If you're a newbie and need to get up to speed, having an experienced person you can ask questions of every 5 to 10 minutes is a big help. And if you can design your software so that the team members are replaceable, being able to easily replacing engineers is more important than keeping them happy.

IMO it only works on a certain complexity level of software, and up to a particular skill level of engineer. Beyond that, you need more specialized engineers that need more code ownership, and will be replaced less often. They'll cost more too.