[trescenzi]

So this is such a good example of why the office is actually a major liability. Being in person allows you to get away with creating a culture where documentation doesn't really exist and that tapping people on the shoulder is more efficient. Everyone will be better off if instead knowledge is shared efficiently.

A good analogue is the culture of "the smoke break"(see the Friend's episode The One Where Rachel Smokes for a funny example). It's easy to say "the best decisions are made during smoke breaks therefore smoking is necessary for efficient businesses." Clearly that's absurd. It's not the smoking that makes good decisions, nor does the ability to tap people on the shoulder make for good documentation. Depending upon an accidental formation of office culture is never going to go well in the long run.

[plugin-baby]

> Being in person allows you to get away with creating a culture where documentation doesn't really exist

Viewed a different way, it allows a team to spend less time documenting and more time on other things. Increased documentation could be seen as one of the costs of working remotely.

[gingerrr]

Increased documentation is a cost you pay no matter what, you just pay it later in other formats when in-office - when the SME you treat as a guru finds a better-paying gig you have to scramble to rebuild their expertise from nothing or hope they are nice enough to do a thorough knowledge transfer. That kills productivity far worse and for longer than taking 30m at the end of your day updating some shared wiki.

All this to say, the trade-off you're proposing doesn't exist. You're arguing for paying twice instead of paying once - twice in the sense that you lose productivity now via random interrupts, and in the future when your siloed knowledge leaves you high and dry. Hope the "other things" you got done instead of documenting were worth it in that scenario.