favorite FPS game. And I thought I'd be able to avoid those stupid corporate events if I worked for a lean startup! No thanks.
In short, I think that the author is approaching the topic of distributed teams from a rather biased point of view, namely, the viewpoint of a corporate executive who is proud of his "social skillz" and expects everyone else to enjoy the pointless parties he throws.